The writings included in this volume, like those in the preceding volume of the series, are based on talks given by the Mother to the young children of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. They were originally published as Editorials in The advent (1951 & 1952).

The end of a civilisation

The world has been going down in its course of degradation with an increased momentum since the very beginning of the present century. One of the great symptoms of the decline is the prevalence of wars. It can be said in fact that there has been no real peace or even truce upon earth since the century opened with the Russo-Japanese War. Wars have continued since then uninterruptedly: some part or other of the world has always been involved. Indeed one can say it has been a single war carried on on many fronts, opening out at different times. Another noticeable thing about these wars is their nature; with the lapse of time they have become more and more extensive and more and more devastating. It is no longer now simply a clash of armies or professionals, of that section of society whose business it is to fight. Whole nations—literally the whole of a people including men, women, children of all ages—are now mobilised, have to take part in the fight and share the same danger.

Naturally, war meant always killing; but the nature of killing has changed and even the motive too. Killing is now attended with cruelty, done with methods terribly

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atrocious and revoltingly ingenious. And this has affected the very consciousness and morale of man. Not only there is no decency or decorum, not to speak of magnanimity and nobility of attitude and behaviour— once familiar things in stories of the Kshattriya, the Samurai, the Knights of old—there has come into the field a phenomenon for which it has itself found a name, sadism, wanton violence and on a mass scale. Man seems to have thrown off all mask, all the rules of civilised social life and has become worse than the animal: he is now the Pisacha, the ghoul and the demon. He seems to have reached the bottom of the pit.

We know of worlds—vital worlds—which are made of the most unimaginable horror and ugliness and devilry. Many have contacted such domains either consciously in the course of their yogic experiences or unconsciously in nightmare. They bear testimony to the stark monstrosity of these worlds—the gloom, the fear, the pain and torture, the doom and damnation that reign there. That entire inner world seems to have precipitated itself upon earth and taken a body here. A radiant poet spoke of Paradise being transplanted upon earth in the shape of a happy city (the city of the Raghus): today we have done the opposite miracle, the devil's capital city is installed upon earth, or even something worse. For, in the subtler worlds there is a saving grace, after all. If you have within you somewhere an

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aspiration, a trust, a faith, a light, the enemy cannot touch you or maul you badly. You may have also around you there beings who help you, a teacher, a guide who is near visibly or invisibly to give you the necessary warning or protection. But here below when the enemy has clothed himself in a material form and armed himself with material weapons, you are almost helpless. To save yourself from a physical blow, it is not always enough to have the proper inner consciousness only. Something more is needed.

Therefore misery stalks large upon the earth. Nothing comparable to it, either in quality or quantity, can history offer as an example. Man finds no remedy for his ills, he does not dare to hope for any. He feels he is being irretrievably drawn into the arms of the Arch-enemy.

Perhaps it was necessary that it should be so. A pralaya, a Deluge has to be there to end an epoch and begin a new one. Indeed the civilisation that man has built up for millenniums, that has reached its culmination in modern scientism, whatever gifts it might have brought to him, however great and powerful and beautiful it might have been at its best in its own sphere, still it had and was a limitation, acted as a deterrent to a further leap and progress of the consciousness. It is the humanistic cycle that has reigned, from ancient Greece down to modern America. Is it not time that

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another consciousness should intervene, other gods make their appearance?

* * *

And yet if the civilisation really goes, it will not be a small thing, even when measured on the cosmic scale. A civilisation is to be judged and valued not at its nadir, but at its zenith, in its total effect and not by a temporary phase in its course. Civilisation really means preparation of the instrument: the human instrument that is to express the Divine. The purpose of creation, we have often, said, is the establishment of the highest spiritual consciousness in the embodied life on earth. The embodied life means man's body and life and mind; individually and socially these constitute the instrument through which the higher light is to manifest itself. The instrument has to be prepared, made ready for the purpose. Actually it is obscure, ignorant, narrow, weak; at the outset and for a long time it expresses only or mainly the inferior animal nature. Civilisation is an attempt to raise this inferior nature, to refine, enlarge, heighten it, to cultivate and increase its potentialities and capacities. The present civilisation, we have said, is a growth of thousands of years—at least five thousand years according to the most modest archaeological computation. In this period man has developed his brain,

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his rational intelligence, has unravelled some of the great mysteries of nature; he has controlled and organised life to an extent that has opened new possibilities of growth and achievement; even with respect to the body he has learnt to treat it with greater skill and endowed it with finer and more potent efficiencies. There have been aberrations and misuses, no doubt; but the essence of things achieved still remains and is always an invaluable asset: that must not be allowed to go.

If the civilisation goes, it means the instrument is gone, the basis on which the edifice for the Divine Consciousness is to be built is removed, nothing remains to stand firmly on. So the labour has to start again: one must begin from the beginning. The work has to be done and will be done, it cannot be allowed to terminate into a labour of Sisyphus.

Look at the individual. Why is there in him the life-urge to persist, to endure, to survive? If life had no other meaning than mere living, then the best thing would have been to drop the body as soon as it is badly damaged or incapacitated, through illness, accident or old age. Instead, why this attempt to prolong it, to refuse to accept the present difficulties and disadvantages? The reason is that life requires time to grow in consciousness, to acquire experiences, to assimilate and utilise them so as to transform them into powers of being,

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time, that is to say, to build and forge the instrument so that it may house the higher consciousness and existence. In the present make-up, the body, at a certain stage has to be given up; for the frame becomes too rigid and stiff to keep pace with the growing and fast moving inner consciousness. The thread is taken up again in another life; but there is always a considerable reduplication in this natural process, one has to repeat the stage of babyhood and immaturity, a retempering of the instrument till it is capable of newer uses. True, something of the experiences, their essence, is stored somewhere in the depth of the being; but it is not utilised fully, it is not an effective element in element in the normal consciousness. And although one always bases oneself upon one's past, the edifice constructed seems new every time. Yoga in the individual seeks to eliminate this element of repetition and unconsciousness and delay in the process of growth and evolution: its aim is to complete the cycle of individual growth in a single life.

Now the same principle can be extended to the wider collective development. Civilisation has reached a status today when the next higher status can be and must be attempted. Man has risen to a considerable height in the mental sphere; the time and occasion are now here to step beyond into the supramental, the dynamically spiritual. Dangers are ahead, even around and close: all the forces of the infra-human, the sub-

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merged urges of animal atavism are pushing and pulling man down to a regression, to a reversion to type. The choice is indeed crucial. If the civilisation is to perish, it means mankind has to start over again its life course, begin, that is to say, at the baby stage, once more to go through the slow process of centuries to acquire the mastery that was attained in the physical, the vital and the mental domains. Already there have been such lost periods in man's evolution now submerged in his consciousness and their gains are being with difficulty recovered. But a landslide at this critical hour will be a colossal catastrophe—humanly speaking, some thing almost irremediable.

For here is the sense of the crisis. The mantra given for the new age is that man shall be transcended and in the process, man, as he is, shall go. Man shall go, but something of the vehicle that the present cycle has prepared will remain. For, that precisely has been the function of the passing civilisation, especially in its later stages, viz. to build up a terrestrial temple for the Lord. The aberration and deformation, rampant today, mean only an excess of stress upon this aspect, upon the external building which was ignored or not sufficiently considered in the earlier and higher curves of the present civilisation. The spiritual values have gone down, because the material values came to be regarded as valueless and this upset the economy or balance in

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Nature. It is true that we have gone far, too far in our revanche. And the problem that faces us today is this: whether mankind will be able to change sufficiently and grow into the higher being that shall inhabit the earth as its crown in the coming cycle or, being unable, will go totally, disappear altogether or be relegated to the backwater of earthly life, somewhat like the aboriginal tribes of today.

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DARKNESS TO LIGHT

The Darkness is the measure of the Light. The world as it is is exactly the opposite of what it has to be and shall be. And in order to be what it shall be it had to become what it is now, just not that which it will be. The antipodes go together unavoidably: the depth of the precipice is the precise measure of the height. Man's fall represents the ascent he has to make, he is destined to make.

Hurdles and obstacles are put there in the way: not merely to test your strength, but to train it, to increase it, to discipline it. Difficulties abound precisely because by overcoming them you attain to the fullness of your perfection. You have been built with elements and forces that are exactly in keeping with what you are expected to do with them: you are placed in the midst of conditions and circumstances that are absolutely proportionate to what you have to realise. Indeed you carry within yourself all the difficulties that are necessary to make your realisation perfection itself.

When you receive a blow, do not draw back or blink and sink down: hold up your head with courage and fortitude and say to yourself, here is another opportunity

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given to take another step forward. The blow is a finger of light pointed towards a dark spot to be illumined, a weak link that has to be forged anew. In meeting and surmounting a difficulty you add another degree to your ascension, another sinew as it were to your muscle. Remember a difficulty is never out of proportion to your strength: it comes in the exact measure of your power to face it. It is your mind, your notion that makes the contrary suggestion, a kind of illusion possesses you that you are beyond your depth and must go adrift.

You may not be able to do the ideal thing at a given moment. You may not command the perfect gesture that is expected of you in a set of circumstances: the Divine may seem to be veiled from you and you do not hear the direct voice. But it does not matter. What is expected of you is to do your best, do the best that you are capable of at that moment. The highest that is present to you, the summit available for the time and under the circumstances—that should be the source and inspiration of your act. Act on the heights where you stand and aspire for higher heights.

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TYPES OF MEDITATION

The first is to think on one subject in a continuous logical order. When, for example, you have to find the solution of a problem, you go step by step from one operation to another in a chain till you finally arrive at the conclusion. The thought is withdrawn from all other objects and is canalised along a single line. This is a kind of meditation, although it may not be usually known by that name. It marks a progress in the makeup of the human consciousness. For normally the mind moves at random, thoughts run about on many subjects, various, contrary and contradictory, from moment to moment. There is neither direction, consistency or organisation: it is a confused mass of incomplete, half-formed thoughts. The control and organisation of this mass, to start with, in a limited sphere and in a definite direction, the rejection of the unnecessary and the irrelevent and the marshalling and ordering of the required elements form the first exercise towards mental growth. All high intelligence, all effective wielding of thought power needs this discipline. Under the present circumstances of the world the school-life gives the best

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opportunity for this development. This is a meditation that should be obligatory and universal.

The next type we may call concentration, instead of meditation. Here we do not pursue a thought-line, but fix the thought upon one object unmoved. It means a further process of withdrawing the consciousness from its habitual outgoing and dispersive movement. The thought is held at a point and attention is focussed upon it: it is continuous and unbroken attention, for example, upon an idea, a phrase (mantra) or an image. One can concentrate also upon a physical point, say, fixing the gaze upon the tip of one's nose, or on a luminous point outside etc. In this discipline the whole mind is gathered together and focussed: or, everything else is shut out leaving only one thing upon which all the light of the consciousness is directed. It is a standstill consciousness, like a flame erect and immobile in a windless place.

There is a third grade when the mind becomes a void, all thoughts being driven out, all vibrations tran-quillised. It is a wide silence suffused with a still luminosity. The operation is difficult. For it means a kind of continuous and methodical drainage or rare-fication which takes more or less a very long time. First you throw out well-formed ideas and notions, processes and products of reasoning and judgment— the bigger waves, as it were; as soon as these subside

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you find there are smaller waves below or behind— half-formed thoughts, budding ideas, fugitive notions and so on; when these too are quieted down, you come across still another layer of smaller ripples of thought, close to sensations, nervous reactions, vibrations of the brain-mind, rudimentary percepts etc. etc. One may go on like that if not ad infinitum, at least, to a considerable length. One arrives in the end at what is practically a vacuum, to all intents and purposes a silent mind. Even then it is a difficult and arduous process and may not be as absolute as one may expect. There are other surer and even perhaps easier processes to attain the same end. Thus instead of striving and struggling and forcing your will upon the restless waves, you simply relax yourself, by-pass them as it were,await and aspire and open yourself towards the Silence that is above: call for the silence with trust and reliance and it comes not unoften as a massive inundation, a glacial sweep and automatically overwhelms you, drowning and filling you from top to toe. There is also another way: to contact, to enter into the Mother's presence. Mother's Presence means all the realisations to which we aspire concretised, brought down, near to us, within our human reach. We have not to travel far and wide, mount to inaccessible heights, labour and strain—with blood and sweat and tears—to get what we want: all the gettings are ready-made there

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in our atmosphere, we have only to know and perceive, open something in us for them to flow in. That is perhaps the action of Grace: silence, absolute silence, not only in the mind, but in the whole being, can come this way too.

The last process gives us the clue to the fourth type of meditation—the type, in fact, which is recommended for us, both because it is the easiest—following as it does the line of least resistance, also because it gives the fullness of the result demanded. Instead of trying to manipulate the mental force with one's personal will and effort, instead of seeking to control and command the consciousness, the best thing to do would be to remain quiet as far as it is normally possible for one without struggle and then turn the gaze to the other side, deep inward or high upward, become more conscious of the light, the Will that brought you to this Path, to be alive with the secret delight, the flaming aspiration that is there within you behind all the turbid turmoil of the surface life and consciousness. This Presence and Guidance will of itself place before you the elements and movements that are to be rejected and those that are to be accepted and given your sincere assent help you in doing the necessary gesture. Indeed if you do not resist too much, it will throw out what is to be thrown out and bring in what is to be brought in. That is how the instrument will be cleansed

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and refined. Silence will be put in, for that is the basis; but not silence alone, for it will be unified with a new dynamism expressing the Divine's Will—personal choice there will be none, neither for absolute quietude nor for mere activity.

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THE CONSCIOUS BEING

The conscious being in us is truly the psychic being. But it is behind at present and out of the picture. What is normally conscious then is the mind, a part of it which has got the light is illumined. We are conscious through this portion, and even we identify ourselves with it, know and feel it as our self, as "I".

The mind, however, has a central consciousness which may be called the Witness Mind, the Purusha in the mind. It stands apart and observes whatever is happening in the mind and in other parts as well; it is in fact the observer of the whole adhar. The other parts are the vital and the physical. The vital too has its own central consciousness, its witness Purusha, which observes all the vital movements and also through its own angle the other parts. Likewise the physical has a Purusha and it too observes through its own consciousness. The mental Purusha says, "I see I am thinking, reasoning etc."; the vital Purusha says, "I see I am angry, violent or enjoying, energising etc."; the physical Purusha says, "I see I am acting, walking, running etc." Now each of these three Purushas, in an ordinary person, stands separately, each is conscious

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in its own way; they are not clearly conscious of each other; they intermix, but not happily, they are more often than not at cross purposes. Very rarely are they unified and harmonised or bound together as a team for serving a common purpose, a single aim. That union and harmonisation can be done only through the supreme Purusha, the Divine Witness who is the true conscious Being, the one Purusha behind or above all the others, whose light first of all centralises in the psychic being and then through it is canalised into its delegates or emanations on the lower levels, the mind, the vital and the physical.

What is consciousness? It is the inverse of Inconscience. It is the creative essence of the universe: without consciousness there is no creation. Inconscience means non-existence. The supreme Non-manifest becomes conscious of itself, that is, objectifies itself, sees itself created or reflected in multiple centres: that is the origin of all creation. By consciousness all is, by unconsciousness nothing is. Consciousness is light, consciousness is life.

The original consciousness is one and indivisible and at its highest potential. But when it gets devolved and divided, i.e., individualised, it gets at the same time diffracted and minimised, like the reflections in a rough mirror. What we normally understand by consciousness is this diminished degree of it in the

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individual. But although diminished and diffracted in many forms and modes, the basic consciousness is still the divine consciousness which is there behind and at the origin of all the partial formulations. It is through this core of Divine Presence—which is nothing else than the psychic—that the individual maintains and develops its contact with the Divine, grows into the fullness of the divine consciousness even as an individual and earthly embodiment.

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THE STORY OF CREATION

Consciousness is the source and basis of creation. Even the most material object, apparently unconscious, the stone, for example, has inherent in it a vibration of consciousness. Where there is absolutely no consciousness, it is the Inconscient. If you ever descend into the Inconscient, that is to say, further down the scale from the inanimate stone, you will know the difference. The gulf between the stone and the Inconscient is very much, very much indeed, greater than that between the stone and man. For it is a secret consciousness that links man to the stone, but beyond there is a hiatus, something unbridgeable. The Inconscient is the Void, the absolute zero ("Inane", Sri Aurobindo names it in Savitri): it is not substance, it is pure negation. Consciousness is at the back of the material universe: without that consciousness there would not be the marvellous organisation that is found within the material particle of atom. The Inconscient is pre-existent to the material creation.

The one indivisible Reality and its pure consciousness: that is the origin. This Supreme Consciousness chose to objectify himself, bring himself out of himself,

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witness himself in play—the Upanishad says, the One wished to have a second, a companion to himself,sa dwitiyam aichhat. This power of self-objectification is a free-will given to the consciousness to move out of its original unified status and move abroad and away, as it liked. Thus the Supreme saw himself as his own power of self-manifestation, and that is the Mother Consciousness, Adya Shakti, Aditi—consciousness-power, who again in her forward creative urge expressed herself in the first four major Emanations (Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Maha-saraswati). But this free urge, free to separate itself and proceed in an independent movement of self-expression and evolution precipitated itself immediately, almost as a logical consequence of its career of free choice, into the Denial, the Negation that is inconscience. So, against the Supreme, the Divine Consciousness, there stood out the utter unconsciousness: the Light disappeared into absolute Darkness. It was the result of a self-choice in the consciousness: but the end was the very opposite of consciousness.

It was a dead silence, more silent than Death and more dead than Silence itself. And it was utter helplessness and hopelessness. . The Divine Consciousness —Aditi—saw the terrible line of destiny that freedom had taken and ended in: she could stand it no longer and a cry went out for succour, for help. And the

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answer came immediate, a ray shot down from the one Supreme Consciousness and entered into the womb of Inconscience. Lo, the miracle, Matter was born, the first creation, the first manifestation of the Supreme Grace. Matter holds in it the spark of consciousness that is to grow and unfold itself, shine more and more into the enveloping gloom of Inconscience, illumining it farther and farther, pushing its frontiers ever backward and away.

The birth of Matter coincided with another descent of the Supreme Consciousness; it is a descent in graded stages linking up the highest to the lowest through intermediate formations: they are telescoped into Matter so that Matter might lodge and express them gradually through its inherent developing consciousness till the highest is revealed and embodied here as it is always self-revealed at the highest.

In the graded descent, in the hierarchy of planes and levels, there appeared forces and beings also proper to each domain. The earliest, the first among them are the Asuras, rather the original Asuras—the first quaternary (some memory of them seemed to linger in the Greek legend of Chronos and his brood). For they embody the powers of division, of Inconscience: they are the Affirmations of the Negation. Against the Asuras there came and ranged—at the first line of division, on the one side of the descent of the Light

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—the first godheads, the major powers and personalities of the Divine Consciousness. The battle of the gods and Titans for the possession of the earth has been going on ever since. The end will come one day: it will mean the dissolution of the forces of Negation, at least within the earthly sphere, and the establishment there of the reign of Light.

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EARTH A SYMBOL

The earth is the centre of the material universe. It has been created for concentrating the force that is to transform Matter. It is the symbol of the divine potentiality in Matter. As we have said, the earth was created through a direct intervention of the Divine Consciousness: it is on the earth alone that there is and can be the direct contact with the Divine. The earth absorbs and develops and radiates the divine light; its radiation spreads through space and extends wherever there is Matter. The material universe shares, to some extent, the gift that the earth brings —the light and harmony of the Divine Consciousness. But it is upon the Earth alone that there is the full and final flowering of that consciousness.

The psychic being is found on the earth alone, for it is a product of the earth: it is the touch of the Divine upon Matter. The psychic being is a child of the Earth: it is born and grows upon Earth, it is native to nowhere else. Still when it develops sufficiently and becomes an adult individuality, it can go to other physical domains, visit other planets, for example.

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TOTAL TRANSFORMATION DEMANDS TOTAL REJECTION

To a positive side in the sadhana, there must also be a negative one. Realisation or experience, on one side, must be accompanied by rejection of things that oppose it, on the other. People wonder why a beautiful experience fades away too soon or does not repeat easily, why a happy condition does not continue long but is followed almost inevitably by a condition of despond.

The reason is very simple. The experience or realisation is not a total one, that is to say, it belongs to a part only of the nature and is not shared by other parts. The sadhak is not of one piece: the whole of his nature is not worked to the same pitch and amplitude, it is not equally responsive everywhere. Thus, when the psychic brings forward an experience and the inner consciousness is full of the light and energy and joy and faith, even then, in the background or by the side, if you are vigilant and observe carefully, you will see that the mind, the external mind, has its reservations or continues to move in its accustomed way. It looks askance at the experience, criticises or doubts; or it tries to understand or explain in its own

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terms, seize it within its frame of comprehension. Or else, the vital rises up and tries to get hold of the experience and utilise it for its own purposes; it is enjoyed as a tasty food, made to serve the vital's ambition or vanity, some lower ignorant egoistic urge. Or again, the physical, the body consciousness, may not at all participate in the experience; it may remain indifferent, listless, lethargic with no impulse or enthusiasm to carry out in practice the experience of the inner consciousness. Any of these drags or cross-currents is sufficient to maim and diminish and finally even wipe out the experience: and usually all the three are there to combine and reinforce each other's efforts to do the mischief.

The remedy is to turn back and hold to the spot of light that is there in the consciousness, the clarity or the aspiration that belongs to the inner and higher being. That has to be used as a torch, as a staff to support and guide you in your periods of darkness and vacillation. That beam of burning light should be thrown, in turn, upon those parts in you that besiege with their obscurity and inconscience, doubt and arrogance, the realisation that comes, the progress on the way. It must be done with firmness, vigilance and perseverance. The mixture has to be sorted out, the dross separated, kept on one side and the pure element on the other: the impurities have to be put

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under the flame-light to melt, burn away and be eliminated. And this means an ardent sincerity, for that is the tinder which keeps the fire alight.

And sincerity demands often a severe dealing with oneself; it involves accepting an inconvenience, inflicting even a painful pressure. One has to be prepared for such a turn, one has to welcome it even at times. The part that is unwilling or refractory has to feel the wrench, if it is to be cleansed and corrected.

Indeed, the experience of joy in the very process of suffering is a common experience with the saint and the martyr. We know of innumerable instances where the fierce torture of the flesh was drowned, overwhelmed in the ecstasy of the inner aspiration; the vital enthusiasm drawn from the inner flame suffuses, courses through the nerves and tissues with such energy and impetus that it effectively blocks out the invading reaction of pain. It is a discipline that has its value even for a sadhak of the sunlit path.

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THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE

An integral sadhana cannot be confined to the individual alone; an element of collectivity must enter into it. An individual is not an isolated being in any way. There are, of course, schools of Yoga and philosophy that seek to isolate the individual, consider him as an entity hemmed in by his own consciousness; indeed they view the individuals as all distinct and separate, each a closed circle or sphere, they may barely touch each other but never interpenetrate or intercommunicate. Each stands as a solitary island, all together forming the vast archipelago of the universe. This is a position, no doubt, that can be acquired by a kind of discipline of the consciousness, though not to a great perfection; but it is not a natural or necessary poise. Normally, individuals do merge into each other and form one weft of give and take. A desire, an impulse, even a thought that rises in you, goes out of you, overflows you and spreads around even to the extreme limit of the earth, like a Hertzian wave. Again, any movement in any person anywhere in the world would come to you, penetrate you, raise a similar vibration in you, even though you may not so recognise

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it and consider it as something exclusively personal to you. You send out vibrations into the world and the world sends out vibrations into you. Individual life is the meeting-ground of these outgoing and incoming forces. It is precisely to avoid this circle or cycle of world-vibrations that the older Yogis used to leave the world, away from society, retire to mountain-tops, into the virgin forest where they hoped to find themselves alone and aloof, to be single with the Single Self. This is a way out, but it is not the only or the best solution. It is not the best solution, for although apparently one is alone on the hill-top, in the desert crypt, or the forest womb, one always carries with oneself a whole world within, the normal nature with all its instincts and impulses, reactions, memories and hopes: you cut away the outside, run away from it, but what about the outside that is within you? The taste for a tasty thing does not drop with the removal of the object. Secondly, such an individual solution, even if it were possible, would still be a purely personal matter and, in the ultimate analysis, egoistic. It is why the Buddha refused to enter definitely into Nirvana and withdrew from the brink to work among men. Indeed, the real solution is elsewhere. It is not to withdraw or go away but to find within the orbit here a centre, a focus of consciousness which is not controlled by the outside forces but can control them,

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which is not coloured by them but can lend them its own luminosity. That is the soul or the psychic centre.

And this centre is not an isolated entity in its nature: it is, as it were, a universal centre, that is to say, it links itself indissolubly in a secret sense of identity with all other centres. For this self is only one of the selves through which the One Self has multiplied itself for a varied self-objectification. The light that shines here, the fire that burns here and the delight that flows here illumine, purify and revitalise not only the individual in which it dwells, but move abroad and extend into the other individuals with which it lives in spiritual identity.

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HOW TO WAIT

"If you know how to wait, you gain time". Usually, when you are about to do a thing, the impulse is to rush towards it and rush it through; between the idea and the execution you do not want to leave any gap. You are in a haste to see the thing done. You do not care to pause and look about you, view and weigh the conditions and circumstances, think out the best way of working towards the goal. The result of the hustle is failure, very often dead failure. You have to begin over again. You may even have to begin over and over again if you do not learn the lesson given. Evidently, you lose time, lose energy and lose your success. On the contrary, what you have to do before you actually take up your work is not to jump at it, but understand what it means and involves, have before your mind's eye a clear figure or pattern of the thing to be undertaken, not to go upon a vague and indefinite notion about it, something that will take shape—that will take care of itself—as you proceed. You must have a clear conception of your work and also you must find out the exact ways and means, have at your elbow the best possible implements.

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It is only when you are fully armed with the necessary equipment that you can be sure of success without any waste of time or energy.

And then there is a time, a propitious time for everything. A thing cannot be done at any time, it has its own appointed hour; you cannot succeed even if you attempt a hundred times before that hour strikes. But when the time is ripe, how easily a thing seems to get done! In what does this ripeness of time consist, what are the marks of the propitious hour? It is when you are in complete possession of the right instruments and when the disposition of circumstances is such that they concur to help and execute and not mar and obstruct. But how to find out or recognise when such conditions are available? Not by your mind or external reasoning. You must have the intuition, an instinctive perception of the situation. Always the indication is there in the very poise of your consciousness. That is to say, when it is filled with a great calm, trust and confidence, a luminous concentration.

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FATIGUE AND WORK

Fatigue, it is said, comes from overwork. The cure for fatigue is therefore rest, that is, do-nothing. But the truth of the matter is that most often fatigue is due not to too much work, but rather too little work, in other words, laziness or boredom. In fact, fatigue need not come too soon or too easily, provided one knows how to go about his work. If you are interested in your work, you can continue for a very long time without fatigue; and precisely one of the means of recovering from fatigue is not to sit down and slip into lethargy and tamas, but to take up a work that rouses your interest. Work done in joy and quiet enthusiasm is tonic: it is dynamic rest. A work done without interest, as a sort of duty or task, will naturally tire you soon. The remedy therefore against fatigue is to keep the interest awake. Now, there is a further mystery. Interest does not depend upon the work: any work can be made interesting and interesting to a supreme degree. There is no work which is by itself dull, insipid, uninteresting. All depends upon the value you yourself put upon it; you can choose to make it as attractive as a romance, as significant as a symbol.

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How to do it? How to find interest in any thing or all things? Is there not a work that conforms to your nature, adapted to your character and capacity? And are there not works that are antagonistic to your grain, that lie outside your scope and province?

The question is not about your scope and capacity. All depends upon your attitude, the consciousness with which you approach a work, especially when you are a sadhak. When a work comes to you or when you have to do a work, you must take it up as a thing worth doing. Whatever the value given to it normally or you usually put upon it, you should not neglect or merely tolerate it, but welcome it and set about it with the utmost conscientiousness possible. Even if it were a trifling insignificant thing, a menial affair, for example, do not consider it as mean or beneath your dignity. Directly you begin to do a thing in the right spirit, you will find it becoming miraculously interesting. Try to bring perfection even in that bit of insignificance. Do it with a good will, even if it is scrubbing the floor, telling yourself: "I must do it as best as I can, that is to say, this too I shall do even better than a servant, I shall make the floor look really neat and clean and beautiful." That is the crux of the matter. You should try to bring out the best in you and put it into your work. In other words, the

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work becomes an instrument of progress. The goodwill, attention, concentration, self-forgetfulness and the control over yourself, over your organs and nerves —the "smaller" the work the more detailed is the control gained—all that are involved in doing a work perfectly, with as much perfection as it is possible for you to command, are elements called forth in you and help you to make a better man. Indeed a work for which you have no preferential bias, to which you are not emotionally attached, even indifferent normally, may be of especial help, for you will be able to do it with less nervous disturbance, with a large amount of detachment and disinterestedness.

Man usually chooses his work or is made to choose a work because of a vital preference, a prejudice or notion that it is the kind in which he can shine or succeed. This egoistic vanity or opportunism may be necessary or unavoidable in ordinary life; but when one wishes to go beyond the ordinary life and aspires for the true life, this attachment or personal choice is more an impediment than a help to progress, towards finding the way to the true life. The Yogic attitude to work therefore is that of absolute detachment, not to have any choice, but to accept and do whatever is given to you, whatever comes to you in your normal course of life and do it with the utmost perfection possible. It is in that way and that way alone that all

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work becomes supremely interesting, and all life a miracle of delight.

This does not mean, however, that there is no work natural to you, for which you have a special aptitude in and through which your soul, the Divine, can express itself fully and wholly in a special manner. But what is that work? The kartavyam karma—the work that demands to be done—deriving from your swa-dharma—your Self-nature? Evidently, it is not that of your superficial nature, which the mind chooses, the vital prefers and the body finds convenient. To come by your true or soul work, you have to pass through a considerable discipline, a rigorous training.

You cannot throw off this work and that at random declaring they are not the work fit for you or jump at anything that your fancy favours. Indeed, you cannot give up anything, cast out anything, simply because it is unpleasant or not sufficiently pleasant. The more violently you try to shake off a thing, the more it will try to stick to you. Instead of that, you must know how to let a thing drop of itself, quietly, automatically and definitively. That is the only way of getting rid of an unwanted or an unnecessary thing. Before all, be sincere to yourself: that is to say, try to follow the highest light and aspiration in you each moment, and be faithful to that and that alone. Never allow yourself to be shaken or moved by the likes and

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dislikes of your mind or heart or body. Do even what goes against the grain of your body or heart or mind, if it is presented to you as the thing to be done; do it as calmly, dispassionately and as perfectly as it is possible for you to do and leave the rest to your higher destiny. If you belong all to your soul, if you are obedient to the Divine alone, then as this consciousness and poise grows clearer and steadier in you, you will find things that are not consonant with it are dropping off from you quietly and without any effort or reaction from you, like autumn leaves from branches that supply the sap no more. Your work is changed, your circumstances are changed, your relations with things and persons are changed automatically and inevitably in accordance with the need and demand of your soul-consciousness.

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THE STEPS OF THE SOUL

The human individual is a very complex being: he is composed of innumerable elements, each one of which is an independent entity and has almost a personality. Not only so, the most contradictory elements are housed together. If there is a particular quality or capacity present, the very opposite of it, annulling it, as it were, will be also found along with it and embracing it. I have seen a man brave, courageous, heroic to the extreme, flinching from no danger, facing unperturbed the utmost peril, the bravest of the brave, truly; and yet I have seen the same man cowering in abject terror, like the last of poltroons, in the presence of certain circumstances. I have seen a most generous man, giving away largely, freely, not counting any expenditure or sacrifice, without the least care or reservation; the same person I have also found to be the vilest of misers in respect of certain other considerations. I have seen again the most intelligent person, with a clear mind, full of light and understanding, easily comprehending the logic and implication of a topic and yet I have seen him betraying the utmost stupidity of which even an ordinary man without education or intelligence

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would be incapable. These are not theoretical examples, but I have come across such persons actually in life.

The complexity arises not only in extension, but also in depth. Man does not live on a single plane but on many planes at the same time. There is a scale of gradation in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on planes above and beyond, there will be accordingly differences in the constitution or psycho-physical make-up of the individual personality. The higher one stands the richer the personality, because it lives not only on its own normal level, but also on all that are below and which it has transcended. The complete or integral man, some occultists say, possesses 365 personalities; indeed it may be much more. (The Vedas speak of the three and thirty-three and thirty-three hundred and thirty-three thousand gods that may be housed in the human vehicle—the basic three being evidently the triple status or world of Body, Life and Mind.)

What is the meaning of this self-contradiction, this division in man? To understand that we must know and remember that each person represents a certain quality or capacity, a particular achievement to be

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embodied. How best can it be done? What is the way by which one can acquire a quality at its purest, and highest and most perfect? It is by setting an opposition to it. That is how a power is increased and strengthened —by fighting against and overcoming all that weakens and contradicts it. The deficiencies in respect of a particular quality show you where you are to mend and reinforce and in what way to improve in order to make it perfectly perfect. It is the hammer that beats the weak and soft iron to transform it into hard steel. The preliminary discord is useful and necessary to be utilised for a higher harmony. This is the secret of self-conflict in man. You are weakest precisely in that element which is destined to be your greatest asset.

Each man, has then a mission to fulfil, a role to play in the universe; a part he has been given to learn and take up in the cosmic Purpose which he alone is capable of executing and none other. This he has to learn and acquire through life-experiences, that is to say, not in one life, but in life after life. In fact, that is the meaning of the chain of lives that the individual has to pass through, namely, to acquire experiences and to gather out of them the thread—the skein of qualities and attributes, powers and capacities—for the pattern of life he has to weave. Now, the inmost being, the true personality, the central consciousness of the evolving individual is his psychic being. It is,

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as it were, a very tiny speck of light lying far behind the experiences in normal people. In grown up souls this psychic consciousness has an increased light—increased in intensity, volume and richness. Thus there are souls, old and new. Old and ancient are those that have reached or about to reach the fullness of perfection; they have passed through a long past of innumerable lives and developed the most complex and yet the most integrated personality. New souls are those that are just emerged or emerging out of the mere physico-vital existence; these are like simple organisms, made of fewer constituents, referring mostly to the bodily life, with just a modicum of the mental. It is the soul, however, that grows with experiences and it is the soul that builds and enriches the personality. Whatever portion of the outer life, whatever element in the mind or vital or body succeeds in coming in contact with the psychic consciousness, that is to say, is able to come under its influence, is taken up and lodged there: it remains in the psychic being as its living memory and permanent possession. It is such elements that form the basis, the ground-work upon which the structure of the integral and true personality is raised.

The first thing then to do is to find out what it is that you are meant to realise, what is the role you have to play, your particular mission and the capacity or quality you have to express. You have to discover that

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and also the thing or things that oppose and do not allow it to flower or come to full manifestation. In other words you have to know yourself, recognize your soul or psychic being.

For that you must be absolutely sincere and impartial. You must observe yourself as if you were observing and criticising a third person. You must not start with an idea that this is your life's mission, such is your particular capacity, you are to do this or you are to do that, in this lies your talent or genius etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking or disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth. Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, "I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that other, this is not for me." Neither vanity or arrogance nor self-depreciation or false modesty should move you. As I said, you must be absolutely impartial and unconcerned. You should be like a mirror that reflects the truth and does not judge.

If you are able to keep such an attitude, if you have this repose and quiet trust in your being and wait for what may be revealed to you, then something like this happens: you are, as it were, in the woods, dark and noiseless; you see in front of you just a sheet of water dark and still, hardly visible—a bit of a pond imbedded in the obscurity, and slowly upon it a moonbeam is cast

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and in the cool dim light emerges the calm liquid surface. That is how your secret truth of being will appear and present itself to you at your first contact with it: there you will see gradually reflected the true qualities of your being, the traits of your divine personality, what you really are and what you are meant to be.

One who has thus known oneself and possessed oneself conquering all opposition within himself, has by that very fact extended himself and his conquest, making it easier for others to make the same or similar conquest. These are the pioneers or the elite who by their victorious campaign within themselves help others towards their victory.

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THE EXPANDING BODY-CONSCIOUSNESS

The field of our physical activity is very limited. If you look at it closely you will find it indeed extremely narrow and our capacities confined within a small circle. We are bound by the outline of our material body. I cannot, for instance, be sitting in my room and at the same time doing gymnastics in the playground. If you wish to do one thing you cannot do another, if you are at one place you cannot be at another simultaneously. How convenient it would be if while I was writing at the table, I could get there immediately a book from a far-off shelf for consultation without moving or taking anybody's help! And yet is the thing so very impossible? We know, for example, of extraordinary—at least, queer—things happening at what are called "spirit séances", things that cannot be explained by the normal functioning of the body senses; they are explained as interventions from the spirit world. In reality, however, spirits or ghosts have, in general, very little to do in this matter. It is action not of disembodied beings but of the normal human energies—especially the vital or life energy—freed from the body's control and exerting itself independently. An

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example, a true fact that happened, will best illustrate what I mean to say.

A young man, in Paris, a clerk at a railway station, used to receive there his fiancée and her mother from time to time. One day he was expecting them and waiting for the train time; they had to come by train. As he was busy with his work at the table, at about the appointed hour, people around saw him all on a sudden bending down his head with a loud shout and then resting it on the table; he lay unconscious. In the meantime, what happened on the other side was a terrible railway disaster: the two women were involved in it. The trains were smashed and all passengers killed or mortally wounded. But, curious to say, the young woman, the fiancee, was found, living and almost unscathed, in the midst of the debris, within a sort of cover made by a fallen beam that lay across over her. She was pulled out with only a few bruises upon her body. Here is, however, the young man's version of the story. He said that as he was working at the table, suddenly he heard the voice of his fiancee calling loudly for help and he saw in a flash, as it were, the situation she was in, he rushed out, not physically indeed, and ran and threw himself over the body of his fiancee to protect her; that is the only thing he could do. As a result he did in fact protect her. True, he did not rush out in his body, for that matter, if he had

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done, it would have been of no use. What rushed out of him was his vital body, a formation of that life energy which is most close to the body and almost as concrete as physical energy but much more powerful and effective. This vital power concentrated and projected out of him acted as a veritable shield over the woman. The young man himself, curious to say, bore marks of bruises upon his head as if a huge load had fallen upon it. A strong impact upon the vital can and does leave scars upon the material body: it is not an uncommon phenomenon. Many of the Christian saints (Saint Francis of Assisi, for example) are reported to have borne on their body the marks —the stigmata—of crucifixion of Christ's body; Rama-krishna too, it is said, once showed marks of scouring on his back when a boy was whipped in his presence.

All this means that the physical body is not man's sole means of action in the physical world. The physical extends and expands into more and more subtle modes of activity and all the more, not less, effective for that very reason. Behind the physical lies the subtle physical, behind which again is the vital physical and then the various grades of the vital. Indeed the vital or life energy as a whole is the real dynamism of all our physical activities and if it usually acts through its bodily instruments, it can act independently of them too; normally too it often acts in this way,

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only we are not conscious or observant enough to notice. A conscious concentration of the vital energy directed upon a material object can handle it with the effectivity of material energy. When it needs physical conditions it creates them, as the protective vital energy of the young man created the physical disposition of objects that formed a covert for the girl.

In the present case, the phenomenon happened automatically, without any premeditation on the part of the persons concerned; because the sympathy between the two was so strong, other considerations did not weigh in the balance against it. Needless to say, if one wishes to obtain conscious mastery of this occult power, one will have to go through a long and arduous discipline. But, if difficult, the thing is not impossible. In the matter of physical feats, for example, a particular development may seem for the moment beyond your reach; but with practice and persistence, stubborn will and wise guidance, you can not only arrive at your immediate end but do much more. The story of many who have broken Olympic records is revealing in this respect. In the same way, one can master the subtle forces, if one goes about the thing earnestly and in the right way. It is more difficult—much more perhaps—but the way is there provided the will is there.

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BODY, THE OCCULT AGENT

The body has an individuality of its own. It is an organised formation and acts as a whole in each and all its parts. The human body is, par excellence, such a formation; for it is moved and controlled by the consciousness which overshadows or informs it, which is its master whose will it executes scrupulously.

The body is an epitome of the world. It encases within its frame the whole world, particularly the earth—earth itself being an epitome of the world— on a miniature scale, the mikros reproducing all the features and characters of the makros.

Such being the case, a wholly conscious body governed and inspired by the supreme Consciousness lives and moves in the cosmic rhythm: not only does it register in itself the world happenings, but also possesses an active power to control and even to change those happenings by its individual movement. We may imagine the body to be a kind of map or chart of the earth. Each spot on the earth is represented by a particular spot—a certain group of cells, for example—in the body. If the consciousness ruling the body concentrates itself upon that point and

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induces a change there, a corresponding change can be brought about automatically on a larger scale in the part and conditions of the earth with which it is connected. Thus without going out and moving about, without being the "man on the spot" to know things "at first hand", one can, sitting, in his room, by switching on a key, as it were, in one corner of the body, set in movement a whole process of happenings in a particular region of the earth. By a conscious re-disposition of a few cells in your body, you can bring about a desired change in world circumstances. The body is thus a control room for the consciousness in respect of happenings upon earth. Naturally, any body cannot do that, but only a body destined and trained for that purpose.

A body, in this way, becomes the instrument, a lever for producing mighty changes and creations upon earth. This conception of the occult potency of the body is at the basis of the rite or institution of sacrifice that was a characteristic feature of the old-world society. Iphigenia was offered as a victim to avert the wrath of the gods and bring victory to the Greeks. Sometimes an animal replaced the human victim and served the same purpose and in the same way. And in a higher sense—indeed in the highest sense—a body can sacrifice itself in such a way— wholly and integrally—as to bring about a corresponding

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integral reversal or revaluation in the physical world. A human being that makes of himself a holocaust—burns himself out at the altar of the Divine —keeping nothing for his own sake, living for the Divine alone, by calling down the divine will in himself, brings into the earthly life too a divine presence and transformation. A total physical sacrifice results inevitably into a total expression and embodiment of the Divine in the physical world.

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THE INTEGRAL REALISATION

Endless are the ways to the Divine. Each one followed with sincerity and earnestness and persistence to the end leads to the same goal. Now, if the end were solely to reach the highest summit, the point beyond, the transcendent God and settle there, any one line would be quite sufficient for the purpose. And even if several or all were tried, as Ramakrishna did, that would be only to prove the fact and to encourage each and everyone to pursue his own path and not get discouraged if others did not subscribe to it or even denied it. At the most it would be a richer experience in the sense that the same truth is tasted and enjoyed in various ways.

But such is not the character of the supramental or Integral Yoga. This Yoga does not aim at kicking the ladder of existence down once you are up beyond. It seeks to integrate the Beyond and the Here-Below, make of the mundane an expression and embodiment of the Spirit. In this view the approaches to the Divine are not mere interim truths but facets of one organic total reality incarnating the divine consciousness in a divine life.

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In other ways that lead to an escape, you reach a state where you are happy and satisfied, you feel you have attained the highest, the utmost worth attaining and you need not move further or look for anything else. The integral yogi is not so bound by one experience. He will find himself always getting away from the already attained status, however high it may be, and ranging beyond. Even if he tries to repeat an experience which he cherishes and considers worth repeating and so goes through the usual steps to recover it, he may find that instead of the experience wanted he is given quite a new experience.

The problem for him is not to reject or minimise any experience or stick to some only as valuable but embrace all and to put them together, make a synthesis out of them. This synthesis is the very character of the Integral Yoga. And it can be reached only by rising beyond the experiences given for synthesis. A higher poise of consciousness only can find the point of union among different elements and the function and role of each one in a composite harmony. The supramental status is the highest synthetic centre; here all experiences and realisations rise into their original and true reality and find their perfect expression.

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EVER GREEN!

When you have an inner experience, there is a natural tendency in you to have it again, to repeat it, and to repeat it, you go by the same way and in the same manner. When you sit in meditation, for example, you withdraw yourself from outward contacts and enter into a condition with which you have become familiar, which has pleased you and which you consider sufficiently high and a commendable poise of consciousness. Thus whenever you sit down to meditation, you forthwith get into your habitual condition automatically, without any effort and you remain there as long as you like. Evidently, the experience has become a matter of habit i.e. mechanical and lifeless, but you do not perceive it, you have become so unconscious. That means you do not progress any more, you have shut yourself, as it were, in a closed box. If you continue, you may do so your whole life in that way, but you will not have advanced a single step; on the contrary, you will have regressed a good deal.

The great secret of progress—and also of permanent youthfulness—is to feel at every moment that you are just beginning your life and your life experience. Always

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you start afresh; even if you are on the same path and seem to be moving in the same direction for the hundredth time, you must feel as if it was for the first time that you undertook the journey, it was your virgin attempt towards a new discovery. Forget all past ideas, notions, experiences that crowd your mind; sweep away all the accumulated dust that has cumbered your brain; make your consciousness as clean and clear as that of a newborn babe—all straightened out, with none of the convolutions and wrinkles of an aged cerebrum. Always you will come into contact with the world and things in all the simplicity and spontaneity of a pure consciousness and always the world and things will bring to you their unending wonder and beauty and truth.

Whenever you go inside and seek your poise, do not look for your old acquaintances, the familiar experiences, do not carry upon your back the load of the past, but go ahead, as if through a virgin tract, making quite new discoveries and opening unexpected vistas at each step. You can make an experiment even on your physical body, i.e. take the physical consciousness too to share in your adventure of ever new discovery. Thus you may, for example, forget your habit of eating or even walking, truly forget and try to learn over again, even as you did for the first time as a child. You have to acquire consciously a capacity of

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the body that has become an almost unconscious reflex action. It is a wonderful and exhilarating experience. Naturally you cannot repeat too often or carry too far an experiment of this kind on the physical plane. But you can freely deal with your inner life and consciousness. You can make your mind and your vital a clean slate, as much as you like; not once in your life, but every moment of your life. And then see how the world impinges upon your consciousness, what fresh discoveries and awakenings come to you endlessly! You can always rid yourself of the accustomed vibrations on the normal levels of your existence, the physical, vital and mental; and even you can go beyond your psychic formation and be the wide, the vast, the limitless, the Infinite itself, void of all name and form. And then with that virgin consciousness drop straight into the world of material life and form, into your body and bodily reactions. The world will give itself up to you in its pristine purity, its original beauty and truth, always luminous and glorious. This experience has to be the normal mode of your living, not simply the culmination or acme of your being, a fixed and stagnant status, even if considered the highest, the summum bonum. That is how you can keep yourself and the world around you ever fresh and young and new.

The preacher who speaks of the truth and delivers it to his hearers is usually effective for the first time or for

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a first few occasions only, when he feels the truth of his truth and is sincere while delivering. But as time wears on, his truth too wears out, for it becomes stereotyped, a matter of mere habit. The experience is no longer lived, but mechanically doled out. You are sincere only when the experience is new and fresh and living, it should be made so every moment, otherwise it is dead letter, letter that killeth.

That is the secret of spiritual life and even of normal life. To keep it ever green you must know how to pour into it a continuous flow of new sap. Look upon yourself, look upon the world always with fresh eyes— never burdened or obscured by the scales that past experiences and acquisitions have collected. Unlearn the past, always begin from the beginning as a beginner —every moment a fresh impact, a new revelation, an unexpected opening. That is how life remains ever young and ever progressive.

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A PAGE OF OCCULT HISTORY

At the beginning of creation, four individual formations—the first personalities—made their appearance. There were: (1) a Being of Light or Consciousness, (2) a Being of Truth or Reality, (3) a Being of Love or Ananda and (4) a Being of Life. And the first law of creation was freedom of decision. These Beings were manifestations in the free movement of the Divine; they themselves moved free, according to their individualised conscious will. They stood out, as if in relief, on the background of the Divine Existence. For originally, although they differentiated themselves from each other and from the Divine, yet they formed a unified harmony and lived and moved and had their being as different members of the same divine Body. At first they stood out, but still essentially and apparently linked on to their fountain and origin. Soon, however, they stood out no longer on the Divine, but moved out of him, away and separate; they sought to fulfil their individualised will and destiny. The Divine did not impose its will or force these individualities to turn round: that would frustrate the very purpose of creation. He allowed these independent beings to enjoy their full

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independence, although they were born out of him and essential part and parcel of his own being. They went abroad on a journey of adventure, each carving out its own line of growth and fulfilment. The first fruit, the inevitable reaction of freedom was precisely, as is just said, a separation from the Divine, each one encircled within its ego, limited and bound to its own fund of potency: individualism means limitation. Now, once separated, the connection with the source snapped, that is to say in the outward activity, in dynamic movement or becoming (not in essential being), the Four Independents lapsed into their opposites: Light changed to Darkness, i.e. consciousness to unconsciousness, Truth changed to Falsehood, Delight changed to Pain and Suffering, and Life changed to Death. That is how the four undivine principles, the Powers of the Undivine came to rule and fashion the material creation.

Into the heart of this Darkness and Falsehood and Pain and Death, a seed was sown, a grain that is to be the epitome and symbol of material creation and in and through which the Divine will claim back all the elements gone astray, the prodigal ones who will return to recognise and fulfil the Divine. That was Earth. And the earth, in her turn, in her labour towards the Divine Fulfilment, out of her bosom, threw up a being who would again symbolise and epitomise the earth

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and material creation. That is Man. For, man came with the soul in him, the Psychic Being, the Divine Flame, the spark of consciousness in the midst of universal unconsciousness, a miniature of the original Divine Light-Truth-Love-Life. In the meantime, to help the evolution, to join hands with the aspiring soul in the human being, there was created, on the defection of the First Lords—the Asuric Quaternity—a second hierarchy of luminous beings—Devas, gods. (Something of this inner history of the world is reflected in the Greek legend of struggle between the Titans and the Olympians.) These gods, however, being a posterior creation, perhaps because they were young and inexperienced, could not cope immediately with their strong Elders. It is why we see in the mythological legends the gods very often worsted at the hands of the Asuras, Indra hiding under the sea, Zeus threatened often with defeat and disaster. It is only an intervention from the Supreme (the Greeks called it Fate) that saved them in the end and restored the balance.

However, the Asuras came to think better of the game and consented to use their freedom on the side of the Divine, for the fulfilment of the Divine; that is to say, they agreed to conversion. Thus they took birth as or in human beings, so that they may be in contact with the hitman soul—Psyche—which is the only door or passage to the Divine in this material world. But the

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matter was not easy; the process was not straight. For, even agreeing to be converted, even basking in the sunshine of the human psychic, these incorrigible Elders could not forget or wholly give up their old habit and nature. They now wanted to work for the Divine Fulfilment in order to magnify themselves thereby; they consented to serve the Divine in order to make the Divine serve them, utilise the Divine End for their own purposes. They wished to see the new creation after their own heart's desire.

That is how things have become difficult upon earth and are delaying the ultimate consummation which, however, is sure to come about when the wheel of Time or Fate has turned full circle.

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DIRECTED CHANGE

Never to be bound by the experiences of the past, never to try to recover and stick to the knowledge or realisation gained, even though it may appear particularly precious or unique. This is a motto you should always keep before your mind. When you try to repeat what you have once said, done or experienced, you arc sure to find very soon that the thing is becoming more and more lifeless, mechanical, a matter of routine and therefore perfectly useless. The soul has disappeared, the skeleton remains. You must live the word you utter at the time of uttering it, you must live the experience that you wish to recall or express. It is only thus that truth becomes living, possesses its force and light and gains its full value.

In point of fact, however, no two succeeding moments, whether in your consciousness or in the world movement, are exactly the same. Even if you try seriously and sincerely, you can never recapture a thing of the past as it was or as it came to you, not, that is to say, in the same exact manner. For you are no longer the same nor is the world. The world is is a continuous flow, it has been very often declared:

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but it is not a continual repetition or recurrence, a mere cyclic order. On the other hand, constant renewal is the very character of the change. At every moment something new is coming down on the scene, something that was not surges out: Nature is bringing out at every step something that was hidden or latent in her secret depth, something is thrown down from above into her normal movement, something unforeseen and unexpected. The march of time means evolution, that is to say, the addition of a new factor to the existing factors, making manifest something that was unmanifest—mṛtam kancana bodhayanti, as the Vedic Rishi says. Even if to an apparent sight everything seems to remain the same, yet it is not so in reality; always a new element is being poured into the existing circumstances, always an additional spark or influence enters into actual play of forces. It is the accumulated presure of all the variables that brings about the great changes upon earth and in humanity which are summed up in the word evolution—changes cosmological and psychological.

You have to accept this principle of change and move on—to be one with the cosmic spirit,—never to stand still or turn back, but look forward and forge ahead. To be stagnant means to die and be fossilised. Now, if things change continually, it means things can change and must be changed. Only, one must

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see to the direction in which the change occurs. A change can be, after all, for better or for worse. And you have the power, if you are conscious with the right consciousness, to direct the change and even to initiate one of the right order. Have you ever climbed a hill? There are many ways, paths, issues leading towards the top, some more or less direct, some zig-zag, others winding or taking a long round. This does not matter, provided you look upward, have the sense of direction to the summit, then you mount up. Otherwise if you have your face downward or look below, you move downward away from the top. In the same way changes that happen will be directed according to the direction of your look. And there is only one direction towards which you must turn your look: towards the summit, towards the highest goal. It is to grow conscious, to grow more and more conscious—to be conscious of yourself, to be conscious of the universe and to be conscious of the Divine who dwells in you and permeates the world and then to manifest the Divine, in your physical life and in the physical life of the world.

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VALUE OF GYMNASTICS, MENTAL OR OTHER

Intellectual activity is a kind of gymnastics. What is the value of physical gymnastics? It develops the muscles, makes them strong, supple and agile. But simply to develop them, to make them grow as much as possible or to take delight in mere muscle-binding a body is not the ideal; it rather frustrates the very object of gymnastics. The object is to develop, strengthen, shape all the limbs of the body and organise and harmonise them into a beautiful and capable whole. A particular exercise is not to be indulged for its own sake: all the energy of the body turned to that alone and the whole attention devoted to that one thing. An exclusive concentration upon a single physical feat does not bring out the full capacity of the body. It is to that end, the fullness of the body potential, that the culture of the bodily limbs is to be directed. In the same way, mental culture—the power of thinking, reasoning, arguing—has its value in its relation to the total culture of the mind and consciousness. There are higher regions of consciousness beyond the reach of the intellect; and you have to

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stop all intellectual activity, make your mind a total blank before you can hope to reach there. And indulgence even in so-called higher or philosophical speculations can only block the way to the true consciousness and knowledge. And yet you cannot leave the intellectual faculties uncared for or undeveloped on the plea that something higher is needed. In the physical body it need not be your ideal to become a "muscle man"; but neither would you like to have frail, ill-grown, rickety limbs that are weak and unshapely. With regard to your mental body too it would not serve any purpose to have a mind or intellect that is unable to think powerfully, cogently, closely. It is harmful when you take to mental gymnastics only for its own sake, to exclusive intellectual acrobatics—discussions, disputations, verbal quibbles etc., etc.; in that case the result attained is a disproportionate growth. But the development of the mind,even of the logical mind, can be and must be made part of the integral development, it must attain its true form, stature and strength, as a help towards and finally as an expression in its own field of the divinity, the highest and richest consciousness in man, even as the body too is to express and make concrete the supreme beauty and vigour of the perfect being.

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MENTAL SILENCE

Normally the mind is in a turmoil; it is eagerly active. First of all it is preoccupied with its problems and wants their solution. It knows only to think, to see pros and cons, weigh, reason, deduce; it arrives at some kind of conclusion which brings success or failure almost at random. Apart from this conscious or voluntary activity there is in the mind a whole region of involuntary activity; that is to say, it is assailed on all sides by a hundred thoughts, ideas and notions that come from outside and fill your brain cavity and over which you have no control. Each one tries to push forward, secure a place for itself, claim satisfaction and fulfilment. They are all moving at cross purposes and the mind knows no peace or issue.

It is possible to put a violent pressure upon oneself and forcibly push out all this confused movement and make the mind vacant. But the effect of mental will upon mind cannot be perfect or enduring. Besides it is not that, the absolute vacancy, that is our goal. Some other way and manner has to be found for stilling the mind's activities.

It is to call in the peace that is beyond, that is

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already there somewhere. It happens, with a sincere demand or aspiration in the consciousness, a certain readiness in the being. When that happens (something in the manner of the Upanishadic vivṛnute tanum svam —he unveils himself his own body), you feel as if a sheer blank, even a black void has entered into you and captured you. In the very midst of whirlwind activity comes a dead stop. Nothing is there now, no idea, no thought, no notion, no motion even— an immense emptiness has eaten up, engulfed everything. Keep steady and await. In that stillness something rises up—up and up—and goes out beyond, a tranquil beam of consciousness. And then something descends, from afar—a peace, a luminousness, authentic and absolute in its reality. It comes down, enters into you, possesses your brain and body. It has, you find, resolved all problems, harmonised all contraries and conflicts; for it comes from the home of mother truth. Now you do not strive, but you know, you do not grope, for you are led. You await and at each moment you receive the direction as to what is to be done; you have no thought or preoccupation, the inspired movement happens automatically and infallibly.

Sometimes it happens too that the sudden silence or inner immobility causes a bewilderment and you are caught by a fear that you are losing all bearings, that

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you are turning an absolute idiot or something worse. Some in a panic have let go the grace that came. In such a condition one has to be firm and steady and continue.

I have said normally you are assailed by all kinds of thought. They come into your brain from all quarters and demand audience and satisfaction. Thoughts need come into the brain, because actions become possible through them, they give the form and frame to your action. But the difficulty is that the thoughts are not only various but almost always contrary to each other; we see man so often moving in contrary directions and contradicting himself at each step. It is bound to be so if the doors of the mind are left wide open. Sometimes, however, or in some persons, one dominant thought takes possession of the mind and drives out all others. In such a case, when a single idea rules, one is likely to cut oneself down, narrow oneself and force the being into a strait-jacket, to move in a closed groove. The being in its entirety does not find self-expression or self-fulfilment. Thus you may have the idea, the fixed idea, that the world is irrevocably miserable and incorrigible and therefore you will naturally plan your whole life to that end, all your occupation and preoccupation will be how to get away from this world, you will seek a far solitude, inner and outer, seek

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release from existence and merge into the Transcendent or the Void. On the other hand, if you have the idea that in spite of all appearances to the contrary the world is remediable and reclaimable, then your life takes on a different pattern. It will seek to find out ways and means of the remedy and to what degree the possibility goes.

Now, the value of an idea cannot be determined by the idea itself. Usually one chooses because of some external reason or other: one's education, environment, one's personal temperament, likes and dislikes go a long way in determining one's choice. So the first thing you have to do is not to allow the thoughts to Come in pell-mell, as and when they like. Thoughts must come only when you choose them and only those that you choose. There must be a conscious selection. How to proceed in this work? As your own thoughts cannot choose themselves, what you have to do at the outset is to call for a higher guidance and let yourself be absolutely impartial and passive in its hands.

A blankness is needed, a white emptiness somewhere behind—even if it does not come and occupy the front too. Give up personal choosing and wait for the Higher Direction—the Divine—to do with you whatever it wills. Given the requisite silence and reliance, the decision comes inevitably and you are moved to

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do automatically what is required to be done from moment to moment. At first you may not get the knowledge of the why and the wherefore of your action, you act merely as an automaton but with the luminous silence within and a tranquil aspiration attending. When once you have been trained in this unquestioning docility, then knowledge will be given to you gradually, at first only of a few steps ahead, later on for a fuller and completer perspective.

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MIND, ORGAN OF SEPARATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS

The world is one, indissolubly and solidly one: no part can be separated from any other. Any action anywhere affects the whole and nothing can be moved even a hair's breadth without changing the entire balance. Each element literally lives, moves and has its being in every other and the totality is a rigidly unified mass.

If it is so, then there arises a difficulty, a dilemma. For the world to progress at all, under the circumstances, it must progress as a whole, en masse; it cannot progress piecemeal. The totality must advance in order that each element may progress and each element must advance so that the totality may progress. Perhaps this is what is happening actually in the world : but the result, if nothing else, has been rather slow. It will take not only millenniums but aeons for humanity to make any progress worth the name.

It need not be so however. Man is solidly one with the universe, true; but he has a faculty in him by which he can separate, isolate himself from the rest of the world. It is the mind's power of self-division and dissociation. Through this faculty man can put the world

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aside and outside himself (for a time, at least), cut away from it and concentrate upon his own being, his inner truth, in other words, make the progress in himself, as quickly as possible, independently, without waiting for others or the world to progress in any degree. And then when once he has made the progress himself, achieved a new higher status, he can turn back upon the world and bring to bear upon it the force of his progress and establish the progress more generally.

This power which in the inferior human consciousness appears as mind or mental discernment is the image or delegate here below of that very force of consciousness that originally separated the world from the Divine, created the ego and placed it as an objective reality against itself. It was a force of dividing consciousness, of exclusive concentration, that created the fission in the original unitary status of the Divine: it was that that precipitated the world of negation, of ignorance and inconscience, out of the supreme Light and Reality.

It was a power of denial that severed the world from its pure source: the same power can now be utilised for the return back for the reintegration. The power that separated from the Divine is capable of separating from the world; the consciousness that moved away from the One Divine can move away also from the Multiple Ignorance. As the individualised element isolated itself

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from the unitary consciousness of the Divine, in the same way the individualised element in man can stand aloof from the unitary being of the world: as it came down the ladder of consciousness from the supreme light of the spirit into the lowest depth of unconscious dead matter, the same path it can take in the opposite way and from the unconsciousness rise into the fullness of the original light. The soul has freely chosen the bondage, he is free too to choose his freedom again. That is what the Upanishad meant when it said: avidyayā mṛtyum tîrtwā, by the Ignorance he shall cross death.

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THE PERSONAL AND THE IMPERSONAL

As you go up in your consciousness towards the origin of things you come finally at the end of things: you are beyond the names and forms that make up the universe, beyond even the subtle names and forms at the topmost. You arrive at something formless, impersonal, unthinkable, unique, infinite and eternal. It is at best a vast force or a state of consciousness. When you come in contact with it, you lose your personal form, your separate individuality and become the featureless absolute. Many religions and philosophies consider this status to be the supreme, the highest and the origin of things. In reality, however, it is not the end of things nor the supreme status. You can rise further beyond. Your consciousness enters into the formless and impersonal and merges its separate existence there and then emerges again; it envisages a reality which is not formless but has a form, it is not impersonality but a Person, with which or with whom you can have a personal relation unlike the relation or lack of relation with the Impersonal. But this form beyond the formless is not like the forms of the inferior consciousness: it is the Form

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of forms. And it is not a person like a human being or even a divine being or god, but an essential Personality, the Person of persons. It has not the limitation or exclusiveness of ego-bounded individuality (even the gods are ego-bounded); it has a kind of fluid boundedness or outline which is recognizable as that of a definite Person, but it has not the fixity or rigidity of lower forms.

And yet to arrive at this supreme Person, to come in contact with Him, it is necessary to pass through and have the experience of the formless impersonal infinity. For that breaks the inferior moulds, the narrow egoistic formations which are only aberrations or obscure images of the true Person.

Somewhat on the same line the vital too has to proceed to transform itself. It must get rid of its ignorant and violent impulses, its obscure formations: it must be thoroughly cleansed and purified. For that it must learn to be quiet and silent—absolutely still and passive; and in that quiet passivity to feel, to be conscious of the Divine Presence, to be saturated with it. When once that is done, it is called upon to come out and take part in active life. Normally, however, the tendency is, when one has withdrawn and lived an inward quieted life, on coming back to outer life, to turn to the old accustomed ways and reactions; one falls back into the old groove of the consciousness.

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The vital should then make the experience and the realisation of the Divine Presence dynamic so that it may be a living reality; the vital must be conscious of it in the midst of all activities, not merely in the indrawn state. The energy of the vital must be put out into a complete and perfected living, but it must not run into old moulds and take up the habitual modes; with the constant sense of the Divine, the everpresent truth and beauty of the Divine's consciousness, the vital will possess a new life and create a new pattern of living.

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"I HAVE NOTHING, I AM NOTHING"

The state is that of utter commonplaceness. The feeling that I am doing Yoga, that I am something and have a special work to do, that something has to be achieved, that life has a purpose etc. etc. all that has left and left a blank, a void inside and an absolutely mechanical automaton outside. I do the most ordinary things of life, as any other common man, like the routine work of a machine; I know nothing and have no impulse to know or to plan as to what I should do, how I am to move or why is it all like this. A great tranquillity and silence possess the whole being. There is no "I", no person to refer to in the consciousness: individuality has been totally abolished, a sweep of universality passes through the consciousness and makes it as it were a no-man's-land. The mind has laid down its burden and says it is free now and obedient to the call that may come to it. The vital too submits its adherence and awaits the order: it has no inclination or choice of its own. The physical is likewise wholly docile.

This state of supreme blankness and passivity borders on the experience of illusion—the illusoriness

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of the world and the vanity or hollowness of life. Creation does seem like an empty shell, with no meaning or purpose and no real truth of existence even: it is a shadow play that rests on nothing and vanishes into nothing. The great exponents of Illusoriness must have had an experience of this kind and considered therefore that—Nothingness—as the ultimate truth and mystery of existence.

Now when all sense of personality—not only the sense but even the fact itself—had totally dissolved, the voice of the Supreme Divine was heard and His impulsion recorded. The Prayers and Meditations hereafter were written through such an impulsion; it was truly automatic writing—the instrument did not know what it was writing and even did not understand the meaning of the recorded words, it was merely a copyist, it looked at the writing as a third person would.

The whole being in all its parts acted thus like a recording or transferring agency. It was under such conditions—at the zero point of human personality and consciousness—that the instrument which so long lived apart and behind, concerned with itself more or less, was made to come forward and take up the work that the Divine demanded of it. The vessel that was completely empty, a universal and transcendental shape, came gradually to be filled, with the Divine's own will and its own formations.

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HERE OR ELSEWHERE

It is easy and comfortable to go within and in an inner consciousness find and maintain a union, even a close union with the Divine. It is because of such a state of peace and bliss that many, nay, most who go there do not want to come back, to normal life upon this earth. And teachers, great or small, almost invariably, have taught that in the end it is best like that, and perhaps the only thing to do under the circumstances. For this life and this earth mean the very opposite of that inner heaven and that highest good. But some are not given this comfortable solution of the difficulty. They are asked to turn back and live the life of the earth. They are not allowed to remain cosy in a narrow room and be busy always with themselves alone. Indeed, is it not narrow egoism to seek only one's own salvation? When one has saved himself, is it not his duty—the logical outcome and implication of his personal freedom—that he should seek to help others in their salvation? Such was in fact the attitude of the Amitabha Buddha.

A house is on fire. It has a tarred roof. One can easily understand the fury of the fire. Some inmates

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who were trapped have managed to come out in time, although somewhat bruised and scalded. But there were others, some children, left inside. One of those who came out rushes back again through the flames and comes and goes till all are saved. He is badly burnt, he has risked his life: he did not mind and could not remain at a safe distance. He could not be contented with saving himself, which was to be sure a sufficient gain in one respect. This soul had a consciousness of his wider self.

In the same way, there are souls that have emerged out of the fire of earthly life and are enjoying the safety and security of the heavens; but they have been called to come back into the world, add to the experience of the tranquil above the experience of the trouble below. Surely it increases the scope of their consciousness. But to turn upon the world means also to re-enter into ignorance, for this world means ignorance, as it is, it is nothing but ignorance. The role then of one who returns is once more to embrace ignorance, but with a view to bringing into it the light and bliss that he gained from above, permeating the stuff of the present world with the substance of the higher consciousness. It is a sacrifice demanded of him, thus to abandon the eternal felicity of the high heavens—the unbroken union with the Divine above —and to enter into the depths of "this great perilous

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world": but this is a privilege too, to bring solace to the afflicted, the transforming light to obscure souls, the radiant energy to inert earth. It is a high privilege for which the luminous soul is thankful: he modestly accepts a gift of grace from the Supreme. He accepts the Ignorance and offers it: he lays it at the feet of the Supreme so that it may be transmuted into light—light here below. His own role is that of a modest intermediary.

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WHEN IMPERFECTION IS GREATER THAN PERFECTION

A perfected consciousness is attained in the highest status of being, when it is full of light and delight, peace and purity, one with the Divine Consciousness. Such a Consciousness, when it comes down upon earth in its original unmixed clarity, lives as a foreign element and has no real contact with the world; it can have only a very indirect influence upon men and things. If the perfect, the Divine Consciousness has to be truly effective, has to change human and world nature, it must put on partially at least that nature; it must share in the imperfection of ignorance so that it can show how that imperfection can be dealt with and transformed. The Divine has to become human, even the ordinary human, in a sense, in the outward instrumental aspect, to a greater or lesser degree as needed, so that He may come in living contact with the obscure lower consciousness and put His light into it and gradually purify and illumine it. If, however, the consciousness retains its fullness of power and light and makes its appearance as such, it may dazzle and overwhelm, as a meteor miracle,

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but leave nothing substantial behind. This is what has happened in the past of man's history. The saints and sages, the greatest and the most genuine among them, mostly dwelt apart from humanity in consciousness and even away from human contact; the earth could not profit wholly by their example.

Therefore the Mother says in her Prayers and Meditations that having gone beyond all desires still she had to live in the midst of desires; she had no choice of her own, no preference, no attachment, no need of anything, yet she was put in the conditions of very ordinary life, the normal human life; she had to deal with the common man, handle the small insignificant objects of material existence. In one part of her being she had to identify herself with ignorance and obscurity, so much so that even the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness—the conscient and the inconscient—was for a time obliterated. Naturally, the inmost being in its inner self remained always calm, luminous, inviolable, but it put around itself this body of ordinary nature to meet its ordinary reactions and through them gradually to uplift and train it to manifest and incarnate the inmost divine.

The gods are perfect; but, it is said, they have to become men, come down upon earth and assume human proportions—that is, imperfections,—if they wish to progress further, attain still higher levels

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of consciousness. For, the gods are perfect each in his own limited and well-defined and therefore unchangeable type; but man means an aspiring soul, that is to say, infinity—his very imperfection is a sign and symbol of ever greater possibility; the fluidity of his nature means an opportunity.

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INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE SOUL

The individual has a soul. Likewise a collection of individuals, a group too has a soul. When persons habitually meet together for a certain purpose, they form a set or society and gradually tend to develop a common consciousness which is the beginning of a soul. At school, they who read together, the class, they who play together, the team, all who live and move together inspired by the same or similar impulses and ideas possess a rudimentary soul. In the same way, a bigger group, the nation has also a soul, each its own according to its nature, tradition and culture. Even a continent has a soul. One can speak of the soul consciousness of Europe, of Asia or of Africa. Indeed each cell of an organism has a consciousness of its own; it may be said to be the unit individual consciousness. Many such cells combine to form the organism, the individual (who in this way may be viewed as a composite or collective being). Many individuals form the family—-each family with its group consciousness (whence the idea of kuladharma, the genius of the family or the tradition and stamp of a Royal House). Many families formed the tribe,

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here too each with its particular consciousness. And then families and tribes have formed the modern nation, each one a distinct and almost a well-developed soul. The grouping continues to enlarge and we have the many nations combining to form the human group as a whole; humanity too has its own consciousness and its own soul. There is no limit to the volume or dimension of the group. The earth has its soul consciousness, even as the sun or a star or any other planet. The solar system or a galactic system too is moved by its own secret consciousness.

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THE WONDER OF IT ALL

The ordinary consciousness takes for granted the things that exist as they are. It does not question; it finds everything very natural and as a matter of course. It sees and expects to see the same old familiar things repeated and is not struck by any extraordinary note in them. That is the unconsciousness of the ordinary consciousness. But when you begin to be conscious, when you look about and gaze at things, you awake, as it were, from sleep, and begin to question, to wonder: why it is like this, how is it so, what is it, to what purpose etc. etc. Normally you see the sun rises, rain falls, earth rotates—but you do not spend a thought over any of these objects or happenings, except so far as they are useful or simple nuisance. But when there is a light in you and you become conscious, conscious of yourself and of things around you, everything acquires an importance, a sense and you are full of wonder, wondering at a wonderful creation. The more you advance, the more the light grows in you, all the more your wonder increases. As your awareness increases, your interest too increases. A new beauty surrounds, flows out of every object and event.

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You do not take things for granted and let them pass mechanically, but meet every one of them as a guest, with whom you wish to make acquaintance and be familiar, each one having a message for you and yourself something to deliver. That is a source of inexhaustible delight and of ever increasing knowledge.

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TO LEARN AND TO UNDERSTAND

It is one thing to learn (apprendre), quite another to understand (comprendre). In learning you take in a thing by your surface mind and it is a thing that comes in from outside like a foreign body; it is put into you, almost driven and forced into you. You do not absorb it, make it wholly your own. If you are not mindful, leave it aside for sometime, it goes clean out of your memory. Understanding a thing, on the other hand, means, you absorb it, get it into the stuff of your being, you live it in your consciousness within. When you have understood a thing you never forget it; it has become an element of your consciousness. Years and years might have passed, yet the thing would be as clear and vivid as it was on the first day. Why do you forget so easily the lessons that you learn—-with pain and difficulty—from books or at school from teachers? It is because you simply learn, but do not understand. You retain in your brain the words, the outer formula or forms, you note down the information; but what they stand for, their import and inner law, the living truth escape you totally. You read Einstein, read over and over again his formulas and

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equations and even commit them to memory—learn by rote; but after a time, if you lose touch with them, they vanish from your mind or become very vague and misty and you have to start again. That is because you learnt Einstein simply as a lesson, whereas if you entered into the perceptions these forms embody, the inner principles that determine them, if the Eins-teinian consciousness became in some way your consciousness, then you would have understood and never forgotten. It would not be a lesson but an experience. What is needed, then, is this inner awakening by which you live a thing, identify yourself with it, become one with it and not simply meet or make a nodding acquaintance only with it. Unless there is this awakening or openness, as we say, in the consciousness, however much a lesson is thrust into you, it will not enter deeply enough. You may learn, like a parrot, but you will not understand, it will pass over your head and soon be forgotten.

Indeed it was not very much necessary for the ancient sages and occultists to try to hide their knowledge in an obscure language, in codes and symbols and ciphers for fear of misuse by the common un-initiate; even if they had expressed their knowledge in ordinary language, ordinary people would not have understood it at all. It would be like my speaking to you in Chinese, you would make nothing of it.

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One comprehends only what one already possesses, that is to say, you must have within you something at least of what you want to know and understand, something corresponding to it, similar in nature and vibration. That is what I mean when I say that you should be open, your mind and consciousness should be turned and attuned to the object it wishes to seize; it must have some light in it in order to receive the light outside and beyond. If it is mere obscurity, the light does not light; even if it manages to come it departs soon or is engulfed in the darkness.

The human mind can seize things only in three dimensions. A three-dimensional knowledge is its normal possession. But there is a fourth and a fifth dimension (which some intellectuals in Europe have begun to guess at): indeed there are at least as many as twelve dimensions in reference to the present creation. We cannot readily picture a four-dimensional object, a fifth dimension borders on the bizarre and beyond that it is all a blank to the human consciousness. If I spoke of these multi-dimensional experiences, what would you make of them?

For example, you read and hear much and constantly of the Divine. What is He or It to you in reality? Something vague, misty, wordy. The perception is not concrete to you. You can doubt, deny, refuse credence as you like. But if you once experience it,

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hold it in your inner being and consciousness, in however small way, however little of it, if you get the direct contact in whatever manner—well, the thing is unforgettable, it lives, lives for ever. If the whole world denies and scoffs, you are unshaken, you smile at the world, for you know what you know.

What then is the way to this experience, to this opening in the consciousness? The Presence is there, the Light is there, the Grace always leans down to you, surrounds you. On your side you have to make a corresponding gesture. You have to ask for the thing sincerely, whole-heartedly, aspire for it tirelessly. You have to ask for it persistently, without losing faith or trust; you have to go on perseveringly without counting the time taken.

There is an iron door there nailed and fixed. It has to be broken open. It is the door that shuts you within your narrow ego-consciousness. You have to throw down that barrier and widen yourself out. You have to will for it, exert for it with a settled constancy. There is the pressure on the other side too, the pressure of Grace. Your aspiring will meeting the Grace will surely make the necessary opening in in the dead wall.

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THE COMING OF SUPERMAN

Is it said that when the supramental descends, it will come with such an overwhelming and irresistible force that all humanity will be changed forthwith, that is to say, all men whether they wanted it or not, sought for it or not, would be automatically transformed? It cannot be so: it is a comfortable doctrine putting a premium on laziness and inertia.

There is no necessity of all men turning supermen, the normal human race disappearing altogether. Mankind need not become extinct like the ancient Mammoth and Mastodon in order to give place to Superman. Both the races can dwell together; earth is wide enough. Man has appeared; for that reason the ape has not disappeared, although it is said man came out of the ape genus. The superman will come and live with his new law of life; man too will continue with his human dharma. Not only so, they need not be separated into water-tight compartments, there may be interaction or interchange between the two. With the coming of Superman there will naturally be a descent of harmony and peace and happiness and good will into the earth's atmosphere and mankind is

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likely to be benefited by it. The conditions of life will be changed and will affect man's life too. An element of light and joy and tranquillity will enter into humanity's normal dealings. And man, on his side, may offer his services as the recruiting ground of the super-race. Furthermore, the whole of Nature being a unified movement, no level of creation being totally separate from others, the change may very well touch the animal and even the vegetable kingdom. The plant may put on, for example, a luminous or greener tint and the animal may develop a happier and livelier spring. There may be less scarcity, dearth, aridity, less convulsions and catastrophes on earth.

Always, however, exceptions are possible. Even now, where conditions of life are happier and things are expected to be more smooth and harmonious, there exist people who are by nature so obscure, quarrelsome and turbulent that they are not touched at all and go on in their way finding always occasions to quarrel and fight and create trouble. They will be in the midst of the new humanity as Hottentots or Head-hunters—aborigines and savages—are today in the eye of civilised humanity.

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TOWARDS REDEMPTION

As I have often said, creation is the self-objectivisation of the Supreme Divine; it is the supreme consciousness putting itself out of itself so that it may look at itself. In so doing—in self-objectifying and self-dividing— it scattered itself abroad: the one infinite multiplied itself into infinite atoms. Not only so, in detaching itself from itself the consciousness became the very opposite of itself: consciousness became unconsciousness, spirit became matter, delight became pain, knowledge became ignorance, and light became darkness. Boundless universality was the essential nature of the Divine, now it got clotted into the knots of egoism upon which is based this inconscient creation. In the midst of this utter negation, this denial by the universe of its origin, the Divine Love descended and lodged itself in order to bring back the erring creation to its lost home. The Divine Love became involved and entangled in the Inconscient, became one with it; only so could she (it was indeed the Divine Mother in her Grace) suffuse the inconscient universe with her own substance and transmute it into its original nature. The first effect or visible sign of this descent or divine

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infusion is the emergence of the psychic or the soul element in the material body: it is the speck of consciousness imbedded in matter, inhabiting the apparently dead particle or aggregate of particles, which continually grows in and through its relation of action and reaction with its surrounding unconsciousness, and at the same time extending its light into that darkness transforms it gradually into what it was originally at its source.

⁂

The origin of creation is an individualisation—the manifestation or emanation of many, as units, out of the undivided and indivisible Single. It meant freedom for each unit to choose: the individual became, so to say, a unit of freedom. The immediate result, however, was not very successful, apparently, that is to say. For the individual unit chose to follow a path exactly opposite to its origin: the individualisation happened as if an element shot out of the infinite unity and flung itself in its momentum, as far away as possible, to the other pole. That is how the one spirit became the infinite particles of inconscient matter. The purpose and problem then set was to bring back the straying elements to their source and origin. The work was long travail. It took and it is taking even

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now ages and ages for the one Being who could do the thing to prepare slowly, mount the steps gradually along which creation slid down, recover the ground painfully and achieve the hidden purpose, vindicating amply the deviation and the fall. Through devious ways, long winding, arduous marches the spirit of evolution laboured through millenniums: it was the instrument utilised by the Divine Grace.

The original individual was a hard concentrated point of ego, concerned wholly and absolutely with itself. So a situation of give and take was brought about so that even to exist meant to exist through others. Human society began in this way. The solitary human animal for its own sake had to come out of its solitariness, take to a mate and thus gradually bring up a family. The wall of egoism was broken to that extent, its scope extended. This enlargement of the ego continued—still continues—increasing the content of the unity. From the family the human ego enlarged into the tribe, and the tribal ego has now enlarged into the nation. Larger and larger aggregates are being formed in place of the original individual unities. The nations too are now approaching and interpenetrating each other and in many ways the whole of humanity has begun moving as an aggregate. The individual has thus learnt to find himself in the life of humanity as a whole. He has to look up—or will

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soon have to look up—to the whole creation as one existence in and through which he has to exist. Thus the universe is recovering its original indivisible unity, but having gained something in the process; for it is now no longer the featureless unity at the source but an enriched and multiple unity in expression. Furthermore the individual can proceed yet beyond. He has to and now is able to, not only in his individual but in his collective consciousness—turn back and move straight to its original unity: he can establish direct contact, commune and unite with the Divine Himself from whom it came and strayed away. The ranges of ascent are within him and are in line with those outside which the universe is traversing in the path of evolution. Such is the process the Divine Grace has undertaken to fulfil the Divine's purpose in creation.

* * *

The earliest sense of "ego" or "I" is limited and confined to one's own self as against others and other things. It is then that one has the feeling of want and asks for things he has not. He has shut out from his wingspread men and things, of his own accord, to enjoy his individual free will: he is now compelled to ask of them materials to enjoy, to grow and increase,

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even to exist. On the other hand, if you enlarge yourself, if you identify yourself with all, then you find all things within yourself, you have no need to go out and seek for them, you have no feeling of want. Whatever is needed to be brought and utilised for a definite purpose or in a particular circumstance, at a certain time or place, is automatically presented then and there. You do not, however, lose your real "I". Your "I" finds its "I" in all other "I"s and all other "I"s in the "I" you call yourself. You have lost your old ego, the small narrow person, and transcended and transmuted it into the cosmic and transcendental ego. The Divine is that ego and that individual person. In reality it is the Divine alone who is that, in the supreme and truest sense.

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SWEET HOLY TEARS¹

The tears that the soul sheds are holy, are sweet; they come bidden by the Divine and are blessed by His Presence. They are like the dew from heaven. For they are pure, they are spontaneous, welling out of a heart of innocent freedom. The feeling is infinitely impersonal, completely egoless: there is only an intense movement of self-giving, total simple self-giving. Tears are the natural expression in one who needs help, who has the complete surrender and simplicity of a child, the abdication of all vanity. Such tears are beautiful in their nature and beneficent in character. They are therefore like dewdrops that belong to heaven as it were and come from there with a sovereign healing virtue. Such tears are not "idle tears", as the English poet says in a vein of melancholy, they are instinct with a power, an effective energy which brings you relief, ease and peace. And it is not only pure but purifying, this feeling made of quiet intensity and aspiration and surrender: it is unmixed, free from any demand or need of reward or return; it is so impersonal

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, July 12, 1918

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that the aspiration is, so to say, even independent of the object for which it exists.

At a supreme crisis of the soul when there seems to be no issue before you, if you come, in the naked simplicity of your whole being, pour yourself out in a flood of self-giving, to one who can be your refuge— in the end the Divine alone can be such a one—and who can respond fully to the intensity and ardent sincerity of your approach, you come holding your tearful soul as a complete self-offering, you do not know what tremendous response you call forth, the blessing divine you bring down in and around you.

"I prepared the Feast" ¹

It was a banquet I prepared for men. Instead of a life of misery and suffering, of obscurity and ignorance I brought to them a life of light and joy and freedom. I took all the pains the task demanded and when it was ready I offered it to mankind to partake of it. But man in his foolishness and pigheadedness refused it, did not want it. He preferred to remain in his dark miserable hole. Now, what am I to do with my Feast? I cannot let it go waste, throw it to the winds. So I offered it to my Lord and laid it at his feet. He accepted it. He alone can enjoy it and honour it.

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—September 3, 1919

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The Feast is that of Transformation, the Divine Life on earth. Man is not capable of it naturally, cannot attain it by his own effort or personal worth. It is the Divine who is to bring it down Himself. He is to manifest Himself and thus establish His own life here below. Then only it will be possible for the human creature to open to the urgency of the new beauty and offer his surrender.

It was not easy to prepare the Feast. I had to bear the full load of the cross and ascend the calvary. Jesus as he mounted to his destiny with the Cross on his back stumbled often and fell and rose again with bruised limbs to begin again the arduous journey. Even so, this being too had to go through many disillusions and deceptions, many painful and brutal experiences. It was not a smooth and straight going, but a tortuous and dangerous ascent. But at the end of the tunnel there is always the light. The calvary and the crucifixion culminated in the Resurrection: the divine Passion of Christ flowered into this supreme Recompense. Here too after all the dark and adverse vicissitudes lies the fulfilment of transformation. One must pass through the entire valley of death and rise to the topmost summit to receive and achieve the fullness of the glory. One must leave behind all the lower ranges of ignorance, the entire domain of human consciousness, come out of the imperfection

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man is made of; then only will he put on the divine nature as his own body and substance.

⁂

The Cross symbolises all the suffering and difficulty, the renunciation and self-denudation that the ascent to the Goal involves. The Calvary of the Christian legend means Ascension and Resurrection is Transformation in our sadhana. The Cross is also symbolic of the Transformed consciousness. It has three branches and represents the triple Divine, the Divine in his three modes of existence. The top branch, the vertical portion above the transverse line, stands for the supreme or transcendent Divine, one who is above manifestation; the middle—the transverse or horizontal branch stands for the expanse of the universal consciousness, the Cosmic Divine; and the bottom portion, the vertical line below the transverse stands for the individual Divine immanent or imbedded in the manifestation. You will note that the flower we call transformation has a form analogous to the Cross.

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IDENTIFICATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The Prayers¹ speak always of the identification of consciousness with the Supreme. There is also the other identification of the consciousness, on the other side, namely, with things and beings, with the world outside: to that also the Prayers refer constantly. In reality, however, there is only one consciousness; it is everywhere, in all objects, in the universe and beyond. When a limit is put around it somewhere, a frame is erected, then it becomes or appears to become an individual consciousness. It is man's ego, a spot or point cutting and shutting itself off from the global consciousness, that has thus separated from the Divine; it is that ego, that separative consciousness which is asked to break the limits and regain its natural unity with the one consciousness. And when it can do so it is said to have made the identification with the Supreme. Apart from this, however, when the consciousness has separated and individualised itself in different centres, even then it exists and acts in hiding in all the multiple varieties of forms, from

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother

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the tiniest to the biggest. The same consciousness is alive in the atom, the stone, the plant, the animal, in the earth and the sun and the stars, in the universe as a whole. Each object big or small, living or non-living, conscious or unconscious, contains that consciousness at its centre and embodies or expresses it in various ways.

Consider, for example, your country, India. When you say "India", what do you mean to convey? Is it the geographical boundary that goes by the name or the expanse of soil contained within that boundary or its hills and rivers, forests and fields or the beasts that range in it or its human inhabitants or all of these together? No, it is something else; it is a centre of consciousness which has as its bodily frame the particular geographical boundary: it is that which dwells in its mountains and meadows, vibrates in its vegetation, lives and moves in its animal kingdom; and it is that which is behind the mind and aspiration of its people, animating its culture and civilisation and moving it towards higher and higher illuminations and achievements. It is not India alone, but every country upon earth has its consciousness, which is the central core of its life and culture. Not only so, even the earth itself, the earth as a whole, has a consciousness at its centre and is the embodiment of that consciousness: and earth's evolution means the growth

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and expression of that consciousness. Likewise the sun too has a solar consciousness, a solar being presiding over its destiny. Further, the universe too has a cosmic consciousness, one and indivisible, moving and guiding it. And still beyond there lies the transcendental consciousness, outside creation and manifestation.

Consciousness being one and the same everywhere fundamentally, through your own consciousness you can identify with the consciousness that inhabits any other particular formation, any object or being or world. You can, for example, identify your consciousness with that of a tree. Stroll out one evening, find a quiet place in the countryside; choose a big tree—a mango tree, for instance—and go and take your seat at its root, with your back resting or leaning against the trunk. Still youself, be quiet and wait, see or feel what happens in you. You will feel as if something is rising up within you, from below upward, coursing like a fluid, something that makes you feel at once happy and contented and strong. It is the sap mounting in the tree with which you have come in contact, the vital force, the secret consciousness in the tree that is comforting, restful and health-giving. Well, tired travellers sit under a banian tree, birds rest upon its spreading branches, other animals—and even beings too (you must have heard of ghosts haunting

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a tree)—take shelter there. It is not merely for the cool or cosy shade, not merely for the physical convenience it gives, but the vital refuge or protection that it extends. Trees are so living, so sentient that they can be almost as friendly as an animal or even a human being. One feels at home, soothed, protected, strengthened under their overspreading foliage.

I will give you one instance. There was an old mango tree in one of our gardens—very old, leafless and dried up, decrepit and apparently dying. Everybody was for cutting it down and making the place clean and clear for flowers or vegetables. I looked at the tree. Suddenly I saw within the dry bark, at the core, a column of thin and dim light, a light greenish in colour, mounting up, something very living. I was one with the consciousness of the tree and it told me that I should not allow it to be cut down. The tree is still living and in a fairly good health. As a young girl barely in my teens I used to go into the woods not far from Paris (Bois de Fontainebleau): there were huge oak trees centuries old perhaps. And although I knew nothing of meditation then, I used to sit quietly by myself and feel the life around, the living presence of something in each tree that brought to me invariably the sense of health and happiness.

Another instance will show another kind of identification. It is an experience to which I have often

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referred. I was seated, drawn in and meditating. I felt that my physical body was dissolving or changing: it was becoming wider and wider, losing its human characters and taking gradually the shape of a globe. Arms, legs, head were no longer there: it became spherical, having exactly the form of the earth. I felt I had become the earth: I was the earth in form and substance and all terrestrial objects were in me, animals and people, living and moving in me, trees and plants and even inanimate objects as part of myself, limbs of my body: I was the earth-consciousness incarnate.

But the point is to be this individual consciousness anywhere or everywhere and still to maintain the higher, the universal and transcendent, the supreme consciousness, to be simultaneously conscious in both the modes to the utmost degree.

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THE CENTRAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Very often this was the experience: union with the Supreme is established, but as soon as the consciousness was about to settle and merge in the bliss of the union, it was called back and had to turn to the outside world to the ordinary affairs of ordinary consciousness. As if I was given to understand that it was not for me to forget and reject the life of the physical world and pass into the Beyond, but to maintain the contact, the closest contact, between this world and the Beyond and hold both together in one consciousness. The process is somewhat like this: you withdraw the consciousness from the world outside and turn inward; you withdraw even from your own physical activities and physical perceptions; you withdraw further in this way step by step through all the grades of life movements and mental movements, go deep inward and high upward till you reach the highest summit: the absolute silence and indivisible unity with the immutable single reality. This was the aim and, generally, the end of all the greatest spiritual disciplines of the past. We too have to possess this realisation; but for us, it is the basis, the indispensable basis,

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no doubt, all the same it is the starting-point. Sri Aurobindo has always said that our yoga begins where other yogas end. For what we aim at is not merely the attainment of the summit reality, the consciousness beyond, but to bring it down, make it a living and actual reality in the physical world. The older yogas intended to save the world, but accomplished only the salvation of the individual, one's own self, by passing beyond the world, realising the supreme Spirit and Truth and never coming back. Thus the world remained what it has ever been: only a few escaped out of it. Our yoga enters its crucial phase, its characteristic and its most difficult turn, when it seeks to bring down the highest consciousness once realised on the heights and make it enter into the life of the world and fix it there as the permanent possession of earthly life.

The key is to find the poise where both the extremes meet, the junction of the two levels of consciousness, the transcendent and the manifested, where the two not only do not contradict or oppose each other, but are aspects or modes of the same Truth, indissolubly united and unified. It is just the border-line, the last point of the manifested world and the first point of the Unmanifest (as one goes upward). If you are able to find the point you have not to make a choice between two irreconcilables, either the Brahman or

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the world. It is only when you miss the point that you are forced to the choice: some choose the other side of the border, the static consciousness, the eternal immutable pure being, self-absorbed and self-sufficient; others who dare not do that, turn to the world and remain entangled and drowned in its darkness, ignorance, travail, undelight, impotency and misery. But, as I have said, this is not the necessary or inevitable solution—if solution it is at all—of the enigma.

The first condition, however, to arrive at the crucial or synthetic state of consciousness (which is, in fact, the basic supramental consciousness, as Sri Aurobindo calls it) is the realisation that the world, that is to say, physical consciousness does not exist by itself. By itself, it is nothing. As the Prayer says, "it knows nothing, it can do nothing, it is nothing." This realisation must not be merely a mental perception, a perception in the inner consciousness alone; but the body, the physical existence itself must be conscious and in that consciousness see and experience the truth that by itself it is a void, non-existence: it becomes so however only to find that it is real, supremely real when it is suffused with its true substance, when it is the embodiment or vehicle of the supramental consciousness.

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THE CONSTANTS OF THE SPIRIT

The Divine exists in three modes: (1) Existence, (2) Consciousness and (3) Bliss. Pure existence, pure consciousness and pure bliss—Sat-Chit-Ananda— these are the three fundamental elements out of which the world is made; they are everywhere in all things, in all beings, in all domains and levels of being. Sach-chidananda is the supreme reality that is behind all, even here below, behind the mind, behind the life and behind the body too and behind each form in each of these domains. It is that which upholds and sustains everything. Therefore in order to realise it, it is not necessary to mount up, leaving behind the mental, the vital and physical existence and go beyond. Usually when one seeks Sachchidananda one looks for it outside the universe, above and beyond the creation, in the transcendent. In reality, however, one can meet it from any place where one happens to be, either in the mind or in the vital or even in the physical; one has only to withdraw and sink down, or get behind: it is there always. To meet Sachchidananda in and through the physical existence is not very much more difficult or rare a thing than the

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other ways; it is more difficult and rare to maintain it there constantly and consciously, to make of it a dynamic physical possession. That is the work to be done and for which Sri Aurobindo came.

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SELFLESS WORKER

The Prayer says: "I look for my conscious mind and I find it no more____" Normally one is conscious of oneself. Whatever one does or whenever one does something, the consciousness always remains behind, "I am here, I am doing". And if this sense of "I am" is not there, one can do nothing. All action stops automatically if I do not see or feel that I am acting. But that is the nature of ordinary consciousness; in the spiritual consciousness things are otherwise. Spiritual consciousness means the consciousness in which this sense of "I am doing" or even "I am" has disappeared, got dissolved. Truly, the work is done not by me, by the sense of "I-ness", but by Prakriti, Nature, apparently by Lower Nature, secretly by Higher Nature. When the "I" disappears, the force that has been working continues to work, only the sense of "I" attached to it (in ignorance and by ignorance) is no longer there. Or, the "I" has completely merged itself into the working Force and is one with it. What is conscious is not the personality or the individual I, but the Force of action.

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SECOND SIGHT

We know that animals generally possess sharp senses to an extraordinary degree. They can hear and smell at a distance far beyond what is normal to the human sense. Give a kerchief used by a man to a dog, it will spot the man among a thousand. An elephant will take you straight to a place miles away where there is water, if you happen to be stranded in waterless surroundings. Where there is no question of sight or smell, even then the animals perceive things in a queer way: an elephant, again, for example, refusing to advance further upon road, because, as it was discovered later on, the road was hollow inside and would have sunk down had the animal walked upon it. There are other countless phenomena to prove the keenness and subtlety of the animal sense or instinct, as it is called.

Perception means contact with the object. Now, what is it that contacts? In ordinary sense-perception, the normal human sense-perception, for example, it is the physical vibration emanating from the object that contacts the physical organ: the distance at which the vibration can be received depending on the

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sensitivity of the recipient nerves. In man the sensitivity is limited, in the animal it is highly intense. This is however, only one factor of the phenomenon. We will explain.

As it is well-known, there are three levels of consciousness: the physical, the vital and the mental; for the present we leave out of consideration the fourth or the spiritual (including the psychic). Not only so, in each level or plane all the others are also involved i.e. lie secreted. Thus, in the mind there is a vital mind and a physical mind, in the vital there is a mental vital and a physical vital. So, in the physical too there are these three grades: (1) physical physical, (2) vital physical and (3) mental physical.

We will now better understand the process of contact in sense perception. The purely material contact, physical vibration touching the physical nerves of the particular organ is an instance of the physical physical perception: the dog smelling or the elephant hearing at extraordinary distances. We have heard of men who, by putting their ear upon the ground, are able to catch sounds coming from a great distance and practically inaudible to others standing by. But there is another class where the material vibration is not at issue, it is the vital vibration in the physical touching the vital physical of the receiver. The elephant finding the water or sensing

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the hollow road is an instance in point. The mental physical, the last of the three is a kind of intuition in the physical, that is what is usually called 'instinct'. A cat, for example, put in a sack and banished miles away from its home, will find its way back; a dog will go round the world almost and find and recognise its master even many years after (the first to recognise Ulysses was his dog). In man too the vital physical, more especially the mental physical not unoften finds room for play, although his physical physical i.e. purely material sensibility is extremely limited. This limitation of the physical sensibility in general, to whatever sphere it may belong, is due to the intellectual or rational bias that has developed in him. In the more unsophisticated races or types the sensibility is still maintained. Man can, however, cultivate, consciously develop these faculties: it then becomes what is called a system of Yoga. A familiar example of the mental physical action as cultivated in man is offered by the water diviner or dowser, as he is called. But, as I have said, the normal effect of human rationality is to inhibit the spontaneous action of the senses as it is natural with the animal.

It is interesting to note that animals in the wild state maintain intact their instinctive capacity, their "second sight", but begin to lose it when they live with men, come under the influence of human mind

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and reason, become "domesticated". A cow habituated to free grazing in the fields will never touch the poisonous grass, will always avoid it and take only the harmless and healthy variety; but kept within the stable, accustomed to a closed life, it loses its natural instinct, gets confused, does not know how to distinguish the right from the wrong food, being always given ready-made things by the master.

Human contact has thus a harmful effect upon the animal's instinctive life. But in another way it may have an uplifting influence too. Some of the refined human sentiments—sympathy, gratitude, faithfulness, self-sacrifice—in a pronounced human way find expression in animals that are domesticated and live close to man and within the human atmosphere. It is true many of these feelings are not totally absent in the animal kingdom (especially in the higher strata) in its natural or wild state, but they belong to the level of pure feeling or impulse and have not risen to the level of sentiments which have a mental element infused into their vital stuff. Indeed a strong mental element, a reasoning capacity sometimes very clearly develops in the domestic animal.

The animal acts by instinct, we say; that is to say, it goes straight to the thing to be done: in order to do a thing it does not make a choice between possibilities, there is no selective process in its consciousness. It is

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the human consciousness alone that says, "this is not to be done, but that to be done, not this but that" or puts the question, "which one, to be or not to be?" This is what we mean by discrimination or deliberation. Normally, this faculty is absent in the animal. We have said of refined feelings in man; "refined" here need not mean always ennobled or morally elevated; it may mean also more subtle, more complicated and be applied to some baser—acute perverse—feelings which are perhaps peculiarly human. Domestic animals sometimes contract them from men: jealousy, spitefulness, vengeance, vindictiveness of an extreme degree are likely to be found more among animals living with men than those that are in the wild state. We have heard of elephants brooding over a hurt or even an insult for long months and taking revenge when occasion presents itself. And we have heard of a cat jumping out of a window into the street below and killing itself simply because it thought its mistress showed more love towards another cat.

The humanising of animals living with men, through its good and bad effects, has an evolutionary value: that is to say, some animals in that way attain almost to a human status in their soul. And occultists state that souls do pass in this manner from the animal to the human incarnation.

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THE MOTHER ON HERSELF

There are two things that should not be confused with each other, namely, what one is and what one does, what one is essentially and what one does in the outside world. They are very different. I know what I am. And what others think or say or whatever happens in the world, that truth remains unaffected, unaltered, a fact. It is real to itself and the world's denial or affirmation does not increase or diminish that reality. But being what I am, what I do actually is altogether a different question: that will depend upon the conditions and circumstances in which things are and in and through which I am to work. I know the truth I bring, but how much of it finds expression in the world depends upon the world itself. What I bring, the world must have the capacity and the will to accept: otherwise even if I bring with me the highest and the most imperative truth, it will be, absolutely as it were, non-existent for a consciousness that does not recognise or receive it: the being with that consciousness will not profit a jot by it.

You will say if the truth I bring is supreme and omnipotent, why does it not compel the world to

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accept it, why can it not break the world's resistance, force man to accept the good it refuses? But that is not the way in which the world was created nor the manner in which it moves and develops. The origin of creation is freedom: it is a free choice in the consciousness that has projected itself as the objective world. This freedom is the very character of its fundamental nature. If the world denies its supreme truth, its highest good, it does so in the delight of its free choice; and if it is to turn back and recognise that truth and that good, it must do so in the same delight of free choice. If the erring world is ordered to turn right and immediately does so, if things were done in a trice, through miracles, there will be then no point in creating a world. Creation means a play of growth: it is a journey, a movement in time and space through graded steps and stages. It is a movement away—away from its source—and a movement towards: that is the principle or plan on which it stands. In this plan there is no compulsion on any of the elements composing the world to forswear its natural movement, to obey to a dictate from outside: such compulsion would break the rhythm of creation.

And yet there is a compulsion. It is the secret pressure of one's own nature that drives it forward through all vicissitudes back again to its original source. When it is said that the Divine Grace can

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and should do all, it means nothing more and nothing less than that: the Divine Grace only accelarates the process of return and recognition. But on the side of the journeying element, the soul, there must be awakened a conscious collaboration, an initial consent and a constantly renewed adhesion. It is this that brings out, at least helps to establish outside on the physical level, the force that is already and has always been at work within and on the subtler and higher levels. That is the pattern of the play, the system of conditions under which the game is carried out. The Grace works and incarnates in and through a body of willing and conscious cooperators: these become themselves part and parcel of the Force that works.

The truth I bring will manifest and will be embodied upon earth; for, it is the earth's and world's inevitable destiny. The question of time is not relevant. In one respect the truth which I say will be made manifest is already fully manifest, is already realised and established: there is no question of time there. It is in a consciousness timeless or eternally present. There is a process, a play of translation between that timeless poise and the poise in time that we know here below. The measure of that hiatus is very relative, relative to the consciousness that measures, long or short according to the yardstick each one brings. But that is not the essence of the problem: the essence is that

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the truth is there active, in the process of materialisation, only one should have the eye to see it and the soul to greet it.

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ABOUT

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SIMILAR BOOKS

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6