... " (The Mother, Cent. Ed., p. 4) The sadhaka's personal effort should be engaged in making this surrender to the Divine genuine and thorough. And in the measure he is capable of doing so, he will find to his happy surprise that the Divine Mother has started acting quite overtly in his life and no longer secretly as before. And this with the purpose of building up his spiritual life and... march of his spiritual itinerary? But the fact is that this deeper truth is not revealed to the sadhaka's consciousness in the early part of his sadhana. And in spiritual matters it is not the mental speculative knowledge which can be of much help. What is essential is to have the direct subjective experience of the Truth. Otherwise, without having this intimate experience to support him... The Practice of the Integral Yoga X Personal Effort and the divine Grace While walking on the thorny path of spiritual Sadhana the sadhaka should never forget even for a moment that he is not alone in his arduous journey. But if not alone, who gives him companions hip on the Path? Is it any human comrade who is referred to here? No, certainly ...
... confound all truth of experience, if we are not to limit ourselves to a mere static experience of something indefinable, to speak of a triple aspect of the Divine? In the practice of Yoga there is a great dynamic difference in one's way of dealing with these three possible realisations. If I realise only the Divine as that, not my personal self, which yet moves secretly all my personal being and which... something that warrants this hope to arrive at something better. For the spiritual experience there is—and this something behind is to it as undeniable a fact as the very apparent character of this world in its surface aspect as a world of Ignorance, tribulation, suffering, disharmony, disorder, obscure Inconscience. To spiritual experience it is not a speculation but a fact that there is a Godhead immanent... consciousness also. It is also a part of spiritual experience that there is something Beyond in which this Divinity—or whatever other name you may give to it—is above the contradiction offered to it by this world of disorder and ignorance; that is the meaning of the Transcendence. Whatever wide differences there may be between different ways of spiritual experience or whatever names may be put on these ...
... of that kind mentally too. Is personal experience always necessary? SRI AUROBINDO: No. One need not have personal experience for such poetry. NIRODBARAN: You once compared mystic poetry to moon light and spiritual poetry to sunlight. SRI AUROBINDO: No, I meant occult poetry to be like moonlight. There are two kinds of mystic poetry: occult-mystic and spiritual-mystic. That poem of mine, "Trance"... say so? The poem is hazy. The Vaishnava poets have clearly stated their experiences. NIRODBARAN: Dilip told me that once Tagore in an agony of pain tried hard to concentrate and ultimately he separated himself from his pain and got relief. Isn't that a spiritual experience? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, that is a spiritual experience. NIRODBARAN: I remember also to have read in his autobiography, Jivan... day he felt a sudden outburst of joy and all Nature seemed to be full of Ananda. The outcome of that feeling or experience of bliss is supposed to be the poem "Nirjharer Swapna Bhanga" ("Interruption of the Dream of the Fountain"). SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, that too is a spiritual experience. What does he say in the poem? NIRODBARAN: He speaks of a fountain breaking all barriers and rushing towards ...
... Sweet Mother, there are people who do hypnotism. Then, when they always practise it on the same person, does that person fall ill after a while? Not necessarily ill. It depends on the kind of hypnotism and Page 263 hypnotiser. Not necessarily ill. One thing is certain, that this person loses his personal will, that the hypnotiser's will takes the place of the personal will, otherwise... this is their way of making use of people—to swallow them. So it cannot be a very pleasant experience. It is a very, very, very dangerous game. But everywhere, in all the teachings, in all the disciplines, in all ages, the same thing has been repeated: that one must never intermingle ambition and personal interest with the sadhana, otherwise he is inviting trouble. So it is not only a particular... itself proves that you don't have it!" That's all, my children? Sweet Mother, I have heard that the magicians who use occult powers for their work suffer a great deal after their death. Is it true? What sort of magicians are you speaking about? Any kind? Those who have occult powers and use them for their personal interest? You mean these? Yes. I don't know whether they suffer after ...
... work, or when you can begin to feel always that it is the Mother's force that is doing the work and you are only a channel or an instrument, then in place of memory there will have begun the automatic constant realisation of Yoga, divine union, in works. * The only work that spiritually purifies is that which is done without personal motives, without desire for fame or public recognition or... sort of mid-world of purely subjective experiences without a firm hold on either external reality or on the highest Reality and without the right use of the subjective experience to create a firm link and then a unification between the highest Reality and the external realisation in life. Work can be of two kinds - the work that is a field of experience used for the Sadhana, for a progressive... inside in order to have experiences and to neglect the work, the external consciousness, is to be unbalanced, one-sided in the Sadhana - for our Yoga is integral; so also to throw oneself outward and live in the external being alone is to be unbalanced, one-sided in the Sadhana. One must have the same consciousness in inner experience and outward action and make both full of the Mother. * To keep ...
... who are by nature drawn to the Transcendent, most seek more readily the Personal, the Divine immanent here, especially if they can find it in a human body), there is there no doubt an advantage. It arises simply from the strong survival in India of an atmosphere of spiritual seeking, and a long tradition of practice and experience, while in Europe the atmosphere has been lost, the tradition interrupted... but to create a ground and a way of spiritual growth and experience which will bring down a greater Truth beyond the mind but not Page 40 inaccessible to the human soul and consciousness. All can pass who are drawn to that Truth, whether they are from India or elsewhere, from the East or from the West. All may find great difficulties in their personal or common human nature; but it is not... practised with success spiritual disciplines which were akin to Oriental Yogas and have followed too ways of the inner life which came to them from the East. Their non-Oriental nature did not stand in their way. The approach and experiences of Plotinus and the European mystics who derived from him were identical, as has been shown recently, with the approach and experiences of one type of Indian Yoga ...
... descent of the Force to establish a connection—here the descent is taking another form intended to establish the fundamental experiences of the Realisation. It is the beginning of a very decisive experience and realisation—first, the Ascent above the mind (head) into the spiritual plane. It is here that one releases and is released into the vastness, fullness, solace, freedom, peace and joy of the... unveiled and unmixed above mind, life and body and not in mind, life and body. It is a matter of the undeniable experience of many that this can descend and it is my experience that nothing short of its full descent can thoroughly remove the veil and mixture and effect the full spiritual transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the... second is the Light, here the white light of the Mother. When the higher consciousness descends or is intensely felt, there is very usually an opening of the limited personal being into the cosmic consciousness—one feels a wide and infinite being which alone exists, the identification with the body and even the sense of the body disappears, the limited personal consciousness is lost in the Cosmic Existence ...
... individual consciousness. At the beginning the experience of wideness like other experiences comes only from time to time. It is only afterwards that it becomes frequent and remains long, till finally it settles and the consciousness remains always wide. The Cosmic Consciousness and the Cosmic Self In the cosmic consciousness the personal I disappears into the one Self of all. The I which... above. The personal being naturally feels itself as something very small and insignificant in that Infinite. But in that Infinite there are higher and higher levels and it is to these levels that the Mother was leading you when she took you by the hand. This often happens in meditation or trance when one has once gone upward into the spiritual infinity. The reason why you did not see the Mother's form was... Experiences of the Inner Consciousness and the Cosmic Consciousness Experiences of the Inner Consciousness and the Cosmic Consciousness Experiences of the Cosmic Consciousness Letters on Yoga - III Chapter I The Universal or Cosmic Consciousness The Terms "Universal" and "Cosmic" There is no difference between the terms "universal" and "cosmic" except ...
... discussion between Mother and Satprem to decide whether Mother's comment on the last aphorism, on renunciation, should be published in the "Bulletin" in full or only in excerpts. At first Mother finds it too "personal." This raises the problem of the publication of Mother's words. ) ...It should have been said objectively, not as "my experience." But if I start saying "my experience," I have to go right... right to the end of my experience, I can't stop halfway. But that's just the point: it's really striking only when it's YOUR experience. Yes, but then I would have to tell everything. It's exactly as your friend wrote in that letter: if you present an "objective" theory, then it's fine—people can take it or leave it, it doesn't matter; but when you introduce that personal element... Not that I... quiet, or else... Let me give you another example: when I answer people's letters, I never write about myself, I write about them, yet it's very personal: it's FOR THEM. And in fact, I am coming to see (in not a very pleasant way) that out of a personal answer they want to make a general teaching—it's absurd! Absurd. I say something to this man or that woman, and I'll say the opposite to someone else ...
... open yourself to the protection of the Mother and her grace and call on that for your safeguard and your guidance. There is no utility in such experiences; they may happen on the vital plane so long as one has still to pass through the vital range of experiences, but the aim should be to get beyond them and live in a pure psychic and spiritual experience. To admit or call the invasion of others... be always vigilant and turned towards the true source of Light. The difficulty is that here one may have a true spiritual experience and afterwards all sorts of imitative deceptions come in and bring with them the danger of a false experience. One has to watch, observe one's experiences and try to discriminate and understand,—waiting for two things, the opening of a wider higher consciousness from... barriers of his own embodied personal mind he enters into a wide range of experiences which are not the limited solid physical truth of things and not yet either the spiritual truth of things. It is a zone of formations, mental, vital, subtle physical, and whatever one forms or is formed by the forces of these worlds in us becomes for the sadhak for a time the truth—unless he is guided and listens to ...
... assertions but with the assured evidence of his direct personal experiences. Luckily for us, there are in this age two persons who fulfil these conditions in ample measure. We are, of course, referring to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. With their perfected method of "knowledge by identity" they have delved deeply into the mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth and brought to us their... doubts and confusions? Only a spiritual person, a Yogi, can do that. But any and every spiritual person cannot do that. We have to approach someone who is not only highly advanced in the acquisition of suprahuman spiritual piety and love but is at the same time possessed of supramental spiritual knowledge. This Yogi should come to us not with his personal opinions or dogmatic assertions... patience to refer to the extensive original sources. We fervently hope that some clarity will dawn on our readers' minds after they become acquainted with the occult-spiritual answers provided by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. We shall not mind if some hypercritical negatively disposed readers find nothing worthwhile in this book. The author himself has derived a lot of inner benefit ...
... Beyond Vedanta THE first step in the spiritual life is the Vedantic experience that the world is an illusion, an absolute illusion. Rather it is the Buddhist experience of nihil, nothingness, extinction that is the first step, the very basic realisation of all spiritual life. It is not the summit – the nee plus ultra , beyond which there is nothing... nothing – but it is the very foundation, the absolute minimum of spirituality – sine qua non, without which it is not. The one experience with which you start your spiritual journey is the total negation of whatever exists, reducing existence to zero: world-existence being equated with Ignorance. Life is a falsehood, one has to reject it outright. The next step in Vedanta would be, when you have eliminated... Compassion. The transcendent Delight (Ananda) Page 182 was made terrestrial and human in Buddha. But Buddha's compassion was a universal feeling and had no personal frame as it were. Vaishnavism gave it a personal frame and a human form. Radha and Krishna are not figures of an allegory but concrete realities. Vrindavan is not merely the land of heart's desire, a garden of paradise but ...
... II Beyond Vedanta The first step in the spiritual life is the Vedantic experience that the world is an illusion, an absolute illusion. Rather it is the Buddhist experience of nihil, nothingness, extinction that is the first step, the very basic realisation of all spiritual life. It is not the summit—the nec plus ultra, beyond which there is nothing—but... nothing—but it is the very foundation, the absolute minimum of spirituality— sine qua non, without which it is not. The one experience with which you start your spiritual journey is the total negation of whatever exists, reducing existence to zero: world-existence being equated with Ignorance. Life is a falsehood, one has to reject it outright. The next step in Vedanta would be, when you have... was given in Buddha's Compassion. The transcendent Delight (Ananda) was made terrestrial and human in Buddha. But Buddha's compassion was a universal feeling and had no personal frame as it were. Vaishnavism gave it a personal frame and a human form. Radha and Krishna are not figures of an allegory but concrete realities. Vrindavan is not merely the land of heart's desire, a garden of paradise ...
... the Asram, only coming out to give a silent blessing three times in a year. The Mother also has not time to give free or frequent access to those who are here. You would therefore probably be disappointed if you came here with the idea of a personal contact with us to help you in your spiritual endeavour. The personal touch is there but it is more of an inward closeness with only a few points of physical... Letters on the Mother Letters on the Mother Helpers on the Way The Mother with Letters on the Mother Receiving Their Influence There are no conditions for receiving the influence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother 1 except faith, an entire sincerity in following the spiritual path and a will and capacity to open oneself to the influence; but this capacity... interested in the Yoga. But we have disciples in France and some of these have been able already to establish an inner closeness with us and to become aware of our nearness and help in their spiritual endeavour and experience. We would advise you therefore to try this way where you are rather than face the difficulty and inconveniences of a journey and stay here which, if necessary, could be undertaken with ...
... (moha) and grief (śoka)], the spiritual does. 2 In the Vedantic experience "seeing" means also becoming, one is that one self, identified,—all action of Nature seems to one a movement in that one self which is itself not touched by it. Therefore there is no moha or śoka . That is, when one can keep the experience and when it is complete. Even if one has the experience only as something within while... universal experiences to which any Yogin may arrive; to reach this condition with relation to the Divine is indeed a common object of Yoga. An incarnation is something more, something special and individual to the individual being. It is the substitution of the Person of a divine being for the human person and an infiltration of it into all the movements so that there is a dynamic personal change in... bring about an incarnation. An incarnation is destined, is chosen for you; the human person cannot choose or create an incarnation for Page 421 himself by his own personal will. To attempt it is to invite a spiritual disaster. One thing must be said—that an incarnation is not the object of this Yoga; it is only a condition or means towards the object. The one and only aim we have before ...
... relation between the sadhaka and the Divine; (2) All personal (psychic-spiritual) relations to proceed from the Divine Mother, determined by her, and to be part of the single relation with the Divine Mother. In so far as it keeps to this double rule and Page 302 admits no physical indulgence or vital deformation or mixture, a personal relation can be there. But since as yet the Supramental... course the relation on the way. I leave aside the spiritual or psychic love for all which can come afterwards and be the radiation of the union with the Divine. Our experience is that it is only when both are in the true consciousness centred round the Divine that there is some chance of a true meeting in the Divine. Otherwise, with the personal relation that forms there comes in either disappointment... the relations with others. Personal Relations in Yoga Personal relation is not a part of the Yoga. When one has the union with the Divine, then only can there be a true spiritual relation with others. A personal relation is formed when there is an exclusive mutual looking to each other. The rule about personal relations in this Yoga is this: (1) All personal relations to disappear in the ...
... of precedence between the two. X has to learn to consecrate his work and feel the Mother's power working through it. A purely sedentary subjective realisation is only a half realisation. Work without Personal Motives The only work that spiritually purifies is that which is done without personal motives, without desire for fame or public recognition or worldly greatness, without insistence... not get the settled experience of the Divine Power taking up one's works and doing Page 236 them; afterwards it is the Power which determines what is to be done or not done. The overcoming of all attachments must necessarily be difficult and cannot come except as the fruit of a long sādhanā —unless there is a rapid general growth in the inner spiritual experience which is the substance... failure. Right Attitude in Work The spiritual effectivity of work of course depends on the inner attitude. What is important is the spirit of offering put into the work. If one can in addition remember the Mother in the work or through a certain concentration feel the Mother's presence or force sustaining or doing the work, that carries the spiritual effectivity still farther. But even if one ...
... had myself the experience of this rising to a height, during a certain stage of the spiritual development, of things that before hardly existed and seemed quite absent in the pure Yogic life. These things rise up like that because they are fighting for their existence - they are not really personal to you and the vehemence of their attack is not due to any 'badness' in the personal nature. I dare say... inimical to the building up of a healthy spiritual life. The attitudes may be formulated in this way: 1."I don't care to eradicate my weaknesses. If at all, I shall attend to this task much later in my life, surely not so soon." 2."Oh, what can I do? I am too weak to fight these weaknesses." 3."Why do I bother about these things? The Mother's Grace and Consciousness are there to work... avoided. Difficulties are bound to arise in course of the sadhak's sadhana but he has to make a sincere effort to overcome them - of course, aided and sustained by the Mother's Grace. If he does not do so, what spiritual progress can he expect to register? Let us listen to what Sri Aurobindo has to say in this connection. This will, let us hope, help us shake off our attitude of lethargy and ...
... the force of our personal effort— utsāha. There intervenes, third, uplifting our knowledge and effort into the domain of spiritual experience, the direct suggestion, example and influence of the Teacher— guru. Last comes the instrumentality of Time— kāla; for in all things there is a cycle of their action and a period of the divine movement. 26 Thus, in the Hindu spiritual traditions, Sel... consciousness, which spiritual aspirants are often unaware of, is a seeking for what is basically personal satisfaction or fulfillment. In ordinary life this takes the form of desire for different things. However, Eckhart points our that seeking is part of the egoic consciousness, and so one must cease to be a seeker if one is to live a truly spiritual life. As the Mother said to an aspirant who... and insecure; it experiences constant threat and lives in perpetual fear. Thus, practically everyone lives in a state of fear that varies in degree from being ill at ease to experiencing acute anxiety. It is after coming across Eckhart's teaching about the ubiquitous nature of fear that I have come to realize more adequately the truth of the following statements of the Mother that I first read ...
... Thus, with the help of sadhana and the grace of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Champaklal has not only gone from near to nearer God but has reached constant communion with Him. Sri Aurobindo said once that Realisation consists of three successive movements, internal vision, complete internal experience and total identity. The spiritual vision can take on mental forms of itself that can help towards this... this identification, each in its own way. Visions and experiences of Champaklal indicate that every cell of his being responds to the Divine Consciousness and he has attuned himself completely to the Consciousness of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and in turn continuously knows how, in the Mother he has worshipped, “Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps.” These visions are records of the struggles... essentially a force from beyond the human range, producing an effect directly on the more subtle substance of our being and can bring in a fine attunement of the reader to the spiritual consciousness from which these experiences of Champaklal are born. What do these visions indicate? The growth of the Psychic Being dominating the whole consciousness can develop visions, till it penetrates the ...
... possible in the beginning, it follows that personal effort is necessary. 65 Page 106 To recall again the four aids spoken of in the Mahabharata, Shastra—the teaching—comes first; next to Shastra is Utsaha, zeal or force of personal effort. Regarding zeal in spiritual practice, Sri Aurobindo writes: The development of the experience in its rapidity, its amplitude, the intensity... the two attitudes in spiritual practice spoken of by Rama-Krishna alluded to earlier (pp. 42, 43)—the baby-monkey attitude of reliance on personal effort, and the baby-cat attitude of surrender and reliance on the Divine Power—the latter is a more fitting description of the practice as taught by Eckhart. Not personal effort but Presence does it all, says Eckhart. The only personal effort is to choose... 59 Eckhart recognizes that teachers differ in their perspectives regarding the respective roles of personal effort and a higher power in spiritual practice. Whereas Eckhart attributes all practice to the action of a higher power—the power of Presence—in Sri Aurobindo's view, personal effort is indispensable until the whole consciousness— physical, vital, mental—is ready and completely surrendered ...
... difficulties cannot disturb this sense and personal effort is no longer necessary, hardly even possible. That is the sign of the full surrender of the nature into the hands of the Divine. There are some who take this position in faith even before there is this experience and if the Bhakti and the faith are strong it carries them through till the experience is there. But all cannot take this position... stress on personal effort at once—and not always desirable; for personal effort is better than tamasic inertia. The personal effort has to be transformed progressively into Page 84 a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of the Divine Force, then call it in more and more to govern your effort, to take it up, to transform it into something not yours, but the Mother's. There... that are the basis of the siddhi in this Yoga—other experiences are only a help, not the basis. It is the psychic surrender in the physical that you have begun to experience. All the parts are essentially offered, but the surrender has to be made complete by the growth of the psychic self-offering in all of them and in all their movements separately and together. To be enjoyed by the Divine ...
... these visions on her own account and did not mix me with them; but after the Mother had ceased to receive her, she suddenly wrote among her other experiences (e.g. of having a God glowing and tingling inside her) that she had seen that I was an incarnation of Shiva and discovered by intuition that I was working by my spiritual forces to bring about a war between the white and the coloured races next... 391 supramental realisation along which the Mother was helping you and admitted another occult influence. This is shown by the nature of your doubts where you question her knowledge of certain common experiences of Yoga and by your conclusion that she can no longer help you. I pass by your pretensions to gauge her knowledge and experience; her dealings with you and others proceed from a co... their spiritual progress. I have made the arrangement not for any temporary purpose but because it is the one way (considering what she is and her power—provided always the disciple is open and receives) that is true and effective. Page 390 [3] [August-September 1927] I do not think it necessary to answer the personal question you put me or announce who I am on the spiritual plane ...
... as it appears at first sight. For if I have to express my spiritual experiences, I must do it with truth—I must record them, their bhāva , the thoughts, feelings, extensions of consciousness which accompany them. What can I do with the experience in which one feels the whole world in oneself or the force of the Divine flowing in one's being and nature or the certitude of one's faith against all doubts... at faith, even if you yourself doubt, and do not attack or criticise the Mother. As for the sense of superiority, that too is a little difficult to avoid when greater horizons open before the consciousness, unless one is already of a saintly and humble disposition. There are men like Nag Mahashoy in whom spiritual experience creates more and more humility, there are others like Vivekananda in whom... superabundant in this Asram. There are some who have it, but for the most part I have met not only doubt, but sharp criticism, constant questioning, much mockery of faith and spiritual experience, violent attacks on myself and the Mother—and that has been going on for the last fourteen years and more. Things are not so bad as they were, but there is plenty of it left still, and I do not think the time has ...
... the Nirvanic experience ..." otherwise called the silent Brahman Consciousness. It was, said Sri Aurobindo, his "first positive spiritual experience and it made possible all the rest of the sadhana." That his sadhana was progressing at a pace can be deduced from his letters to his wife, Mrinalini Devi. - The experience of the Cosmic Consciousness, or the Vasudeva experience in the Alipore... Now, if 'Arabindo Babu' had these personal realizations while in Bengal, what need had he to go to such a far-off place as Pondicherry? But we have seen enough of 'Arabindo Babu' to know that he was never driven by personal ambition nor did he ever care for personal achievement. When he began his political career it was India he looked at. India the Mother. He saw how the colonial government... was evidently thinking of 'conscious yoga.' Because let us recollect that with his first step on Indian soil he had begun to get experiences. Earlier still, from his Darjeeling days. Let us recapitulate some of the main experiences. 1 1 Described in Mother's Chronicles, Books Four and Five. Page 262 -In Darjeeling: "I saw suddenly a great darkness rushing into me and ...
... vision of which the Word is the body. In all ages spiritual seekers have expressed their aspirations or their experiences in poetry or inspired language and it has helped themselves and Page 714 others. Therefore there is nothing absurd in my assigning to such poetry a spiritual or psychic value and effectiveness to poetry of a psychic or spiritual character. 24 December 1934 I have always... call it insincere. Is there no justification for a poet-sadhak to use this tone? If such poems are put as a claim, or vaunted as a personal experience of Yoga, they may be objected to on that ground. But a poet is not bound to confine himself to his personal experience. A poet writes from inspiration or from imagination or vision. Milton did not need to go to Heaven or Hell or the Garden of Eden before... writing any spiritual value? No present value spiritually—it may have a mental value. It is the same with the work—it has a value of moral training, discipline, obedience, acceptance of work for the Mother. The spiritual value and result come afterwards when the consciousness in the vital opens upward. So with the mental work. It is a preparation. If you cannot yet do it with the true spiritual consciousness ...
... 18 June 1932 The Mother says in her prayer of 31 July 1914 that spiritual experience is willed ("elle est consciente, voulue" [p. 231]) by the Divine. Am I then to suppose that the dearth or abundance of experiences in any given case is willed by the Divine? To say so has no value unless you realise all things as coming from the Divine. One who has realised as the Mother had realised in the... particular prayer and that experience. It all depends on the person, the condition, the need of the moment or of that stage or phase of the consciousness. These things in spiritual experience are always plastic and variable. In some conditions or in one phase or at one moment expression may be needed to bring out the effectuating force of the prayer or the stability of the experience; in another condition... the love of which the Mother speaks in that passage is something very pure, fixed and constant; it does not leap like fire and sink for want of fuel, but is steady and all-embracing and self-existent like the light of the sun. There is also a divine love that is personal, but it is not like the ordinary personal human love dependent on any return from the person—it is personal but not egoistic,—it goes ...
... difficult it is to establish a Deva Sangha or a spiritual unity even between a few souls. I fee] that it is most difficult or rather impossible to establish a Deva Sangha without the realization of the Spirit. I know it is very difficult to realize oneself but at least there must be some sound spiritual basis for the commune and the work. I do not desire personal salvation or Bliss, but for our work this... us. Then only we become real instrument of that Consciousness and also our surrender to God g a significance and value. Not only our work must not be personal but our work or no work must also be decided by God. Thirdly, A.G. says your experiences are real and they are not mental imaginations as you seem to doubt them. As for example, the feeling the centre of our being above our head, or the vision... your letter are out of place. What you have to realize is that your success or failure depends, first and always, on your keeping in the right attitude and in the true psychic and spiritual atmosphere and allowing the Mother's force to act through you and move those whom you approach for this work. Or, if you cannot do that always, you must at least be able to put them into relation with her force and ...
... or violent death cutting short prematurely this always brief spell of terrestrial experience we call life seems to it especially painful and unfortunate. But one who gets behind the outward view knows that all that happens in the progress of the soul has its meaning, its necessity, its place in the series of experiences which are leading it towards the turning point where one can pass from the Ignorance... another terrestrial existence. This is the general law, but for the connections of embodied soul with embodied soul, that is a matter of personal evolution on which nothing general can be said as it is intimate to the soul stories of the two and needs a personal knowledge. That is all I can say, but I don't know that it will be of much help to her, as these things are helpful usually only when one... Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge Destiny, Karma, Death and Rebirth Letters on Yoga - I Chapter III Death Death and Karma It [ death ] is a universal force—the happening or change called death is simply one result of the working of the force. Most people die before the vitality of the body ...
... or theory but of experience. If I have written about the Force, it is because both the Mother and myself have had many thousand experiences in which it acted Page 37 and produced results of every kind. This idea of the Force has nothing to do with theory or reasoning but is felt constantly by every Yogin; it is part of his yogic consciousness and his constant spiritual activity. 18 May... appearing in public or taking any personal part in public activities. This rule is still valid for me and I am unable to depart from it. Or perhaps you [ Sri Aurobindo's secretary ] can type the answer as from me and I will sign it. 17 October 1936 On His Modified Retirement after 1938 By the way, no one sees me daily and talks with me except the Mother and those who have been in attendance... suggestion about joining with those who are in personal attendance upon me. They were not admitted as a help to their sadhana but for practical reasons. In fact here also there is some misconception. Continual personal contact does not necessarily bring out the action of the Force. Hriday had that personal contact with Ramakrishna and the opportunity of personal service to him, but he received nothing except ...
... The Arya The Arya 8 is a work of spiritual philosophy founded on personal realisation; it is obviously not meant for minds that do not think out spiritual things in all their aspects. For understanding Arya one must have a sufficiently trained and developed intellect or else a basis of experience along with a capacity of mentalising experience. X as yet has neither. It is Page... very dynamic, almost—for the paths to which they relate—indispensable experiences. No doubt, for those who follow other ways or no way at all or for those who have not yet had the illuminating and vivifying experience, they may seem at first a little difficult or unseizable. But that is true of most spiritual truth—and not of spiritual truth alone. There are many very highly intelligent and cultured people... Divine Immanent—is, I have read, perfectly familiar to Christian ideas and to Christian experience. The words themselves in fact—transcendent and cosmic—are taken from the West. I do not know that there is anything exactly corresponding to them in the language of Indian spiritual thinking, although the experiences on which the distinction rests are quite familiar. On another side, Christianity insists ...
... and act only according to his "central will" which, as we have mentioned earlier, will be a constant expression of the Divine Will. Here are some pertinent words of the Mother: "...I may tell you from my personal experience that there is nothing in the world more interesting. If you begin making this effort you will find that.... Everything becomes so interesting, the least little thing,... Will of the Divine will be nothing else in reality but the sole satisfaction of the camouflaged appetites of his own ego. Let us listen to what the Mother has said in this regard: "So long as there will be any personal aspiration, or a personal desire or preference, an egoistic will, this will always create a mixture and it will no longer be an exact expression of the divine Will. The only... grievous. The point is: Why should the sadhaka renounce his self-will and seek to know the Divine Will in order to fulfil it? Is it for some personal interest, be that interest high and noble and Page 225 glorious or even garbed in some 'spiritual' guise? No, Surely not; for if such is the behind-the-screen motive of the sadhaka in his quest after the Divine Will, he can be ...
... without any participation of the others in it. My yoga begun in 1904 had always been personal and apart; those around me knew I was a sadhak but they knew little more as I kept all that went on in me to myself. It was only after my release that for the first time I spoke at Uttarpara publicly about my spiritual experiences. Until I went to Pondicherry I took no disciples; with those who accompanied me or... received no spiritual help from anyone else. My sadhana before and afterwards was not founded upon books but upon personal experiences that crowded on me from within. But in the jail I had the Gita and the Upanishads with me, practised the yoga of the Gita and meditated with the help of the Upanishads; these were the only books from which I found guidance; the Veda which I first began to read long afterwards... field of spiritual experience and it ceased as soon as it had finished saying all that it had to say on that subject. Then about my relations with Sister Nivedita—they were purely in the field of politics. Spirituality or spiritual matters did not enter into them and I do not remember anything passing between us on these subjects when I was with her. Once or twice she showed the spiritual side of ...
... should she think of Mother in her present form which she sees during Pranam, as separate from her physically and apart from her in her suite at the Ashram? She has been brought up and moulded spiritually in the first way. She always cognises the Divine as Formless, Immanent and Omnipresent. But now if you advise it, she is willing to worship the Mother in her heart in a personal way. To meditate... is his Shakti, the Mother. Is this correct? It is right. There is no difficulty about it. Nirguna, Saguna are only aspects taken by the Divine in the manifestation. It is the Mother who manifests (creation is only manifestation) the Saguna or the Nirguna Ishwara. 28 June 1933 This morning I perceived the Mother both as with Form and as the Formless. Both experiences are correct. What... through both, but is bound by neither. 4 September 1933 My wife wishes to have explicit instructions from the Mother as to which of the following two procedures would be most conducive to her spiritual evolution: (1) Should she meditate on the Lotus of the Heart and think of Mother as the Light of Lights situated therein, which is the real Bliss, Omnipresent and Omniscient, which supports everything ...
... each other. Let only your spiritual change and progress matter for you and for that trust wholly in the Mother's force and her grace which is with you—do not let things or people disturb you,—for compared with the truth within and the journey to the full Light of the Mother's Consciousness these things have no importance. 6 December 1935 It is not possible for Mother to intervene personally in... the tendency is to carry it over into the life of sadhana, but that is not the spiritual truth of things. The Mother tolerates all; she does not forbid any criticism of the sadhaks by each other nor does she give these criticisms any value. It is only when the sadhaks see the futility of all these things from the spiritual level that there can be any hope that they will cease. In all these things... I have told you already that people in the Asram—it is true even of those who have inner experiences and some opening—are not yet free in their outer selves from ego and wrong ideas and wrong movements. It is no use getting distressed or depressed by that. What you must do is to be turned only to the Mother and relying on her go forward quietly with your work and sadhana until the time when the sadhaks ...
... Letters, Messages and Other Short Written Statements Letters, Messages and Other Short Written Statements Experiences of the Mother Words of the Mother - III Some Experiences of the Body Consciousness One can say with equal exactitude that all is divine and that nothing is divine. Everything depends upon the angle from which one looks at the problem. ... in words: it has to be lived. April 1954 To acquire a perfect and total consciousness of the world as it is in all its details, one must have, at the outset, no personal reaction to any of these details, no spiritual preference even as to what they ought to be. In other words, a total acceptance with a perfect indifference and neutrality is the indispensable condition for a knowledge by... by integral identity. If there be a single detail, however small, which escapes the neutrality, that detail escapes also the identification. Therefore, the absence of all personal reaction, for whatever end it may be, even the most exalted, is a primary necessity for a total knowledge. One can thus say, paradoxically, that we can know a thing only when we are not interested in it, or rather, more ...
... is the normal law and right of the nervous being; but to choose by personal desire its action and enjoyment is only its ignorant will, not its right. Alone the supreme and universal Will must choose; action must change into a dynamic movement of that Will; enjoyment must be replaced by the play of a pure spiritual Ananda. All personal will is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation... bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings Page 208 discover their own intimate significance. In the bodily... imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher ...
... between these two meetings he participated in a whole series of experiences, experiences of gradually growing awareness. This is partly noted in Prayers and Meditations (I have cut out all the personal segments). But there was one experience I didn't speak of there (that is, I didn't describe it, I put only the conclusion)—the experience where I say 'Since the man refused I was offering participation... attire'! I mean I really knew nothing about India; I had never seen Indians dressed in the Indian way. Well, I saw him. I experienced what were at once symbolic visions and spiritual FACTS: absolutely decisive spiritual experiences and facts of meeting and having a united perception of the Work to be accomplished. And in these visions I did something I had never done physically: I prostrated before him... and I saw in his eyes that it was He. The two things clicked ( gesture of instantaneous shock ), the inner experience immediately became one with the outer experience and there was a fusion—the decisive shock. But this was merely the beginning of my vision. Only after a series of experiences—a ten months' sojourn in Pondicherry, five years of separation, then the return to Pondicherry and the meeting ...
... is true. It is good, my child. Mother, do You have something to comment? To comment? No, my child, the substance of what you have written, seems to me correct, as it should be, but some personal things... some personal things that have been written... about that, I can say nothing because I do not remember anything at all. Mother, all that You had told me, I had noted down... think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri . One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The more one advances on the path of Yoga, the more one assimilates and better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it... together. And every time I used to compare what he said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told him my experiences and that he had noted them down afterwards, no, he knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences he has presented all along and they were also his experiences. It is, moreover, the picture of our adventure together into the unknown ...
... the Integral Yoga The Fundamental Realisations of the Integral Yoga Spiritual Experiences and Realisations Letters on Yoga - III Chapter I Experiences of the Self, the One and the Infinite Peace, Calm, Silence and the Self That [ state of vast peace and calm ] is the basic experience of the higher consciousness—it is what is called the realisation of... above. The personal being naturally feels itself as something very small and insignificant in that Infinite. But in that Infinite there are higher and higher levels and it is to these levels that the Mother was leading you when she took you by the hand. This often happens in meditation or trance when one has once gone upward into the spiritual infinity. The reason why you did not see the Mother's form was... in that, the firmer will be the foundation of the sadhana. In this self will come all the higher experiences, oneness with the Divine, light, knowledge, strength, Ananda, the play of the Mother's higher forces. It does not always become stable from the first, though for some it does; but the experience comes more and more frequently and lasts till it is no longer covered by the ordinary nature. ...
... that he gets the experience without understanding it and this may be a hindrance or at least retardarory to development while he would not get so easily out of a mistake as one more mentally enlighrened. 33 A mistake often made by spiritual seekers pertains to inner experiences. Sri Aurobindo regards the mind as a useful instrument in Page 88 the spiritual life for discriminating... I mean by it [the intermediate zone] that when the sadhak gets beyond the barriers of his own embodied personal mind he enters into a wide range of experiences which are not the limited solid physical truth of things and not yet either the spiritual truth of things. It is a zone of formations, mental, vital, subtle physical, and whatever one forms or is formed by the forces... There is indeed an advantage in having a spiritual experience without prior mental knowledge about it. As the Mother remarks: Always the most interesting cases for me have been those of people who had read nothing but had a very ardent aspiration and came to me saying, "Something funny has happened to me, I had this extraordinary experience, what can it mean truly?" And then they describe ...
... conscious experience and his mind opened to the calm, wideness, strength, peace, light and Ananda of the spiritual consciousness. Let him write to you from time to time what experiences he gets or what are the difficulties that rise and prevent the experience. 1 30 November 1926 Sri Aurobindo is retired and sees no one. If you have not had even a glimpse of the Truth from any spiritual man,... to go but do not feel at ease and are always thinking of how to come back as soon as possible. To help others without egoism or attachment or leaving the spiritual surroundings and spiritual life is one thing, to be pulled away by personal attachment or the need of helping others to the outside life is different. 18 May 1935 X, who was a residential disciple of yours at Pondicherry but came... be of the right stuff. His visions were interesting 2 but what I wanted was for him to prepare himself and see whether anything developed in him. If there is nothing in his letters about experiences or spiritual developments, he has not satisfied the test. You will in that case write to him that his acceptance depends upon his development and showing that he is really called to this sadhana. 8 ...
... paths to serve Mother and embarked upon the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. For 19 years, he lived near the Mother and became her confidant and her witness. He recorded innumerable personal conversations that form Mother’s Agenda. He has written a biography of Sri Aurobindo under the title, Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness. He has also written a biography of the Mother in three volumes... contain conversations of the Mother that took place in her classes. In 1958, Mother withdrew to her room in order to come to terms with the research in the problems related to the supramental transformation of the physical consciousness at the cellular level. In 1968, Mother founded Auroville, an International city as a collective field for the material and spiritual researches required for realising... more than twenty years, during which Mother slowly uncovered the 'Great Passage' to the next species by the supramental transformation of the physical consciousness and fulfilled the work that Sri Aurobindo had given to her. ___________________ ¹. Satprem was born in Paris in 1923. After intense experiences in concentration camps and adventures in Guyana, Brazil and Africa, he came to India ...
... paths to serve Mother and embarked upon the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. For 19 years, he lived near the Mother and became her confidant and her witness. He recorded innumerable personal conversations that form Mother's Agenda. He has written a biography of Sri Aurobindo under the title, Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness. He has also written a biography of the Mother in three volumes... contain conversions of the Mother that took place in her classes. In Page 11 1958, Mother withdrew to her room in order to come to terms with the research in the problems related to the supramental transformation of the physical consciousness at the cellular level. In 1968, Mother founded Auroville, an International city as a collective field for the material and spiritual researches required... twenty years, during which Mother slowly uncovered the 'Great Passage' to the next species by the supramental transformation of the physical consciousness and fulfilled the work that Sri Aurobindo had given to her. Page 12 × Satprem was born in Paris in 1923. After intense experiences in concentration camps and ...
... the legendary king and sage, and where he is without any doubt writing down his own revolutionary, superhuman experiences. (And when he mentions for the very first time the name Aswapati, on page 341, it is only because he is reaching the end of those personal, all-important experiences and intends to take up again the thread of the legend which he has left on page 21, at the end of Book I Canto... indulgence, but because there is that burden, or at least what I conceive to be that, in the vision or the experience." 17 He wrote also: "Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences." 18 It would be possible to cull from his letters half a dozen more quotations to the same effect.... Canto V in Book I. Again before starting to relate his experiences, Sri Aurobindo begins this canto with the line: "This knowledge first he had of time-bom men." A very personal statement indeed—but it refers to the previous canto The Secret Knowledge, and thus softens its impact. Be it said in passing that this secret knowledge must no doubt be very important for all seekers of Truth, Aurobindonian ...
... Sri Aurobindo does not usually extend any personal help or direction to any but accepted disciples who are practising a serious Yoga. Worldly life is a field of Karma (a field of growth) in which the soul progresses through the play of energies inner and outer, personal and universal producing a complexity of results until it is ready for the spiritual change. Once one practises this Yoga, the life... I hope you won't mind relaxing it for the sake of a bhakta. I am afraid it is impossible. No separate personal Darshan can be given at this stage—it is not a rule, it is a necessity for the work that Sri Aurobindo is doing. 17 August 1934 The Maharani's request was placed by the Mother before Sri Aurobindo. But it has been his strict rule for many years past to see no one except on the three... me how I can obtain his kṛpā? My spiritual work is limited to a very small field and a particular purpose. Outside that field I never intervene whether for spiritual instructions or worldly matters. This limitation is absolutely necessary otherwise I could not do the work I have to do. All depends on whether the man who comes to me is meant for the spiritual path and its work—if not, then all I ...
... impose on them his own ideas and personal fancies, but only see to the execution of the will of the Mother. None should regard himself as a subordinate, even if he has to carry out instructions given through another or to execute under supervision the work he has to do. "All should try to work in harmony, thinking only of how best to make the work a success; personal feelings should not be allowed... opposition from outside. The danger is from those who profess to accept the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's teachings, join the organisation, and, then, sabotage and subvert it from within as its accepted members. We have to be vigilant so that, with the arrival of such entrants not yet spiritually surrendered to the Mother, the Ashram does not degenerate into some sort of a huge boarding and lodging... gives some kind of commodity which he calls devotion or surrender and in return the Mother is under obligation to supply satisfaction for all demands and desires spiritual, mental, vital and physical, and, if she falls short in her task, she has broken her contract. The Ashram is a sort of communal hotel or mess, the Mother is the hotel-keeper or Page 69 mess-manager. One gives what one can ...
... all human affairs. But the spiritual seeker is a seeker of Truth. He cannot and must not align himself with any kind of falsehood. He has to uphold truth even if it means breaking of family interests and ties. He is above all ties of personal relationship which ties him down to ordinary and lower consciousness. We cannot take up the cudgel on behalf of our father, mother, brother, sister, husband and... such ties in spiritual life is absolutely nil. So long as there is any" attachment to individuals as members of family— an attachment which flows from particular relationship, such as husband and wife, father and son, brother and sister etc, the prospect of any spiritual liberation and up lift ment of consciousness is a far cry. In spiritual life we have to outgrow all our personal narrowness and... perspective and see that it in no way interferes with our seeking of the Truth. In a spiritual society there will be no more narrow family ties. The whole society would be one big family favorable to spiritual seeking and fulfilment. And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt And old experience laboured out once more. All can be done if the God-fought is there. — Sri Aurobindo Page ...
... The Mother is so great that none of us can gauge her truly. Not only our highest range of intellect but even our spiritual experiences are not enough to make us understand and feel fully what she really is. They can offer us only a partial revelation. The experiences are not a complete knowledge, but they lead towards it. The Mother's light flows in my... seems foreign to me. The action of this knowledge is at times felt, to use Sri Aurobindo's own words, "as a sort of concrete spiritual sense". Through this knowledge I feel not only the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's guidance in an impersonal way, but also their personal intervention and direct help in any problem I may have; the action of their light and power can always be dynamically felt... profound for me to understand. You must get the knowledge by developing the experience. Generally the experiences come by themselves, I only try to live within and go on aspiring and receiving them. What Page 238 is actually meant by "developing the experience"? Let it develop of itself — then it must become sufficiently precise for ...
... Moonlight may symbolise the spiritual consciousness and the room your own personal being or individual physical consciousness. With these clues it will be easy for you to understand the significance of your experience. The fire you saw was again the psychic fire of purification and Page 369 tapasya and the garland was the offering it was preparing for the Mother, the psychic and divine... open the door to these forces—but that weeping is without affliction, tears of bhakti, spiritual emotion or Ananda. Your experience was a very beautiful one—the inner being realises by such experiences that which must be established in the waking state as the foundation of the spiritual consciousness and spiritual life. Psychic Yearning The yearning of the heart may be there but it should not... difficulties Page 377 of the body and the vital. The question was of the intensity of psychic and pure spiritual experience—psychic devotion and love, peace, Ananda. You cannot base a general denial on your own particular experience, because you have only the initial experiences of calm etc. and have not got to the intensities as I have done and others before me have done. It is only when ...
... the mind and vital. All movements and experiences of the soul would in that sense be called psychic, those which rise from or directly touch the psychic being; where mind and vital predominate, the experience would be called psychological (surface or occult). "Spiritual" has nothing to do with the Absolute, except that the experience of the Absolute is spiritual. All contacts with self, the higher ... we term it, the vital) plane is attended with great dangers. The beings of this plane are often hostile to the true aim of spiritual life and establish contact with the seeker and offer him powers and occult experiences only in order that they may lead him away from the spiritual path or else that they may establish their own control over him or take possession of him for their own purpose. Often, r... occult powers, but in all that you have said about him and in the printed papers there is no trace of any spiritual realisation or experience. All that he seems to think about is occult powers and feats of thaumaturgy. Those who take their stand on occult powers divorced from spiritual experience are not Yogis of a high plane of achievement. There are Yogis who behave as if they had no control over ...
... written Shastra,—some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins,—it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught... that govern the realisation— śāstra . Next comes a patient and persistent action on the lines laid down by this knowledge, the force of our personal effort— utsāha . There intervenes, third, uplifting our knowledge and effort into the domain of spiritual experience, the direct suggestion, example and influence of the Teacher— guru . Last comes the instrumentality of Time— kāla ; for in all things there... Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth's spiritual progression or its transformation. Always indeed it is the higher Power that acts. Our sense of personal effort and aspiration comes from the attempt of the egoistic mind to identify itself in a wrong and imperfect way with the workings of the divine Force. It persists in applying to experience on a supernormal plane the ordinary terms of mentality ...
... 561 IV In his own spiritual life, Sri Aurobindo had moved, as we saw in some of the earlier chapters, from one or two unexpected experiences to the tentative period of prānāyāma and then on to the all-annihilating experience of the silent Brahman at Baroda, under Yogi Lele's guidance. At the Alipur jail, the blissful experience of Narayana Omnipresent had suddenly overwhelmed... ss and nature... not a retreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure". 32 In a field of experience such as the "spiritual" that is apparently so nebulous and so easy to get confused about, it is necessary to avoid entanglement in the coils of self-delusion. To what extent is Yoga "scientific"? Are its processes and experiences controllable, measurable, comparable and repeatable?... thus in a position to build on the ground of personal experience and take his readers through the unconscious Yoga of Nature, and the various conscious Yogas: Hatha, Raja, Jnana, Karma, Bhakti, the Yoga of the Gita, his own integral Yoga and the revolutionary world-transforming Supramental Yoga. With this unique wealth of variegated spiritual experience, it was not unnatural that Sri Aurobindo should ...
... , choosing its destiny but with a view to collaborating and uniting with others in the realisation of a global truth. In the spiritual sphere also Sri Aurobindo gives us the same ideal and outlook. In the early days spiritual realisation was sought for personal salvation, a complete renunciation of the world, absolute freedom from this transient unhappy world ― anityam asukham lokam imam... the worldly life, enrich yourself with all experiences of that life, that is to say, you marry and become a family man. It is the second stage called gārhashtya. Next when you have fully enjoyed or fulfilled the duty of the worldly life, you pass on to the next stage that is called the vānaprastha . That is the hermit life, the beginning of the true spiritual life. Finally at the Page 53... the personal ego individual ― but for the sake of your soul, the greater self. In this connection I am reminded of what Sri Aurobindo said when he was taking leave of his students at Calcutta in his farewell address before starting his public political activity: he said, "When I come back I wish to see some of you becoming rich, rich not for yourselves but that you may enrich the Mother with ...
... reasoning or theory but of experience. If I have written about force, it is because both the Mother and myself have had many thousand experiences in which it acted and produced results of every kind. This idea of the Force has nothing to do with theory or reasoning but is felt constantly by every Yogin; it is a part of his yogic consciousness and his constant spiritual activity. August... understand this and keep it in mind, Krishnaprem’s experience and the image in which he saw it should be sufficiently clear. The needle is this power in the soul and the card with its directions the guiding indications given by it to the mind and life. The ship is the psychological structure of ideas, beliefs, spiritual and psychic experiences, the whole building of the inner life in which one... could get there some spiritual experience or for relief from pressure, it would be different; for however I would wish to have you here, your spiritual needs must take first place. The reasons you put forward in your letter seem to me very slight and outward: a dispute with Purani, the tragedy of the Professor’s handbag, certain difficulties about visitors’ cards and the Mother’s insistence on method ...
... not only did Sri Aurobindo and the Mother show special interest in him at one time but also because the Mother on two occasions made a remark on what Ramalingam had named "Grace-Light" or, as Vanmikanathan puts it, "Effulgence of Grace". On July 12, 1970 she greatly appreciated the term and the experience it stood for, which corresponded to one of her own experiences. She was even reported as equating... and gives no importance to the Personal Divine and man's relationship with Him of love and service? Self-surrender to the Divine Mother is the whole heart of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. He 1 has emphatically declared it as something "simple and familiar" that the entire reason of his Yoga has always been "that to follow after the Impersonal only brings inner experience, or at the most mukti [=l... soul going through many lives, getting diverse experiences, gradually rising higher and higher. If evolution is a fact and if it is to have a spiritual meaning, the spiritual evolution can proceed only through the progress of an individual soul through a series of lives across the ages. Reincarnation in a literal sense is unavoidable in a spiritually evolutionary world-vision. Page 14 ...
... dictated lines 266 length of 60 Mahabharata story 4 Mother on 281,286 Mother's experiences in 330 new dimension of poetic expression 367 original form 287, 328 parallels with poems 98 philosophy and 220,321,342 revision of 320 spiritual philosophy and vision 130 spiritual revelatory literature 286 Sri Aurobindo on 58,147,200, 255, ... divine and human simultaneously 314 Divine Mother 96 Divine Power 312 divine vision 249 divinised consciousness 129 earth-born heart of man 77 earth-life as the field of the Spirit 76 earth's aspiration 130 fate and pain 75 fourfold scheme of experience from Mandukya Upanishad 99 fullness of the spiritual state 227 glimpses of Supernature 128... -Yoga, Personal Letters, Vol. I 13.Life-Poetry-Yoga, Personal Letters, Vol. II 14.Life-Poetry-Yoga, Personal Letters, Vol. III 15.Light and Laughter: Some Talks at Pondicherry by Amal Kiran - and Nirodbaran 16.Mandukya Upanishad: English Version, Notes and Commentary 17.On Sri Aurobindo's Savitri 18.Our Light and Delight: Recollections of Life with the Mother 19 ...
... create the right vibrations, detect, discourage and eliminate the wrong ones. That is the method the Mother and I advise to all. Rejection is a principle element in this sadhana. But what I say is that one can reject best by bringing in the positive psychic Page 64 and spiritual forces through the pursuit of positive things like brahmacharya and the rest. I do not know what... rejection will succeed in the end. What you should do, is always to reject the lower experiences and concentrate on a fixed and quiet aspiration towards the one thing needed, the Light, the Calm, the Peace, the Devotion that you felt for two or three days. It is because you get interested in the lower vital experiences and in observing and thinking about them that they take hold, and then comes the absence... mind or vital. The right vibrations I speak of are those that come from the psychic or from the spiritual above or take place in the mind or vital under the influence of the psychic or spiritual. If one aspires sincerely and rejects what has to be rejected, as far as one can, then the psychic and spiritual influences will more and more work, bring more and more true discrimination, support, stimulate ...
... subconscious, tends to reproduce in ourselves a simulacrum of the desired experience. Things project themselves from the subconscious under the drive of the force of impatience and the gates are opened for all kinds of pseudo-experiences. And in our zeal, our enthusiasm for quick achievement, we seize on the seeming experience and shut ourselves up in its enchantment. Such a misprision becomes possible... no relevance to the central purpose of yoga. Further, as the Mother points out, impatience leads to imitation. This is especially so when we seek an experience; it may be a vision of the Divine, a seeking for the illumination of knowledge or the descent of Power or whatever. When there is this impatience in the being for the experience, there is a subtle pressure of the vital on the mental faculties... The Mother Abides - Final Reflections Intensity without Impatience One of the cardinal requirements for success in yoga sadhana is uts ā ha, zeal. The seeker has to give top priority to the demands of the sadhana—he cannot simply treat it as one of his interests. The spiritual life becomes the foremost concern, with all else playing subsidiary, if not co ...
... Aurobindo himself not philosophy but record of his own experience seen and realised and lived. You see the truths of religion or Philosophy and Theology differ according to the differing mental and intellectual per ception of their authors or founders. Spiritual truth is always one and the same though there are different rungs or levels of spiritual Realisation. Thus we have the Dwaita, Adwaita and V... the differing philosophies. Under the circumstances it is best to. follow one you prefer as we have done in choosing the integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and find out the truth by your own personal experience. Science deals with laws of physical nature. But we have a vital nature, a mental nature. Psychology is an effort at the study of our vital and mental nature, but this is a very imperfect... needed. I have not yet reached that stage when I can go out and preach. But you can well realise that we have had some experiences some 'Grace' of the Divine which make us stick to this life through thick and thin, even though Sri Aurobindo has long left his and the Mother has followed suit. Recently, we have arrived at a conscious stage of our evolutionary destiny and our struggle will not cease ...
... This experience is the prophetic dawn of the Mother's life whose blazing noontide is revealed in the Prayers and Meditations of the Mother. Here it is only a foreshadowing, but what a marvellously precise foreshadowing ! We now propose to proceed very humbly to understand—it is foolhardy to presume to interpret such high spiritual experiences— (1) the constant seeking of the Mother's soul,... that which was preparing in the Superconscious. Looking at the Mother's present activities, one would say that this childhood experience was the blue print of her later work on earth. The experience is remarkable for another reason : the sequence of its details is flawlessly perfect, it corresponds exactly to that of the spiritual experiences on the path of Sri Aurobindo's integral Yoga, as promulgated... illumination. THIS is one of the earliest—it does not seem to be the very first—spiritual experiences of the Mother. It signalizes the beginning of a great mission and is eloquently prophetic of the Mother's future. Four things stand out in it arresting out attention and compelling our wonder : (1) the Mother's ascent high up into the sky, (2) her putting on of a golden robe, (3) the ...
... do with the higher or spiritual planes? The love that belongs to the spiritual planes is of a different kind - the psychic has its own more personal love, bhakti, surrender. Love in the higher or spiritual mind is more universal and impersonal. The two must join together to make the highest divine love. We cannot be satisfied with experiences of the Mother's infinite Peace and Silence:... tangible even than experiences in the waking state. But it is said that samadhi does not bring any change in the waking consciousness. It depends on how far the inner being imposes the result of its experience on the outer. After the samadhi is over, many parts of my being continue to remain indrawn. The physical and mental activities are handed over to the Mother's force. Then I feel... is the Mother's influence felt in the inner being. When I had experiences and realisations, why did I not feel the inner touch, since it is said that none can have experiences (which are the fruits of the inner being's development) without it? You did not feel it because the inner being was not awake to it - it felt only the results - and these results were not experiences in the ...
... 1954 1954 Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960 April 1954 ( A few experiences of the body consciousness ) [The following texts were written by Mother in French.] With the same accuracy, one can say that all is divine or that nothing is divine. Everything depends upon the angle from which one looks at the problem. Likewise, it can be said that the divine... in words: it must be lived. Page 33 To acquire a total and perfect awareness of the world as it is in all its details, one must first have no more personal reactions in regard to any of these details, nor even any spiritual preference as to what they ought to be. In other words, a total acceptance with a perfect neutrality and indifference is the indispensable condition for a knowledge... knowledge through integral identification. If one detail, no matter how small, escapes this neutrality, this detail also escapes identification. The absence of personal reactions, whatever their end, even the most exalted, is thus a basic necessity for total knowledge. So we could say, paradoxically, that we can only know a thing when we are not interested in it, or rather, more precisely, when we are ...
... the Truth brings calm and peace." (Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., pp. 461-62) Let us refer in this connection to the beautiful way the Mother once brought out the essential difference between a mere intellectual presentation and a genuine spiritual experience: "As for me, I consider this the best remedy. The other is an intellectual, common-sense, rational remedy.... The other is like the... Book of the Traveller of the Worlds"; for, indeed, Savitri is the spiritual autobiography of Sri Aurobindo, and the passages quoted below represent his own experiences gathered during his actual "travel" through these supraphysical worlds. The extracts given here are no more than a few bubbles of the ocean; actually the experiences recorded in Savitri are legion. (1) "All could be seen... annulment of one's personal consciousness is at all based on fact. The truth of the matter is that personal survival after the body's death is assured to every mental being. The basic consciousness of a man is in no way dependent on the existence or non-existence of his physical body. It is entirely separate and independent. Here is an adaptation from what the Mother said on March 10, 1954 ...
... relations to disappear in the single relation between the sadhak and the Divine; (2) All personal (psychic-spiritual) relations to proceed from the Divine Mother, determined by her, and to be part of the single relation with the Divine Mother. 22 Our view is that the normal thing is in Yoga for the entire flame of the nature to turn towards the Divine and the rest must wait for the true basis:... Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Mother and the other works of the Master, and this anyone could do anywhere, and this is also the way in which many have had their first spiritual encounters with Sri Aurobindo. In the Ashram itself, the sadhaks were in a privileged position, since they could receive personal guidance from Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, - for even after his retirement he was... the spiritual life, the family ties which belong to the ordinary nature fall away - one becomes indifferent to the old things.... There need be no harshness in it at all. To remain tied to the old physical affections would mean to remain tied to the ordinary nature and that would prevent spiritual progress. 21 The rule about personal relations in this Yoga is this: (1) all personal relations ...
... too dangerous. That teaching should really be given under the seal of secrecy, and given along with the necessary power and discrimination for going through the experiences without danger. And that means the guru's constant personal care and attention. Certain stages of your development even require the guru's physical presence: you must no longer go into trance unless he is there, sitting beside... it can't be published; it's much too personal. To be published now, yes—but what about fifty years from now?... Oh, in fifty years it won't be interesting any more. Come on! You think so? Of course I do! The whole path is there.... Well, let's make a date for fifty years from now and see how much it interests us then. But it will, Mother! Page 115 Do you think... can't give the full picture, it becomes sheer inanity. If you wanted to be perfectly complete, you could write volumes (it's a tremendous world of experiences!). And saying just a thing or two makes you look like one of those ninnies who have a few experiences and think they've discovered the world! × Bhikku : Buddhist ...
... Jivatman, 79, 80 personal, 80 true, 79 Universal, 79, 80 self-realization, 1, 20, 21 silence, 17, 24, 25, 98, 99 space, 17 spiritual evolution, 5 spiritual path, 42-44 spiritual practice, 65, 66 Page 171 aim of, 144-147 methods, 112-121 zeal in, 107 spiritual teachings, paradoxes in, 20, 21 spiritual transformation... self and being, 77-80 evolution of consciousness, 81-84 instruments of the teacher, 161, 162 method of spiritual practice, 112-121 personal effort and surrender, 103-112 process of inner change, 121—144 related to mind, 84-103 spiritual practice, 144-147 of Sri Aurobindo and method of practice, 157-160 theosophy, 4, 5 thoughtless... Jivatma , 79, 80 Jiyu-Kennett, Rev., 150 Jnana Yoga, 114 K Kapila, 113 karma , 5 kensho experience, 151 knowing, 102 knowledge Advaita process of the way of, 114 methods of, 102, 103 paths of, 115, 116 spiritual, 116 L Lele, Vishnu Bhaskar, Yogi, 141 liberation, 23, 40-42, 65, 120, 144, 146, 147 Lila, concept ...
... and to feel the Mother's presence all around, is it not an Page 254 exceptional experience and vision? Why should it be exceptional to see the Sun and Moon on each side or to feel the Mother's presence everywhere around? There are plenty of sadhaks who have had these or equivalent experiences. What would be exceptional is to feel the Mother's presence like that... by establishing a connection between his consciousness and the Mother's Consciousness, by preparing his nature to be taken up more and more by the Mother's Consciousness and Force, by giving him experiences which make him ready for the major experiences of Yoga, by stimulating the growth of his psychic being, by opening him to the Mother as the universal Being etc. etc. Naturally it acts differently... not get solved by a mere prayer and the Mother's personal intervention had to be sought. Being new and too young to understand all this, I asked Sri Aurobindo what exactly was this unique thing called "the Mother's Force". Was it the same thing as the divine Shakti? There came forth one of the most beautiful and comprehensive explanations on the Mother he has ever given me in a few lines: ...
... of the divine Mystery, the Personal and the Impersonal, are here fused together, the seeker of the integral Truth feels in the duality of Ishwara-Shakti his closeness to a more intimate and ultimate secret of the divine Transcendence and the Manifestation than that offered to him by any other experience. For the Ishwari Shakti, divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between... any other existence, are the fourfold character of this settled experience. Yet this eternal Self-Existence is seen by him also as a conscious Time-Spirit bearing the stream of happenings, a self-extended spiritual Space containing all things and beings, a Spirit-Substance which is the very form and material of all that seems non-spiritual, temporary and finite. For all that is transitory, temporal, spatial... episode that repeats itself in a constant series; it arises through experience Page 126 of life out of mind into an infinite, impersonal and absolute Superconscience in which personality, mind-consciousness, life-consciousness seem all to disappear by a liberating annihilation, Nirvana. At a lower pitch he still experiences this fundamental impersonality as an immense liberating force everywhere ...
... 1928: The Mother gave me 10 minutes at soup time. She gave me soup. Spoke to her, expressed desire to have a word. "Sincere faith and constant aspiration, gets the answer," was the Mother's utterance. ... 15.6.1928: Received before soup from the Mother's hands, Book and Photos with signature. Mother serious at soup time. Good experience. ... 17.10.1928: Night soup: the Mother was h... guidance from the Guru had helped a large number of sadhaks "to awaken from lethargy and begin to tread the way of spiritual experience"; others had been enabled to move "from a small round of experience to a flood of realisations"; and some who had been hopeless for years to experience a sudden conversion and make the passage "from darkness into an opening of light". As a matter of fact, a majority... the individual inmates), the personal contacts were perhaps even more important. On the Darshan days, the sadhaks could see and receive the blessings of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. And throughout the year, the Mother was accessible to the sadhaks. Here is the grateful acknowledgement of Sahana Devi, who had been a sadhika for over six decades: The Mother... usually kept apart about ...
... his own abiding sense and thrill of the divine World-Mother's presence within and without. The subsequent march of the homeless sannyasi, possessed of the Mother, is part of Indian history. Throughout his life, Vivekananda worshipped the Mother as only a few souls have done; still, his final philosophical word is against the worship of a personal divinity. Surely here is a paradox. The only ... final necessity that the Highest should also be an infinite or inconceivable yet real goodness and righteous power. But for Vivekananda the philosopher, a personal Creator could never be that, and if love is to be valuable as a step in spiritual life it must at least forget if not disbelieve that its object is a creative Person. Otherwise, it must go by the board; and in any case Jnana was deemed surer... illusions: his every thought was an act of adoration at their feet, every moment of his sadhana was filled and glorified by his acceptance of them as realities. The personal God, sovereign of his being, was the secret of his entire spiritual adventure, whether at Dakshineswar, at Amarnath or at the Parliament of Religions. His whole dynamic Yoga was shaped and guided by this one living motif, this pure ...
... Aurobindo's vision ( About Savitri) 1) The daily record of the spiritual experiences of the individual who has written. 2) A complete system of yoga which can serve as a guide for those who want to follow the integral sadhana. 3) The yoga of the Earth in its ascension towards the Divine. 4) The experiences of the Divine Mother in her effort to adapt herself to the body she has taken and the... expressing our experience. These words are evidently the best according to us for formulating our experience. But if, in our enthusiasm, we were convinced that they are the only appropriate words to express correctly what Sri Aurobindo is and the experience he has given us, we would become dogmatic and be on the point of founding a religion. Page 21 He who has a spiritual experience and a faith... Aurobindo Words of the Mother - I Work and Teaching Sri Aurobindo's work is a unique earth-transformation. Sri Aurobindo incarnated in a human body the supramental consciousness and has not only revealed to us the nature of the path to follow and the method of following it so as to arrive at the goal, but has also by his own personal realisation given us ...
... become motionless meditative ascetics, then all my spiritual teaching is false and there is no use for supramental realisation or anything else that has not been done in the past. My own impression is that work is an excellent means as a preparation, but the major experiences and realisations are not likely to come in during work. My little experience corroborates me, because whatever drops of Ananda... between the workers themselves, conflict between the workers and the heads of departments, conflict between the ideas of the sadhaks and the will of the Mother. Harmony can only exist if all accept the will of the Mother without grudge or personal reaction. Independent work does not exist in the Asram. All is organised and interrelated; neither the heads of departments nor the workers are independent... realisation. I am only giving it its due place. You will excuse the vein of irony or satire in all this—but really when I am told that my own case disproves my whole spiritual philosophy and accumulated knowledge and experience, a little liveliness in answer is permissible. 16 December 1934 A sense was coming down from above that I belong to the Above, but have come down upon earth for a ...
... increases its depth. Chaitanya's experience was not that of Supermind, but of a Love and Ananda brought from above into the vital—the response of the vital is an extreme passion and exultation of Godward love and Ananda, the result of which is these vikāras . Chaitanya claimed this supremacy for the Radha experience because Ananda is higher than the experiences of the spiritual mind, Ananda being according... and divine Person; the impersonal in that view is only an attribute or power of the personal Divine. But at the summit of spiritual experience passing beyond mind one begins to feel the fusion of all these things into one. Consciousness, Existence, Ananda return to their indivisible unity, Sachchidananda. The personal and the impersonal become irrevocably one, so that to posit one as against the other... to the inner experience. When he speaks of maintaining his claim or case against the Mother until she lifts him into her lap, he is not speaking of any outer vital or physical contact, but of an inner psychic experience; precisely, he is protesting against her keeping him in the external vital and physical nature and insists on her taking him on the psychospiritual plane into spiritual union with ...
... not gained in steadiness—it only means that the steadiness you have gained is not a personal virtue but depends on your keeping the contact with the Mother—for it is her Force that is behind it and behind all the progress you can make. Learn to rely on that Force more, to open to it more completely and to seek spiritual progress even not for your own sake but for the sake of the Divine—then you will go... the definitive experience come. To some rapid preparatory experiences can come at a comparatively early stage, but even they cannot escape the labour of the consciousness which will make these experiences culminate in the realisation that is enduring and complete. It is not a question of my liking or disliking your demand or attitude. It is a matter of fact and truth and experience, not of liking or... comes after a long preparation of the Adhara which may take a long time. In a more deep and spiritual sense a concrete realisation is that which makes the thing realised more real, dynamic, intimately present to the consciousness than any physical thing can be. Such a realisation of the personal Divine or of the impersonal Brahman or of the Self does not usually come at the beginning of a sadhana ...
... itself after an experience. The experiences you have had from above are spiritual experiences. The experience has come, but not yet taken possession of the centres—it is touching them so as to prepare. The Truth consciousness is the consciousness which lives in the Truth or in constant touch with it and not, as the ordinary mind does, in the Ignorance. The experiences you have are a good... the individual independently of the atmosphere. Preparatory Experiences and Descent The illumination above the head as usually seen in this Yoga is the Light of the Divine Truth. It is above the head that there is perpetually the Divine Peace, Force, Light, Knowledge, Ananda. These begin to descend into the body when the personal consciousness is prepared sufficiently. The preparation is usually... ingrained in the formation of the present being, it can only be done by calling in a higher power and consciousness than that of the personal mind and will. The higher consciousness Page 441 can by what it brings correct or rebuild what is defective in the personal nature. The consciousness is always there above you. It is when one opens oneself and calls it that it descends and works—whether ...
... immediate experience, are less difficult to resolve because they are based on the same experience viewed from opposite angles. Divergences, on the other hand, are due to differences in the nature of the spiritual realizations on which they are based. For example, the Buddhist view that the Reality is Non-Being or Non-Existence or Nothingness (Asat) is based on a different spiritual experience from the... individual soul are illusions, Maya, is based on a spiritual experience that is fundamentally different from the equally valid experience on which is based another Hindu' view that regards the world as a divine play, Lila. Here, the eternal Supreme Being plays hide-and-seek with the eternal individual soul. In Eckhart's teaching, as in all spiritual teachings, there are certain paradoxes. There is also... being. Eckhart's teachings start at the high level where one is ready to step out of the mode of all personal seeking. So does Sri Aurobindo's yoga, which, however, recognizes that, although we viii human beings are initially always motivated by the egoic self even in doing yoga, all spiritual seeking is at heart a yearning of one's true self to discover itself through liberation from the bondage ...
... not only did Sri Aurobindo and the Mother show special interest in him at one time but also because the Mother on two occasions made a remark on what Ramalingam had named "Grace-Light" or, as Vanmikanathan puts it, "Effulgence of Grace". On July 12, 1970 she greatly appreciated the term and the experience it stood for, which corresponded to one of her own experiences. She was even reported as equating... soul going through many lives, getting diverse experiences, gradually rising higher and higher. If evolution is a fact and if it is to have a spiritual meaning, the spiritual evolution can proceed only through the progress of an individual soul through a series of lives across the ages. Reincarnation in a literal sense is unavoidable in a spiritually evolutionary world-vision. Page 54 ... as a personal siddhi maintained by yoga-siddhi — not a dharma [= inherent law] of the nature." The Aurobindonian supra-mentalisation has to be an intrinsic permanent state of the body by the junction of the descending free Supermind from above the mental plane with the Supermind evoked from matter where, according to Sri Aurobindo, it lies involved. Both the spiritual vision and the spiritual dynamics ...
... Consciousness, the Mother's consciousness, to come in and the coolness etc. you felt are also often felt at that time. The first result was the detachment from personal connections, the freedom, lightness, openness of heart, fearlessness, and also the sense of the Mother's presence. These things are signs of the true consciousness and part of the spiritual nature. They come first as experiences, afterwards... ns of the Integral Yoga The Spiritual Transformation Letters on Yoga - III Chapter VI Feelings and Sensations in the Process of Descent Sensations in the Inner Centres It [ a pressure felt in meditation ] is what we call the pressure of the Force (the Force of the higher spiritual or divine consciousness, the Mother's Force); it comes in various forms... imagination which the Mother recommended to you was a means of such concentration. A Page 473 mental idea of the omnipresence such as comes to you is a good help for that also, especially if it brings the strong faith and reliance. The feeling of the vibration of the Mother's Force around the head is more than a mental idea or even a mental realisation, it is an experience. This vibration is ...
... which to meet Him. The identification creates a spiritual oneness. But there are other personal relations which are created by other causes. It is too complex for all relations to be determined by one cause. Yes, Yogis whose progress does not depend on the personal intervention of the Mother, need have no personal relation with her—only the spiritual contact in distance. Some may have a special relation... the silly mathematical rules of the physical mind here is absurd—your physical mind cannot understand what the Mother does; its values and standards and ideas are not hers. It is still worse to make your personal vital demand or desire the measure of what she ought to do. That way spiritual ruin lies. She acts in each case for different reasons suitable to that case. Page 509 ... often in her physical presence. 11 June 1935 Sadhaks whom the Mother has accepted have some personal physical relation with her. I want to know if there is any personal relation with me. There is a personal relation with most, but what is a personal physical relation? Suppose a child wants to remain faithful to the Mother and tries to remain faithful, but he sees he is not getting any response ...
... Sri Aurobindo, The Mother , p. 106. ² Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 455 ³ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga , Part One, p. 174. 4 Sri Aurobindo, On Himself , p. 476. Page 268 If you give the money to the Mother, that can't be commercial; commerce implies personal profit, and here your profit is only spiritual.¹ 2-4-1944 The Mother and myself deal with... complete, just as was his personal retirement into solitude in 1910. But this did not mean, as most people supposed, that he had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in the fate of India. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but... the way I want it. They achieved it as a personal Siddhi maintained by Yoga-Siddhi – not a Dharma of the nature (physical transformation). Secondly, the supramental transformation is not the same as the spiritual-mental. It is a change of mind, life and body which the mental or over-mental-spiritual cannot achieve. All whom you mention were spirituals, but in different ways. Krishna's mind ...
... vivid experience of all of me giving itself up to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother she replied (19.5.1944) that the experience seemed to her "a valid promise" that the realisation would come if I made up my mind to it. In answer to my reference to a "warning" she had given me she explained: "as for what I meant in my last letter it was simply that there were things which might delay your spiritual realisation... one with me. I live enfolded by his greatness. What is the right feeling to have? Am I wrong to differ from the general experience?" The Mother answered: "Both the ways are right. It all depends on one's own turn of feeling. But perhaps what you feel corresponds more to the spiritual reality and relationship." Sri Aurobindo's "Be like me" puts me in mind of two points from the past. A vivid... life-style any more than it was to the Mother's. Perhaps as representative leaders of the whole of human life's activity to the spiritual goal both he and the Mother had to pass through all phases of it before founding the Integral Yoga. As regards the French "imbecile" and the English "moron", about which I made some observations in a letter in Mother India I am making unexpected discoveries ...
... years the transformation of the Mother’s body cells is an enormously rich, varied, multifaceted, spellbinding and sometimes also baffling process — baffling for the understanding of beings like us, that is, to whom spiritual experiences are for the most part abstract imaginings, not to talk about experiences of the frequency and range of those taking place in the Mother. To her awareness things happened... Sri Aurobindo stated his own experience: ‘[The sadhak of the Integral Yoga] often finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he still has to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the... the great River. Who can tell what he had discovered in his spiritual and occult explorations, what had been revealed to him by the Gods and the Godhead, what he knew without revealing it, not even to the Mother in her sadhana because for her the time proper for such knowledge had not yet come? Looking back over the Mother’s experiences in her last fifteen years and trying to consider them as a ...
... the supramental cannot be achieved except by a long sadhana—the experience should not be taken as meaning anything more than that. Moon The moon signifies the light of spirituality or of the spiritual consciousness. The moonlight indicates the light of the spiritual consciousness. The moonlit maidān is the spiritual consciousness at the doors of which you are standing as it were... future orientation she gives to her being. Stars in such visions 1 indicate points of light or of higher experience in the consciousness. The earth means the physical consciousness. Stars indicate points of light in the ignorant mental consciousness. Moon = spiritual light Sun = the higher Truth light They [ gold stars in the sky ] are simply indications of divine Truth... physical consciousness which is to replace the obscure and ignorant physical consciousness in which men now live. Red is the colour of the physical; the red diamond is the Mother's consciousness in the physical. In the experience the disc of the sun indicates the supramental consciousness with the Divine Being in it (the supramental Divine who can bridge by his light the gulf between the higher ...
... its unity with others, but, even at its best, this perception can be either a mental idea or a sentiment, not a fact of inner experience, not a dynamic stuff of consciousness. Even if it lives and acts only for others, it so lives and acts according to its own ideas, its personal principles and ethical rules, which are in- variably based on more or less subtle preferences and pre- judgements of its ignorant... no obstruction anywhere. Most often we surrender own body and life and the emotions of the heart as far as it is possible for our personal effort to do it, but reserve to ourselves the ideas and principles of our mind. This reservation stands in the way of the Mother's working in us. It is preposterous to expect the divine Force to act .according to our ignorant mental notions and conceptions; if it... pressure upon the ego? I shall deal with this question in a subsequent chapter; for the moment it is enough to say that a sincere opening to the Mother and a call upon her Grace to effect the psychic emergence, along Page 143 with a personal will and aspiration concentrated upon that end, will be found to be of inestimable help. RENUNCIATION OF DESIRE The ego lives and thrives ...
... consciousness and experience are not there. One has to proceed on a basis of firm quietude and equanimity with a steady aspiration. It is only if there is a vital excitement that progress becomes a strain and relaxation is needed; for this Page 135 demand for relaxation is the vital's counterpart of excitement and its way of relief from it. A perfect spiritual equanimity throughout... If that is once firmly founded, the rest can come. It is very good that you have had this experience; for this kind of consciousness full of equality (samata) is just the thing that Page 134 has to be acquired and the very basis on which a sound Yogic consciousness full of the Mother can be built up. If it can be fixed, then most of the trouble and difficulty of sadhana disappears—all... thing—to have an equal view of men and their nature and acts and the forces that move them; it helps one to see the truth about them by pushing away from the mind all personal feeling in one's seeing and judgment and even all mental bias. Personal feeling always distorts and makes one see in men's actions, not only the actions themselves, but things behind them which, more often than not, are not there. ...
... height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain I'" a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take ill life and all world-activity into the scope of this Spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning... with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual cons... living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as "public", "altruistic" or "beneficial". Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind ...
... by establishing a connection between his consciousness and the Mother's consciousness, by preparing his nature to be taken up more and more by the Mother's consciousness and force, by giving him experiences which make him ready for the major experiences of Yoga, by stimulating the growth of his psychic being, by opening him to the Mother as the Universal Being, etc. etc. Naturally it acts differently... such a thing as Yoga force or spiritual force. It is evident that if spiritual force exists, it must be able to produce spiritual results—therefore there is no irrationality in Page 179 the claim of those sadhaks who say that they feel the force of the Guru or the force of the Divine working in them and leading towards spiritual fulfilment and experience. Whether it is so or not in a... a particular case is a personal question, but the statement cannot be denounced as per se incredible and manifestly false because such things cannot be. Farther, if it be true that spiritual force is the original one and the others are derivative from it, then there is no irrationality in supposing that spiritual force can produce mental results, vital results, physical results. It may act through ...
... universe. (Vide p. 16 Page 151 of Sri Aurobindo's The Mother.) In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo describes the experience as follows: "In the end by this way one arrives at a consciousness in which one feels the Force or Presence acting within and moving or governing all the actions and the personal will is entirely surrendered or identified with that greater Truth-Will... and the personal will is entirely surrendered or identified with that greater Truth-Will, Truth-Power or Truth-Presence," (The Life Divine, p. 903) While distinguishing the ordinary activities, both inner and outer, Page 140 indulged in by a normal worldly man from the actions to be undertaken by an aspirant when he seriously considers taking up a spiritual life, Sri... ess, the sadhaka will by and by come across a new spiritual phenomenon. He will no longer have to choose an action with the help of his imperfect and fallible "best light" but .will rather be guided in his choice directly by the divine inspiration. Of course, this achievement has got many stages of progress. Thus, at first the personal will of the sadhaka may be occasionally or frequently ...
... not gained a steadiness — it only means that the steadiness you have gained is not a personal virtue but depends on your keeping the contact with the Mother — for it is her force that is behind it and behind all progress you can make. Learn to rely on that Force more, to open to it more completely and to seek spiritual progress even not for your own sake but for the sake of the Divine — then you will... find after many experiences and large changes on the higher planes that much remains to be done. How do you expect to get rid of it at once unlike everybody else? A Yoga like this needs patience, because it means a change both of the radical motives and of each part and detail of the nature. It will not do to say “Yesterday I determined this time to give myself entirely to the Mother and look it is... will go on more smoothly. Get the full psychic opening in the most external physical consciousness. That and not despondency is the lesson you ought to draw from your present adverse experience. ...
... between the ancient form of spiritual revelations and Savitri , this blossoming into poetry of his prophetic revelation is... what could be called the most exceptional part of his work. And what is remarkable (I saw him do it) is that he changed Savitri : he went along changing it as his experience changed. It is clearly the continuing expression of his experience. There were whole sections... ( A little later, concerning Sri Aurobindo's biography, Mother remarks: ) All those details have always horrified me. If anyone ever wanted to write about me, the first thing I would say is: NOT ONE WORD about my personal life—not a word. × Mother had asked Sri Aurobindo to write something for the Ashram 'Bulletin... sections he redid completely, which were like descriptions of what I had told him of my own experiences. Nolini said this. When I recently reread Savitri , some phrases were very familiar and I said to Nolini, 'How odd, these are almost my very words!' And he replied, 'But this has been changed, it was written differently; it has BECOME like this.' As the thing became more and more concrete for him, he changed ...
... society manners considered as a part or a test of spiritual experience or true Yogic siddhi? It is no more a test than the capacity of dancing well or dressing nicely. Just as there are many very good and kind men who are boorish and rude in their manners, so there may be very spiritual men (I mean those who Page 655 have deep spiritual experiences) who have no grasp over physical life or action... have it, it is delightful; but if they do not have it, I cannot deduce from that that they have no spiritual experiences or that these experiences are of no value. You yourself speak of the Baradi Brahmachari. Because of his habits of speech, it is surely impossible to deny greatness as a spiritual man to this remarkable ascetic admired by Ramakrishna and revered by Vivekananda. Even Ramakrishna... reached perfection or anywhere near it, be a proof that spiritual experience is null or worthless? You write as if the moment one had any kind of spiritual experience or realisation, one must at once become a perfect person without defects or weaknesses. That is to make a demand which it is impossible to satisfy and it is to ignore the fact that spiritual life is a growth and not a sudden and inexplicable ...
... when reason claims that it contains the whole truth in a conclusion, it is wrong. If you find that experiences differ, you have to go on adding experience after experience till you come to the reconciling experience in which all others find their place. When you want to describe a spiritual experience, you are obliged to use mental terms which are quite inadequate. That is why the Vedantins say that... reasonings, experiences differ and come to different conclusions. How then can experience be a criterion any more than reason? SRI AUROBINDO: Experience is not a criterion. It is a means of arriving at the Truth. But experience is one thing and its expression is another. You are again putting reason up as the true judge over experience which is above reason. When people differ over experience they differ... and declares the others to be false, For instance, if it speaks of the Truth as impersonal, the Truth for it is solely impersonal and can never be personal; or vice versa. Really, both the personal and the impersonal are true; wherever there is the personal there is also the impersonal, and this holds too the other way round. When you transcend both you arrive at the Absolute. SATYENDRA: Of which ...
... call of the Supreme upon it to remember its mission and invoke His descent and manifestation in Matter. The normal spiritual aspiration of the awakened soul for the exclusive enjoyment of the peace and bliss of the Beyond turns in the mature soul, by an absolute renunciation of all personal enjoyment, into an aspiration for the service of the Divine and the perfect fulfilment of His Will to manifestation... (1) personal effort and tapasya, 1 (2) personal tapasya aided and fortified by the divine Grace, and (3) the direct working of the divine Grace and Force. The last means is that which Sri Aurobindo advises the followers of the Integral Yoga to avail themselves of,, because it is the only means by which the great objective of the supramental transformation can be achieved. In. this Yoga personal effort... have an equal view of men and their nature and acts and the forces that move them; it helps one to see the truth about them by pushing away from the mind all personal feeling in one's seeing and judgment and even all the mental bias. Personal feeling always distorts and makes one see in men's actions, not only the actions themselves, but things behind them which, more often than not, are not there ...
... Knowledge, Experience and Realisation Knowledge by thinking process would not be spiritual knowledge. True knowledge comes by spiritual realisation and experience. There are such realisations and experiences. I was speaking of your experiences of the higher consciousness, of your seeing the Mother in all things—these are what are called spiritual realisations, spiritual knowledge. Realisations... them in words are a lesser knowledge and if the thoughts are merely mental without experience or realisation, they are not regarded as jñāna in the spiritual sense at all. It [ knowledge gained in Divine realisation ] is the conscious experience of the Truth, seen, felt, lived within and it is also a spiritual perception (more direct and concrete than the intellectual) of the true significance... there is faith and openness, though it may come only gradually and through steps of experience. But I have seen people without education or intellectuality understand in this way perfectly well the course of the Yoga in themselves, while intellectual men make big mistakes—e.g. take a neutral mental quietude for the spiritual peace and refuse to come out of it in order to go farther. Knowledge and the ...
... realms of consciousness, a confrontation of apocalyptic visions, all with their source of inspiration in Vedas and Upanishads and with ample corroboration from Sri Aurobindo's and his spiritual collaborator, the Mother's own yogic strivings and realisations. No wonder this part of the epic spans over about 125 pages, or nearly 4,000 lines. Finally, and most important of all—for the rest... stages, maps out the worlds travelled, the depths sounded, the heights scaled. Not every poet could do this. The experiences described are supra-normal; and besides the inspiration of the Vedas and the Upanishads, Sri Aurobindo has also had to draw very largely upon his own Yogic experiences. A few verses in the original poem became a "small passage" in the early drafts of Page 257 ... world-knowledge, it brings him face to face with earth's fetters and the prison-house of man's ignorance; and, at last, the fruit he seeks from his tapas is the solution of no personal problem or the answering of no personal need, but the sundering of earths fetters, the shattering of man's prison-house. At the culminating point of his yogic realisation, Aswapati incarnates all the world's agony of ...
... Science and Validity of Spiritual Knowledge Indeed, if spiritual experiences were a matter of sporadic occurrence or of a sudden momentary flash, then, considering the variety of spiritual experiences and considering the conflicts in regard to the truth-claims of various spiritual experiences, one would have hesitated to assign much value to the realm of spiritual experiences. But the dismissal... to Yoga, spiritual experiences, even if they occur sporadically to some or many, are in themselves not hazardous or accidental. There is always a psychological base for these experiences. Certain intensity in the being is a precondition; that intensity may pertain to the operations of thought or emotions or will, or even to some bodily condition or even to some subtlety of sense experience. Even if... regarded as shastra or science, which consists of the systematic body of the knowledge of the truths, principles, powers and processes that govern the spiritual experiences and spiritual realizations. This shastra has been built upon the perception and experience that our inner elements, functions, forces can be separated or resolved or they can be new combined and set to novel and formerly impossible workings ...
... its immutable support of Self. And the Supracosmic is not only an Impersonal Absolute but also a Personal God, an Everlasting Being who is capable of intimate relationship with all the creatures forming part of His world-play - a Being whom these creatures can experience as Supreme Lord, Father, Mother, Lover, Friend, Guide - a Super- Person, in consecrated communion with whom man as an individual... total submission to a spiritual Guru or Teacher; he also cannot remain always under even a psychiatrist. If he feels that LSD supplies him with wonderful experiences, he may take the future administration of it into his own hands and somehow or other, through the numerous channels possible in the market of today, get possession of it. And when he is unprepared in the spiritual sense the very forces... their religious rites. But all truly fruitful "liberation"-therapy connected with religion has had a spiritual supervisor who was himself in masterful touch with the planes beyond and could keep guard over the man chosen by him for a mind-changing experience. The man too approached the experience with the proper attitude: he got ready for it by purifying his life, practising the mood of prayer, submitting ...
... Yoga force or spiritual force. It is evident that if spiritual force exists, it must be able to produce spiritual results—therefore there is no irrationality in the claim of those sadhaks who say that they feel the force of the Guru or the force of the Divine working in them and leading towards spiritual fulfilment and experience. Whether it is so or not in a particular case is a personal question,... appear to be making a claim for myself and pleading for recognition or acceptance—for the spiritual consciousness does not claim in that way, it can state the truth about itself but not fight for a personal acceptance. A general and impersonal statement about spiritual force is another matter, but I doubt whether the time has come for it or whether it could be understood by the mere reasoning intelligence... hand he may see forces working against the cure and conclude that the spiritual force has to be contented with a withdrawal or an imperfect success.) In all that the doctor, the patient or the user of force is justified in believing that the cure is at least partly or even fundamentally due to the spiritual force. Their experience is valid of course for themselves only, not for the outside rationalising ...
... reasoning intelligence. " But in as much as Gurudev permitted me last year to publish in America what he had told me about his occult experiences, I may, I think, venture to make public what I could not, twelve years ago. For I know from personal experience that many people are tired today of this sterile scepticism—as I was myself before Page 96 my plunge for Yoga. Even one of the... heart or the deeper intelligence which looks behind deeper appearances and sees what is behind them. The spiritual consciousness does not claim in that way, it can state the truth about itself but not fight for personal acceptance. A general and impersonal statement about the spiritual force is another matter, but I doubt whether the time has come for it or whether it could be understood by the mere reasoning... without which ____________________________ *I have related elsewhere an experience — which I need not therefore repeat — with a Maharani. I spoke to her about my faith in the spiritual reality when I was in the grip of gloomy doubts. I wrote to Gurudev asking whether I had been insincere. To which he replied: Your experience with the Maharani. That happens to everybody: it is when that part of the ...
... psychic being. What comes from above is the Ananda of the higher consciousness. Page 336 The love that belongs to the spiritual planes is of a different kind—the psychic has its own more personal love, bhakti, surrender. Love in the higher or spiritual mind is more universal and impersonal. The two must join together to make the highest divine love. The psychic realisation is... Universal love is the spiritual founded on the sense of the One and the Divine everywhere and the change of the personal into a wide universal consciousness, free from attachment and ignorance. Divine love is of two kinds—the Divine love for the creation and the souls that are part of itself and the love of the seeker and love for the Divine Beloved; it has both a personal and impersonal element... which the Mother speaks in that passage 1 is something very pure, fixed and constant; it does not leap like fire and sink for want of fuel, but is steady and all-embracing Page 344 and self-existent like the light of the sun. There is also a divine love that is personal, but it is not like the ordinary personal human love dependent on any return from the person—it is personal but not egoistic ...
... the direct and full awareness of it; for, he has not yet reached the advanced state of a concrete spiritual experience of the Presence of either the Divine or the psychic being. That experience will surely come with the further advancement of his sadhana. But at this early stage of his spiritual life, the sadhaka can at best expect to receive just a sign of the divine Will and that too expressed... perspective. "In the ordinary life a personal, social or traditional constructed rule, standard or ideal is the guide; once the spiritual journey has begun, this must be replaced by an inner and outer rule or way of living necessary for our self-discipline, liberation and perfection^ a way of living proper to the path we follow or enjoined by the spiritual guide and master, the Guru, or else dictated... of any other consideration high or low. The Mother was once asked by a disciple: "But why do we do this divine Work? It is surely to make ourselves..." The Mother abruptly stopped the questioner from proceeding further and retorted: Page 159 "No, not at all. It is because that's the divine Will. It is not at all for a personal reason, it must not be that. It is because it's ...
... Page 177 " Mother, excuse me, but why didn't you put "spiritual" instead of "religious"? I am not sure yet. It struck me as strange! Yes, I saw that!... Maybe it's better to put "spiritual." I'll see. "...It is only in experience that there can be knowledge of the Truth. "No one ought to speak of the Divine unless he has had experience of the Divine...." That's... That's the important point. "...Get the experience of the Divine, then alone will you have the right to speak of it.... You understand, we could put "spiritual," but... "...The objective study of religions will be a part of the historical study of the development of human consciousness.... I place religions below, in the mental realm. Well yes, exactly! In the mental... A few months later ( October 21 ), Mother gave Satprem this note written to a French disciple, which seems to fit well with the story she has just recounted: "I am told that you intend to distribute a reproduction of the portrait you did of me. It would be better not to introduce in this gathering anything personal that might suggest the atmosphere of a nascent religion." ...
... the inner mind and vision and the inner or yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature. Sri Aurobindo... for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way. That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one... growth that it is done. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - III: Inner Experience and Outer Life You have asked what is the discipline to be followed in order to convert the mental seeking into a living spiritual experience. The first necessity is the practice of concentration of your consciousness within yourself. The ordinary human mind has an activity on the surface which veils the real Self ...
... the pupil to experience the significance of free choice, particularly the choice between the good and the pleasant, shreyas, andpreyas. What was discouraged was personal indulgence or undisciplined preference; but the very object of education implied free choice at every important stage of a pupil's growth. In other words, freedom of choice and an increasing experience of spiritual freedom blended... and conation, and arrived at extraordinary experiences of higher levels of consciousness and their corresponding objects of knowledge. Those ancient seers also made a distinction between Yoga and philosophy. Philosophy was restricted to mean intellectual reasoning about the ultimate source of things or intellectual transcription of spiritual experience. It was recognized that Yoga transcended ... theory and practice of Yoga, the theory and practice of a higher change, familiarized him with the concept of a spiritual existence and sowed in him a hunger for the divine and the infinite. The pupil was not allowed to forget that he had within him a higher self beyond his little personal ego, and that numerous ways and disciplines were provided by which he could realize this higher self or at least ...
... victory — with, of course, the Mother as their assistant. The delusion played havoc with him and he had to leave the Ashram. A wit coined a spiritual epitaph for him: "Undermined by Overmind." Yes, Indians too are liable to fall or go astray on the Yogic path. Yet, by and large, they have a more pervasive sense of the genuine and the spurious in spiritual experience: a long historic background... to me his opinion as well as the Mother's of both the search-story and the photographic representation. He said: "The Mother and I were both extremely well-impressed by Bosanquet's photograph which shows a remarkable personality and great spiritual possibilities. If he come here, we shall be glad Page 132 to give him help in his spiritual aspiration." (13-12-1938) Seldom... self-giving to the Mother. The true spiritual child Page 137 in him was evident in the way he took the Mother's scolding now and again. Such gentle humility is scarce indeed — and it is thrown into striking relief all the more in a Westerner hailing from a psychological environment in which the stress on individuality is very prominent. I remember the Mother's comment on an ...
... Penultimate Experiences According to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the exclusive paths of yoga do lead us to the experiences or realizations of the ultimate reality, but each one of them being grasped at the level of the mind, the experience that is obtained reveals only an aspect of the integral Reality. Thus, although the object of knowledge is ultimate, the experience of it is not ultimate... penultimate experiences of reality which give such an overwhelming feeling of ultimateness that the yogic systems which arrive at these penultimate experiences combat with each other and, even in the philosophical field, they become the sources of exclusive and rival schools of exclusive philosophy. Sri Aurobindo, while commenting upon one of these penultimate experiences, namely, the experience of the... Self-Existent. ...There can be no denial of the overwhelming decisive convincingness, — ekdtma-pratyaya-saram , — with which this realization seizes the consciousness of the spiritual seeker. But still all spiritual experience is experience of the Infinite and it takes a multitude of directions; some of them, — and not this alone, — are so close to the Divine and the Absolute, so penetrated with the reality ...
... ns and spiritual paths. I was born into Buddhism, baptized into Christianity, initiated in Hindu Tantra, instructed in Sufism, and guided through all these experiences by the Supreme Shakti we call the Mother. What I have learned from all these paths is that each approach leads to a particular inner experience, and that each experience contributes to a more total, complex and rich spiritual realization... worship of the Supreme Mother, the Shakti in India. Just holding it I experienced waves of ananda or bliss emanating from it. I wondered how a geometrical figure could give such a spiritual experience. Exactly then an unpublished conversation was given to me in which the Mother speaks of the fifth aspect of the Mother, the Mother of Ananda which she wrote is also the Mother of Transformation. I also... present, protecting and showing me the path to greater spiritual growth. This I attribute to the Mother. And I feel that the inner growth of these years provided the basis for what was to come in later years, particularly regarding the work at the Matrimandir. I met Panditji exactly nine years to the day after the experience in which the Mother said I would know who she is and would realize a “power ...
... self-offering through personal effort becomes more or less integral, the sâdhaka (spiritual aspirant) begins to feel that the hold of the ego on him is slackening, and that the Mother's Power is entering into him, replacing his personal effort. The sense of his being a servant tends then to disappear gradually into the growing experience of becoming an instrument of the Mother's Will. This transition... to Her inspiration and intuition But if one could do that, the result would be what » has always been in the case of all sincere spiritual seekers a marvellous shower of intuitive knowledge, untainted by personal bias, and sparkingly spontaneous in its revelation and action. Knowledge sits enthroned beyond the leapings and circlings of the human intellect, and manifests itself only to the mind... divine Mother. It will not do, in the Integral Yoga, to reduce the action of the body to a minimum and limit it only to the bare maintenance of the physical frame, or to social or humanitarian beneficence, or to the performance of some prescribed religious duties. Since the integral Yoga accepts the whole of life, it accepts all its multitudinous action and play of energy, not for the personal profit ...
... to learn. I see very clearly the difficulty he is referring to: most people—and in all the things that are written, or in the lectures they give—use inflated speech, without any truth of personal experience, which has no effect, or rather a negative effect. That is what he is referring to. Yes, that is why they should do as I have said. Ah! But not so long ago, most of the teachers were saying... my opinion, to speak to the children of spiritual things often has the opposite result, and that these words lose all their value." "Spiritual things"—what does he mean by spiritual things? Obviously, if the teachers recite them like a story... Spiritual things... They are taught history or spiritual things, they are taught science or spiritual things. That is the stupidity. In history... Conversations On Education 5 April 1967 ( Mother writes a note. ) It is an answer to a question. Do you know what I told the teachers of the school? I have been asked another question. Here is the beginning of my reply: "The division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' is an outdated antiquity." Did you read his question? Read it again to me. ...
... was eighteen Page 269 years old. It was my first try at getting out of an exclusively personal viewpoint and pass on to a larger viewpoint, and at showing that the larger, the more universal viewpoint makes you overcome the personal thing." By "intensive mental development" Mother meant "a mental development in the most comprehensive way: a study of all the philosophies, all the... first one, The Living Ether—were, in fact, based on my knowledge. He put my knowledge into French —beautiful French at that! I would tell him my experiences and he would write them down. Later he wrote The Gods — it was incomplete, one-sided." Mother continued, "Afterwards, there were all sorts of quite uninteresting stories." She refrained from recounting them. "He became a lawyer some time... Mother's Chronicles - Book Three 24 Mister Mind Mirra's destiny was in a hurry; it never allowed her to stay put with any one experience. That boundless Heart was in a constant forward motion. Madame Theon gone, no backward pull tied Mirra to the occult world. She had thoroughly explored it and tested its boundaries, and the barriers ...
... other books things too personal were omitted — it seems to me the same rule must hold here — except very sparingly where unavoidable. A number of letters not included in the four books mentioned above were published in the mid and late 1940s in several journals associated with the Ashram: Sri Aurobindo Circle , Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual , The Advent and Mother India . Many letters in... both places. In Letters on Himself and the Ashram , the manuscript version of a given letter has often been used because it contains Sri Aurobindo's remarks on himself or the Mother or members of the Ashram. These personal remarks, as noted above, were usually removed by Sri Aurobindo when he revised the letter for publication as a letter on Yoga. This revised form of the letter has generally been... rewriting of the letter. He generally removed personal references if this had not already been done by the typist. When necessary, he also rewrote the openings or other parts of the replies in order to free them from dependence on the correspondent's question. As a result, some of these letters have an impersonal tone and read more like brief essays than personal communications. The Publication ...
... the largest in truth. The spiritual field is many-sided and full of complexities and there is room for an immense variety of experiences. Besides, all mental egoism — and spiritual egoism — has to be surmounted and this sense of superiority should therefore not be cherished.’ 17 In the course of their personal evolution it had become clear to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that they, as Avatars,... n with God, all else is nothing but ‘vanity of vanities’ while mankind keeps plodding around in its mental circles. ‘Yoga is not a thing of ideas but of inner spiritual experience. Merely to be attracted to any set of religious or spiritual ideas does not bring with it any realization. Yoga means a change of consciousness; a mere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only... year Sri Aurobindo withdrew in seclusion for the rest of his life and put the Mother in charge of the corporeally present guidance of the disciples; by this fact the small group around them became an ashram, a spiritual community. To fully understand the importance of this milestone in the life of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, it is necessary to take a closer look at the effort at transformation they ...
... not giving trouble to the Mother and to me, but do you not realise that nothing can be worse trouble to us than your going away?" Part I, "Letters of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother", covers a wide variety of subjects. These letters offer solutions to many problems, emotional, psychological, social and spiritual. They deal both with the personal problems of spiritual life and with the larger problems... follow to my utmost capacity." Whenever Champaklal was free, he used to note down the events of his daily life, including his visions, experiences and problems. He wrote to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother regularly — short notes about work, long letters about his personal progress and sadhana — and received guidance from both of them. He also brought to them the letters of others. To help others was his... Part II Notes, Prayers and Reflections of the Mother Personal Notes, Prayers and Reflections of the Mother Part III, "Miscellany", tells us about the significance of blessings, blessings-packets, the Mother's signature and several symbols she designed. It also contains some Sanskrit names given by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to disciples and devotees, with meanings such as Anurakta ...
... contains letters in which Sri Aurobindo speaks about the experiences and realisations that may take place in the practice of his system of Yoga. The letters have been arranged in four parts dealing with these broad subject areas: 1. The Place of Experiences in the Practice of Yoga 2. The Opening of the Inner Senses 3. Experiences of the Inner Consciousness and the Cosmic Consciousness ... things too personal were omitted — it seems Page 504 to me the same rule must hold here — except very sparingly where unavoidable. A number of letters not included in the four books mentioned above were published in the mid and late 1940s in several journals associated with the Ashram: Sri Aurobindo Circle , Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual , The Advent and Mother India . Many... both places. In Letters on Himself and the Ashram , the manuscript version of a given letter has often been used because it contains Sri Aurobindo's remarks on himself or the Mother or members of the Ashram. These personal remarks, as noted above, were usually removed by Sri Aurobindo when he revised the letter for publication as a letter on Yoga. This revised form of the letter has generally been ...
... the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion and the possibility or the advisability for one to take the step, the decision resting with the Mother. The objection of the difficult times... to be the decisive authority in matters of Yoga or in spiritual things is untenable. The activities of the outward intellect there lead only to the formation of personal opinions, not to the discovery of Truth. It has always been understood in India that the reason and its logic or its judgment cannot give you the realisation of spiritual truths but can only assist in an intellectual presentation... high splendours of light and spiritual experience and yet the goal is not attained; for in the phrase of the Rig Veda, “As one climbs from peak to peak there is made clear the much that is still to be done. “ But there is always something that either carries us on or forces us on. This may take the shape of something conscious in front, the shape of a mastering spiritual idea, indestructible aspiration ...
... height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his yoga is not only to realize the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take all life and all world-activity into the scope of this Spiritual Consciousness and action and to base life on the Spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In... with a spiritual Force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that, besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic Power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness... was living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as "public", "altruistic" or "beneficial." Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind ...
... cleverly shallow article on some subject of which he has no personal knowledge or experience. Argument number three. The generalisations based on spiritual experience are irrational as well as unproven. Irrational in what way? Are they merely foolish and inconceivable—infrarational—or do they belong to a suprarational order of experience to which the ordinary intellectual canons do not apply because... proved by showing it to the eye. Of course, a spiritual experience cannot be proved in that way, for it does not belong to the order of physical facts and is not physically visible or touchable. The writer's position would amount to this that only what is or can easily be made evident to everybody without any need of training, development, equipment or personal discovery, is to be taken as true. This is... Truth and Spiritual Experience Intellectual truths? Do you think that the intellectual truth of the Divine is its real truth? In that case there is no need of Yoga. Philosophy is enough. Philosophy knows nothing about peace and silence or the inner and outer vital. These things are discovered only by Yoga. Yoga is not a thing of ideas but of inner spiritual experience. Merely to be ...
... September 1928 An acquaintance has written a letter asking for the Mother's permission to join our group meditation here. Is he practising Yoga—does he do meditation by himself? It would as a rule be better if people tried by themselves first and joined the collective meditation only when they had begun to have experiences or some kind of opening. This is not an absolute rule, however. If... and the Mother, otherwise they will not go in a straight line to the goal but are likely to be confused or divided, to wander into circuits or bypaths and lose the guidance. But they need not try to oppose the convictions of others, who are not following this way but another. Religions quarrel and collide with each other, but we are not creating a religion, we are following a path of spiritual realisation... the want of association with co-sadhaks here. I am trying to adapt myself to the new place but I do miss my friends, especially as I can't discuss spiritual matters with anyone here. You must be able to stand alone with only the force of the Mother supporting you. The association should not be a necessity, but only instrumental for action. 8 September 1934 Group Meditations (1) It is not ...
... Ashramites who can easily testify on the basis of their daily personal experience that the Presence of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is, as it has ever been before, active and living in the Ashram atmosphere and our Master and the Mother have been constantly helping and sustaining all sincere souls in their life of sadhana. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have assigned a sublime task to the members... inmates of this great and unique Ashram created by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, let us try by all means to keep the hearth clean and the flame of aspiration burning bright and the Mother's Flag flying high, and, when the need will arise with the passage of time, let us pass on the baton of spiritual endeavour to those sun-eyed children of the Mother who are destined to appear "in the march of all-fulfilling... speaking of personal things - which did not eventually happen even after delay, defeat or even disaster." (On Himself, p. 169) Such is the potency of the Will of our Master and such the noble future towards which his Tapasya is directed. Now, we the Ashramites of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, where do we stand in this 'Hour of God'? Does it behove us to be forgetful of our spiritual commitment ...
... Vedantic books wherein experiences are mentioned. So I have always thought. I explain this absence of the descent experiences myself by the old Yogas having been mainly confined to the psycho-spiritual-occult range of experience—in which the higher experiences come into the still mind or the concentrated heart by a sort of filtration or reflection—the field of this experience being from the Brahmarandhra... field has been prepared by a certain amount of psycho-spiritual-occult experience) is drawn upwards above the Brahmarandhra to ranges above belonging to the spiritual consciousness proper and instead of merely receiving from there has to live there and from there change the lower consciousness altogether. For there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda... wanted to change the earth consciousness—they were concerned to raise people out of it, not to bring down anything into it, except spiritual force for personal salvation. Are we to expect the same results for us—unsteadiness, fall and fiasco? It does not matter very much what you expect. It depends on whether the greater consciousness can be brought down and fixed here (as mind fixed itself in ...
... supraphysical experiences and powers, occult or yogic, always seemed to him something perfectly natural and credible. It was after a long stay in India at Baroda, that Sri Aurobindo turned decisively to Yoga in 1904. He had, however, a few spiritual experiences even in his pre-yogic period. The first was in London in 1892, the year of his departure from England. The next experience was when he set... the Luminous seas of the Infinite.' This experience and realisation of the utter reality of the Brahman and the unreality of the world is a recognised culmination of the classical path of Knowledge and Adwaitic Mayavada. For Sri Aurobindo, however, this turned out to be only one of the foundational experiences, and a series of spiritual experiences and realisations that followed led him to a new... purpose of this yogic practice was to find the spiritual strength which would support him and enlighten his way. Explaining the results of this practice, Sri Aurobindo has written: 'What I did was four or five hours a day pranayama.. .. The flow of poetry came down while I was doing prānāyāma, not some years afterwards. If it is the flow of experiences, that did come after some years, but after I ...
... not gained in steadiness—it only means that the steadiness you have gained is not a personal virtue but depends on your keeping the contact with the Mother—for it is her force that is behind it and behind all the progress you can make. Learn to rely on that Force more, to open to it more completely and to seek spiritual progress even not for your own sake but for the sake of the Divine—then you will go... Letters on the Mother Letters on the Mother The Mother's Force The Mother with Letters on the Mother Reliance on the Mother's Force My mind is not yet quiet and that is why I am not getting any joy in my sadhana, any experience or realisation—nothing at all. This makes me very sad and unhappy. May the Mother bestow on me the flow of Peace and help me... opens the consciousness fully to the Divine, then all that must develop develops within, spiritual experience comes and with it the knowledge and union with the Divine. 9 April 1937 You say after several years you have not changed your nature. I only wish the external nature were so easy to transform that it could be done in a few years. You forget also that the real problem—to get rid of the pervading ...
... continuation and fulfilment of this spiritual flowering only in heavens beyond; the union is consummated and made perpetual in an eternal dwelling-place of his perfection, joy and beauty. But this is not enough for the integral seeker; however intense and beautiful, a personal isolated achievement cannot be his sole aim or his entire experience. A time must come when the personal opens out into the universal;... of our personal nature and experience, a Leader and Master, a Guide and Teacher, a Friend and Lover, or else a spirit, power or presence, constituting and uplifting our upward and enlarging movement by the force of his intimate reality inhabiting the heart or presiding over our nature from above even our highest intelligence. It is our personal evolution that is his preoccupation, a personal relation... but crude vital natures or minds too easily exalted when they allow ambition, pride or the desire of greatness to enter into their spiritual seeking and vitiate its purity of motive; a magnified ego stands between them and their true being and grasps for its own personal purpose the strength from a greater unseen Power, divine or undivine, acting through them of which they become vaguely or intensely ...
... spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to reach the Overmind still rarer—although influences and experiences can come down from there. It is (sometimes directly... "above-mind" layers of consciousness. Or it may be experiences from the larger Mind or Vital ranges. To the human mind all these are so big that it is easy to take them for overmind or even supermind. One can get indirect overmind touches if one opens into the cosmic consciousness, still more if one enters freely into that consciousness. Direct overmind experience cannot come unless part of the being at least... Divine can be nirguṇo guṇī ;—having no experience of what is behind the two words it takes each in an absolute sense. The Impersonal is Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, not a Person, but a state. The Person is the Existent, the Conscious, the Blissful; consciousness, existence, bliss taken as separate things are only states of his being. But in fact the two (personal being and eternal state) are inseparable ...
... motivation and urged by a separate-seeming personal will. Now, so long as we dwell in such a state of ego-dominated consciousness, we have to make some personal effort for our spiritual progress. We cannot pass on everything to the action of the divine Grace. This will be an act of sheer self-deception, of mithyācāra as the Gita would say. Sri Aurobindo has clarified the situation in these words: ... being a personal actor, and realised by actual experience that the Divine alone is the agent at all times. In such a sadhaka' s case no other condition need be imposed for the effective intervention of the divine Grace. But have we, most of us, reached that state? Surely not. We, novices on the Path, are still dominated by the sense of ego. All our actions arise out of a sense of personal motivation... that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary." (The Mother, Cent. Ed., P-6) And in the very next sentence Sri Aurobindo has included the 'labour of aspiration' as the primary element of this necessary personal effort. The Mother on her part speaks more bluntly and seeks to disabuse our mind of any false ...
... evolution and the nature of spiritual living.... A second cause is the soul's hunger for personal salvation, for escape into some farther or farthest height of unalloyed bliss and peace... or else it is its unwillingness to return from the ecstasy of the divine embrace into the lower field of work and service. But there are other slighter causes incidental to spiritual experience, — strong feeling and practical... prompting the way of renunciation is based on the concrete experience spiritual seekers have when they follow a particular line of spiritual sadhana. For, it is not merely a philosophical hypothesis or the idle speculation of an imaginative heart but a very compelling and utterly convinc- Page 63 ing spiritual experience that, once the sadhaka, escaping from the prison of his ego-bound... the wretched thing becomes curled again! Citing his own personal case the great Vedantin wrote towards the end of his earthly life: "Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance thirst for power!" (Complete Works, Vol. VI, p. 424) If such is the case with a great spiritual giant like Sw'ami Vivekananda, the detractors may declare: ...
... something unreal, vague and truthless. The spiritual experience does not even despise dreams and visions; it is known to it that many of these things are not dreams at all but experiences on an inner plane and if the experiences of the inner planes which lead to the opening of the inner self into the outer so as to influence and change it are not accepted, the experiences of the subtle consciousness and the... difficulties of the body and the vital. The question was of the intensity of psychic and pure spiritual experience-- psychic devotion and love, peace, Ananda. You Page 85 cannot base a general denial on your own particular experience; because you have only the initial experiences of cairn etc. and have not got to the intensities as I have done and others before me have done. It... my acceptance of your former experiences, this current and the descent of stillness in the body, as signs of the Yogi in you. But these ideas spring from an ignorance of the spiritual realm and its phenomena and only show the incapacity of the outer intellectual reason to play the role you want it to play, that of a supreme judge of spiritual truth and inner experience—a quite natural incapacity because ...
... height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his Yoga was not only to realise the Divine and attain I'" a complete spiritual consciousness, but also to take ill life and all world-activity into the scope of this Spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning... with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action; for it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of the mind and life and body in Matter, there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual conscio... living a life of enviable solitude enjoying the luxury of a spiritual endeavour. Many regretted his retirement as a great loss to the world because they could not see any external activity on his part which could be regarded as "public", "altruistic" or "beneficial". Even some of his admirers thought that he was after some kind of personal salvation which would have very little significance for mankind ...
... has attained to the union with the Divine's Consciousness; his personal will is far from being identified with the Divine's Will. Sohe cannot try to behave in a way as if he has reached the end of the spiritual path. He is still living in his separative ego-consciousness ever impelled by the motions of desires; he is full of personal likes and dislikes, preferences and antipathies, and seeking always... egoistic faith in the mental and vital being tainted by ambition, pride, vanity, mental arrogance, vital self-will, personal demand, desire for the petty satisfactions of the lower nature is a low and smoke-obscured flame that cannot burn upwards to heaven." (SABCL,Vol. 25, The Mother, p. 9) A question may at times puzzle the heart and mind of the sadhakas; it is as regards the exact implication... results that will follow out of this pure and unreserved attitude of self-resignation and surrender are simply indescribable. Here is what the Mother has written in her Prayers and Meditations in this connection: "Last night I had the experience of the effectivity of confident surrender to Thy guidance; when it is needful that something should be known, one knows it, and the more passive ...
... themselves are to us more than they have been to spiritual seekers so far. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have been bent on bringing into action a power of these Ultimates more radically effective in earth-existence than ever before. As a result the practitioners of the Integral Yoga have had experiences which have scarcely been tabulated in earlier spiritual histories. But they are urged to halt nowhere... Our Light and Delight 16 Spiritual Life in the Mother's Light In the spiritual life, even more than in other fields since the possibilities and the pitfalls are greater here, a proper assessment of oneself is salutary and helpful. Two generations ago Tagore said that although India was lying in the dust the very dust in which she lay... create in a more or less degree the Aurobindonian stance in its practitioners. One is never allowed to remain entrenched in this or that high experience. A pressure is put to grow on every side and dare fresh flights into the Unknown. In other spiritual paths one is content to be a Jnani (Knower), a Bhakta (Devotee) or a Karmayogi (Doer of Divine Works). Here one is called upon to be all of them ...
... not to grow – independently. Each group or section, each undertaking sought to depend upon itself, secured its own personal equipment and resources: its gains were its own; and naturally losses were bound to be more than the gains, the real gain was perhaps the experience. The experience is meant to develop the consciousness and it is hoped that the consciousness did make a gain. The freedom, the... have any personal possessions. Whatever they had belonged not to themselves but to the group, rather to the Master of the group, the Guru, to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo . Whatever they had, they considered as having received from the Mother for use only. They are not proprietors or possessors of anything: whatever they needed or they thought they needed, they had to ask for it and the Mother decided... were no children. ¹ And of men, only those who were allowed, who had a real call for the spiritual life, those alone who were chosen by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and permitted to live here. And here is the natural psychological reason: it was a select group who had already had an inner life and spiritual aspiration. And so they were ready for a life of surrender and self-giving, obedience and ...
... but provable by solid experience. No fell intention to tantalise. 30 October 1935 But it is unthinkable and almost unbelievable to have any experience of the Self in the circumstances you have described [in the letter of 29 October 1935]. I can't help that. It happened. The mind's canons of the rational and the possible do not govern spiritual life and experience. But can you not tell... have peace. In my Yoga also I found myself moved to include both worlds in my purview, the spiritual and the material, and to try to establish the divine Consciousness and the divine Power in men's hearts and in earthly life, not for personal salvation only but for a life divine here. This seems to me as spiritual an aim as any and the fact of this life taking up earthly pursuits and earthly things into... view and experience of things and of the truth of existence that enabled me to write The Life Divine and Savitri . The realisation of the Supreme, the Ishwara, is certainly the essential thing; but to approach him with love and devotion and bhakti, Page 234 to serve him with one's works and to know him, not necessarily by the intellectual cognition, but in a spiritual experience, is also ...
... misleading inspirations and false voices, and it is safer to have some sure guidance from those who know and have spiritual and psychic experience. One must look at this field calmly and with discrimination, but to shut the gates and reject this or other supraphysical experiences is to limit oneself and arrest the inner development. Even as it is, the memory even of a fleeting vision... question depends on what value one attaches to spiritual experience and to mystic and occult experience, that is to say, to the data of other planes of consciousness than the physical, as also on the nature of the relations between the cosmic consciousness and the individual and collective consciousness of man. From the point of view of spiritual and occult Truth, what takes shape in the consciousness... own image? Does the Goddess Isis similarly represent the soul of ancient Egypt? Is Mother India merely a poetic symbol or an Entity? Long ago when I came into spiritual contact with Sri Aurobindo I was almost swept off my feet spiritually by the power of his paper, the Karmayogin. / almost believed that Mother India was more than a symbol, that there was an Entity as real as my own being. I feel ...
... their sadhana if they were receptive. Many indeed had unusual experiences and some would have the vision of divine manifestations emanating from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Also, for a visitor, a darshan could in a few moments of silent contact change the whole course of his life. Indeed the darshan was an unforgettable experience — ascharyavat, a thing of wonder. Clad in a fine dhoti, a chaddar... l moment of spiritual communion and communication with the Master and the Mother when he could offer himself anew to them and receive their blessings. For Sri Aurobindo and the Mother it was an occasion to look into the innermost being of each disciple to see his spiritual progress. Besides, Sri Aurobindo said that at the time of the darshans there were special descents of spiritual Force, Light... are two other categories of letters to which I should make at least a passing reference. Occasionally in his letters Sri Aurobindo wrote about some incident in his own life or drew upon his personal experiences to explain or illustrate the subject matter of the letter. Sometimes he would also write to correct misstatements about himself which appeared in others' writings. These letters have been grouped ...
... whole being in all its parts, the offering of the thinking mind and the heart, the will and actions, the inner and the outer instruments so that one may arrive at the experience of the Divine, the Presence within, the psychic and spiritual change. The more one gives of oneself in all ways, the better for the sadhana. But all cannot do it to the same extent, with the same rapidity, in the same way. How... preparation. Even with those who begin with a flood of experiences because of some mental or vital preparation in past lives whose results happen to be near the surface, these lead to nothing definite till the psychic preparation is made; they often have all their struggle Page 211 still to go through and some sink with their bag of experiences on their head and a magnified ego on their back.... the surrender is complete that the full flood of the sadhana is possible. Till then there must be the personal effort with an increasing reality of surrender. One calls in the power of the Divine Shakti and once that begins to come into the being, it at Page 207 first supports the personal endeavour, then progressively takes up the whole action, although the consent of the sadhak continues ...
... severe, despotic and so much in the image of man that one wonders if it is not a demiurge as Anatole France said—these people when they want to lead a spiritual life no longer want the personal God, because they are too frightened lest the personal God resemble the one they have been taught about; they want an impersonal Godhead, something that doesn't at all resemble—or as little as possible—the... little bit of this without experiencing it. It is very difficult, but still, even without the experience one can understand just a little, if one understands this, this principle of the inner dimensions. ( Silence ) It can be put like this (you see, it's one way of saying it) that you carry within yourself both existence and non-existence at the same time, the personal and the impersonal, and.... education into contact with too individual, too personal a God, to seek the impersonal Divine, because this liberates them from many superstitions. After that if they are capable they will go farther and have once again a personal contact with a Divine who indeed is beyond all these other godheads. So that's it. Page 240 Sweet Mother, how can we escape from other people's influence ...
... value I have always put upon his insight into spiritual things, the brilliance and accuracy of his thought and vision and his expression of them – I think I described it once as pasyanti vak – and on as much as I knew of his spiritual experience and constant acquisition and forward movement and many-sided largeness. A closer perception of the spiritual person behind all that is perhaps the one... 15, 1948 I don’t know whether I can throw any positive light on Miss Chadwick’s mystic experiences. The description, at any rate the latter part, is not very easy to follow as it is very allusive in its expressions and not always precise enough to be clear. The first part of the experience indicates a native power of healing of whose action she herself does not know the process. It seems... soul of the all-pervading Mother and feels a growing union with that soul. She finds out her spiritual mission in the world and by it realises the complete unity of the country. From the moment she becomes conscious of her soul, chorus begins rising into a great force and enthusiasm. * Page 215 November 11, 1948 I must say that Mother was taken aback by your ...
... to grow, independently. Each group or section, each undertaking sought to depend upon itself, to secure its own personal equipment and resources: its gains were its own, and naturally the losses were bound to be more than the gains. The real gain was perhaps the experience. The experience was meant to develop the consciousness and it is hoped that the consciousness did make a gain. The freedom... have any personal possessions. Whatever they had belonged not to themselves but to the group, or rather to the Master of the group, the Guru, to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Whatever they had, they considered as having received from the Mother for use only. They were not the proprietors or possessors of anything: whatever they needed or thought they needed, they had to ask for it and the Mother decided... there were no children. And of men and women, only those were allowed who had a real call for the spiritual life; those alone were chosen by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and permitted to live here. And here is the natural psychological reason: it was a select group who already had an inner life and spiritual aspiration, so they were ready for a life of surrender and self-giving, of obedience and allegiance ...
... sensing something, my friend Stuart inexplicably and suddenly appeared in the room and began telling Aster of the importance and need to relate her personal experiences and how vital it was to share her life’s experiences of the Ashram, with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and in Auroville and how it would be a source of inspiration for other seekers of the Integral Yoga for many years to come. This helped... Wholeness”. For him the study of psychology was not enough without a corresponding spiritual realization. He wanted a realization in consciousness of the spiritual truths of existence. After reading the works of Sri Aurobindo he found the basis for this “wholeness” approach which would make the experience a fact of personal corroboration. The only term that could be rightly used for this was “Integral... It was about that time that one or two really powerful experiences, which I took to Mother, gave a clear form to my inner aspiration. It seems too much to put into words and I might say I understood nothing of it at that moment and I do not know if I do now. But this aspiration took the form of wanting the Absolute — or whatever was the spiritual reality — in life and not by rejecting life, by leaving ...
... sceptical of the existence of supraphysical things, of which it has no direct experience and to which it can find no clue; even when it has spiritual experiences, it forgets them easily, loses the impression and result and finds it difficult to believe. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and supramental planes is one object of this Yoga, just as to enlighten it... comes only when the ego disappears, and the ego disappears only when you are ready to abandon yourself completely to the supreme Lord without any personal motive and without any expectation of profit—when you do it because you cannot do otherwise. The Mother On Thoughts and Aphorisms: Aphorism - 6 There is a part of the nature which I have called the vital mind; the function of this mind is... its true place. The Mother Questions and Answers (1956): 20 June 1956 Is reason the highest function of the mind? Of the mind properly speaking, of the human mind, yes, certainly. That is, with the reason one doesn’t risk making mistakes, as long as one remains in the purely human and purely mental domain. How can reason become an obstacle to the spiritual life? Because it u ...
... have achieved a high inner spiritual state even though he had not offered pranam as he had done. I said it was impossible—for no matter how great a sadhak your Yoga can't be done by withdrawing from pranam. My opponent's argument was—it was possible temporarily. I saw his point of view when he pressed home the fact that now Mother has practically cut off all personal contact we were used to—also... why does Mother meditate ? It was argued that Dayashankar had an ascetic fire to do sadhana alone basing himself on inner contact above ? But did not Harm, Nalinbehari, Swasti, [?] etc. all tried that and failed as you wrote once to me adding that cutting off pranam could never be good for any sadhak no matter what he says about his spiritual need of isolation. I gathered that personal physical... decides to take up the inner spiritual life. We shall see him on the 21 st and see what he is—everybody seems to be favourably impressed by him already. Mother will see B. and hear his music tomorrow at 12.30. So you will come with him then. February 18,1937 Pavitra had no authority to say that Mother could be displeased or that you were to blame. Mother did not like that Suvrata ...
... s burning patriotism born through personal Sadhana and sacrifice. A modern intellectual in India has much to learn about social service as an aspect of spiritual life from this particular tradition. Anyone at all alert to the spiritual and cultural barometers of our times cannot but remember the contemporaneous presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Shirdi Sai Baba, Sri Ramana Maharishi... culture, conservative intellectual-ism, the spiritual traditions of our land and our conception of Page 321 the Indian nation. I shall therefore embark on this personal narrative by quickly surveying some important landmarks in the nineteenth century and twentieth century to show how modernity in India was implicated in our spiritual traditions. I am, of course, referring to the... Savitri and Mandodari, to India herself as woman, and the further linking of India as Mother with the Mother Goddess, was natural and inevitable. Sri Aurobindo's Bhawani Mandir is an articulation of this idea. As I pointed out earlier the Shakti cult in many parts of India provided the necessary spiritual foundations for this nationalist conception. And yet it is clear that while it might have ...
... still very hesitant. The text reads well, but it leaves doubts as to how well the book that follows will conform to the norms of our 'Spiritual Masters' series. I greatly fear that we will both end up disappointed again. The book you want to write is, I feel, very personal, whereas this series must consist of books which are essentially expositions, introductions, tools of information...": etc. ( After... something in him is wary: "What's to tell me this book won't lead me just where I don't want to go?" Their main complaint was, "You are abstract." So if we want to be concrete, we have to speak of experiences. No, to them "concrete" means telling what Sri Aurobindo did physically. That's what they call concrete. Psychology is something abstract for them. Oh, I don't know what to do! Here,... Catholic. But it's terribly strong in France: it tries to take advantage of every opening and to block whatever might take a new turn. It will give way. But the things I am seeing aren't at all personal like this letter, you know, they are not small details, they are overall actions. There seems to be something unyielding, like this ( gesture ), and then it suddenly collapses and there's a free flow ...
... the most important point is that the mind is incapable of judging spiritual things. All those who have written on this subject have said so; but very few are those who have put it into practice. And yet, in order to proceed on the path, it is absolutely indispensable to abstain from all mental opinion and reaction. Give up all personal seeking for comfort, satisfaction, enjoyment or happiness. Be only... you had to endure and bear if you did not want to be crushed by them, you will be able to walk on, straight and firm, conscious of your destiny, master of your life. The Mother On Education: Psychic Education and Spiritual Education ... one may have the good fortune of meeting someone who is capable of showing the way and giving the help that is needed to follow it, most often the attempt is left to one’s own personal initiative. The discovery is a personal matter and a great determination, a strong will and an untiring perseverance are indispensable to reach the goal. Each one must, so to say, trace out his own path through his own ...
... general approbation, caused some eyebrows to be raised. There was no question about her managerial ability, her unfailing friendliness and her personal spiritual eminence. And yet.. the Mother of the Ashram? ... with complete authority to direct its affairs and ordain the destinies of the inmates? After all, some of the sadhaks so they felt - had been doing quite well in their sadhana under... her, the Mother's Grace will be with you. 33 Work should be done for the Mother and not for oneself, - that is how one encourages the growth of the psychic being and overcomes the ego. The test is to do the work given by the Mother without abhimāna or insistence or personal choice or prestige, - not getting hurt by anything that touches the pride, amour-propre or personal preference... presently came to be known as Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. But it was the Mother's Yoga as much as Sri Aurobindo's, and he was always forthright in acknowledging his debt to the Mother's contribution. As he once said: Before the Mother came all [the sadhaks] were living in the mind with only some mental realisations and experiences. The vital and everything else were unregenerated and the psychic ...
... new or future... Sweet Mother, excuse-me, but why didn't you put "spiritual ” instead of "religious ”? I'm not sure yet. It gave me a funny feeling! Yes, I noticed!... Maybe it's better to put "spiritual". I'll see. "It is only in experience that there can be knowledge of the Truth. No one ought to speak of the Divine unless he has had experience of the Divine... That's... himself from the idea of personal possession.” But it's not the "idea"! It's the "sense"! (Mother writes:) 3. The Aurovilian should lose the sense of personal Page 40 possession. For our passage in the material world, what is indispensable to our life and to our action is put at our disposal.... You don’t say by whom? (Mother laughs) No!... By the All-Possessing... extremely interesting experience: how the same actions, the same work, the same observations, the same relationship with the people around (near or far), how they take place in the mind, through intelligence, and how they take place in the consciousness, through experience. And that's what this body is now learning—to replace the mental government of intelligence by the spiritual government of the c ...
... does not exist, seems to me a logical inconsequence. There remains your personal case and you may very well tell me "What does it matter to me if these things are true when they are not true to me, true in my own experience?" But it does make a difference that they are true in themselves. For if your personal want of experience is held as proving that it is all moonshine, then all is finished—there... it the internal concrete—or if the physical Mind at every step raises a dance of doubts which refuses to allow the nascent experience to develop. Even the scientist carrying out a new experiment would never succeed if he allowed his mind to behave in that way. When the Mother said it was just a trick of reversing the consciousness, she meant that—that instead of allowing always the external mind... letters to me you wrote: "A Yoga consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in it, may not be dead or unreal but it is evidently something inert and without effect or consequence. Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness—a Yoga force or spiritual force—is making a false claim and is either a charlatan ...
... The whole supramental Yoga was indeed like a great general's campaign against forces that had never been combated before by any spiritual figure. In the teeth of every common experience, every posture of human living down the ages, even every articulate spiritual tradition, this Yoga hoped to change the very foundations of Matter and proceeded into an embattled darkness: only a fearless fighter... the fight there continues... The Mother's difficulties are not her own; she bears the difficulties of others and those that are inherent in the general action and work for the transformation. If it had been otherwise, it would be a very different matter." Obviously, then, whatever sacrifice is made by Sri Aurobindo or the Mother cannot be one imposed on them by personal defects. Theirs the unique adhars... the vast poison had not been drawn away into the body of this one man whose spiritual consciousness, armed with divine Love, had made him a universalised individual incarnating the Transcendent's Will. And here we may refer again to the fact that the obstacles confronting Sri Aurobindo in his Yoga were not really personal. They were representative of the race and he gladly accepted their retarding ...
... intensity of these experiences which will indicate how open the sadhaka has been." The Mother also has given a beautiful description of the state of openness on the sadhaka' s part. Here is a paraphrase of what she said: "When you will find that everything around you has been tinged with a superbly beautiful colour; when you will feel that every moment and every experience of your life, happy... is almost next to nothing. The net result is that days and months and years pass by in our life without our gaining any spiritual benefit worth the name. For it is only the opening and receptivity which can make us ready to gather the treasures of spiritual experiences and realisations. Without these two prerequisites sufficiently developed, all our external efforts at "doing sadhana" will produce... and the Mother have spoken about them. First Page 79 let us listen to what Sri Aurobindo has to say about the matter: "It can be easily understood whether any sadhaka has been able to open himself or not. If it is found that he is becoming day by day aware of the nearness of the Divine Mother; or that he is having some particular experience of the action of the Mother in him; ...
... in the Mother, and also recognise one another in the Mother's consciousness alone. A pair may have first come as guardian and ward, but after acceptance, they became equal in the eyes of the Mother, for both were her children. When in the far future a true spiritual life becomes the law, personal relations will also undergo a transformation. Its very basis would be psychic and spiritual, not vital;... precisely the sadhak said and what the Mother said that is important, but the fact of the meeting, the exchange and the communion. It was a periodical reaffirmation of the Mother-child spiritual relationship, and on the sadhak's side (and on the Mother's too) it had a basic value. Indeed, what was it for the sadhak except a tryst with the Divine? And for the Mother, wasn't it a gathering of the child... the mother, of a sadhak towards the Master of the Yoga. What prevailed in Sri Aurobindo Ashram was, in fact, a peculiar three-in-one relationship, child-Mother-Master, for the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's consciousness was axiomatically and experientially one and the same. Said Sri Aurobindo in 1935: It is a very common experience, that of the identity between myself and the Mother. .. ...
... aspiration which will awaken spiritually the outer mind and set on fire the vital being, is the way out. It is usually a psychic awakening or a series of strong experiences by which the sadhak comes out of this intermediary no man's land of the quiescent vital (few can avoid altogether this passage through a neutral vital indifference) into the full dynamic course of the spiritual movement. It is... its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way. Page 6 That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated... is the Supreme Mother. But through the Ananda you can perceive the Anandamaya Krishna; for the Ananda is the subtle body and being of Krishna; through the Peace you can perceive the Shantimaya Shiva; in the Light, in the delivering Knowledge, the Love, the fulfilling and uplifting Power you can meet the presence of the Divine Mother. It is this perception that makes the experiences of the bhaktas and ...
... it is not that only actual experiences can exhaust the effect of a karma or action done in the past. Fate and Karma can be completely neutralised and this can be done by three different means: (i)by the application of personal tapasya and effort; (ii)through the mediation of divine Grace; and (iii)by the agency of yogic power. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have both discussed... Grace will either scorch out all his past karmas to ineffectivity or will so arrange the circumstances of his life that these very karmas will produce great good for the sadhaka's spiritual progress. But the Mother has warned us at the same time that the aspirant should not nurture a false hope which may be formulated in this way: "Let me repent a little for my past misdeeds and address... gist here. (i) Let us first discuss the factor of personal effort and tapasya. It is true that it has been asserted with force that "niyati kena bādhyate", "Who can frustrate the action of Fate?" But the wise men of the past have also affirmed at the same time that "niyatirapi puru ṣ ena jīyate", "Even Fate can be conquered by personal tapasya". The sage Vasistha has unambiguously stated in ...
... with the Mother Preface Growing up with the Mother is an experience not easy to put into words. “Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven.” It is not often that a person gets the privilege of close proximity, guidance and love from the Divine incarnate in a human form and that too of a wonderful Mother. “A Mother to our... and 1973. It also has some personal letters and messages given by the Mother before 1959. What She wrote in my notebooks between 1950 and 1958 for the Group A (Green Group) classes of which I was the captain from the age of 10 1/2, however, has not been incorporated. I hope to bring these out as a separate book in the near future. My questions and answers of the Mother on Thoughts and Aphorisms... they have been the instruments of the Mother’s love. As we enter the new millennium which is the harbinger of a new light and force and life, I feel a deep joy in sharing this treasure of messages, correspondence and conversations, that give a wonderful insight and guidance to seekers on the spiritual path. It also shows the natural unfolding of the Mother’s relationship with a child of the Ashram ...
... Aurobindo - Volume 2 MOTHER'S ROLE IN OUR SADHANA Why do we hear that the Mother experiences this or that? Has she still to go on experiencing? Experiencing what? She has her own experiences in bringing down the things that have to be brought down — but what the sadhaks experience she had long ago. The Divine does the sadhana first... Sometimes a sadhak feels as if not only he but also the Mother goes through a certain experience in us. The poet Harin often speaks of such a happening as "I am thrilled by Thee and Thou art thrilled by me. I am happy by Thee and so Thou art by me", etc. I cannot understand how such experiences take place. Naturally, the Mother does the sadhana in each sadhaka — only it is conditioned... "She has her own experiences in bringing down the things that have to be brought down..." I have said that the Divine does the sadhana first for the world and then gives what is brought down to others. There can be no sadhana without realisations and experiences. Both myself and the Mother have done sadhana. The Prayers and Meditations are a record of Mother's experiences. ...
... rewarding experiences of some of the participating sadhaks, the gradual decline in the degree of consecration and dedication, the effect on the Mother of the onesided exchange and her decision at last to withdraw her own personal participation in the ceremony - it was a marvellous lyric suspended half-way through, like Coleridge's Kubla Khan. That too was the period when the Mother instituted... consciousness in terms of the consciousness of the Mother. (Amrita) To live in Mother and to know Mother's Will. (Champaklal) To do as Mother directs us to do. (Chandulal) A series of experiences which the individual soul feels from the time of its contact with the Divine up to the union with the Divine. (Dara) Not to hinder Mother in making the best possible of us. (Duraiswami)... Ashram, the offering of flowers to the Mother at the time of Pranam - and to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother at the time of the Darshans - was a Page 320 symbolic act testifying to the spiritual kinship between the Divine and the devotees. In India, flowers have always been associated with offerings to the Gods and also used for decoration. The Mother too was uncannily susceptible to the ...
... be initiated by a direct intervention of the Divine incarnating in Matter as an Avatar. The yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is new, because its goal is no longer a personal liberation or the attainment of heaven, which have been and are the goal of all other spiritual and religious endeavours up to the present. Its aim is to actively participate in the transition from the human being to a transhuman... equilibrium.’ 49 The Mother herself would comment on this entry: ‘The prayer refers to an experience I had when I was not physically well and was in fact narrowly saved from death. I had an inflammation of the nerves.’ 50 This is an extremely painful condition that she described as ‘the maximum of intense pain’ everywhere in the body. The reason was that, by an act of spiritual occultism which she... so much sought for.’ 5 Then followed what is a regular feature in all true spiritual progress: the repercussion, the downward movement after an uplifting experience or spiritual realization. This is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the Black Dragon lashing out with its tail in an effort to swipe away the spiritual gain. ‘My physical organism suffered a defeat such as it had not known for several ...
... supramental Yoga was indeed like a great general's campaign against forces that had never been combated before by any spiritual figure. In the teeth of every Page 443 common experience, every posture of human living down the ages, even every articulate spiritual tradition, this Yoga hoped to change the very foundations of Matter and proceeded into an embattled darkness: only a fearless... continues....The Mother's difficulties are not her own; she bears the difficulties of others and those that are inherent Page 445 in the general action and work for the transformation. If it had been otherwise, it would be a very different matter." Obviously, then, whatever sacrifice is made by Sri Aurobindo or the Mother cannot be one imposed on them by personal defects. Theirs... the vast poison had not been drawn away into the body of this one man whose spiritual consciousness, armed with divine Love, had made him a universalised individual incarnating the Transcendent's Will. And here we may refer again to the fact that the obstacles confronting Sri Aurobindo in his Yoga were not really personal. They were representative of the race and he gladly accepted their retarding ...
... Presence. The Divine Presence is felt as Page 173 that of one who is the living source and essence of that light etc., a Being therefore, not merely a spiritual state. The Mother's Presence is still more concrete, definite, personal—it is not that of Someone unknown, of a Power or Being, but of one who is known, intimate, loved, to whom one can offer all the being in a living concrete way.... it the Mother's Presence, to open to her guidance, to get, not by occasional glimpses but in a steady opening and flowering, the psychic perception and the descent of the spiritual Light and Ananda. For that help will be with you. 7 March 1937 Page 174 It is quite right and part of the right consciousness in sadhana that you should feel drawn in your heart towards the Mother and aspire... its openness to inner supraphysical experience. Apart from the vital and its disturbances the physical is the chief difficulty in establishing a continuity of Yogic consciousness and experience. If the physical is thoroughly transformed—opened and conscious—then stability and continuity become easy. 16 October 1933 It is quite necessary to realise the Mother in her formless presence and not only ...
... his own personal battle, he has still to vain it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe. It is evident, then, that the union the Mother aspires... The first quotation embodies the Mother's aspiration, but the second, which is very significant, shows that the perfection of individual action depends to a great measure upon the conditions which make for the perfection of the universal action. This perception of the Mother of the interdependence of all actions is an index to the line her spiritual career has consistently taken—it is the... striven for and attained, and not one that has ever been achieved in the spiritual history of humanity. It will come as the ultimate victory in a double war waged within man and without, individually and collectively. If we bear the above salient points well in mind, we shall be able to follow the general trend of the Mother's aspiration and achievements and discover in them the same essential elements ...
... vision of which the Word is the body. In all ages spiritual seekers have expressed their aspirations or their experiences in Page 322 poetry or inspired language and it has helped themselves and others. Therefore there is nothing absurd in my assigning to such poetry a spiritual or psychic value and effectiveness to poetry of a psychic or spiritual character. Mantras Mantras come to many... touches. If it is the Word itself,—as in certain utterances of the great Scriptures—Veda, Upanishads, Gita,—it may well have a power to awaken a spiritual impulse, an uplifting, even certain kinds of realisation. To say that it cannot contradicts spiritual experience. The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as mantras , they were the vehicles of their own realisations and could become vehicles of realisation... who are accustomed to successful meditation find it difficult to do—unless in periods when there is an uninterrupted flow of experiences from above. It is very good news that you got rid of the attack and it was the japa that helped you to do it. This and past experience also shows that if you can overcome the old association of the japa with sterility and sorrow, it can do its natural function ...
... the absorbed super-conscient state of trance, the experience cannot become real to the whole existence, being valid only for a remote part of it. Thus it Page 87 militates against our goal of the complete spiritualisation of the totality of our existence. (v)The Yogic trance helps us to fix the spiritual experiences in our inner consciousness alone; it cannot automatically... body and bodily life. For the Integral Yoga has for its objective: (i)to make spiritual experiences real to the whole consciousness including that of the outer being; (ii)to establish the highest possible realisation in the waking state and make it endure there; (iii)not only to experience the Truth subjectively and in one's inner consciousness alone, but to manifest it even... But Samadhi experiences cannot suffice in the least for the object of our Yoga of Transformatio n; for, our goal is no less than the dynamic divinisation of our total existence including the outermost parts of Prakriti. To be more specific, viewed from the Page 86 perspective of our spiritual goal — the goal of embodying and manifesting the highest spiritual consciousness ...
... spirit secret behind man's life and the world in which he labours and aspires. To me he is the sage poet of the Ashram. He inspired me and comforted me with recognition that my spiritual quest may be personal but that I am not alone in my endeavours. For instance, I find his following poems are representative of the universal nature of his poetry: 2. Ibid ., p. 9. 3. Ibid... the journey of life is for the understanding of this transcendental Reality and internalising it as realised experience through one's own inner calling and sadhana. This notion of oneness of an individual self with the Universal Being is not new. It is a verifiable statement of spiritual fact supported by the very essence of India's ancient Veda. It means that Existence is integrative and it... interest in those subjects as well as they illumined my limited mind. He has been my hero when it comes to pursuing spiritual journalism to advocate, elaborate, elucidate and to counter criticisms of Sri Aurobindo's pursuits by 7. Amal Kiran, " The Aurobindonian Poet" , Mother India , February 2001, pp. 99-101. Page 84 people endowed with partial knowledge, preoccupied ...
... the conscious instrument and the body. There is a greater Ananda of samarpaṇa , of spiritual realisation or divine love, but in the spiritual consciousness and life the Ananda of creation has its place. To observe whether it [ one's work ] is really well done or not and feel the Ananda of work done for the Mother [ is the right attitude ]. Get rid of the "I". If it is well done, it is the Force... always do more than the personal effort; so the one thing is to get quiet and call it down or back to the front—for it is always there behind or above you. Drawing upon the Force for Energy During the course of the sadhana one can learn to draw upon the universal Life-Force and replenish the energies from it. But usually the best way is to learn to open oneself to the Mother's Force and become conscious... the experience or else stood in the way of its being pure and complete. The silence of the mind does not of itself bring in the supramental consciousness; there are many states or planes or levels of consciousness between the human mind and the Supermind. The silence opens the mind and the rest of the being to greater things, sometimes to the cosmic consciousness, sometimes to the experience of the ...
... The Fundamental Realisations of the Integral Yoga The Fundamental Realisations of the Integral Yoga The Spiritual Transformation Letters on Yoga - III Chapter V Descent and Other Kinds of Experience Descent and Experiences of the Inner Being It is good that you felt the peace within and the movement in the heart. That shows the force is working not... external physical consciousness, you feel the Peace enveloping you. Descent and Psychic Experiences The infinite calm you felt coming down was the calm of the Divine Consciousness—the higher or spiritual consciousness above the head, which descends as the higher parts of the being open to it. The experience of faith, love or aspiration come from the psychic being. It is when the psychic being is... the second experience. The third about the sleep is also felt when one has confidence in the Mother and goes to sleep under her protection, as if in her lap, surrounded by her presence. As for the dream the legs indicate the physical consciousness which is still under a double pull, one upward to the higher consciousness so that the physical consciousness may unite itself with the spiritual, the other ...
... The doubt about the possibility of help is hardly a rational one, since all the evidence of life and of spiritual experience in the past and of the special experience of those, numerous enough, who have received help from the Mother and myself, is against the idea that no internal or spiritual help from one to another or from a Guru to his disciples or from myself to my disciples is possible. It is... on Himself and the Ashram Help from the Guide Satsanga It is a traditional belief that satsanga has great effect—the nearness or the personal contact of a spiritual person is supposed to produce great benefit to those who are in his company. How is it then that your earliest companions here did not derive any benefit from your company? I don't... have them is quite a wrong idea. The only necessity in this sadhana is to open yourself to the Divine Force; if one is open the necessary understanding or knowledge will come of itself through spiritual experience. 23 May 1933 Sometimes I think it would be better not to ask you questions about my difficulties, but simply to state them. But I find that if I can't put things in the form of questions ...
... who do the act, yet it must be done for her. All stress of egoistic choice, all hankering after personal profit, all stipulation of self regarding desire must be extirpated from the nature. There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the fulfilment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness... perfection will come when you are completely identified with the Divine Mother and feel yourself to be no longer another and separate being, instrument, servant or worker but truly a child and eternal portion of her consciousness and force. Always she will be in you and you in her; it will be your constant, simple and natural experience that all your thought and seeing and action, your very breathing and... The Mother The Mother The Mother with Letters on the Mother The Mother - V If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. All your life must be an offering ...
... Letters on the Mother Letters on the Mother Aspiration and Surrender to the Mother The Mother with Letters on the Mother Surrender to the Mother There is not much spiritual meaning in keeping open to the Mother if you withhold your surrender. Self-giving or surrender is demanded of those who practise this Yoga, because without such a progressive surrender... man to assent or not to assent to the Page 144 Divine leading—how else can any real spiritual evolution be done? If there is so serious an obstacle to your going forward, it consists only of two things, your vital depressions and your mental doubts which make you challenge even the experiences you have and belittle any progress you make. Never have we told you to be stiff and gloomy and... life. The Mother can only free you from these things, if you really want it, not only in your psychic being, but in your physical mind and all your vital nature. The sign will be that you no longer cherish or insist on your personal notions, attachments or desires, and that whatever the distance or wherever you may be, you will feel yourself open and the power and presence of the Mother with you and ...
... the soul for its evolution. Sometimes congenial circumstances minister to our spiritual growth and sometimes they prove a positive ¹ Prayers and Meditations, of the Mother, August 2, 19I3. These words spoken by the Divine have a special significance and special bearing on the life and experiences of the Mother. Here we are concerned only with their general import and universal applicability... of the Mother, February 15, 1914. Page 302 It is then that the rules of conduct having at their base a perfect personal disinterestedness should assume all their value.”¹ In this state of aspiring but unsealed human consciousness, it would be not only fatuous but spiritually fatal to believe or claim that we are instruments of the divine Will and have no personal responsibility... perfect Yogic action means. The spiritual discipline of the Gita is, indeed, a very powerfully synthetic discipline for a divine life-effectuation and life- fulfilment, but the most radically effective steps of it, the steps of the crucial transition from the human to the Divine, have been left in obscurity, as a mystery to be resolved in personal experience. But the modern mind insists on ...
... will be the nature of the ultimate experience by which one passes into That which is ineffable, That of which no report can be given to the mind or expressed by any utterance. Sri Aurobindo terms all these definitive culminations as penultimates of the one Ultimate. A supreme experience is the one which affirms and includes the truth of all spiritual experiences, gives to each its own absolute, in... integralises all knowledge and experience in a supreme reality. In this light, it may be said that all spiritual experiences are true, but they point towards some highest and widest reality which admits that truth and exceeds it. According to Sri Aurobindo, in the passage from mental to overmind cognition, one realizes many-sided unity, and the whole manifestation assumes the appearance of a singular... Methods, Processes and Results PART THREE Spiritual Experiences on the way to the Supermind On the way from the Quiet Mind and Silent Mind or Purified Mind, and while crossing from Higher Mind to the Supermind, several higher and penultimate spiritual experiences are attained. In the specialized systems of yoga these or some of them are felt to be ...
... wives are Satis! Letter from Dilip – with Krishnaprem's. Whether every time a Sadhaka makes personal effort can it be said that it is to satisfy the Ego. Sri Aurobindo : No, it can be to subordinate the Ego to the Divine. If it is to seek power or to satisfy some other impulse then personal effort may have egoistic origin. Disciple : Could one make the surrender to a Guru whose... to retain their hold over North Africa if they can – to ensure payment of their money. They would even like to have Persia and Iraque. So, the peace is not likely to be a very easy affair. Spiritual cure – method described – Blue ray – directed to the patient – Washes his own hands. Astral body seen near the patient. 19th April, 1943 Spirit communication – Desire to continue... it is the Ego that says that 'this fellow has got this defect, I won't surrender to him.' Disciple : But the very act of accepting some one as Guru requires some perception or feeling or experience of the Divine in the person? Sri Aurobindo : Not necessarily. It may be only a belief in the Divinity of the Guru. That way it can be argued that God is imperfect because the exterior ...
... accept Mirra as the Mother. Why is she the Mother? Who is the Mother? These were the questions asked by some and unasked openly by some others.’ 27 ‘Her status after 24 November 1926 as the spiritual head of the Ashram, the “Mother” … caused some eyebrows to be raised. There was no question about her managerial ability, her unfailing friendliness and her personal spiritual eminence. And yet... to India in 1930, took Nirodbaran along to Pondicherry. Doctor Talukdar, considering himself an empiricist and very suspicious of spiritual hocus-pocus, was on his guard, but he was all the same touched by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. After some disastrous experiences in Burma, Nirodbaran returned to Pondicherry and was accepted as a member of the Ashram. First he did some work in the building ... sees to be his true need or what is best for him in his spiritual progress. No one can be her judge or impose on her his own rule and standard; she alone can make rules, and she can depart from them too if she thinks fit, but no one can demand that she shall do so. Personal demands and desires cannot be imposed on her … This is the spiritual discipline of which the one who represents or embodies the ...
... by the psyche to carry out the Divine's decree that I should be drawn to the Truth. Most love-experiences are very far from what happened to me. Yet the fact that love was chosen as the best instrument to prepare me for Yoga shows that there is something akin in it, no matter how crudely, to the spiritual urge. I cannot, therefore, undervalue the idealistic help true love can give to the soul. ... and bend down at its feet, as certain poets and idealists do. The direct touch of the Divine is the sole experience capable of giving basic satisfaction, radical peace - and what best constitutes that touch is the process of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga with its blend of the psychic, the spiritual and the supramental, and its special insistence on the whole being moving forward by degrees, in an intimate... smallness and gives it an ultimate value and a golden hope. This hope I may best express by saying that in the experience you have recounted there is the promise that one day each of our tiny lives may be like a star Tingling with rumours of the infinite. Having had that experience in your childhood, you figure in my fancy, during all your years of a mail-man, as just such a star though in ...
... can then hold that a Yogi, a spiritual aspirant or even a mere aspirant – on the whole they mean the same. According to Brémond, a poet is he who has either fallen from the status of a mystic or has deviated from the path of inner discipline. He is of the opinion that the fount of a poet's inspiration, insight and feeling is either a spiritual experience or an experience inclined towards spirituality... the source of poetry but about its culmination. According to Bremond, the inner inspiration of the poet or the source of it is a spiritual experience. He also adds to it that the poet descends into a lower level of nature the moment he endeavours to mould his experience into words and tries to give it a metrical shape without following the straight Page 104 yogic process, without a... and Truth, to a world beyond. Milton, Wordsworth and Dante need no introduction in this field, for they are undoubtedly spiritual. They seriously resorted to spirituality. But it is strange enough how Shakespeare, whose creation is replete with nature's scenes and the experiences of man's day-to-day life, says: With thoughts above the reaches of our souls, or, There's a divinity that shapes ...
... old vital Nature looking on in a horrified disapproval! I don't think it is much use writing about personal relations in the true spiritual life (which does not yet exist here). None would understand it except as a form of words. Only three points— (1) Its very base would have to be spiritual and psychic and not vital. The vital would be there but as an instrument only. (2) It would be a... Don't make such Herculean efforts to explain it. No joy, no energy, no cheerfulness. Don't like to read or write—as if a dead man were walking about. Do you understand the position? Any personal experience? I quite understand; often had it myself devastatingly. That's why I always advise people who have it to cheer up and buck up. I asked Kanai for my diagnosis—he says some sort of trouble... for here it might be different, but as things are it would be foolish to walk off under the instigation of this old Mother Gloom-Gloom. Stick on and you will get the soul's reward hereafter. June 14, 1936 ... You say I could help Y. How can I do so avoiding everything personal? If I can help at all, it is in her literary work—surely not in Sadhana! But there again you doubt. Tell me precisely ...
... recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it Page 15 contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself... embodies the Mother's aspiration, but the second, which is very significant, shows that the 1 Prayer of November 2, 1912 Page 14 perfection of individual action depends to a great measure upon the conditions which make for the perfection of the universal action. This perception of the Mother of the interdependence of all actions is an index to the line her spiritual career... striven for and attained, and not one that has ever been achieved in the spiritual history of humanity. It will come as the ultimate victory in a double war waged within man and without, individually and collectively. If we bear the above salient points well in mind, we shall be able to follow the general trend of the Mother's aspiration and achievements and discover in them the same essential ...
... surroundings are desirable, the true quiet is within and no other will give you the condition you want. The inner spiritual progress does not depend on outer conditions so much as on the way we react to them from within—that has always been the ultimate verdict of spiritual experience. It is why we insist on taking the right attitude and persisting in it, on an inner state not dependent on outer c... difficulty of keeping experience of which you complain. It is only if you keep quiet and steady within that the lines of experience can go on with some steadiness—though they are never without periods of interruption and fluctuation; but these, if properly treated, can then become periods of assimilation and exhaustion of difficulty rather than denials of sadhana. A spiritual atmosphere is more important... important than outer conditions; if one can get that and also create one's own spiritual air to breathe in and live in it, that is the true condition of progress. If you can achieve quietude followed by an upward openness, it is better than the effort which sways between strong experiences and strong adverse reactions. Even to have the quietude and calm somewhere behind or in Page ...
... first had experiences in Paris with drugs. Oh! Then, he told me, "But when I saw I could have experiences like that, without drugs, I said to myself it was much better!"... But he's fine, not distorted. ( silence ) ( Mother holds out a flower ) What is it? It's "Power of Truth in the Subconscient".... Not easy! ( Mother laughs ) The flowers are quite bold! ( Mother takes another... that I can also suffer with her pleasantly?" ( Mother laughs a lot ) Pleasantly!... With a question mark. Sri Aurobindo answers: "Pleasantly? It would be anything but pleasant either for you or for us. "It is rather a crude statement of a fact. The Mother in order to do her work had to take all the Sadhaks inside her personal being and consciousness; thus personally (not merely ... point of our Yoga, since this province has never been conquered by the spiritual Power, the old Yogas having either left it alone or used on it only a detail mental and vital force, not the general spiritual force. It was the reason why after a serious illness caused by a terribly bad state of the Ashram atmosphere... ( Mother laughs ) "...I had to insist on her partial retirement so as to ...
... the other a form of divine love and divine action,—the Gita proceeds now to unite the personal and the impersonal in the Purushottama and to define their relations. For the object of the Gita is to get rid of exclusions and separative exaggerations and fuse these two sides of knowledge and spiritual experience into a single and perfect way to the supreme perfection. First there comes a description... knowledge and experience, however true Page 438 and however powerful in its appeal to our highest seeing, has still to get rid of a very real and pressing difficulty, a practical as well as a logical contradiction which seems at first sight to persist up to the highest heights of spiritual experience. The Eternal is other than this mobile subjective and objective experience, there is a greater... towards one central thought, and to that it is arriving in all its balancing and reconciliation of the disagreements of various philosophic systems and its careful synthetising of the truths of spiritual experience, lights often conflicting or at least divergent when taken separately and exclusively pursued along their outer arc and curve of radiation, but here brought together into one focus of grouping ...
... always cures you of your petty personal maladies. The Mother Impossibilities into realisations Each one here represents an impossibility to be resolved, but as for Your Divine Grace all things are possible. Your work will be, in the detail as in the ensemble, the accomplishment of all the impossibilities transformed into divine realisations. The Mother Laziness It is not that... ignorant self-guidance based on one's personal ideas and personal feelings is the aim of Karmayoga, the surrender of one's own will to the Divine Will. Sri Aurobindo The true yogic way The work here is not intended for showing one's Page 14 capacity or having a position or as a means of physical nearness to the Mother, but as a field and an opportunity for... matters. And as an absolute rule, it must be wholly objective. You should not allow any personal reaction, any preference, any like or dislike to creep in. And above all, never introduce your own petty personal grudges Page 16 into the work that is assigned to you. The Mother Living examples Now, all depends on your will and your sincerity. If you have the ...
... the stammer ended that. I also wanted to be a fashion designer. Were you aware of a spiritual presence in your childhood and when did you first aspire deeply for the spiritual life? I was slightly aware as I had one or two uplifting experiences in church as a child but I began to aspire for a truly spiritual life in East Africa in my late twenties when I discovered Hinduism. How do you see... India in 1960. How did you learn of Mother and Sri Aurobindo and when did you come to live in the Ashram? I was told about Mother and Sri Aurobindo in Nairobi, Kenya. I attended some meetings there and planned a month’s visit to the Ashram in 1960. Can you describe darshan of the Mother? What experiences did you have with her? Darshan of the Mother always overwhelmed me. She appeared to... all-powerful. But I never truly felt a personal intimacy with her. Why not? What does that mean exactly? Well, when I heard about people putting their heads on her lap or writing to her and closing with “Your child”, I found this difficult. I saw her as the Universal Mother rather than the personal Mother. I had more of a psychic relationship with both Mother and Sri Aurobindo. They were both ...
... disharmonies, luminous, blissful and free. That much is the age-old testimony of spiritual experience." On the general position as regards ultimate reality Sri Aurobindo 7 makes the summary; "In the Upanishads, in the inspired scripture of the most ancient Vedanta, we find the affirmation of the Absolute, the experience-concept of the utter and ineffable Transcendence; but we find also, not in... y truth: it is justified by a perception of the universality of the spiritual individual...but neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and exist by the transcendental Divine being. "This Divine Being, Sachchidananda, is at once impersonal and personal: it is an Existence and the origin and foundation of all truths, forces... he is also outside it, transcendent; good and evil, happiness and misery are only phenomena of cosmic experience due to a division and-a diminution of consciousness in the manifestation but are not part of the essence or of the undivided whole-consciousness either of the Divine or of our own spiritual being." However, Sri Aurobindo 6 is careful to note in consonance with the ancient Vedanta: ...
... which expresses itself in them and in all that we see and experience. This equality and this oneness are the indispensable twin foundation we must lay down for a divine being, a divine consciousness, a divine action. Not one with all, we are not spiritual, not divine. Not equal-souled to all things, happenings and creatures, we cannot see spiritually, cannot know divinely, cannot feel divinely towards others... free, master, knower and enjoyer. For these are in human and earthly experience relative modes, none giving its single and absolute fruit; all are intermixed with each other and there is not the pure action of any one of them anywhere. It is their confused and inconstant interaction that Page 99 determines the experiences of the egoistic human consciousness swinging in Nature's uncertain... lines of Karmayoga laid down by the Gita? Its key principle, its spiritual method, can be summed up as the union of two largest and highest states or powers of consciousness, equality and oneness. The kernel of its method is an unreserved acceptance of the Divine in our life as in our inner self and spirit. An inner renunciation of personal desire leads to equality, accomplishes our total surrender to ...
... than most in the spiritual life; some occupy a responsible position in the work of the Ashram; yet many of them cannot come to the Mother separately every morning or meet her again in the afternoon as you have been allowed to do. This privilege was given you because she felt that you had a special need other care and of help and support from her. For she does not act for her personal satisfaction or... The Mother can do her work only if she is free always to do what she sees to be right and her decisions are accepted by all concerned. This is now generally understood in the Ashram and no one makes this kind of demand; it is not possible that you alone out of eighty people should have the right to do it. In fact, you have been given privileges of close daily personal contact with the Mother which... knowledge and his long experience. You must remember that just as the Mother uses your capacities and gives them their field, she must be able to do the same with the capacities of others. If she gives charge of a department of work to one, that must not stand in the way of her consulting or using others. Thus Benjamin and Chandulal are in charge of the building work, but the Mother consults P. too because ...
... wrote somewhere, after an experience like this of the Divine Presence in the being, he wrote, "If men knew how marvellous is the way.... But they don't know." He wrote it, I can't quote because I'll quote it incorrectly, but he had this experience, "If men knew how marvellous it is, they wouldn't hesitate for a minute." Now they still make a distinction: the "spiritual life" and the "ordinary life... desire to learn. I do see the difficulty he alludes to: most people (in what we see written or in the conferences they have here), use pompous words ... Yes. ...devoid of any truth of personal experience and without any effect. They rather have a negative effect. That's what he alludes to. Yes. But that's why it would be better to do as I said. Oh, but not so long ago, the majority of... April Mother’s Agenda 1967 April 5, 1967 Mother writes a note leaning on the window sill: It's the answer to a question. Have you heard what I said to the School teachers?... 1 They've asked me another question. This is the beginning of my answer: "It is the division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' ...
... deeper strata-the soul-in him throughout the varied experiences of his terrestrial life. The New Man will be Master-and not slave. He will be master, first, of himself and then of the world. Man as he actually is, is but a slave. He has no personal voice or choice; the determining soul, the Ishwara... from the ego-it is the ego which requires an object outside and against to feel and affirm itself but it will come from a higher personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and therefore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the sovereign power that is calm... greater freedom and a vaster movement. It was the crest of that underground wave which peered over the surface from age to age, from clime to clime through the experiences of poets and prophets and sages - the Head of the Sacrificial Horse galloping towards the Dawn. Page 3 And now the days of captivity ...
... your bath a pleasant experience, or caring for your hair, or whatever (of course, it's been a long time since there have been any of those stupid, petty ideas of personal pleasure), so that these things aren't done indifferently, out of habit and necessity, but... with a touch of beauty, a touch of charm and delight for the Lord. There, that's all.... Mon petit... ( Mother gazes a long time at... unlikely or at best very intermittent and partial, because this body is much more a field of misery than a field of joy. (None of this is based on speculation, but on personal experience—I am Page 68 relating my personal experience.) But with work, it's different: when the body is at work, it's in full swing. That's its joy, its need—to exist only to serve Him. To exist only to serve. And of... Then there is food, keeping clean, a whole range of things. And according to Sri Aurobindo, spiritual life shouldn't suppress those things; whatever is indispensable for the body's well-being must be kept up. For ordinary people, all other bodily activities are used for personal pleasure and benefit. The spiritual man, on the other hand, has given his body to serve the Divine, so that the Divine may use ...
... therefore declared simply that the sadhaks and sadhikas of the spiritual community she was building up were not her disciples but her children. This meant much more than mere words. As Sri Aurobindo wrote: ‘It is true of every soul on earth that it is a portion of the Divine Mother passing through the experiences of the Ignorance in order to arrive at the truth of its being and be the instrument of... ‘soup’ may be a rather prosaic food or word, there is no reason to suppose that the water and its other components should be spiritually inferior to, let us say, wheat in the form of bread. Over and above the collective activities there were also personal meetings of the Mother with the sadhaks, conversations in their room or house, inspections of the various departments and services, and so on.... of each one is personal, ‘each one carries his truth in himself, and this is a unique truth, belonging to each one personally and to be expressed by him in his life.’ 23 (the Mother) Each disciple of the Ashram, being a representative of a type of humanity in the process of general transformation, had to be guided in a personal way. This actually was the one and only rule the Mother recognized. ‘No ...
... unmanifest." But the master-means of manifestation, no less than the One who was to be manifested, was directly approached only on that day. Before meeting Sri Aurobindo the Mother used to find for her various spiritual experiences and realisations a poise for life-work by giving them a mould with the enlightened mind. All kinds of powerful ideas she had for world-upliftment—ideas artistic, social, religious... The Mother - Past-Present-Future The Mother The Mother* SOME GENERAL TRUTHS AND PERSONAL FACTS The One whom we call the Supreme is the utter Unmanifest. The creative Conscious Force of the Supreme is the Divine Mother in Her transcendent poise, Aditi, holding the Truths that have to be manifested out of the absolute Mystery. Through... of tune with it shape her actions. Before this time, she had already arrived at a fairly precise idea of her mission. Between the ages of eleven and thirteen, a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to her not only the existence of God but man's possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life divine ...
... But the master-means of manifestation, no less than the One who was to be manifested, was directly approached only on that day. Before meeting Sri Aurobindo the Mother used to find for her various spiritual experiences and realisations a poise for life-work by giving them a mould with the enlightened mind. All kinds of powerful ideas she had for world-upliftment - ideas artistic, social... The Mother SOME GENERAL TRUTHS AND PERSONAL FACTS The One whom we call the Supreme is the utter Unmanifest. The creative Conscious Force of the Supreme is the Divine Mother in Her transcendent poise, Aditi, holding the Truths that have to be manifested out of the absolute Mystery. Through the transcendent Mother and by Her creativity the whole... of tune with it shape her actions. Before this time, she had already arrived at a fairly precise idea of her mission. Between the ages of eleven and twelve, a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to her not only the existence of God but man's possibility of uniting with Him, of realising Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon earth in a life ...
... to the point where one is not at all sincere. Sweet Mother, here it is written: "The personal effort has to be transformed progressively into a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of the Divine Force, then call it in more and more to govern your effort, to take it up, to transform it into something not yours, but the Mother's." But if one is not conscious of the Divine Force? ... their personal use. For the mind to be clear it must be silent—at least to a certain extent, and for the vital to be clear it must give up its desires, have no desires and impulses and passions. This indeed is the essential condition. Later, if one goes into details, neither of them should have any preferences, attachments, any particular way of being or particular set of ideas. Sweet Mother, what... you have told you certain things. You had no means of checking, because you were too young and had no experience. But you have faith in what they told you and you go forward on that faith. So everyone has a tiny bit of faith, and to increase it one can use one's aspiration. Page 394 Mother, in your symbol the twelve petals signify the twelve inner planes, don't they? It signifies anything ...
... down by the Divine. Our Yoga is not for our own sake but for the sake of the Divine. It is not our own personal manifestation that we are to seek, the manifestation of the individual ego freed from all bounds and from all bonds, but the manifestation of the Divine. Of that manifestation our own spiritual liberation, perfection, fullness is to be a result and a part, but not in any egoistic sense or for... psychic call and of one's readiness to go through to the end. * In the former Yogas it was the experience of the Spirit which is always free and one with the Divine that was sought. The nature had to change only enough to prevent its being an obstacle to that knowledge and experience. The complete change down to the physical was only sought for by a few and then more as a "siddhi" than anything... purified, but preoccupation with them as the one important thing is not helpful. The positive side of experience of the descent is the more important thing. If one waits for the lower nature to be purified entirely and for all time before calling down the positive Page 5 experience, one might have to wait for ever. It is true that the more the lower nature is purified, the easier is ...
... or the working of things more from a spiritual point of view, something more universal, whereas this needs to be seen from a detailed, occult point of view. For example, one thing had always appeared unimportant to me in action—intermediaries between the spiritualized individual being, the conscious soul, and the Supreme. According to my personal experience, it had always seemed to me that if one... complement to spiritual action. The spiritual action is direct, but it may not be immediate (anyway, that's my experience). Sri Aurobindo said that with the supramental presence, it becomes immediate—and I have experienced this. But this would then mean that the supramental Power automatically commands all these intermediaries, whereas if it's not present, even the highest spiritual power would need... 1958 1958 Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960 November 27, 1958 ( Concerning the disciple's karma and the tantric discipline that he is following to dissolve this karma, Mother wonders why She herself had not been able to dissolve it directly and why it was necessary to resort to intermediaries ) I am used to seeing the process ...
... Self-existence, Self-awareness, Self-delight of being that secretly supports and pervades the universe even while it is also beyond it, is, then, the first truth of spiritual experience. But this truth of being has at once an impersonal and a personal aspect; it is not only Existence, it is the one Being absolute, eternal and infinite. As there are three fundamental aspects in which we meet this Reality,—Self... its existence. These truths present themselves to our conceptual cognition as the fundamental aspects in which we see and experience the omnipresent Reality. In themselves they are seized directly, not by intellectual understanding but by a spiritual intuition, a spiritual experience in the very substance of our consciousness; but they can also be caught at in conception by a large and plastic idea and... resembling the part of which he had had the touch. An experience of some one aspect of the Page 345 Infinite is valid in itself; but we cannot generalise from it that the Infinite is that alone, nor would it be safe to view the rest of the Infinite in the terms of that aspect and exclude all other view-points of spiritual experience. The Infinite is at once an essentiality, a boundless ...
... Does personal initiation mean to mix up our own individual work with the Mother's work, which brings desire, ego and other lower elements into the work? Personal initiation does not mean that - it means oneself being the worker and doing the work for oneself - instead of feeling the work as the Mother's - done by the Mother's Force for the sake of the Divine Purpose. Personal action... understood that what I wrote to you about Page 160 persons was private. Experiences, one's own or others' if one comes to know about them, should not be talked about or made a matter of gossip. It is only if there can be some spiritual profit to others and even then if they are experiences of the past that one can speak of them. Otherwise it becomes like news of Abyssinia or Spain... instruments - the outer energy being quiescent or else a part only of the inner - while this inner consciousness knows that the force is the Mother's or feels the Mother's presence in it: there are different experiences in this respect. The third is when all is the Mother's Force working. Page 147 Working Consciousness Sometimes there is an excess of inertia before ...
... 13 February 1936 The experience of a concrete presence of the Mother in the photograph and the immediate effect on the health are things of the subtle physical acting on the physical mind and body—such things can happen only when the physical consciousness has begun to open—that is why I said it was a sign. Of course the full effects of the spiritual experiences can only come when the whole... Letters on the Mother Letters on the Mother The Mother in Visions, Dreams and Experiences The Mother with Letters on the Mother Experiences of the Mother and Her Powers In the morning I was feeling that the mind is quite empty. In the afternoon I saw an intense compact golden light there in front, at some distance outside the mind. The golden light... ourselves for our inability, we put the blame on the Mother, pouring our venom on her which she swallows and offers back to us as Amrita in return. This experience brought me a mixed feeling of peaceful silence, self-reproach and a touch of sadness. It has remained with me all day, but now I apprehend a reaction; for usually my experiences recede, leaving me with depression or emptiness. What ...
... she heard in astonishment — for Sri Aurobindo often read out to her what he just came to write — that in many passages her own experiences were described, sometimes in the smallest detail. ‘All this is his own experience, but what is most astonishing is that it is my experience also. It is my sadhana which he has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours... Part Two: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Beyond Man Chapter Eighteen: The Confrontation with Death To conquer death, one must be ready to go through death. 1 — The Mother About a year before, there already had been signs of trouble with the prostate gland, but Sri Aurobindo had cured that with his spiritual power. In November 1950, the symptoms... central place in the epic. We have already been reminded several times of the fact that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother never spoke speculatively or theoretically but always from their own practical experience, and that Savitri and the poetry of the later years too were based on that experience. Death, however, had not been experienced by Sri Aurobindo, though he must have been aware that the confrontation ...
... least one thing precise about his spiritual experience: he speaks of the calm and stillness of Nirvana and before it everything seems an illusion. PURANI: The division of consciousness into two parts—one being fundamentally free and the other imperfect or impure—is a very common experience. SRI AUROBINDO: It is not only common, it is the inevitable experience unless one is able to take all action... that nothing stirs whatever happens, then also you can be free from them. After I had the Nirvanic experience at Baroda and came to Calcutta for work, I thought I had no ambition—I mean personal ambition. But the Voice which I used to hear within would point out to me at every step how personal ambition was there in my movements. These things can hide for a long time without being detected. It... is that even if the work is taken away or destroyed, it must make no difference to the condition of your consciousness. SATYENDRA: Isn't Nirvana a fundamental spiritual experience? SRI AUROBINDO: Nirvana, as I know it, is an experience in which the separative personality is blotted out and one acts according to what is necessary to be done. It is only a passage for reaching a state in which the ...
... quite right to say that "a master of spiritual experience, with a consummate knowledge of the English language (Sri Aurobindo was educated from his seventh to his twenty-first year in England), is not likely to pen feverishly feeble inanities and pass them off as mysticism". Spiritual experience means nothing (like all Page 137 other experience) unless it can be precisely communicated... started to say: It's all very well for you to puncture a specific passage, especially a passage dealing with spiritual vision and realisation. Don't you see that states of ecstasy and beatitude are hardest to communicate to a person who has not passed through identical spiritual experiences?' " The answer he provides is no more than that a poem's "rhythm, linguistic precision and incantation" must... confusion and resolution in Ash-Wednesday are not spiritual in the true sense and they are more misty than mystic. Not that a state of mind is not infused into them but they give us neither the concreteness nor the intensity of spiritual vision and mystic experience. Mr. Lai's ignorance of this fact proves that he has no clear idea of spiritual poetry. St. John of the Cross is a real mystic ...
... itself disappears, not merely the pain. I feel as though I had touched... the central experience.' 1969 Jan 1 Experiences descent of the Superman Consciousness. 'A golden light, transparent and... benevolent. "Benevolent" in the sense of a certainty - a harmonious certainty.... It gave the impression of a personal divinity who comes to help....' - Feb 10-15 The new Consciousness demonstrates... smiling... full of the divine Love....' 1966 Jan 22 'I have never had the same experience twice... I am all the while... on the march. The work of transformation of the consciousness is so rapid, must be done so quickly that there is no time to enjoy or dwell upon an experience....' - Mar 4-9 Experiences 'the consciousness of the dead on earth'. A transitional state but 'a tremendous gain'... rise to the height of her mission and proclaim the Truth to the world.' -Nov 24 Inspires an exhibition in the Ashram Library on the Spiritual Destiny of India. - Dec 1 Presentation, under her personal direction, of scenes from The Story of India's Spiritual Destiny - 'The personages chosen here... brought in a new light and power, initiated a new movement of consciousness in the history of ...
... down the beings of the Gods into people, and the sadhaks felt great exaltation and had remarkable experiences. With what Purushottam did, that sadhak had an unforgettable spiritual experience. The Mother confirmed its genuineness and indicated the extraordinary meaning of what had happened to him. Hers had been the general guiding force, even if the particular form given to it may have shown Purushottam's... be all right." I have told the story at full length in the "personal preface" I wrote for the three-months' collection of the poems when, on Sri Aurobindo's recommendation, they were brought out as a book in 1949. Undoubtedly the heart-trouble seemed worthwhile having for the inner experience of the Mother's help and the outer expression in those eighty-nine poems. Page 89 ... incessantly life begins afresh, then the past no longer cleaves to us." After this, the Mother went on to an astounding pronouncement based on a realisation of hers. She told us: "To give you an idea of the final height of spiritual rebirth, I may say that there can Page 75 be a constant experience of the whole universe disappearing at every instant and being at every instant newly ...
... Tolle and Sri Aurobindo - Some Comparisons Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo Method of Spiritual Practice As stated a little earlier, Eckhart does not consider the term "practice" to be quite appropriate in spiritual life because practice implies personal effort of some sort, whereas enlightenment is not something Page 112 that can be brought about by... n in Sri Aurobindo's yoga have been briefly touched upon in the previous section of this chapter in connection with the role of personal effort and will be presented more fully in the next section, which discusses the process of inner change. One method of spiritual practice—surrender—stands out foremost in both Eckhart's teaching and Sri Aurobindo's yoga. Eckhart regards surrender—saying "yes"... the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quire and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. 91 In all spiritual disciplines, including Sri Aurobindo's yoga, purification or cleansing, like concentration (in the sense of a self-gathered state), is regarded as an essential means towards liberation ...
... what you have seen. Spiritual experience means the contact with the Divine in oneself (or without, which comes to the same thing in that domain). And it is an experience identical everywhere in all countries, among all peoples and even in all ages. If you meet the Divine, you meet it always and everywhere in the same way. Difference comes in because between the experience and its formulation there... remembered and leave almost no trace in the consciousness. But even dreams that have a somewhat deeper origin are still obscure, since they are peculiarly personal, in this sense that they depend for their make-up almost entirely upon the experiences and idiosyncrasies of the individual. Visions also are made up of symbols that do not necessarily obtain universal currency. The symbols vary according to... and for good. That is the plunge you have to take, and unless you do it, you may do Yoga for years and yet know nothing of a true spiritual living. Take the whole and entire plunge and you will be free from this outer confusion and get the true experience of the spiritual life. Page 22 ...
... and yearnings that have troubled and consoled the deeper strata—the soul—in him throughout the varied experiences of his terrestrial life. The New Man will be Master—and not slave. He will be master, first, of himself and then of the world. Man as he actually is, is but a slave. He has no personal voice or choice; the determining soul, the Ishwara, in him is sleep-bound and hushed. He is a mere... it will achieve will not come from the ego—it is the ego which requires an object outside and against to feel and affirm itself—but it will come from a higher personal self which is one with the cosmic soul and therefore with other personal souls. The Asura, in spite of, or rather, because of his aggressive vehemence betrays a lack of the sovereign power that is calm and at ease and self-sufficient... it approached by that very uplift a greater freedom and a vaster movement. It was the crest of that underground wave which peered over the surface from age to age, from clime to clime through the experiences of poets and prophets and sages— the Head of the Sacrificial Horse galloping towards the Dawn Page 109 And now the days of captivity or rather of inner preparation are at an end. The ...
... loved, of going away, of abandoning life or the spiritual endeavour must be rejected. 1 September 1936 As for the feelings about the Mother and that her love is only given for a return in work or to those who can do sadhana well, that is the usual senseless idea of the vital-physical mind and has no value. 17 January 1937 It is not Mother who makes you cry. It is forces from the vital Nature... Nature that make you sorrowful and think of dying and of the past. What comes from Mother is love and light and peace and joy and the spiritual life of the future. Never mind about the purity of the body. The love of the Mother purifies both heart and body—if the soul's aspiration is there, the body also is pure. What happened in the past does not in the least matter. ... mistakes—first, expecting outward expressions of love from the Mother; second, looking for progress instead of concentrating on openness and surrender without demand of a return. These are two mistakes which sadhaks are constantly making. If one opens, if one surrenders, then as soon as the nature is ready, progress will come of itself; but the personal concentration for progress brings difficulties and resistance ...
... overnight, one could bring down the Supermind in a moment, one could... do anything, one could do anything if one had faith. But it must be a pure faith, it should not be mixed with any personal reactions or any personal will. A pure faith is something all-powerful and irresistible. One doesn't often find a faith that is all-powerful and irresistible, and this shows that it is not quite pure. The question... You have heard and read that we are made up of various states of being: physical, vital, mental, psychic, spiritual, etc. Well, all these inner states of being correspond to invisible worlds. There is a physical world, a vital world, a mental world, a psychic world, and many spiritual worlds, a whole range of more and more subtle worlds approaching nearer and nearer to the Supreme. So, since you... appropriate to each of these worlds. But if you know beforehand what they are like—the mind is such a magnificent instrument of formation that it can build up a whole experience for you, and unfortunately, it will never be the genuine experience—it will be merely a mental construction. So, normally, when you want to instruct someone about these occult matters, you never tell him what is going to happen, ...
... December December Mother’s Agenda 1962 December 4, 1962 ( Mother speaks again of the direct experience of the Supreme she had when Sri Aurobindo left his body: ) I don't quite understand. Didn't you have the experience of the Supreme before Sri Aurobindo's departure? Spiritually, you have that experience as soon as you... concrete, total and absolute manner that it can't be forgotten for a single second. At that moment, the physical being and the individual, personal body had the experience once and for all. The body always used to let itself be carried along. It was one in consciousness with Sri Aurobindo's presence, and depended on it without the least worry; it felt that its life depended on it, its progress... you have the experience as soon as the mind is purified; vitally, you have it as soon as you get out of the ego. But it's the consciousness of the BODY—the consciousness of the cells—which had the experience at that moment. Everything else had had it long before and was constantly aware of it, but the body.... It had been told about it and believed in it, but it didn't have the experience in such a concrete ...
... from outside. 13 February 1933 It is always a mistake to let another know what we have written privately to you on personal things, for it is likely, as you see, for it to be misinterpreted. It is because we have had so much experience of that that we prefer that personal things should be kept private. Formerly we used to allow people to show if they wanted to, but we found that even the simplest... twice a week: sadhana, experiences, etc. It is just the time when I am trying to diminish letters and books, so that the Mother has some time to rest at night and myself some time to do the real work instead of passing day and night in sending and answering correspondence. This is not the time to add fresh correspondence. Moreover it is not worthwhile sending experiences merely to ask whether... an effective instrument towards my central purpose—there are a large number of sadhaks whom it has helped to awake from lethargy and begin to tread the way of spiritual experience, others whom it has carried from a small round of experience to a flood of realisations, some who have been absolutely hopeless for years who have undergone a conversion and entered from darkness into an opening of light ...
... fit to assimilate their consciousness. The Grace of the Divine Mother had favoured and had begun to work upon me and I was dragged many a time in trance and came back with different types of experiences. Once I saw myself acting as a military officer on a mountain in one of my past lives." Dr. Govindbhai reported this matter to the Mother. She not only confirmed it, but added "you were with me in Italy... My Pilgrimage to the Spirit by Dr. Govindbhai Patel is the book of his experiences in sadhana in Sri Aurobindo Ashram as well as in his life outside, while following an ideal of Sri Aurobindo—"All life is Yoga." The book therefore is significantly divided mainly in two parts. The first part covers his Yogic experiences and visions guided by the Divine Grace in the form of letters by the Divine... dedicated pilgrimage. "Life is a paradox, with God for key." Govindbhai heard the 'call of the Spirit' while still young. He was accepted by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo when he was only twenty-one years of age. He started getting valuable experiences as he was gifted with a great capacity for concentration and could open to the occult world with marvellous ease and naturalness. Also that was the ...
... or that experiences are of inferior importance any more than it can be said that work is of no or inferior importance. Your experience is the beginning of the fundamental and decisive realisation which carries the consciousness out of the limited mental into the true spiritual vision and experience in which all is one and all is the Divine. It is this constant and living experience that is the... something unreal, vague and truthless. The spiritual experience does not even despise dreams and visions; it is known to it that many of these things are not dreams at all but experiences on an inner plane and if the experiences of the inner planes which lead to the opening of the inner self into the outer so as to influence and change it are not accepted, the experiences of the subtle consciousness and the... my acceptance of your former experiences, this current and the descent of stillness in the body, as signs of the Yogi in you. But these ideas spring from an ignorance of the spiritual realm and its phenomena and only show the incapacity of the outer intellectual reason to play the role you want it to play, that of a supreme judge of spiritual truth and inner experience—a quite natural incapacity because ...
... the help of what you have read, and try to express your personal experience, have you any certainty? I am not speaking, you see, of the result of what you have read or learnt or all that; I am speaking of the result of your personal experience, your own, something that's evident to you because it is your own life, it is your own experience—are you capable of describing it? Page 183 ... a very different way or carry in them forces which are hostile to you and may harm you in your development. But to attain such a perception one must oneself be exclusively occupied with one's own spiritual progress and integral realisation. Now, that is not often the case. And usually too, when one has attained this inner clear-sightedness, it is not expressed by attraction and repulsion, but by a very... But that also... Not that it doesn't exist, but it is not very frequent, and certainly not so total that one need run away when one meets such a person. So, essentially, if one wants to develop spiritually, the first thing to do is to overcome one's dislikes... and one's likes. Look at all that with a smile. ( Silence ) " A new humanity would then be a race of mental beings on the earth and ...
... The two experiences are simultaneous: the one does not blot out the other; on the contrary, they seem to complete each other.... 15 All contraries, all play of opposites, have ultimately a unitary source and lead at long last to a unitary destination. But the Mother isn't particularly happy with the introduction of a male-female antinomy or distinction into an essentially spiritual concept: ... where the Mother is". 7 II For the hundreds of sadhaks in the Ashram, for the children in the University Centre, for the tens of thousands of disciples scattered in all the continents, the Mother was another 'mother', the Mother of the deeper self within or the psychic being, and the Ashram was the real 'home'. Faith, aspiration and the cumulative testimony of numerous experiences built up... the same time as though this flame formed a vase, a large vase, opening and receiving all that comes down. 12 Returning to the theme of the talk, the Mother contributed two essays - "Some Experiences of the Body Consciousness" and "New Experiences of the Body Consciousness" - to the Bulletin of April and August 1954 respectively. Surely, the Divine had come down in various incarnations in the past ...
... twelve different languages and the youths performing Swedish rhythmic ball drill. Everything goes to show that this meeting with the Mother and the personal experience of life at the Ashram resulted in a turnabout of Nehru’s opinion. Besides, by then the Mother’s pronouncements concerning India were printed in many publications and were there for all to read. It would be difficult to find elsewhere... education and its aims was, however, the series of articles requested from him by the Mother for publication in the Bulletin of Physical Education and dictated in the last months of his life. In educating the Ashram children, the Mother drew from her lifelong practical experience and still more from her spiritual knowledge and intuition. The basis of this education was her knowledge of the different... all its divinity. Putting the Earth once again at the heart of the universe may, at first sight, seem bizarre. It should therefore be recalled that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were spiritual realists, expressing their experience of spiritual facts; they did not want a return to medievalism, but the realization of the next step in evolution. Science is young and still very much reductionist, ma ...
... is long and difficult with slow development and sparse experiences, most of the work being done in the subliminal behind the veil—until things are ready. When the time comes for the definite opening and removal of the purdah between the inner and the outer man, I think I can promise you that you will find your power of Yoga and Yogic experience at least as unexpectedly complete as you, and others... forward and governs the mind and vital and physical and changes them that this veil of personal ideas, desires and habits can fall—then the direct relation and nearness grows in the being till the whole consciousness is united with the Divine. When you go deep into the psychic, then you begin to feel the Mother near—when the mind or vital is under the influence of the psychic this sense grows in them... what we call the transformation. Page 355 The psychic being in you is open always to the Divine Power, and when it comes in front, your spiritual capacity awakens and you are fully within the protection and can be moved by the Mother's force. The other parts are divided and can be carried away by the wrong movements of the ordinary nature. Especially if you trust your physical mind and ...
... articles. Besides discussing day-to-day political problems Sri Aurobindo interpreted in both these papers the spiritual significance of Indian Nationalism on the basis of his Yogic experiences. Publication of his jail experiences in Bengali in Suprabhat, a Bengali monthly of Calcutta, which later appeared in book form under the title Kara Kahini. ... Kashmir with the Gaekwad. Had a spiritual experience of the vacant Infinite on Shankaracharya Hill. Drew up a scheme under the title 'Bhavani Mandir' on the lines of which was started Bharati Vidyalaya at the Ganganath Ashram, Sri Aurobindo helping K. G. Deshpande in maintaining it. The scheme was for a nation- wide revolutionary preparation for independence through spiritually-equipped workers. Secretly... impressions. Publication of The Mother in which Sri Aurobindo says: 'The One whom we adore as the Mother is the divine Conscious Force' 'who comes', says he in a subsequent letter, 'to bring down the Supramental'. 1930-38 Daily correspondence with sadhakas. Heaps of letters; replies giving them personal guidance in Yoga. The work kept him occupied almost ...
... ideal,—those of the ego. Work should be done for the Mother and not for oneself,—that is how one encourages the growth of the psychic being and overcomes the ego. The test is to do the work given by the Mother without abhiman or insistence on personal choice or prestige,—not getting hurt by anything that touches the pride, amour-propre or personal preference. It is a high and great ideal that is... perfect as the Mother would like it to be, but she knows that the perfection she would like is not yet possible because of circumstances and the imperfection of her instruments; she arranges all for the best according to what is now possible. The worker should do his work in this spirit according to the Mother's arrangements and he should use his work as a means for growing spiritually in devotion, obedience... obedience, self-offering to the Mother, not insisting on himself, his ideas, his feelings and preferences. To be able to do that makes the consciousness ready for inner experience and progress in sadhana. I have tried to explain what the Mother wants and why she wants it. She wants you to do her work quietly, taking all inconveniences, defects or difficulties quietly, and doing your Page 414 ...
... Letters on the Mother Letters on the Mother The Mother and Sri Aurobindo in Dreams, Visions and Experiences The Mother with Letters on the Mother Other Dreams and Experiences Is there any significance in Mother's standing on the right side and your standing on the left in my experience? Yes, she is the executive power and must have the right arm free... mine—for it was an experience not of the physical hand or in the physical body, but in the subtle realms of the being and there the Mother's touch and pressure might well be stronger and heavier than mine. The Mother does not remember the date, but one night about that period she was thinking strongly about her and putting a pressure for the removal of some obstacle to a spiritual opening. It is possible... of death. But the physical body in these vivid experiences feels as if it were itself that was having the experience; the numbness was the effect on it of the pressure. The pressure on the whole body would mean a pressure on the whole inner consciousness, perhaps for some modification or change which would make it more ready for knowledge or experience; the 3rd or 4th rib would indicate a region which ...
... and Other Spiritual Paths The letters in this volume have been selected from the extensive correspondence Sri Aurobindo carried on with his disciples and others between 1927 and 1950. Letters from this corpus appear in seven volumes of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO: Letters on Poetry and Art (Volume 27), Letters on Yoga (Volumes 28-31), The Mother with Letters on the Mother (Volume 32)... other books things too personal were omitted — it seems to me the same rule must hold here — except very sparingly where unavoidable. A number of letters not included in the four books mentioned above were published in the mid and late 1940s in several journals associated with the Ashram: Sri Aurobindo Circle , Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual , The Advent and Mother India . Many letters in... both places. In Letters on Himself and the Ashram , the manuscript version of a given letter has often been used because it contains Sri Aurobindo's remarks on himself or the Mother or members of the Ashram. These personal remarks, as noted above, were usually removed by Sri Aurobindo when he revised the letter for publication as a letter on Yoga. This revised form of the letter has generally been ...
... for your will to be one with the Divine will, concentrate in the heart and be plastic to whatever experience comes, neither forcing nor resisting any spiritual experience. The aspiration for the supramental would be premature. What you have to aspire for is for the psychic change and the spiritual change of the whole being—which is the necessary condition before one can even think of the supramental... the inner experience, the inner Presence. The help you ask will be with you. Let the aspiration grow and open the inner consciousness altogether. One has only to aspire sincerely and keep oneself as open as possible to the Mother's Force. Then whatever difficulties come, they will be overcome—it may take some time, but the result is sure. One has to suppose that [ the Mother's ] force... is Krishna, one does not care what he did or did not do; only to see Him, meet Him, feel the Light, the Presence, the Love, the Ananda is what matters. So it is always for the spiritual aspiration—it is the law of the spiritual life. Don't waste time any longer in these ideas of the mind or in any starts of the vital—blow these clouds away. Keep fixed on the one thing indispensable. The Meaning ...
... become motionless meditative ascetics, then all my spiritual teaching is false and there is no use for supramental realisation or anything else that has not been done in the past. My own impression is that work is an excellent means as a preparation, but the major experiences and realisations are not likely to come in during work. My little experience corroborates me, because whatever drops of Ananda... asked for the রস [rasa] in work. Will it do any harm if I show some parts of my letter which deal with my personal experiences? It is not of much importance whether you can show or not. Just as you feel about it. Later on it may become necessary for you to keep all your personal experiences to yourself. December 11, 1934 What do you think of this [a letter from C]? Isn't it appalling... This continued as long as the meditation lasted. I would like to have your corroboration on the matter. I wonder how these experiences suddenly drop in. I don't know that I opened myself today specially to such an experience! The consciousness from which these experiences come is always there pressing to bring them in. The reason why they don't come in freely or stay is the activity of the mind ...
... believe—but not in the way I want it. They achieved it as a personal siddhi maintained by Yoga-siddhi—not a dharma of the nature. Secondly, the supramental transformation is not the same as the spiritual-mental. It is a change of mind, life and body which the mental or overmental-spiritual cannot achieve. All whom you mention were spirituals, but in different ways. Krishna's mind, for instance, was ... plastic to escape from this self-limitation of the sadhana—what they experience is that there is no end to the realisation, when you get to one peak, you find another beyond it. In order to see more than this one has to get into conscious waking touch with the supramental or at least get a glimpse of it—and that means passing beyond spiritual mind. Page 412 Certainly, the realisation of the... divine realisation is meant the spiritual realisation—the realisation of Self, Bhagavan or Brahman on the mental-spiritual plane or else the overmental plane. That is a thing (at any rate the mental-spiritual) which thousands have done. So it is obviously easier to do than the supramental. Also nobody can have the supramental realisation who has not had the spiritual. It is true that neither can ...
... fitness – not to speak of certain experiences in the past which were clear proof of the capacity for what can be called occult spiritual experience. These things of themselves would in time bring about the necessary growth of the inner consciousness behind the surface which makes for successful concentration and meditation and renders all kinds of inner experience possible. Before coming... me about Janak Kumari’s experiences before saying anything further about her entry into the field of Yoga. About the blue flag, I presume you mean the flag with the white lotus. If so, it is the Mother’s flag, for the white lotus is her symbol as the red lotus is mine. The blue of the flag is meant to be the colour of Krishna and so represents the spiritual or Divine Consciousness which... peace. In my Yoga also I found myself moved to include both worlds in my purview, the spiritual and the material, and to try to establish the Divine Consciousness and the Divine Power in men’s hearts and in earthly life, not for a personal salvation only but for a life divine here. This seems to me as spiritual an aim as any and the fact of this life taking up earthly pursuits and earthly things ...
... think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it; for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in ... He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind. These are experiences lived by Him, realities... and much more yet. It is a real experience — reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possesses, He has revealed, — as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted ...
... possible in this world of division, the divine Centre which is to manifest. ”¹ Emanating from her spiritual vision and experience, the Mother's message blends with the divine assurance in two revealing Prayers which breathe infinite hope for mankind. "How present Thou art amongst us, O beloved Mother ! It seems as if Thou wouldst assure us of Thy complete support and show us that the Will which... In the Mother's Light Manifestation Contemplation and Action THE combination of Mary and Martha, of contemplation and devoted action, has been held to be the most progressive and catholic ideal of spiritual life. Contemplation by the exclusion of action is a creed narrow in its outlook, and, more often than not, results in a disastrous neglect of the... universal love and peace and purity which grow in the inner being as a result of spiritual progress. This is the ideal most widely accepted in all progressive forms of spiritual culture—God within and His service without, or the freedom of the soul within and its healing and delivering touch without. This ideal of spiritual service (as it is called,) of the cult of consecrated and compassionate action ...
... up from our position on material Mother Earth towards the “heavens” with their hierarchical regions of invisible beings, and normally lacking any conscious connection with those higher worlds, we feel there is a gap between the two realms, between the higher and lower hemispheres of global existence. The very concrete experience of this gap is at the basis of spiritual paths like Buddhism and Advaita... countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and that hope, – and our aim has been [in the Arya ] to search for the spiritual, religious and other truth which can enlighten and guide the race in this movement and endeavour. The spiritual experience and the general truths on which such an attempt could be based , were already present to us, otherwise we should have had no right to... The principal aim of both kinds of spiritual or religious endeavour, in both East and West, consists in escaping as quickly as possible from the absurd ordeal of earthly embodiment into the promised (but not proven) relief of a hereafter. As we will see further on, the thought of Sri Aurobindo and Mirra, based on their extensively tested spiritual experience, goes radically against such long e ...
... Aurobindo, he does not reject Ramana Maharshi as a false guide: the latter has caught hold of spiritual Reality - but in one aspect out of many, an aspect that cannot be overlooked or left unseized but is not the sole one. If it were the sole one, a devotee like Chaitanya who is all absorbed in a Personal Active Deity would be a hallucinated fool. Even Buddha would be reckoned as misguided since... influenced me, but I could not have properly absorbed their influence without my approaching him primarily for spiritual rather than intellectual aid - a direct touch of his own Yogic state rather than an indirect touch through a mental exposition or arrangement of his experience. The first thing, therefore, to do if you are mystically inclined and yet have misgivings about the Divine's... since, though he too was the apostle of a Supreme Silence and Impersonality, he did not call it the Self but named it Non-Being or Nirvana. The large variety of spiritual experience creates the presumption not, as sceptics suppose, that here is a field of hopeless contradiction and therefore purely subjective individual illusion but that here is some Reality which has a thousand faces and ...
... (which does not seem to be the case here) he can be Page 685 told general things about the Yoga (not anything personal to the sadhaks or to Sri Aurobindo or the Mother). 19 November 1931 It is not very advisable to discuss either myself or the Asram or spiritual things with hostile minds or unbelievers. These discussions usually bring on the sadhak a stress of the opposing atmosphere... glanced over your monster. He will have to be beheaded and his tail cut off. Beheaded because Mother has put a prohibition on publication of her name and what she has written. The Conversations are for private circulation, the Prayers only for disciples and those who are actively interested in spiritual experience. This rule has been hammered into Y and others; you also must fix it in your cerebellum... disposal of the Mother, and they do not spend anything of it for other purposes except with the sanction previously given by her. But as you are not a permanent member, this rule does not apply to you, and the Mother cannot undertake to direct you as to the persons and the purposes to which you should give or refuse financial assistance. As a rule we never interfere in the personal lives or affairs ...
... Sweet Mother, you have said: "Give up all personal seeking for comfort, satisfaction, enjoyment or happiness. Be only a burning fire for progress, take whatever comes to you as an aid to your progress and immediately make whatever progress is required." Yes, that's quite simple! It is very clear! Yes, but if I want to progress in sports, for instance, then that would be a personal progress... February February Questions and Answers (1954) 17 February 1954 This talk is based upon Mother's essay " Psychic Education and Spiritual Education ". Once the being has entered into contact with the psychic, why does the psychic again hide itself? It is not the psychic that hides itself, it is the being which returns to its ordinary con... must try to enter into contact, to concentrate upon it, live it, live that reality, and whatever the name you give it is not at all important once you have the experience. The experience alone counts. And when people associate the experience with a particular expression—and in so narrow a Page 25 way, so closed up in itself that apart from this formula one can find nothing—that is an inferiority ...
... shapely subconscious dreams that disturb and depress and fatigue us. An intensive purification of the lower nature in the light of our experiences in sleep as well as in the waking hours of the day will culminate in a thorough catharsis of the subconscient—sustained personal effort led and progressively replaced by the Force of the Divine alone can accomplish this difficult work—and the subconscient dreams... which imperil our spiritual progress and keep us chained to ignorance and suffering. But the most effective means of cultivating the fields of sleep, as, indeed, of achieving any abiding perfection in life, is a complete, confident and dynamic surrender to the Grace of the Divine. Here, as everywhere, it is always the Grace that finally conquers and triumphs, our personal effort, sincerely... ¹ Words of Long Ago by The Mother, Page 188 impurity. It is only in such subconscious dreams that he can discover his real nature,—not certainly the essential, spiritual nature into which he has to grow, but the actual,, dynamic nature which dominates and dictates most of his characteristic life-movements. "You will easily understand", says the Mother, "that, rather than let them ...
... is of capital importance at this stage is a sincere and sustained personal effort to surrender the whole nature to the Mother's Force, so that the Force can enter into the nature and effect the purification in its own infallible way. The sooner the lead in the work of purification is transferred from the sâdhaka's mind to the .Mother's Force, the better for the sâdhanâ. But the will of the sâdhaka, ... progresses and tends to become integral, the personal effort of the sâdhaka gives place to a direct action of the Mother's higher Force. Undisturbed by the mental preferences and vital self-will of the sâdhaka, the Force deals freely with the impurities and follows its own inscrutable way of swift and radical purification, the sâdhaka's will in tune with the Mother's. The detached, witnessing poise of the... and resistances. Besides, with the progress of the Yoga and an increasing action of the Mother's Force, there takes place a descent of the higher Light, and Power and Peace and Purity, which begin to effect a radical change in the parts of our nature and sublimate them into Page 209 their spiritual equivalents. We shall have to consider some of the important details of this change in ...
... our personal experience that — "God is our wise and perfect friend, because he knows when to smite and when to fondle, when to slay us no less than when to save and to succour.... There must be faith in the love and wisdom of God,... working out all for our good even when it is apparently veiled in evil." (Sri Aurobindo, 1984 Ashram Diary, July 3 and August 22) The second spiritual virtue... pressure upon her. Hence the sadhaka will have to wage his spiritual warfare for a long period of time. He will have to face and tackle many a difficult situation. Many types of obstacles, inner and outer, will block the path of his progress; many a serious test he will have to go through. What is more, it is not his Page 2 own personal nature alone which will try to resist him with its... the personal ego but refer everything to the Divine's all-wise all-loving Will. Page 8 (6) Right Attitude at All Times Much of the progress in sadhana, if it is to be effected with the least disturbance to hamper it, depends on whether the sadhaka can take and maintain the right attitude under all circmstances, inner and outer, facing him on the Path. The Mother has pointed ...
... stronger in you. So you must both use your will aided by the Mother's force to get rid of these things, and go on with your inner psychic experiences—it is by the two together that all will be done. The persistence or the obstinate return of the old Adam is a common experience: it is only when there is a sufficient mass of experience and a certain progression of consciousness in the higher parts... The Place of Experiences in the Practice of Yoga The Place of Experiences in the Practice of Yoga The Nature and Value of Experiences Letters on Yoga - III Chapter III Inner Experience and Outer Life Subjective Experience and the Objective Existence Experiences on the mental and vital and subtle physical planes or thought formations and vital formations... that we may suppose the working of the Force is not altogether in vain, as this experience is a very big affair and is supposed to be, if stabilised, the summit of the old Yogas. For us it is only a beginning of spiritual transformation. I have said this though it is personal so that you may understand that outside defects and obstacles in the nature or the appearance of unyogicness does not necessarily ...
... despair—that is their favourite weapon—because it is losing its former field of desires and has not yet in any continuity something that would replace it, the assured continuous psychic or spiritual condition or experience. To prevent that is the whole effort of these Forces. So they create these upheavals and the vital admits them because of its old habit of response to the lower Forces. At the same time... constant; you are likely to be still more tired and depressed than you were. And it will be harder for you to bear because the personal position will entirely be changed. You will have no special place, no authority delegated, no work entrusted to you; you will not be near the Mother but at a distance among the others. The Asuric nature in you which had become an intolerable hindrance to the work and dangerous... succeeded; others have cast it from them and have been able to liberate the light of their soul; open in that light to the nearness and constant presence of the Mother, feel Page 784 her working in them and move forward in a constant spiritual progress. Some are still struggling, but in spite of the bitterness of the struggle have been able to keep faithfully to the divine call that brought them ...
... The meetings with Amal set in motion a deepening for me of my innermost being and my own personal sadhana. I came away with the feeling of intense joy and gratitude for having been graced to know of his experiences with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, which brought me ever closer to them in this very personal and intimate sharing. From The Secret Splendour: Collected Poems of K.D. Sethna (Amal... return to Pondicherry. Mother India was launched in 1949 and he continued to edit the magazine from Bombay. He and Sehra eventually returned to the Ashram on February 12, 1954 and Sehra passed away on April 24, 1980. Following are some of the questions I put to Amal and his answers: Would you describe your first darshan with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? What experiences did you have with them... the level from which Sri Aurobindo wrote his spiritual poetry. Sri Aurobindo said my questions to him were based on some understanding of the kind of poetry he wrote and the plane from which He did so. Whereas, my friend’s comments were lacking in sympathetic understanding. Savitri struck me as opening up an entirely new world not only of experiences but of literary expression. It was a great help ...
... naturally lead to the Truth we seek, the total Truth. But with the two experiences I have had, the experience of the outer life (with universalization, impersonalization—all the yogic experiences you can have in a material body) and the experience of total and perfect union with the Origin... now that I've had those two experiences and something has happened—something I can't yet describe—I know that... knowledge believed in it as an absolute truth, thus closing the door to the other approach. In this respect it is fatal. From my own experience, though, I could say to all those who believe EXCLUSIVELY in the spiritual approach, the approach through inner experience, that this—at least if it's exclusive—is equally fatal. For it reveals to them ONE aspect, ONE truth of the Whole—but not THE Whole. The... questions on this? I would like to ask you in what way your vision has changed since the experience of April 13 —what exactly is the difference? I repeat. For a very long time it had seemed to me that a perfect union Page 158 between the scientific approach pushed to its extreme and the spiritual approach pushed to its extreme, to its utmost realization, a merging of the two would ...
... tendency to be precious and not simple enough". But can mystical and spiritual poetry that is deeply dyed in the unknown be ever simple? No matter how bare and straightforward the style and ordinary and current the words, will not a certain lack of simplicity result from the very nature of the experience embodied - an experience which is a play of figures and values remote from ordinary vision, rare... Sense and emotion do not die in it, vista and vision are not lost in it: the Divine is not a remote inanity, the Divine is both personal and impersonal, coming to us in various ways, meeting us as the indefinable yet most living Vast at one time and at another as a personal centre of that vastness, the Lord, the Lover, the Avatar, the Guru. Mysticism is not "morbid" or "neurotic" or "erotic" if... of individual words or phrases as in grasping in a living manner the insight that is uttered. The difficulty grows when imaged spiritual poetry is written - and spiritual poetry has to be imaged and symbolic if the veiled opulence of mystical realisation is to be caught in speech. To suit that opulence and be faithful to the atmosphere and light and contents of the strange inner "planes" a particular ...
... afraid it is not quite right to say that "a master of spiritual experience, with a consummate knowledge of the English language (Sri Aurobindo was educated from his seventh to his twenty-first year in England), is not likely to pen feverishly feeble inanities and pass them off as mysticism". Spiritual experience means nothing (like all other experience) unless it can be precisely communicated to a person... started to say: 'It's all very well for you to puncture a specific passage, especially a passage dealing with spiritual vision and realisation. Don't you see that states of ecstasy and beatitude are hardest to communicate to a person who has not passed through identical spiritual experiences?'" The answer he provides is no more than that a poem's "rhythm, linguistic precision and incantation" must be... confusion and resolution in Ash-Wednesday are not spiritual in the true sense and they are more misty than mystic. Not that a state of mind is not infused into them but they give us neither the concreteness nor the intensity of spiritual vision and mystic experience. Mr. Lal's ignorance of this fact proves that he has no clear idea of spiritual poetry. St. John of the Cross is a real mystic ...
... process of its knowledge. In all planes the essential experience of Sachchidananda, pure Existence, Consciousness, Bliss is the same and Mind is often contented with it as the sole Truth and dismisses all else as part of the grand Illusion, but there is also a dynamic experience of the Divine or of Existence (e.g. as One and Many, Personal and Impersonal, the Infinite and Finite etc.) which is essential... knowledge. The dynamic experience is not the same in the lower planes as in the higher, in the intermediate spiritual planes and in the Supramental. In these the oppositions Page 134 can only be put together and harmonised, in the Supermind they fuse together and are inseparably one; that makes an enormous difference. The universe is dynamism, movement—the essential experience of Sachchidananda... two classes of Sachchidananda, for Sachchidananda is the same always—but the knowledge of Sachchidananda and the universe differs according to the degree of the consciousness which has the experience. The personal realisation of the Divine may be sometimes with Form, sometimes without Form. Without Form, it is the Presence of the living Divine Person, felt in everything. With Form, it comes with the ...
... attraction is so strong that it is difficult to draw back from the external to the spiritual delight and the spiritual significance. A great poet may do it sometimes, because the constant instinct of his genius is to look beyond the surface and the moment to that which is universal and eternal behind the personal experience and the occasion is only for him an excuse for its utterance. The drama of action... the spirit of existence Page 258 regards itself and its creations. This deeper spiritual feeling, this Ananda is the fountain of poetic delight and beauty. It springs from a supreme essence of experience, a supreme aesthesis which is in its own nature spiritual, impersonal, independent of the personal reactions and passions of the mind, and that is why the poet is able to transmute pain and... the abiding spiritual experience. The mental and vital interest, pleasure, pain of thought, life, action is not the source of poetic delight and beauty and can be turned into that deeper thing only when they have sunk into the soul and been transmuted in the soul's radiant memory into spiritual experience,—that perhaps was what the Greeks meant when they made Mnemosyne the eternal mother of the muses; ...
... just as an ascent induces a delivering descent. But this is not, according to the Mother, a very high, let alone the ideal state. In it the divine Will can manifest itself but intermittently and-with a modified force. For a glimpse of the ideal state, as the Mother envisages it here, and as many of her later experiences fully illustrate, and the other two inferior states from which a God-seeker may... as a medium of ethico-spiritual self-expression. Through it one pours out into the; * Based on Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, Page 280 world something of the moral purity, freedom, power, love and compassion which grow in the being as a result of accumulating spiritual realizations. This is a derivative growth or a reflex of the spiritual progress, and not a direct... of innumerable experiences of every kind and every instant. O Supreme Master, who shinest in my being and each thing, let Thy Light be manifest and the reign of Thy Peace come for all.” Three momentous truths of far-reaching consequence emerge from this Prayer which contains the whole gospel of Yogic action, (1) Contemplation, supreme Concentration or Union —the Mother uses these terms ...
... becomes still more dangerous when you emphasise minor facts and set aside or belittle the meaning of the main ones. In this case the main facts are (1) that the Mother has loved music all her life and found it a key to spiritual experience, (2) that she has given all encouragement to your music in special and to the music of others also. She has also made clear the relation of Art and Beauty with Yoga... as a work done for the Mother. 18 January 1936 You have painting and music in you and if you apply yourself they will develop in you. Only it is best to do it as an instrument of the Mother and as an offering to her, and not allow any personal desire for fame or appreciation by others or any personal pride to be the motives—for it is that that gives trouble. All work done as an offering is a... 10 September 1935 If Sahana gives up music,—I presume it is only a temporary step—I suppose it must be for a reason personal to her sadhana. There is no incompatibility in principle between music and sadhana. 28 June 1931 You can learn the song and sing—do it as Mother's work with out desire, such as even the wish to sing before her—but simply as something to be done for her service. Only ...
... them. That's all?... Still... Sweet Mother, what is our universal being? Our universal being?... What it is?... I don't understand your Page 401 question very well. What is it? "For our entire nature and its environment, all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth..." Our universal self is our... you have not entered totally into the Truth, and only one part of yourself has had the experience and the others don't yet have it; and then you don't remain in this part of yourself which had the experience and begin to live in other parts which do not have it yet; and all these parts must have this experience one after another. This is the reply to my question, this is what you should have told... because we are not made of a single piece and the piece which had the experience is not the only one in us and is not always there, it is replaced by all kinds of other pieces which have not yet had the experience and must have it. That's why. But truly speaking, it is not inevitable. Because even if the part which had the experience and knows is no longer right in front and master of the consciousness ...
... are no easy reading matter. The Record of Yoga, as these writings have been named, ‘provides a first-hand account of the day-to-day growth of the spiritual faculties of an advanced yogi.’ 8 These experiences would lead him to his great spiritual discoveries, which afterwards he found confirmed in the Vedas and the Upanishads , and which would change the destiny of the world. What had started... Aurobindo later confided to some of his disciples. Swami Vivekananda, that pillar of strength and the spiritual crown-prince of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, had died in 1902, six years earlier. However, Aurobindo’s highest mentors, his true and abiding instructors, were Sri Krishna and, ultimately, the Great Mother. Once put upon the path with the help of Lele, his intense and unusually fast development led... had any part in his own spiritual unfolding. Higher powers in him had taken up the reins of his destiny; out of Aurobindo A. Ghose was growing Sri Aurobindo. After his arrival in Pondicherry, Sri Krishna sketched out for him the lines of his further growth, ‘the map of my spiritual progress’. Between 1912 and 1920 Sri Aurobindo kept a detailed diary of his sadhana (spiritual discipline). He noted ...
... there was no positive religious or spiritual element in the education he received in England. "The only personal contact with Christianity (that of Nonconformist England) was of a nature to repel rather than attract. The education received was mainly classical and had a purely intellectual and aesthetic influence; it did not stimulate any interest in spiritual life. My attention was not drawn to the... Bombay. He began to get the experience of' the Self. "A vast calm descended upon him at the moment when he stepped first on Indian soil after his long absence, in fact with his first step on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay (this calm surrounded him and remained for long months afterwards)." Sri Aurobindo explained, "I did not know, of course, that it was an experience. It was a sense of calm and vastness... to such a cutting edge that soon it Page 231 would start smiting the Moderates and the foreign masters with 'an edge surpassing swords'! Sri Aurobindo's first turn towards spiritual seeking came in England in the last year of his stay there. The Bible was the only scripture with which he had been acquainted in his childhood. The narrowness and intolerance of Christianity repelled ...
... qualities though otherwise possessed of omnipotence and omniscience; it answers to the Indian special conceptions of Shiva or Vishnu or Brahma or of the Divine Mother of all, Durga or Kali. Each religion really erects a different personal Deity according to its own heart and thought to adore and serve. The fierce and inexorable God of Calvin is a different being from the sweet and loving God of St. Francis... , the greater becomes its sense of absolute force and freedom. The distinction between the Personal and the Impersonal is substantially the same as the Indian distinction, but the associations of the English words carry within them a certain limitation which is foreign to Indian thought. The personal God of the European religions is a Person in the human sense of the word, limited by His qualities... reason that the normal European mind finds it so difficult to understand Indian religion as distinct from Vedantic or Sankhya philosophy, because it cannot easily conceive of a personal God with infinite qualities, a personal God who is not a Person, but the sole real Person and the source of all personality. Yet that is the only valid and complete truth of the divine Personality. The place of the ...
... instead of an experience." (The Mother, Bulletin, Vol. XIV, No. 3, pp. 43-45) Yes, they [all the states of higher realisation] can be attained even in full activity. Trance is not essential. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 744) A thoroughgoing psychological self-investigation far transcending its present artificial bounds, an occult-spiritual exploration... to remain awake, beyond a certain line, in the really higher states of realisation where the heightened and intensified spiritual experiences are in the nature of things sought. This almost absolute incompatibility of our waking mentality with the highest ranges of spiritual consciousness is strikingly brought out in the following very interesting account of Sri Ramakrishna's repeated failures... sooner than I contemplate for a moment to speak of the visions and experiences there, the mind immediately shoots upwards and no reporting becomes any more possible!' "Oh, innumerable are the occasions when the Thakur sought to exercise the utmost control over himself so that he could report to us about the types of experiences that one has when the mind transcends the throat-centre but each ...
... eternal, illimitable ... The defense is somewhat futile, since as Sri Aurobindo himself points out in a letter to Sethna, these epithets or nouns refer to things real and concrete to the spiritual sense and experience, but seem like dated romantic poetisms to those unvisited by the touch of the Spirit.Gokak concludes his essay with a very illuminating analysis ofstylistic variety in Savitri- with... es of Savitri I (A Review) A Review "All the rest, these are preparations, but Savitri, it is the message," the Mother is reported to have said about Savitri . She is also quoted as having said, "To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine." Little wonder then that such a varied enterprise seems... have called the contexts of Savitri . And I would add-a firm grounding in the theoretical and practical aspects of Sri Aurobindo's spiritual darshana , his philosophy and yoga and a knowledge of the facts of Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's lives, so as to detect the pointers to the inner events of those lives "not lived on the surface for men to see." In this respect, it is welcome ...
... to in his sadhana is to maintain an attitude of perfect calm and equanimity under all circumstances. The Mother was once asked: "Is there any sign which indicates that one is ready for the path, especially if one has no spiritual teacher?" This is Page 248 how the Mother answered this very important question: "Yes, the most important indication is a perfect equality of sou... following recommendatory words of Sri Aurobindo: "The very first necessity for spiritual perfection is a perfect equality." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 671) "Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness..." (Letters on Yoga, p. 661) Lord Krishna, the great proponent of spiritual synthesis, went so far as to define 'Yoga' as the 'attainment of equality', 'samatvam... discerning mind , to the Self, - not the philosopher's intelligent self, but the divine sage's spiritual self which is beyond the three Gunas, All must be consummated by a divine birth into the higher spiritual nature." (Essays on the Gita, p. 189) Yes, "a divine birth into the higher spiritual nature" is indeed the apposite solution. But that cannot be achieved soon. The sadhaka has to start ...
... privileged — to introduce. As editor of the fortnightly review, Mother India, I had the delight of publishing it for the first time in serial form. I am also a friend of the author: I have known him for the last twenty three years and have valued his friendship from not only the personal standpoint but also the literary and the spiritual. Next, our friendship has resulted in a special relation on my... which, though borne towards the spiritual life by an incalculable surge from beyond the normal self, carried a habit of controversy into even the quiet atmosphere of an Ashram of Yoga. His intellect was indeed keyed to a different note of controversy than was mine: I was argumentative about problems like unity and multiplicity, free-will and determinism, the personal God and the impersonal Absolute... his help. Forgiveness and forbearance without end in the midst of a Page xviii ceaseless holding up of the Ideal, genuine personal respect for the frequently recalcitrant disciple, patient intellectual explanation to him again and again of spiritual motives and truths, assurance of a steady unconditional love for him at all moments and, throughout, a sustaining insight into his groping ...
... psychic opens it shows at every step what is to be done. At the later stage of the conversation Mother came and soon after, we all lapsed into meditation with the Mother . After her departure at about 7 P.M. Sri Aurobindo asked X. "What is the idea behind your question, something personal or a general question?" Disciple : I meant, for instance, how to see good in every body, how... That presence can change the nature. I speak of three transformations : 1) Psychic, 2) Spiritual and 3) Supramental. Psychic transformation many had; spiritual is the realization of the Self, the Infinite above, with its dynamic side of peace, knowledge, ananda etc. That transformation is spiritual transformation and above that is the Supramental transformation. It is Truth-consciousness working... have a psychic good-will and in oneself reject all vital and mental impulses, and on that basis proceed towards the realization. The idea must pass into experience. Even then, it is easy in the static aspect, but when it comes to the dynamic experience it becomes difficult. For example, when one finds a man behaving like a brute it is very difficult to see God in him unless one separates him from outer ...
... cutting life in two—into small things and big things, the sacred and the profane.... "What!" say the people who profess to follow a spiritual life, "how can you make such little things, such insignificant things the object of spiritual experience?" And yet this is an experience that becomes more and more concrete and real, even materially; it's not that there are "some things" where the Lord is and "some... of view than to be moral from the spiritual point of view. To be moral from the social viewpoint one has only to pay good attention to do nothing which is not approved of by others; this may be somewhat difficult, but still it is not impossible; and one may be, as I said, a monument of insincerity and impurity while doing this; whereas to be pure from the spiritual point of view means a vigilance, a... perfect and most remarkable—to the true spiritual life without having realised this ideal of moral perfection for a certain period of time, however brief it may be. Many people try to take a short-cut and want to assert their inner freedom before having overcome all the weaknesses of the outer nature; they are in great danger of deluding themselves. The true spiritual life, complete freedom, is something ...
... Mahabharata. Aswapati's spiritual peregrination, described at considerable length in Book II (The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds), has a similar scheme, and can almost be detached from the rest of Savitri, though of course it is also integral to the total scheme of the epic. The occult-spiritual odyssey of Aswapati ends in the fourth canto of Book III (The Book of the Divine Mother), where he has the... becoming That. There are thus two spiritual peregrinations in Savitri, the father's and the daughter's, and they are also a unity in difference. Yet, although important, they are only the background, for in the foreground is played the drama of Savitri and Satyavan, which is profoundly moving in the original legend, but here acquires a further spiritual dimension. Savitri is really the incarnation in human... Savitri —taken up for revision so often before but not brought to the actual point of publication—a wholly new orientation, to turn the 'legend' also into a 'symbol', in the light of his Yogic experiences, his newly formulated philosophy of the Life Page 413 Divine, and also his newly evolved theory and practice of 'overhead' aesthesis. The role of Beatrice in the Commedia ...
... Very. Whatever little experience I have of sadhana through works, makes me incline to the view that work as sadhana is the most difficult thing. Why argue from your personal experience great or little and turn it into a generalisation? A great many people (the majority perhaps) find it the easiest of all. In poetry, though I may be unlucky as regards experiences, while I write, I try to... . Please ask Mother to guide me. Mother can't say. Her experience is that strong medicines are not good for these skin things—toilet products are more effective; but this is only a general observation. I myself cured mine by spiritual force and stingingly hot water, but I don't know if it would work for others. January 17, 1936 If you have cured yourself by spiritual force and hot... of course overmind or supermind, but some sense of the cosmic Force of the Mother behind the action of the personal being. He feels some dynamic force working in him. He feels that he hasn't clung to the Divine, the Divine has clutched him. That is very often felt. People outside feel all these great experiences, while we feel a vacuum. Glory to God! Lots of people feel that outside ...
... demands. But once the psychic opens, it shows at every step what is to be done. Soon after the Mother came in and all of us sat in meditation with her. On her departure about 7:00 p.m. Sri Aurobindo started the talk again. SRI AUROBINDO: What's the idea behind your question? Is it something personal or general? DR. BECHARLAL: I meant, for instance, how to see God in everybody, how to love all... careful to avoid sex impurities. There was a sadhak who, in spite of his occasional outburst of violence, was a very nice and affectionate man. But he used to get his psychic experiences mixed up with the sex impulse, and the experiences were spoiled. The spoiling happens because at times one gives a semi justification to the sex impulse, saying that after all it does not matter very much. But sex is absolutely... inner realisation. What you realise you project outwards into your nature. I speak of three transformations—the psychic, the spiritual and the supramental. Many have had the psychic: there were the Christian saints who spoke of God's presence in their hearts. The spiritual transformation implies the realisation of the Self, the Infinite above, with the dynamic no less than the static side of its peace ...
... d. This is what Sri Aurobindo has spoken of. 29 October 1960 Sweet Mother, Often it is possible to live moments of supreme ecstasy because one is in contact with one's Personal Divine. How to approach the Transcendent Divine? It is utterly certain that if you were truly in contact with "your personal divine", you would know perfectly well "how to approach the Transcendent Divine"... Sweet Mother, Why isn't it possible to live always on the same height of consciousness? Sometimes I fall despite every effort and aspiration. Sri Aurobindo speaks of a "period of assimilation". What is it, Mother? It is because an individual is not made up all of one piece, but of many different entities which are sometimes even contrary to one another: some want the spiritual life, others... it. Talk little, remain quiet and concentrated, and speak only when it is indispensable. 1 June 1960 Sweet Mother, You have asked the teachers "to think with ideas instead of with words". 4 You have also said that later on you will ask them to think with experiences. Will you throw some light on these three ways of thinking? Our house has a very high tower; at the very top of ...
... desirous of establishing personal contact with him at Pondicherry". 9 Again, writing to Motilal Roy in April 1914, Sri Aurobindo said: Richard is not only a personal friend of mine and a brother in the Yoga, but he wishes like myself, and in his own way works for a general renovation of the world by which the present European civilisatio!1 shall be replaced by a spiritual civilisation .... He... wide spectrum, from French-Indian politics to the probable future of mankind, and Sri Aurobindo learnt about Mirra, of her small group of seekers who met weekly in her room, of her occult and spiritual experiences, and of her dedicated ministry in the service of the Future. It was believed, we have said, that Mirra had given Richard several questions to be solved, including the significance of the symbol... meetings was added in the later months of 1910, when Paul Richard returned after meeting Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry. What he told her about Sri Aurobindo - about the great range of his spiritual experiences and realisations, and his dynamic future oriented world-view - intensified Mirra's aspirations and made her re double her efforts to formulate an integral view and work towards an integral ...
... behind and from above; there is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in the spiritual consciousness, though all do not care to possess or, possessing, to use it, and this power is greater than any other and more effective.' He further clarifies that 'it was this force that he used ... at first only in a limited field of personal work, but afterwards in a constant... Aurobindo reserved a big part of his day for what he called his personal work of concentration. After his morning ablutions, he would go through the newspapers and then the Mother would come for a while to discuss things of importance. After this, there would be a long period which he passed in complete silence. Nobody except the Mother had any idea what he was occupied with. This period was perhaps... remember. Now that the country has achieved some outer progress, the need for a corresponding inner progress, moral and spiritual, is all the greater. On February 21, 1949, the Mother's 71st birthday, two new journals were started. A cultural and semi-political fortnightly, Mother India, commenced publication from Bombay. It was edited by K.D. Sethna (Amal Kiran), a close disciple of Sri Aurobindo ...
... infinite, the oneness (that is, they lose their personal consciousness, they have no longer any personal consciousness, they exist no longer as a personal consciousness), they prefer that, rather than having a personal consciousness which gives itself to the Divine and becomes by this very fact consciously and personally immortal. They like dissolution and personal disappearance better than conversion, that... seeing. "Each time that we have made a decisive step in our spiritual progress, the invisible enemies of the the Divine always try to have their revenge and when they cannot injure the soul they strike the body, but all their efforts are in vain and will finally be defeated, for the Divine Grace is with us. " Words of the Mother, CWM Vol. 15, p. 22 What are these "invisible enemies of... becomes a child's story. But these things must be seen in their own domain, which is a spiritual domain and not a material one. Things do not happen as they would here. But still, yes! What happens here is symbolically the same thing, in the sense that the child who is born is nothing else but a little piece of his mother, even materially, altogether materially, for during almost...completely during a ...
... be a being of power, so that he may be able to defend himself.” It’s that, it’s that experience. It came back as an experience. And it’s because it came back as an experience that I remembered having said it.’ Not only do these passages give us an interesting example of the Mother’s attitude towards her experiences, they also announce the totally novel and extremely important presence of a Consciousness... 1972. Taking into consideration the logical sequence of the development of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s avataric yoga, the graduality of the perception of the presence of the new being within her, its similarity with Rijuta’s mature psychic and the final confirmation of the personal experience in the Mother, there can be no reason to doubt this. The caterpillar nature in the human beings looked forward... More and more cells of her body were being spiritualized, even divinized. It was around this time that the Mother stated that the same spiritual experiences and realizations which all the Masters until then had had vitally or mentally, could now be had in the cells themselves, in the Matter of the cells! This staggers the imagination. ‘… The Mental and the Vital: gone! I don’t know if you are able ...
... of the intellect but of spiritual realizarions. Sankhya views Existence as made up of two principles— Purusha (Soul or Conscious Being) and Prakriti (Nature). Explaining these two principles of existence in terms of yogic experience, Sri Aurobindo states: When we come to look in at our selves instead of out at the world and begin to analyze our subjective experience, we find that there are... and refuses the wrong movements of the ordinary consciousness. This requires much Tapasya, personal effort, says Sri Aurobindo. These points will be dealt with further in the next chapter. Page 76 × The Mother, Questions and Answers, CWM,vol.3,p.184. ... automatic but free and effective; we can choose what she shall do or not do in us, or we can stand back altogether from her works and withdraw easily into the Self s spiritual silence, or we can reject her present formations and rise to a spiritual level of existence and from there recreate our existence. The Purusha can cease to be subject, anīśa 12 and become lord of its nature, iśvara. 13 ...
... it—details. And I had it then [on December 5, 1950].¹ Elaborating upon this experience, when asked if she did not have experience of the Supreme before Sri Aurobindo's departure Mother said: Spiritually, you have that experience as soon as you come into contact with the Divine within; mentally, you have the experience as soon as the mind is purified; vitally, you have it as soon as you get out... of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Speaking of this poem, Mother has said: This analogy between the ancient form of spiritual revelation and Savitri, this blossoming into poetry of his prophetic revelation is... what could be called the most exceptional part of his work. And what is remarkable (I saw him do it) is that he changed Savitri he went along changing it as his experience changed... was on December 9, after the Light had begun to withdraw, that the body was laid in a rosewood casket and placed in the Ashram courtyard. Years later, Mother described her experience of that moment: I'd already had all my experiences, but with Sri Aurobindo, for the thirty years I lived with him (a little more than thirty years), I lived in an absolute, an absolute of security—a sense of ...
... descent of the full spiritual calm Page 779 and peace from above—an opening of the consciousness into wideness. Till it comes, keep yourself firm and do not allow these attacks to shake your basis. They [ hostile attacks on the outer being ] are felt as suggestions, or a touch on the surface mind, vital, physical or as movements in the atmosphere (the personal or the general environmental... and less egoistic spirit. This Yoga is a spiritual battle; its very attempt raises all sorts of adverse forces and one must be ready to face difficulties, sufferings, reverses of all sorts in a calm unflinching spirit. The difficulties that come are ordeals and tests and if one meets them in the right spirit, one comes out stronger and spiritually purer and greater. No misfortune can come... adverse forces to activity, they want to diminish its effect as much as possible. When you get a decisive experience of this kind, you should remain concentrated and assimilate it—avoiding self-dispersion and all externalising of the consciousness. It is very often after a good experience or a decisive progress that the beings of the vital world try to attack and threaten. Page 770 ...
... In addition The Story of a Soul contains extracts from my spiritual diaries, in which day-to-day experiences, aspirations, prayers, visions and dreams are recorded. The Mother encouraged me to write these diaries, in books which she sent me each year with her blessings. The extracts given here were seen, corrected and blessed by the Mother. In them, my constant turning to her for help and guidance... Work. When the first version of The Story of a Soul was read out to the Mother on October 5, 1972 by her son Monsieur Andre, she wrote and sent to me through him a message which conveys everything. This is the interesting story of how a being discovers the Divine Life. Nolini Kanta Gupta, the Mother's personal secretary went through the script and spontaneously wrote of it: ... as little children? In my narrative it will be observed how the characters I have encountered during my life were only instruments of various forces that came to help or hinder my progress. No personal significance needs to be attached to them, as most human beings are unconscious instruments of World-Forces. It must also be remembered that things said at one time about people—however true they ...
... that other person. The Mother has discussed this point in sufficient detail and given some striking examples derived from her own personal experiences. The case of the French musical composer, Berlioz, and the celebrated German musician, Beethoven, falls in this category. Readers will come to know many interesting things if they go through the records of the Mother's conversation of September 16... y "produce" subjective heavens and hells in the other worlds, all patterned on their own wishes and hopes and fears and other previously established personal saṅskāras. These heavens or hells have, of course, no ojective reality, but the experiences the disembodied being actually undergoes there after death are very very "concrete" and tangible for his consciousness. We have something more to say... Both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have discussed this issue in great Page 94 detail, A very brief summary of their observations in this regard is given below: In the vital and the subtle-physical worlds on the other side of our physical realm, there are regions of happy and pleasant experiences but there are regions too which offer very unpleasant and painful experiences to the ...
... goal. The Mother The spirit in which one does It is not what you do but the spirit in which you do it that is important for the integral Yoga. The Mother Any work Any work can be done as a field for the practice of the spirit of the Gita. Sri Aurobindo Damp logs Of course, there is a kind of work which is done only for purely pecuniary and personal reasons, like... will be beyond all expectations. The Mother Bigness and smallness Of course the idea of bigness and smallness is quite foreign to the spiritual truth... Spiritually there is nothing big or small. Such ideas are like those of the literary people who think writing a poem is a high work and making shoes or cooking the dinner is a small and low one. But all is equal in the eyes of the Spirit -... The Mother Work as offering You must do the work as an offering to the Divine and take it as part of your Sadhana. In that spirit the nature of the work is of little importance and you can do any work without losing the contact with the inner presence. The Mother Live to serve the Divine Do not live to be happy, live to serve the Divine and the joy that you will experience will ...
... consciousness brought about by the pursuit of spiritual Sadhana, there arises spontaneously a trans-mental knowledge of our true being which is then realised as a consciousness altogether independent of the bodily vehicle, as a spiritual entity possessed of a continuous soul-life perpetually developing and determining its own becoming. About this spiritual knowledge, not at all ideative but felt... terrestrial Becoming. Indeed, what has been termed ' the Lure of the Night and eternal Repose of Sleep', albeit spiritual, — the fana-al-fana or the 'absolute Disappearance' of some Sufis, the Nirvanic Extinction of our Buddhist India, — has been for many a seeker the motivation of his spiritual pursuit. None has expressed so forcefully the absolute repugnance to all existence as the great Buddha... so many Indian disciplines; by the second realisation added to the first we are able to possess freely, with right knowledge, without ignorance, without bondage by the chain of our actions, the experiences of the spirit in its successions of time-eternity.... In either realisation truly envisaged as side and other side of one truth, to exist consciously in eternity and not in the bondage of the ...
... work with the Mother 21 February 1959 She also sent the message which she would distribute to people on her birthday–21st February: In the mind which is a creator of differential contradictions there is supposed to be a perpetual incompatibility between the transcendent and the cosmic states of the Divine—as also between the Personal and the Impersonal... thin reflection or a shadow. But it makes an immense difference in the possibilities of consciousness, a difference which one can only realise, not by thought, but by experience. Also, I received another message from the Mother: In the eternity of becoming each Avatar is only the announcer, the forerunner of a more perfect future realisation. And yet men have always the tendency... . While I was reading, my soul stirred and my eyes filled with tears. They admired my reading. But I knew that it would take me years to read and speak like English people. There was a spiritual discussion followed by meditation. The meeting ended with tea, cakes, biscuits and sandwiches. Miss Partridge—a close friend of Doris—would speak about tea: "We English, where will we be without our ...
... possible to receive the Mother's help at a great distance—say Bombay or Calcutta—almost in the same way as here in the Asram? One can receive everywhere, and if there is a strong spiritual consciousness one can make great progress. But experience does not support the idea that it makes no difference or is almost the same. 18 August 1933 I want to be close to the Mother. If I was close to her... have not even the experiences of peace etc. that you have. Since all this is in me, it has been expressed. Now let it burn into ashes, never to rise again. It would be most foolish to call back this meaningless delusion—for nothing can be farther from the actual and practical truth than to suppose that those who have a physical nearness to the Page 495 Mother or have frequent physical... past does not matter if there is a sincere aspiration and resolution to change. Neither to lament nor to complain or be angry will help; a confident and happy opening of oneself to the Mother without insistence on personal demands and desires is the only thing to do. ...
... a new material substance. That new material substance was being prepared in the Mother's body which was the workshop, as it were, for the Divine body. She has been building in this way not only a personal body of her own, the new Divine body, but also a 'generic' body for humanity at large out of which other personal bodies may be precipitated into the material forms of the material world - the two... all beings man is the most suffering. Animal's is the physical suffering alone while man has a threefold suffering: (I) physical (adhibhautika), (2) psychological (adhidaivika), (3) spiritual (aidhyatmika) – the spiritual suffering is the most painful. Face the difficulty that is come to you, face it at once without delay. Try to resolve it then and there. If you avoid it, set it aside, it will... the senses as they are at present constituted must be suspected: it is bound to be altogether wrong or very partial and inadequate. Observe and wait for it to pass through the crucible of later experiences - invoking all the while the higher light to descend and intervene. It is much easier to counter the bad will of the enemy than to butt the good will of the friends. But the Divine knows ...
... To sell the things received from Prosperity is an insult to the Divine and will bear its spiritual consequences. June 1971 To each one here, power, light and strength are given as much as he can take and even more. It is given for transforming you. But when you take all that and use it for your personal ends and for so-called human love, it is dishonesty, it is robbery and it is crime of the... report a matter with a spirit of vengeance against someone or to show your superiority or with any other personal motive, then it is absolutely wrong and you should not do that. But the true way is that you should be like a mirror and reflect faithfully whatever you see. Don't give your personal colouring and be quite dispassionate. If there is something wrong in the mirror itself, then I can correct... A spoken comment of the Mother which was noted from memory by a sadhak and approved by the Mother for publication. × A spoken comment of the Mother which was noted from memory by a sadhak and approved by the Mother for publication. ...
... and experience for arriving at a rational justification of belief, we can only refer to the pattern that we see in the evolutionary process and consistency of the idea of the avatar as a part of the process of evolution and to the experiences of those who can be justifiably regarded as those having the right qualification to experience and verify truths of the spiritual domain and spiritual aspects... aspects of evolution. What is more, we can even present the methods by which the logical mind, if it wants to verify by personal experience, can adopt for personal experimentation and personal verification. These methods are available in great works such as the Bhagavadgita, which is a well known episode in the Mahabharata, and in the Page 25 latest scientific work on Yoga, entitled The Synthesis... Sri Rama and Sri Krishna is not a matter of speculation but a matter of their own direct experience and a living and constant confirmation and reconfirmation. The most recent testimony of the fact of avatarhood is to be found in Sri Aurobindo, who has quite categorically declared his personal and daily experience and realization of Sri Krishna as an avatar, and who has in some of his letters to disciples ...
... development. A darshan can at best only give some strong experience. Several times when my mind has become blank I have experienced light descending from higher planes—probably supramental. But he has the root experience already in the descent of the Light in the state of blankness. The Light is the Divine Light from the plane of spiritual consciousness above. The supramental comes only at the... evaporated but drawn back from the surface. That usually happens, when there is not the higher consciousness or some experience. What you have to learn is not to allow depression, but remain quiet allowing time for the assimilation Page 523 and ready for fresh experience or growth whenever it comes. 4 December 1934 It was certainly the best Darshan of all yet passed today, though... with the higher consciousness. Then the 15th itself would be more successful. 4 August 1934 As to the 15th August, well, don't lay too much stress on it which is after all more a general than a personal occasion—for the individual any day in the year may be the 15th—that is, the birthday or a birthday of something in the inner being. It is with that feeling that one should do the sadhana. 13 ...
... felt that the way was now open for the emergence of the Gnostic Man or the Superman. 29 March 1914 Madame Mirra Richard (the Mother) meets Sri Aurobindo and recognises him as the Krishna of her visions and spiritual experiences, the Guru she had been seeking all her life. 15 August 1914 Arya, a monthly journal devoted to "a systematic study of the highest... talks' were resumed. The ashram was growing, and so were Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's responsibilities. On the 'Darshan Days', however, people from all over India gathered in Pondicherry and received the blessings of the Master and the Mother. All through his Pondicherry period, Sri Aurobindo's literary and spiritual work went hand in hand, his writing appearing first in the Arya, then in book... Alipore Jail that Sri Aurobindo had his great mystic experience —Narayana darshan —which he was later to describe in his Uttarpara speech. The prosecution failed once again, and Sri Aurobindo was acquitted and released on 6 May 1909. 30 May 1909 Sri Aurobindo made his celebrated speech at Uttarpara. His new sense of spiritual direction was revealed, not merely by this speech, ...
... in the Bulletin (the explanation isn't as strong, but I had to try and make myself understood), I said that religions are based on spiritual experiences brought down to a level where mankind can grasp them, and that the new phase must be that of spiritual experience in its purity, not brought down to a lower level. 2 But this too is hard to understand. Anyway... it gives me colds! Yes... Here is Mother's exact text, as it was published in the August issue of the Ashram's Bulletin : "Why do men cling to a religion? Religions are based on creeds which are spiritual experiences brought down to a level where they become more easy to grasp, but at the cost of their integral purity and truth. The time of religions is over. We have entered the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience... their "ideas"... Yes, yes. ...And they fuss around. The subtle impression I get of it all isn't good. ( Here Mother hands Satprem a letter of explanation from the author of the poster. The letter gives the references of Mother's quotation: a personal letter from Mother to a disciple... written ten years earlier. ) Page 233 That's it! A totally private letter! What right do they ...
... letters in Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother were published along with edited versions of the correspondents' questions if these were available and the editor thought that they would help readers understand Sri Aurobindo's replies. The letters were preceded by editorial headings and followed by their dates, if known. The editor restored some personal references that Sri Aurobindo had omitted... revised by him before sending. Other letters were typed by the recipients for their own personal use or for circulation within the Ashram. Circulation was at first restricted to members of the Ashram and others whom Sri Aurobindo had accepted as disciples (see pages 476—78). When letters were circulated, personal references were removed. Persons referred to were indicated by initials, or the letters... making minor changes here and there. He generally removed personal references if this had not already been done by the typist. He also, when necessary, rewrote the openings or other parts of the answers in order to free them from dependence on the correspondent's question. As a result, some letters now read more like brief essays than personal communications. The Publication of the Letters ...
... the progress easier and swifter. Make more of the good experiences that come to you; one experience of the kind is more important than the lapses and failures. When it ceases, do not repine or allow yourself to be discouraged, but be quiet within and aspire for its renewal in a stronger form leading to still deeper and fuller experience. Aspire always, but with more quietude, opening yourself... that doubts and difficulties should arise in so arduous an undertaking as the transformation of the normal nature of man into the spiritual nature, the replacement of his system of externalised values and surface experience into profounder inner values and experience. But the doubts and difficulties cannot be overcome by giving them their full force; Page 704 it can be rather done by learning... movements from outside. It is the light from within that you have to make room for; the light of the outer mind is quite insufficient for the discovery of the inner values or to judge the truth of spiritual experience. Detaching Oneself from Difficulties Not to be touched or disturbed by the difficulties, to feel separate from them is the first step towards freedom. If you cannot do anything ...
... Mother's Chronicles - Book Six 14 The Deccan From time immemorial geographical India was culturally one. Because "The Vedic Rishis and their successors made it their chief work to found a spiritual basis of Indian life and to effect the spiritual and cultural unity of the many races and peoples of the peninsula." So, to be sure, one met... education was a basic need of life as worship was a basic need of heart. Even in the fourteenth century, when Ibn Batuta, the Moorish traveller-explorer who spent many years in India, records his experiences of South Indian society, he is wonderstruck. "I saw in Hanaur [Cannanore?] thirteen schools for the instruction of girls, and twenty-three for boys, a thing I have not seen anywhere else." The literature... the demolition no university was ever established. Page 109 records. It's now our turn to quote a bit. Hiuen-Tsang "mentions various sanitary rules observed by the people for their personal cleanliness as also the general use of unguents and flowers." Here are some eating and drinking habits of the Indians. "Eating onions and garlic was visited with loss of caste." "Different kinds of ...
... it involves writing about things personal to him and private. He would certainly dislike my writing about them to others than himself. That was the reason for my silence. As for the other matter, the Mother had taken a decision before you wrote and it was the only one possible. Janaki Prasad’s wife’s coming here would mean the destruction of Mother’s work on him and of his peace and recovered... which gives one the direct touch of Truth or the luminous experience of it and takes away all value from mere intellectual opinion, ideas or conviction and removes the necessity for it, or by a right consciousness which brings with it right ideas, right feeling, right action and right everything else. Or else it must come by a spiritual and mental humility which is rare in human nature – especially... impossible to allow her because of Janaki Prasad and why. I did not explain specially about the request for Pranam – that logically hangs on to the rest. She did not come here out of any personal devotion to the Mother; she was quite prepared to go to R in her seeking for the Divine if she could not get in here – that was the best she could do, since we were not prepared to offer up Janaki Prasad as ...
... as it appears at first sight. For if I have to express my spiritual experiences, I must do it with truth—I must record them, their bhāva , the thoughts, feelings, extensions of consciousness which accompany them. What can I do with the experience in which one feels the whole world in oneself or the force of the Divine flowing in one's being and nature or the certitude of one's faith against all doubts... ess of which these things are the very stuff, to which these experiences are native. Anything less than that, than a striving after it or at least a partial realisation of it is not spirituality. The spiritual man is one who has realised something of it even if only in one aspect out of many; one who is striving after it is the spiritual seeker. All else however magnificently intellectual, ethical... think that the Mother or myself or others who have taken up the spiritual life had not enjoyed life and that it is therefore that the Mother was able to speak of a joyous sacrifice to the Divine as the true spirit of spiritual sacrifice? Or do you think we spent the preliminary stages in longings for the lost fleshpots of Egypt and that it was only later on we felt the joy of the spiritual sacrifice? Of ...
... something beyond his personal control, because he felt that "something greater than himself was there, it got terribly frightened. Mark that except this fear and nervous upheaval, there was nothing in the experience itself that was inconsistent with the experience being in true descent of Force, nothing that others have not had and had with joy and spiritual profit. But if he felt Mother's presence so much... feels anything spiritual or psychic or even occult, that is an experience (in the technical yogic sense, for there are of course all sorts of experiences that are not of that character). Feelings themselves are of many kinds. The word feeling is often used for an emotion, and there can be psychic or spiritual emotions which are numbered among Yoga Page 102 experiences, such as a wave... that purification of the heart is necessary before there can be the spiritual attainment. All ways of spiritual seeking are agreed on that. Purification and consecration are two great necessities of sadhana. It is not a fact that one must be pure in heart before one can have any Yogic experience at all, but those who have experiences before purification is done run a great risk. It is much better to ...
... of your life.42 This release from all slavery to the flesh, this liberation from all personal attachment is not the last fulfilment. There are other steps before one can reach the summit of the psychic realization. Then comes the spiritual realization, which opens the gates of the future. The Mother puts the question: Why is it necessary to make a distinction between the psychic... different names according to the environment in which he is born and the education he has received. The experience is essentially the same, if it is sincere: it is only the words and phrases in which it is formulated that differ according to the belief and the mental education of the person who experiences. All formulation is only an approximation that should be progressive and grow in precision as the... her ancient vision of the universal man testing in the human race, evolving through life and mind but with a high ultimate spiritual aim, - it must be the idea of, the spirit, the soul of humanity advancing through struggle and concert towards oneness, increasing its experience an maintaining a needed diversity through the varied culture and life motives of its many peoples, searching for perfection ...
... But there are plenty of people who have very little inner life and are governed entirely by the forces of Nature. As one gathers experience from life to life, mental or vital, the inner mind and vital also develop according to the use made of our experiences and the extent to which they are utilised for the growth of the being. You are mistaken in thinking that your external being alone... double nature in human beings, the inner (psychic and spiritual) which is in touch with the Divine; the outer, mental, vital and physical, which has been brought up in the Ignorance and is full of defects, imperfections and impurities. It is for this reason that in sadhana things cannot be changed in a Page 89 moment. The inner experience grows and extends and fills more and more of the nature... certain movements. The outer consciousness is shut up in the body limitation and in the little bit of personal mind and sense dependent on the body—it sees only the outward, sees only things. But the inner consciousness can see behind the thing, it is aware of the play of forces, personal or universal—for it is in conscious touch with the universal action. Page 90 The outer con ...
... 20, was not only oriented towards India's cause of freedom by joining the clandestine "Lotus and Dagger" Society but also had, through an "empathic" study of Indian spiritual philosophy in the pages of Max Muller, his first experience which may be situated on the threshold of Yoga, as it were: by an intense effort of mental concentration he had a distant imaginative sense of the Atman, the universal... completeness, the integrality, to which he has carried the spiritual life and made it the fount of a dynamism and creativity in the world. Others too have written on the same theme and I may refer you to the article entitled Towards a New World by "Synergist" in the series The World Crisis and India in the fortnightly I am editing, Mother India. 1 The article appeared in the Special Number of August... Eternal and the Infinite. Service of mankind is only a means to an end for him: it is a means towards the mystical experience by enlarging one's scope of action beyond the small individual ego and, when the mystical experience is reached, service of mankind is a means to express that experience in the world. But this service is not the only means. Literature, art, science, educational activity, law, ...
... cell was productive of deep and far-reaching experiences of mystic and spiritual character which completely changed him from being at one time an agnostic to a total and confirmed believer in God whose knowledge, power, bliss and oneness we can all share by uniting with Him in our enlarged highest consciousness as much in static as in dynamic life experiences. He was, however, honorably acquitted of... he went into complete seclusion leaving the Ashram in charge of the Mother, his collaborator in the divine work. It will be wrong to assume that because Sri Aurobindo retired from active public and political life, he had cut off all connection with the outside world on account of his pre-occupation with the inner spiritual life which became more and more of absorbing interest to him not only... problems of life to their utmost depths and was not .content to deal with them superficially from the standpoint of mere intellect or even of the ordinary spiritual consciousness which found a solution for all the malaise of earth life in a spiritual liberation of the soul alone while its instruments, the body, mind and life remained unchanged and tied to an ignorant separative consciousness which constitutes ...
... consciousness and experience they now have, "Is there something you cannot do?", in their sincerity they will answer, "No, what the Lord wills, I can do." That's their state of consciousness. But the appearance is otherwise. The personal experience is like this: all that I do with the Lord's Presence, I do effortlessly, without difficulty, without fatigue, without wear and tear, like that ( Mother spreads out... September September Mother’s Agenda 1966 September 30, 1966 After reading a hitherto unpublished letter of Sri Aurobindo's: "...Although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring 1... out like a flower, that's all; but it's still the flower's structure, only it's in full bloom and radiant. No? Yes, but... ( Mother shakes her head and remains silent for a while ). I lack experience, I don't know. I am absolutely convinced (because I've had experiences that proved it to me) that the life of this body—its life, what makes it move and change—can be replaced by a force; that is to ...
... current in Maharashtra, and on Mahatma Gandhi. 18 and 19 June. Talks on Jain philosophy and the physical sciences. 20 June. Sri Aurobindo spoke about some of his own spiritual experiences and about some of the Mother's experiences. 23 June. Talk on non-violence and on self-purification. 26 June. Talk on Hindu-Muslim unity; non-violence; vegetarian and meat diets. 1 August. Meeting with Arun... upon life and transform it. The old yogas failed to transform life because they did not go beyond mind. They used to catch at spiritual experiences with the mind but when they came to apply them to life they reduced them to a mental formula. For example, the mental experience of the Infinite or the application of the principle of universal Love. "We have, therefore, to grow conscious on all the... Ireland. 9 August. Gokuldas of Cutch met Sri Aurobindo. Talk on personal aim in works and spiritual action; comment about celebrating the fifteenth August: "It is by living the Truth that we can celebrate it." 14 August. Motilal Mehta of Bombay met Sri Aurobindo. 15 August. Barada Charan, a yogi of Bengal, had an experience involving Sri Aurobindo. Talk about celebrating the fifteenth August ...
... minds of some Indian disciples. It even surfaces repeatedly in the literature, e.g. in K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar’s biography of the Mother: ‘There was no question about her managerial ability, her unfailing friendliness and her personal spiritual eminence. And yet … the ‘Mother’ of the Ashram? … With complete authority to direct its affairs and ordain the destinies of the inmates? After all, some of the... wonderful experiences, contacts with divine beings, and all sorts of manifestations which are considered to be miraculous. Experiences followed upon experiences. In brief, it developed in a completely brilliant way which was … I must say extremely interesting.’ 25 ‘I had started a kind of “overmental creation”, to make each God come down in a [human] being,’ 26 she said. The Mother, as Mother... following: ‘Between the end of 1926 and the end of 1927, the Mother was trying to bring down the Overmind gods into our beings. But the adharas were not ready to bear them; on the contrary there were violent reactions, though some had good experiences. There was a sadhak whose consciousness was so open that he could know what the Mother and the Master were talking about. One sadhak would get up while ...
... away from psychoanalysis, held that besides the personal unconscious which is specific to each individual, there is another greater layer of the unconscious - the collective unconscious - which is common to the human race as a whole. The collective unconscious, according to Jung, contains what he calls archetypes or universal "complexes of experience" which are at the basis of all behaviour, both ... instinctive and acquired, and which play a far greater role in moulding an individual's life than the personal unconscious which psychoanalysis deals with. Jung cites the example of a person whose neurosis persisted even after gaining insight into his personal unconscious through years of psychoanalysis; it was only after acquiring insight into the specific archetype underlying his neurotic behaviour... anger indirectly through behaviour without being aware of his feelings of anger. Again, when going through an experience, the neurotic has an inadequate emotional and cognitive contact with what is transpiring in the here and now, and therefore lacks an adequate awareness of what he is experiencing at any given moment. The fundamental process of Gestalt Therapy, therefore, consists in the training of awareness ...
... been personal to her, but even otherwise for all or many to see is somewhat rare, one might say very rare. She was in deep ecstasy but still regrets what do these visions import. She has been told that visions are not experiences and as such was telling me, regretfully (fancy, regretting after visioning Krishna and in you too!J these things really meant very little in spiritual life.... I have been working hard. Last night till nearly 2 a.m. I am working at a spiritual novel (voicing my spiritual experience, etc.). I want to do sadhana more consciously through service and as my books are selling progressively better and better I want to offer it all as a concrete sacrifice to you and Mother. Work I am fond of but I want to do it more and more in the right spirit. Do help... must know! I wonder how much he will send me though! Am I getting too commercial after Bombay and Ahmedabad? If you give the money to the Mother that can’t be commercial; commerce implies personal profit, and here your profit is only spiritual. You can publish the two letters; as to the one in the Advent, I have no objection, as far as I am concerned – I don’t know whether ...
... entrusts oneself entirely to That which is above, beyond all creation, and when, instead of seeking any personal advantage from the experience, one makes an offering of it to the divine Grace and knows that it is from This that the experience comes and that it is to This that the result of the experience must be given back, then one is quite safe. In other words: no ambition, no vanity, no pride. A sincere... and try to have experiences that at times are too strong for their state of consciousness—which brings rather unfortunate results. On this subject I made a remark, and I have been asked to explain my remark. I said: "One must always be greater than one's experience." Page 277 What I meant is this: Whatever may be the nature, the strength and wonder of an experience, you must not be... being, as the physical world is in relation with the physical being—and so on, progressively and by a regular discipline. I knew a woman who had been trained in this way, who had quite remarkable personal faculties, who was conscious in all her states of being, and she used to be able to go out twelve times from her body, that is to say, from twelve consecutive bodies, until she reached the summit ...
... With all my love. Signed : Mother Page 307 I will see you tomorrow morning at ten o'clock and I hope that a few small misunderstandings may be clarified. I am sending you forthwith the note that I had prepared for tomorrow morning. ( Note from Mother to Satprem ) I did not utter the words that you heard—I wanted to speak to you of my experience during the night, but I was... I would like (I recall how I had to wrench out this Orpailleur , which I have not even had time to revise). This is not a reproach, Mother, for you do all you can to help me. But I realize that to write, one must have leisure , and there are too many less personal and more serious things to do. So I can also sit on this and tell myself that I am going to write a 'Sri Aurobindo'—but this will not... with reasoning. So there remains the pure spiritual destiny, pure interiorization. That is what I have been trying to do for the last five years, without much success. There are good periods of collaboration, because one part of my being can be happy in any condition. But in a certain way this achievement remains truncated, especially when you base spiritual life on a principle of integrality. And these ...
... stood for much more than personal survival of physical death: it has stood for a realisation of the Divine Consciousness which is infinite and eternal, the supreme God-Self both within and beyond the changeful series of birth and death in which our common terrestrial existence is caught. Immortality, in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, necessarily includes this experience. When the Overmind came... November 26, Champaklal arranged flowers on the floor of the Mother's room in the form of the Swastika. The Swastika Page 158 is the sign of Immortality. The Mother commented that it was remarkable that he should have chosen to make this particular sign on that particular day. Her words seemed to suggest an inner spiritual movement going on, significant of what the Swastika represented... mortality. That is why the Mother considered Page 159 the revelation not only sacred but secret and that is why the memory of it was allowed to hide in the background. However, in the interests of spiritual history it needs to be brought forward now. Besides, a broad suggestion of the ultimate goal sought for was always given by the writings of the Mother as well as Sri Aurobindo ...
... Ashram Inner Vicissitudes and Difficulties Undeterred by Difficulty I suppose all spiritual or inner experiences can be denounced as merely subjective and delusive. But to the spiritual seeker even the smallest inner experience is a thing of value. I stand for the Truth I hold in me and I would still stand for it even if it had no chance whatever of outward... have had myself the experience of this rising to a height, during a certain stage of the spiritual development, of things that before hardly existed and seemed quite absent in the pre-Yogic life. These things rise up like that because they are fighting for their existence—they are not really personal to you and the vehemence of their attack is not due to any "badness" in the personal nature. I dare say... force than the sadhak's own. My own experience is different, that the sadhana very often does refuse to go on except under certain conditions or until those conditions are realised. But yours may be different. 16 November 1935 No joy, no energy. Don't like to read or write—as if a dead man were walking about. Do you understand the position? Any personal experience? I quite understand; often had ...
... dangerous error. As for experiences, anybody with an occult bent can have experiences. The thing is to know what to do with them. Mixed and Confused Experiences I do not question at all the personal intensity or concreteness of your internal experiences, but experiences can be intense and yet be very mixed in their truth and their character. In your experience your own subjectivity, sometimes... The Place of Experiences in the Practice of Yoga The Place of Experiences in the Practice of Yoga The Nature and Value of Experiences Letters on Yoga - III Chapter IV The Danger of the Ego and the Need of Purification Spiritual Experiences and the Ego A certain exaltation of the being comes naturally with the stronger experiences and the sense of... and the Mother! " I must understand, I must decide." And always you find that your mind can decide nothing and understand nothing. And yet you go on repeating the same falsehood. I tell you plainly once again that all your so-called experiences are worth nothing, mere vital ignorance and confusion. The only experience you need is the experience of the presence of the Mother, the Mother's light ...
... ideas, if indulged, can only aggrandise the ego, spoil the sadhana and lead to serious spiritual dangers. They should be rejected altogether. Making fulfilment etc. the aim encourages an ego-centric attitude. Fulfilment, liberation, bliss etc. will come, but as a result of union with the Divine, not as a personal object of the sadhana. Not Liberation But Transformation Peace is a necessary... 22 the environmental consciousness, but even this is liberation, not transformation. Spiritual liberation means to be free from ego and from the imprisonment in the mind and vital and physical nature and to be conscious of the spiritual Self and live in that consciousness. Spiritual perfection and fulfilment means that the nature should be spiritualised, new-formed in the consciousness... has to seek is the full opening to the Divine, the psychic change of his consciousness, the spiritual change. Of that change of consciousness, selflessness, desirelessness, humility, bhakti, surrender, calm, equality, peace, quiet, sincerity are necessary constituents. Until he has the psychic and spiritual change, to think of being supramental is an absurdity and an arrogant absurdity. All these ...
... conspiracy of accidents. In our spiritual life it is not unoften that we observe with a growing wonder and gratitude how experiences come into us, how veil after veil is lifted from our consciousness, truth after truth is revealed to our vision, and frozen masses of darkness are dispelled in a trice, as if by a miracle ! What we could not achieve by intense personal efforts, by discipline and prayer... any materialist bias, their inner perception not quite blurred by personal preferences, and their hearts meekly receptive to ¹ Words of the Mother, 3rd Series, ² ibid. Page 154 spiritual influences, may perceive something of the mysterious working of Grace. But those who follow the spiritual life, particularly the life of Yoga, can never fail to testify to... there is however, no set limit either to man's spiritual energy, or to the flow of grace." According to Origen, freedom and grace are the two wings on which the human soul ascends to God. We have assured ourselves of the traditional background of an almost universal faith in Grace among spiritual seekers. Let us now turn to the teachings of the Mother and try to understand what she says on ...
... marvelous beauty. So it lasts for two hours, three hours like that. Naturally, they are quite mad while it lasts. And the trouble is that people call it "spiritual experiences," and there's nobody to tell them that it has nothing to do with spiritual experiences. There is an Italian here, whom I saw the other day with his wife (his wife is nice; he has long hair and a mystic air... "mystic" is a way of... it was possible, since it had happened to her!... But when I am in my state (I can't even say that, it's not "personal": it's a way of being), when you have the true way of being, when you are a little conscious and have the true way of being, it CANNOT touch you. It's like the experience of coming across an enemy and trying to hit him, and then none of the blows hit and whatever you do has no e... And in that letter there are many things; first he says he had an experience here—and those people are terrible, mon petit, as soon as they have the slightest experience, they're scared! So naturally, everything stops. But that's beside the point. Then, in that connection, he says he took that drug and he describes the effect ( Mother shows Satprem a passage of the letter ): "The second time, with ...
... partly naturalistic, partly transcendentalist idealism, a reverie of the perfected individual and the perfected society, and was commonly associated with the passion for civic or the idea of a spiritual and personal liberty. A more sober colouring intervened, the intellectual constructions of positivism, liberalism, utilitarian thought which were soon in their turn followed by broader democratic and s... French romance writers or the Elizabethan dramatists or the poets of the eighteenth century, a spiritual resemblance which overshadows individual differences; in the moderns the technical method may have in all similar motives, but difference of subjective treatment so stresses its values as to prevent all spiritual unity. There is here a gain which more than compensates any loss; but we have to note the... and understand the world as it is: that requires a strong and clear eye turned on the object and it would seem to require also as far as possible an elimination of one's own personality; a strongly personal view of things would appear to be the very contrary of an accurate observation, for the first constructs and colours the object from within, the second would allow it to impress its own colour and ...
... Later the Mother added the following commentary: "Of course, this refers only to those who put on the orange robe with the sole purpose of hiding their egoistic passions behind the veil of a dress which is generally respected. There can be no question about those who have a pure heart and whose dress is simply the outer sign of their integral consecration to the spiritual life." ... Page 66 But you see, there is no explanation which can give you that; you must have the experience. As long as one has not had the experience, one can't understand what this means.... And it is the same for everything: the head, the little brain, cannot understand. The minute one has the experience, one understands—not before. One may have a sort of imaginative idea, but this is not understanding... you have done. There are people who have had this experience—but these things come first in a flash, for a moment, and then withdraw; it is only when one is quite ready for the transformation that this comes and is established—well, some people have had this experience once, perhaps for a few seconds in their lives, they have had the experience; and then the movement has been withdrawn, the state ...
... or preconceived moral idea, but on probative facts and on observation and experience. I do not deny that so long as one allows a sort of separation between inner experience and outer consciousness, the latter being left as an inferior activity controlled but not transformed, it is quite possible to have spiritual experiences and make progress without any entire cessation of the sex-activity. The mind... thing that must not be allowed to come in—just as when strength comes down from above, personal ambition and pride have to be kept far away from it; for any mixture of the perversion will corrupt the psychic or spiritual action and prevent a true fulfilment. The movement of self-existent psychic or spiritual love general and without a special object can come, but it must be kept free from all... or any experience. Sex-Thoughts and Imaginations That [ indulgence in sex-thoughts ] is just the thing that ought Page 522 not to be done. It would be merely a gratuitous increasing of the difficulties. For the spiritual endeavour is part of your nature and, if it is difficult to get rid of the sex-impulse, you would find it still more difficult to do without the spiritual life in ...
... highest attainment of Christian mystical experience; in Paradise lost we have the highest elevation of Christian ethical striving. Unlike these, Savitri has the clarity of direct revelation which is the characteristic of the Vedas and Upanishads. It has therefore the uttemess of the speech of the spiritual and not the glimmering beauty of a mystical experience, it is not the sybil who speaks here... leading to personal salvation; Savitri is the grace on earth working for transformation of the race. Beatrice is Theology or Church, a force in history rather limited in its implications to Christianity alone; Savitri is a cosmic involvement. The supernatural — Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, the Devils, the Angels, etc. — of the Commedia is a belief or allegory; in Savitri it is a real experience of the... to the egoistic plane. As poetry, both Savitri and Commedia are unique; both evidencing that philosophy and mystical experience could be rendered in poetry; both conferring in a wonderful way poetic concerteness and objectivity on their supernatural or spiritual beings and realms and visions, as only supreme poetry could do. Both are great, but if one wants to hear more frequently the ...
... cannot be explained: they are personal experiences. This knowledge isn't objective enough to be taught. It comes from my relationship with all those beings, from exchanges with them—I knew them even before I knew the Hindu tradition. But you can't say anything about a phenomenon that depends on a personal experience and has value only for the one who had the experience. Because everyone has the right... right to say, "Well, yes, YOU think that way, YOUR experience is that way, but it has value only for you." And it's perfectly true. What Sri Aurobindo says was based on his erudition of India's tradition, and he says what was in agreement with his own experience, but he based himself on an erudition and knowledge that I don't have. I can only repeat what he said. All that can be asked is how... February 2, 1943. × Janaka : Mithila's king at the time of the Upanishads, celebrated for his spiritual knowledge and divine realization, though he led the ordinary worldly life. × Narada : a wandering ...
... 1966 1966 Notes on the Way 30 September 1966 This talk begins with Mother's comments on the following letter of Sri Aurobindo. "... although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)—I would not swear to it that he is referring to the supramentalised body... flower, that's all. But it is always the structure of the flower, only it is wholly opened and it is luminous, no? ( Mother shakes her head and remains silent for a moment. ) I have not had the experience, I do not know. I am absolutely convinced, because I have had experiences which proved it to me, that the life of this body—the life which makes it move and change—can be replaced by a force;... be many stages. Well, these cells, with all the consciousness and experience they have now, if you ask them, for example, "Is there anything that you cannot do?", they will answer in their sincerity, "No, what the Lord wills, I can do." This is their state of consciousness. But in appearance it is otherwise. The personal experience is this: whatever I do with the Presence of the Lord, I do without ...
... the age of sixteen I had immersed myself totally in the spiritual search and was fully committed to living that life. I did not consider marriage nor family and this came about quite naturally. Would you describe your first darshan with Mother and Sri Aurobindo or share any of the darshan experiences you had with them? I saw the Mother twice a day. She used to give darshan in the mornings in... seen Mother and Sri Aurobindo in their physical bodies? It is difficult for me to judge this, really. It meant so much to have the Mother’s personal touch on a daily basis. She had so many ways of training our consciousness from the inside out. One was elevated to new heights and turned inside out by her. What power there was in her eyes and in her smile! Sri Aurobindo said that the Mother worked... of revelatory image and phrase and of expressing spiritual experience. Also, her later poems are very remarkably built, the thought is worked out in a perfect beginning, middle and end in a way in which is not very common. Many poems contain a beautiful lyrical quality. “The early poems too are very powerful expressions of the kind of experience she had and as poetry hardly inferior to the later ...
... by our personal temperament, personal mind and will of thought or force of impulse or desire; but the true Page 188 truth of things, the true law of action exceeds these personal and human formations. Every standpoint, every man-made rule of action which ignores the indivisible totality of the cosmic movement, whatever its utility in external practice, is to the eye of spiritual Truth an... force and only belong secondarily and in their form to the creature. But what then must be the spiritual position of the personal worker? What is his true relation in dynamic Nature to this one cosmic Being and this one total movement? He is a centre only—a centre of differentiation of the one personal consciousness, a centre of determination of the one total movement; his personality reflects in... endeavour to imprison in their categorical formulas. Beyond the mental and moral being in us is a greater divine being that is spiritual and supramental; for it is only through a large spiritual plane where the mind's formulas dissolve in a white flame of direct inner experience that we can reach beyond mind and pass from its constructions to the vastness and freedom of the supramental realities. There ...
... privacy. In any case this overhearing was not what mattered to me in my personal relationship with the Mother. What mattered was the fact that almost daily I would write a note to her, put it under a paper-weight on a table on the hither-side of the screen and go back to my seat on the mat of the passage. After her lunch, the Mother would pick up my note, take it to her bathroom from a door on the side... emanations. The Mother's diary next day recorded her recognition of the Saviour Grace that had hailed from the Highest. And her experience in the preceding afternoon was a total permanent silence of her mind, the foundational state for the descent and settlement of all the infinities of the "overhead" light and force and bliss to be manifested in world-work. When asked about his experience of the meeting... remember all the face-to-face communion between the embodied Divine and my small self in various ways and at diverse times, with all the personal help received by me through such interchange, I cannot but be a little discontented with what goes on in the absence of the Mother's embodiment. Indeed a great deal of positive life goes on and, as she once told me, one could feel her subtle-physical body with ...
... race, - in all countries where men think, there is now in various forms that idea and hope, - and our aim has been to search for the spiritual, religious and other truths which can enlighten and guide the race in this movement and endeavour. The spiritual experience and the general truths on which such an attempt could be based were already present to us, otherwise we should have had no right to make... booklet Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram, in which is given a sketch of his life based on authentic data, we read: "Sri Aurobindo began his Yoga in 1904. Even before this he had already some spiritual experiences and that before he knew anything about Yoga or even what Yoga was. For example, a vast calm descended upon him at the moment when he stepped first on Indian soil after his long absence, in fact'with... of the Godhead surging up from within when in danger of a carriage accident in Baroda in the first year of his stay. But these were inner experiences coming of themselves and with a sudden unexpectedness, not part of a sadhana." The first great experience that was part of a sadhana was the one of Nirvana I have already spoken of. About this the booklet says: "Meditating only for three days ...
... paid anything? SRI AUROBINDO: No, they didn't come to us. Mother set apart a sum for them. NIRODBARAN: How much did André contribute? PURANI: I don't know. He can't pay much. He has bought a plot of land beside his house. SRI AUROBINDO ( smiling ): You don't want to insinuate that he gathers money in this way for his personal use? ( Laughter ) PURANI: No, I meant that he can't pay much... name and association. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, he described himself as my spiritual agent in Bengal. SATYENDRA: Everybody knew that he was connected with you. SRI AUROBINDO: He said at one time that his body was burning and his head was on fire—it was true—and that disappeared by his contact with me. CHAMPAKLAL: When the Mother first saw him, she is supposed to have said that he was wonderful. ... that he was getting direct guidance and inspiration from you. NIRODBARAN: Was it as a result of the development of his spiritual consciousness or by your Force that he achieved so much? SRI AUROBINDO: It was his vital opening to the Force I gave him. NIRODBARAN: And spiritual? SRI AUROBINDO: Very mixed. NIRODBARAN: Then you gave him the Force for the vital? SRI AUROBINDO: I gave it for ...
... know at all times that even the spiritual progress that he seeks is not for his own sake but for the sake of the Divine; and when he prays, this should be his sole intention: 'To will always what the Mother wills', while in asking or in receiving. For a sincere sadhaka should never forget that the only motive behind all his prayers should be to unite his personal will to the Will of the Divine... indeed one of the principal means of establishing this needed contact. In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a very great power; it is a far greater power than our own entirely self-reliant struggle and effort: it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience. But the whole question is the sincerity of this prayer and of the right spirit... on personal effort. Now the personal effort demanded of the sadhaka has three limbs: an ever-mounting flame of aspiration, a ceaseless process of rejection of all that is inimical to sadhana, and of course an Page 105 increasingly growing reality of surrender to the Mother-Power. If these three are forthcoming, the rest is bound to come by the Grace of the Mother and ...
... animal life. ( After a moment of silence, Mother adds ) But those who cannot be lifted up, who refuse to progress, will automatically lose the use of the mental consciousness and fall back into an infrahuman stage. I'll tell you of an experience I had which will help you better understand. It was a short while after the supramental experience of February 3 , and I was still in that state... action; and at the same time, a new, higher, more powerful spiritual force has also descended upon earth to bring a new life to it. This renders the battle more bitter, violent and visible, but apparently more decisive, too, which is why we may hope to arrive at an early solution. There was a time, not so very long ago, when man's spiritual aspiration was turned towards a silent, inactive peace, detached... of life to avoid the struggle, precisely, to rise above the battle, to be liberated from effort. It was a spiritual peace where, along with the cessation of tension, struggle and effort, suffering in all its forms also ceased, and this was considered the true and unique expression of the spiritual and divine life. This is what was considered divine grace, divine succor, divine intervention. And even ...
... y. He forgets that we have in our highest parts two sides - the impersonal and the personal, the cool intellectual and the hot emotional. He forgets that we have a finite body and a being with an individual face and mould of nature and cast of character. What must be the spiritual truth underlying our personal and individual being? Is that being of ours, with its ardent cry for form and name,... first movement towards this something more is Browningesque romantic idealism which is nothing else than the experience of sex on subtle planes of consciousness where the hold of the raw and rigid physical is diminished. The subtle planes have windows opening to the psychic and the spiritual ethers, and through those windows the light of the Divine can steal in and a sense of what is Page 115... foreshadows the cult of the Saviour and the Avatar, the supreme Mother and the All-Creatrix, the biune Godhead of Shiva and Parvati. It is the half-way house to the religion of the devotees, the bhaktas, the Sufi singers of the perfect Beloved. I think that to perceive a truth behind romantic idealism is also to tend, when the spiritual turn is taken, towards the Aurobindonian vision in which Matter ...
... during 1912 the Mother started keeping a kind of diary in which she wrote down her aspirations and experiences. From these diaries which continued over several years, a small selection was later translated into English, some of it by Sri Aurobindo himself, and published under the title Prayers and Meditations. As spiritual literature, it is an incomparable treasure but the Mother set such small store... preceptor to guide her: she relied entirely on her own experiences which infallibly led her along the destined path. During this period Mirra became the nucleus around whom a small group of spiritual seekers in Paris started meeting. The group was named Idea. Papers were read at the meetings and sometimes Mirra would discourse on her experiences. The members of this group were intensely interested... France briefly. In November 1915 the Mother left Lunel and came back to her home in Paris. But this was to be a short stay. Richard was given an important assignment in Japan. Mirra decided to accompany him and on March 13, 1916, they set sail from London. The Mother was to stay in Japan for the next four years. Here it will not be possible to dwell on her many experiences in Japan and I shall merely mention ...
... from itself—the Silence that is the foundation of spiritual experience. What you have felt (the former experiences were probably preparatory touches) is indeed the beginning of this foundation—a consciousness free, wide, empty at Page 47 will, able to rise into the supraphysical planes, open to the descent of whatever the Mother will pour into it. December 8, 1930... a means of reception of the light or an aid to the experience of spiritual states and an inner change. October 13, 1930 This is a fundamental experience of the Yoga. It is the free ascent of the consciousness to join the Divine. When, liberated from its ordinary identification with the body, it rises upward to have experience of the higher planes, to link itself with the psychic... account of my life; but after starting to correct it I had to give up the attempt in despair. It is chock full of errors and inaccuracies: this cannot be published. As for the account of my spiritual experience, I mean of the Bombay affair, somebody must have inflicted on you a humorous caricature of it. This too cannot "go." The best will be to omit all account or narrative and say—at not too much ...
... consciousness. She had visions of Sant Mirabai and dictated songs heard in her samadhi. Gurudev Sri Aurobindo authenticated these spiritual experiences (vide letters of 7 May, 2 June and 11 June 1950). Some of these heard songs were published by the Pondicherry Ashram with the Mother's and Gurudev's consent—namely Shrutanjali. When Indira Devi developed early signs of supernormal powers such as clairvoyance... Sri Aurobindo confirmed at once that Sri Dilip Kumar Page 13 was indeed her guru and urged him to accept her, promising that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo would work on her through him. Gurudev kept a tender watch on her physical and spiritual welfare, helping Dadaji to mould his disciple, claiming that she in turn would be of great help to Dadaji in his own sadhana— a prophecy that was... of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual advancement. It is from the basis of this truth, which I shall try to explain in subsequent letters, that things regarding spirituality and its seekers must be judged, if they are to be judged with knowledge.... It is only by so understanding it that one can understand it truly, enter in its past or in its future or put in their place the spiritual men of ...
... of the two sexes, Tagore declares that the personal and the social are more vividly real to the feminine nature, the masculine is inclined more towards impersonality and is in its dealing with the world more utilitarian than humanly intimate and understanding. Another difference, according to Tagore, manifests itself in the deeper spiritual field: Man quests for freedom, a rising above... Sri Aurobindo This fact gives us a clue to what may be termed the complete spiritual aim for us — inner liberation from earth and from embodiment together with transformation and fulfilment of both, mukti in the impersonal Infinite together with ascension to the personal God and incarnation of His powers and purposes in our total nature. That would imply a consummating... acmes only through the soul's awakening to its cosmic and transcendent source. But Russell's failure to assess rightly the validity and worth of spiritual experience must not blind us to the noble, Page 103 acute, healthy sagacity he is shown by Roy to be commanding in many respects on the outer tangible plane. Before I pass to the author's fruitful contact ...
... dissimilarity of the two sexes, Tagore declares that the personal and the social are more vividly real to the feminine nature, the masculine is inclined more towards impersonality and is in its dealing with the world more utilitarian than humanly intimate and understanding. Another difference, according to Tagore, manifests itself in the deeper spiritual field: man quests for freedom, a rising above earth... two-moded. Sri Aurobindo This fact gives us a clue to what may be termed the complete spiritual aim for us - inner liberation from earth and from embodiment together with transformation and fulfilment of both, mukti in the impersonal Infinite together with ascension to the personal God and incarnation of His powers and purposes in our total nature. That would imply a consummating of... only through the soul's awakening to its cosmic and transcendent source. But Russell's failure to assess rightly the validity and worth of spiritual experience must not blind us to the noble, acute, healthy sagacity he is shown by Roy to be commanding in many respects on the outer tangible plane. Before I pass to the author's fruitful contact with Tagore I must pause a moment to quote from R ...
... have been taught to fear and avoid all that threatens their personal independence. They have imbibed with their mothers' milk the sense of individuality. And surrender means giving up all that. In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise... sense one must always keep, because then one always has the true attitude of receptivity—a humble receptivity that does not put personal pretensions in opposition to the Divine. Source Someone Who Knows Very Little It is not necessarily someone who has some experience who is most advanced. He lacks an element of simplicity, modesty, and the plasticity that comes from the fact that one is not... in this attitude means that you will remain untransformed and never have the true union; always you will be divided; you will have at best only glimpses of this greater life. For although certain experiences and realisations may come to you in meditation or in your inner consciousness, your body and your outer life will remain unchanged. An inner illumination that does not take any note of the body and ...
... bulldog nature as in B. P.Mittra. These things can only go with spiritual, development and experiences and then the strength behind them becomes asset. It is also evident from what you say about his past experience of the voice and the vesture that there is, as I thought a physical something in him waiting for and on the verge of spiritual awakening. I understand that he is waiting for intellectual conviction... character but what is still lacking is a positive spiritual side of the Sadhana. However, the clearing of the system seems to have gone far enough for him to have had at least glimpses of psycho-spiritual experiences and a promise even of the supramental awaiting its time for manifestation. I shall, if I make time, write separately my comments on his experiences and if he understands and follows he may proceed... ruin. What sort of spiritual perfection is this, that some Sanyasins and Vairagis should be saintly, perfect and liberated, some Bhaktas should dance in restless ecstasy or love and emotion and Ananda and a whole race should become lifeless, void of intelligence, sunk in deep Tamas; one must first get all the partial experiences on the mental level, flood them with the spiritual delight and illumine ...
... whole of these religions, and this divine Personality is not the limited magnified-human personal God of the West. Indian religion cannot be described by any of the definitions known to the occidental intelligence. In its totality it has been a free and tolerant synthesis of all spiritual worship and experience. Observing the one Truth from all its many sides, it shut out none. It gave itself no specific... permits all possible spiritual experiences, all kinds of religious adventures? The only thing fixed, rigid, positive, clear is the social law, and even that varies in different castes, regions, communities. The caste rules and not the Church; but even the caste cannot punish a man for his beliefs, ban heterodoxy or prevent his following a new revolutionary doctrine or a new spiritual leader. If it exc... preparing in her, a mighty transformation and farther dynamic evolution and potent march forward into the Page 190 inexhaustible infinities of spiritual experience. The many-sided plasticity of Indian cult and spiritual experience is the native sign of its truth, its living reality, the unfettered sincerity of its search and finding; but this plasticity is a constant stumbling block ...
... So long as a man is on earth, the terrestrial life is his field of achievement, and all that he gains by personal effort or by divine Grace must have a full and perfect expression in his life, whether the gain is physical, vital, mental or spiritual; and if any acquisition, however highly spiritual it may be, fails to manifest itself in his life, it means that it is still a potentiality and has to be... might be deemed enough by those who seek their spiritual fulfilment elsewhere than on earth—it must be dislodged from every element of one's being, every fibre of one's nature. That is why even for the best of sadhakas sudden and "striking conversions cannot be integral." "Truly to attain the goal, none can escape the need of innumerable experiences of every kind and every instant. ”² The secret... service of the Divine in an integral surrender, the Mother is as definite as Sri Aurobindo, and as uncompromising. This service is not a routine round of rituals which the religions prescribe, nor is it philanthropy, humanitarianism or altruism which pass by that name and usually constitute the active life of spiritual men. By service of the Divine the Mother means the constant and conscious offering of each ...
... the terrestrial life is his field of achievement, and all that Page 24 he gains by personal effort or by divine Grace must have a full and perfect expression in his life, whether the gain is physical, vital, mental or spiritual; and if any acquisition, however highly spiritual it may be, fails to manifest itself in his life, it means that it is still a potentiality and has to... might be deemed enough by those who seek their spiritual fulfillment else -where than on earth—it must be dislodged from every element of one's being, every fibre of one's nature. That is why even for the best of sadhakas sudden and "striking eonversions cannot be integral." "Truly to attain the goal, none can escape the need of innumerable experiences of every kind and every instant." 1 ... of the Divine in an integral surrender, the Mother is as definite as Sri Aurobindo, and as uncompromising. This service is not a routine round of rituals which the religions prescribe, nor is it philanthropy, humanitarian-ism or altruism which pass by that name and usually constitute the active life of spiritual men. By service of the Divine the Mother means the constant and conscious offering of ...
... lasts for about two or three hours. Naturally, they are completely out of their senses the whole time. And the pity of it is that people call these "spiritual experiences", and there is nobody to tell them that this has nothing to do with spiritual experience. Some time ago I received a letter from someone who told me he had taken these drugs, and he said he had had terrible visions, that the walls... had told me about it; and so ( Mother laughs ), that gave me the idea that this was possible, because it had happened to her! But when I am in my own state—I cannot even say that, it is not "personal", it is a way of being—when one is in the true state, when one is a conscious being and has the true way of being, this cannot touch one. It is like the experience of meeting an enemy and wanting... his own vital and conscious in the vital world as one is conscious in the physical world. One goes there consciously. It is not a dream, it hasn't the nature of a dream; it is like an activity, an experience, and it is quite different. But there do exist also these vital worlds where one is persecuted, terrible worlds, worlds of torture and persecution, isn't it so? Ninety per cent subjective ...
... things too personal were omitted — it seems to me the same rule must hold here — except very sparingly where unavoidable. Page 816 A number of letters not included in the four books mentioned above were published in the mid and late 1940s in several journals associated with the Ashram: Sri Aurobindo Circle , Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual , The Advent and Mother India . Many... both places. In Letters on Himself and the Ashram , the manuscript version of a given letter has often been used because it contains Sri Aurobindo's remarks on himself or the Mother or members of the Ashram. These personal remarks, as noted above, were usually removed by Sri Aurobindo when he revised the letter for publication as a letter on Yoga. This revised form of the letter has generally been... rewriting of the letter. He generally removed personal references if this had not already been done by the typist. When necessary, he also rewrote the openings or other parts of the replies in order to free them from dependence on the correspondent's question. As a result, some of these letters have an impersonal tone and read more like brief essays than personal communications. The Publication ...
... love and lover and loved are forgotten in a fusing experience of ecstasy, but are still there latent in the oneness and subconsciently persisting in it. All union of the self by love must necessarily be of this nature. We may even say, in a sense, that it is to have this joy of union as the ultimate crown of all the varied experiences of spiritual relation between the individual soul and God that the... the experience of oneness and infinity remains. But in truth the miracles of spiritual consciousness are not to be subjected to so rigid a logic. When we first come to feel the presence of the infinite, as it is the finite personality in us which is touched by it, that may well answer to the touch and call with a sort of adoration. Secondly, we may regard the Infinite not so much as a spiritual status... the One became many in the universe. Still, the more varied and most intimate experience of divine love cannot come by the pursuit of the impersonal Infinite alone; for that the Godhead we adore must become near and personal to us. It is possible for the Impersonal to reveal within itself all the riches of personality when we get into its heart, and one who sought only to enter into or to embrace ...
... Force can bring forward and use the will. Personal Effort and the Divine Force or Power If there is no personal effort, if the sadhak is too indolent and tamasic to try, why should the Grace act? All that [ thinking one's efforts are useless ] is the physical mind refusing to take the trouble of the labour and struggle necessary for the spiritual achievement. It wants to get the highest,... anywhere to what it disapproves, spiritual humility and the removal of self-righteousness, self-justification and the wish to impose yourself, the tendency to judge others etc. All these defects you know are in you; to cast them out may take time, but if the will to be true to the inner self in all ways is strong and persistent and vigilant and always calls in the Mother's force, it can be done sooner... of will. People less strong than Buddha may have to develop it by endeavour. Those who cannot do that have to find their strength in their reliance on the Divine Mother. The Need of Will There must be a fixed will for the spiritual life—that alone can overcome all obstacles. To be conscious is the first step towards overcoming [ lower movements ]—but for the overcoming strength is necessary ...
... turning the preceding expression of peace to a hint of delicate Page 15 delight at the subtle sight of the Divine Mother. I remember calling Richard Hartz's attention to this sweet change. The other experience was caught from a large picture of the Mother hanging behind the bed on which Lalita had been laid. This picture is now in my own room, hanging behind me as I am typing my letter... with people the out-drawn inner being flows like a warm stream towards them bearing an unspoken benediction from the smiling Splendour that is the Mother and the silent Grandeur that is Sri Aurobindo. This kindness, this helpfulness is not really personal, it is only channelled by the Page 12 giver and it is directed chiefly towards awakening in the receiver the hidden soul, the secret... the pulls of the outer existence. But we have watched also how the Mother tirelessly toiled in the outer existence for our sake. It was as if Sri Aurobindo put her forward to face that existence while he remained behind in a sublime solitude of the Spirit. And yet the actuality is that throughout his intense exercise of the spiritual life Sri Aurobindo seldom shut his eyes! "Exercise" is indeed an ...
... in this view of things is the absence of any fundamental reality of the individual, of any abiding value and significance of his natural or his spiritual activity: but it can be replied that this demand for a permanent personal significance, for a personal eternity, is an error of our ignorant surface consciousness; the individual is a temporary becoming of the Being, and that is a quite sufficient... perception of the universality of the spiritual individual and his power of embracing the whole universe in his consciousness; but neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and exist by the transcendental Divine Being. This Divine Being, Sachchidananda, is at once impersonal and personal: it is an Existence and the origin and... Absolute take their stand; Illusionism itself, even if we contest its ultimate conclusions, can still be accepted as the way in which the soul in mind, the mental being, has to see things in a spiritual-pragmatic experience when it cuts itself off from the Becoming in order to approach and enter into the Absolute. But also, since the Becoming is real and is inevitable in the very self-power of the Infinite ...
... but they are what your senses represent them to be; but in the concrete experience of the Divine, doubt is impossible. As to permanence, you cannot expect permanence of the initial spiritual experiences from the beginning—only a few have that and even for them the high intensity is not always there; for most the experience comes and then draws back behind the veil waiting for the human parts to... live on. It must, however, be not a mere mental quiet but the deep spiritual peace of the shantimaya Shiva. It was this that touched you (descending through the head) in this experience. For the rest it is a resumption of the piercing of the veil, the beginning of the power of inner experience as opposed to the lesser experiences of the surface, the opening of the inner being, which is necessary... hid forgotten till the Mother reminded me of it. I know Chakrabarti only through the Mother, but that is better than any personal acquaintance. The Mother met him in Paris when he was there once with his sons on his way to England; it was before the deluge, in pre-war days. She meditated with him and they were able inwardly to meet each other with a brief but living spiritual interchange. He told her ...
... Devi’. Sri Aurobindo kept a close watch on Smt. Indira Devi’s welfare and authenticated her experiences, which Dilip faithfully reported to him. The Ashram published a book (Shrutanjali) of her songs heard in her visions with permission and blessings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. We have included in this volume one of the letters written by Smt. Indira Devi to Sri Aurobindo in 1950... you belong to the Divine and myself and the Mother. I have cherished you like a friend and a son and poured on you my force to develop your powers – to make an equal development in the Yoga....” Through the years this process was more intensified not only for the sake of the disciple, but through him to draw and help countless seekers of spiritual Truth. In fact the Guru had remarked that more... on Indian philosophy and music. A litterateur, a musician, a musicologist-composer par excellence, a philosopher and a spiritual personality, Sri Dilip Kumar Roy was the right choice to be the cultural ambassador and propagate the best of India to the western world. The Mother gave her consent and blessed Dilip and Indira for this tour. Dadaji talked about his Master Sri Aurobindo and on Sri R ...
... lover and loved are forgotten in a fusing experience of ecstasy, but are Page 237 still there latent in the oneness and subconsciently persisting in it. All union of the self by love must necessarily be of this nature. We may even say, in a sense, that it is to have this joy of union as the ultimate crown of all the varied experiences of spiritual relation between the individual soul and... the experience of oneness and infinity remains. But in truth the miracles of spiritual consciousness are not to be subjected to so rigid a logic. When we first come to feel the presence of the infinite, as it is the finite personality in us which is touched by it, that may well answer to the touch and call with a sort of adoration. Secondly, we may regard the Infinite not so much as a spiritual status... possessed the divine flute-player. This is in essence the power of love itself in the heart and soul turning from earthly objects to the spiritual source of all beauty and delight. There live in this seeking all the sentiment and passion, all the moods and experiences of love concentrated on a supreme object of desire and intensified a hundredfold beyond the highest acme of intensity possible to a ...
... Pondicherry, the Mother unfurled 'The Spiritual Map of India' comprising, not only the undivided India before the partition, but Burma and Sri Lanka as well. This vision of the spiritual reality that is 'Mother India' has been figuring on the cover of the Review all these years. And under Sethna's missionary editorship, Mother India has sustained this robust and spiritually valid "cartographical... from the Mother's writings. Like the essays on Sri Aurobindo (for example, Sri Aurobindo and Human Evolution, Aurobindonian Viewpoints and Sri Aurobindo and the Veda), those on the Mother (especially Some General Truths and Personal Facts ) will also be read with gratitude by a widening circle of readers. In barely 13 pages, the personality and ministry of the Mother are evoked... evoked with an uncanny sureness of touch. The selected ‘general truths’ and 'personal facts' really build up the Mother's life-history in miniature. The entire essay is a rare birthday tribute to "the saviour love" of the Mother. Among other illuminating essays are those on Sri Aurobindo as the Poet of Integralism, on the importance of the English language and of French culture to ...
... the Ego disappears, but cosmos too is annulled forever in a formless Eternal and Infinite. Another may experience it as God; and God may be either the All of the Pantheist, a cosmic Spirit, an individual Deity, a supracosmic Creator; or all of these together. A Personal Godhead may be the spiritual Form in which He presents Himself to us or rather He may reject forms from his being [and] resolve Himself... partial or, it may be, some complete spiritual experience. It is that spiritual experience, it is the method, it is the attainment of this realisation that we call Yoga. Page 361 But the Reality is an Absolute or an Infinite; our consciousness, even our spiritualised consciousness is that of a finite being. It is inevitable therefore that our spiritual experience should be not that of a concrete... the blind men of the story trying to tell what the Elephant Infinite is in its totality by our touch upon a part of it, some member of its spiritual body, tanum svam. One experiences it as Self or Spirit. It may be a Self of himself in which he finds his spiritual consummation, integrality, infinity, perfection. It may be a Self of the universe in which his individuality loses itself forever. It may ...
... asks the question, the actual question and date, and the complete answer. On the other hand, any such deep involvement in the personal histories of the sadhak-correspondents may prove confusing and side-tracking to the earnest spiritual aspirant. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were hence definitely against such wholesale publication of the two-way correspondence. There is clearly the touch of universality... been approved by Sri Aurobindo After all, while a reply may be provoked by a particular sadhak's statement his personal problems, universalist elements also must get into the answer, all the more so because the response is really from the level of the Page 372 higher spiritual consciousness. This should explain why the excerpts from Aurobindo's letters put together in a book like Bases... was the further difficulty that, although Sri Aurobindo was apparently answering his correspondents at the mental level, the replies really came from the infinite reserves of the "higher spiritual experience, from a deeper source of knowledge", 8 The comments, the admonitions, the instructions were offered by a Guru to a disciple, and were meant to be treasured as such and implicitly acted ...
... ial theory, but the integral theories of yogic experience and even some other exclusive theories, which are based on yogic experience and knowledge, admit that every individual soul is immortal and that through a protracted series of births in the terrestrial plane, every soul is required in due course of its evolution to develop ethical and spiritual being as a means of ascension and therefore the... even more trenchantly by the philosophy, which is often described as the philosophy of Nihilism. And this philosophy of Nihilism, too, is supported by one of the most powerful yogic experiences. According to this experience, it is possible to travel beyond the Silence of the Brahman by a greater negation to extinguish self into Non-Being. The Non- Being is absolute withdrawal. It is possible to pass in... Upanishads and the Gita, and in the Tantra. But Sri Aurobindo and the Mother go farther and determine a new integral aim of life 56 which can be fulfilled by new methods of their integral yoga. Let us elucidate this important point in some detail. Supra-terrestrial Theories of the Aim of Life The Vedic and Upanishadic experience has declared that Matter also is Spirit or Brahman; but , ...
... there is a sense of Agni also in it. In another experience I felt the Mother's working as a burning fountain in the arms and the feet. Very good. On the spiritual path there are few things that are really abnormal. It is rather the habit of our ego or ignorance to take any new step, pressure or experience as something rare and miraculous. Obviously. ... When there is a spiritual emptiness I call down or draw the Mother's Force in order to fill it. Do you have any objection to this process? No. It is all right. Whenever possible should I draw down the Mother's Force? Yes, you can do so. When I make an attempt at drawing down the Force, I experience it as much in my body as above the... the Mother's consciousness, one actually feels whatever one thinks. This statement may appear strange to the limited human mind. But the experiences when sufficiently developed will prove its truth. Do you mean by "one actually feels whatever one thinks" that instead of knowing things only by thought one knows them by direct contact in the consciousness, a sort of concrete spiritual sense ...
... the Asram vital that affects me, or a personal one? In Jaswant's case it is personal—in yours it looks like surrender to the "Asram" or rather to the "anti-Asram" vital. But I have suffered enough, enough, more than my share. One can't go on, you know, with a spiritual dietary of 3 chief elements of food. Let me remind you that vitamins of experience are essential; otherwise nervous breakdown... Kindly enlighten us a little more regarding the emanations. How do they support the personal relation or contact with us when we have neither the former nor feel the latter? Do they do these things even when we are not conscious, and how do they act either? I thought all personal relations were with the Mother direct, not through a deputy. It is terribly difficult to write of these things, for... that is the psychic? The psychic is not impersonal. You must be thinking of the universal Atman. The psychic is always personal and individual. One may not be conscious of the Presence, but the relation? Unfortunately, I don't feel any personal relation with the Mother. There lies the whole difficulty of the sadhana. One has to become conscious by the awakening of the inner mind and vital—or ...
... he did. Sri Aurobindo has himself described this incident more than once. Below several accounts of his experience in his own words are reproduced. "I am glad you are getting converted to silence, and even Nirvana is not without its uses – in my case it was the first positive spiritual experience and it made possible all the rest of the Page 97 sadhana; but as to the positive... Gaekwad Wada, Poona, on the thirteenth. Then he went to Bombay. At Girgaum (Bombay) he delivered a lecture on the fifteenth. In Bombay the spiritual experience that had begun at Baroda became more intense. The vacant condition of the mind turned into the experience of the silent Brahman Consciousness. The multifarious activities of the city of Bombay, the rows of tall houses, etc. – all became as if... some experience and evocative power. We sat together and I followed with an absolute fidelity what he instructed me to do, not myself in the least understanding where he was leading me or where I was myself going. ¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself ( Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1972). pp. 82-83. Page 98 The first result was a series of tremendously powerful experiences and ...
... predominantly mental strain in poetry. One can grasp fully if one has some clue to what you put in, either the clue of personal experience or the clue of sympathetic insight." 9 If here and there, even in our prosaic age, a few readers with such insight or experience can be found, The Secret Splendour with Sri Aurobindo's illuminating comments and his vision of a Future Poetry could... Some extraordinary experiences accompanied this period of intense creation: The ability to see through closed eyes; the perception of a living presence in material objects; the impression that words were "living creatures acting on their own". Page 407 (It is interesting to note that all these experiences have been described by the Mother at different times... expression, to use the Mother's vivid phrase. No poet has explored the process by which revelation passes into speech with a more passionate dedication than Amal Kiran. His poetry is unique in that the process itself is a major theme running through poem after poem and reaching a peak of intensity in The Adventure of the Apocalypse, where poet and spiritual seeker finally renounce ...
... knew him very well for years, I have known his difficulties and his good points and I am sure the Mother has given him some genuine spiritual experiences. But I am afraid they have gone to his head and have failed to touch with refining fire the outer being, the lower part of him to which the Mother's reference can be traced in the Agenda itself. And the Agenda has been turned by him into a... the sole Yoga of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and himself is to change the "programming" of the cells and reveal the Supermind in them by a certain inner process? Except for an endeavour to silence the intellect, the vital being and the physical mind, no sadhana is required. It is as if the numberless spiritual experiences which lay behind the final stage of the Mother's sadhana for the world... enhance his own glory while exploiting a moment's weakness of the Mother at a time of unspeakable bodily stress. All the falsifications committed in the Agenda, both deliberately and/or unwittingly, diminishing and exploiting the Mother will one day fall away and the incalculable value of her experiments and experiences will be available, stripped of the dross of an errant disciple. ...
... forces in the spiritual world are in a constant state of opposition and besiege our gains," he specified in a letter dated 26 June 1916. "That I suppose, is why the religions and philosophies have had so strong a leaning to the condemnation of Life and Matter and aimed at an escape instead of a victory." He who was so passionately fond of mother Earth refused to abandon her: "Our mother Earth must... discoveries he made as the Divine Guide within urged him on. "The interpenetration of the planes," Sri Aurobindo wrote on 14 January 1934, "is indeed for me a capital and fundamental part of spiritual experience without which Yoga as I practice it and its aims could not exist. For that aim is to manifest, reach or embody a higher consciousness upon earth and not to get away from earth into a higher... it down and establish it on earth and keep it pure. For, there is a gravitational pull downwards. So the spiritual power must be such that it can not only resist but overcome that pull." He was speaking on 18 January 1939. And he threw a challenge. "This is the solution I propose. It is a spiritual solution that aims at changing the whole basis of human nature. But," he cautioned, "it is not a question ...
... and the personal proof that it helps to the spiritual Page 343 experience. It is not to be imposed on anyone as a principle, for that is the mental way of doing things, the way of the ordinary mind—it is as a need that it has to be accepted, when it is felt as a need, not as a general law or rule. Relations in Ordinary Life The best way to prepare oneself for the spiritual life when... constant experiences which it is able to put in the right place. But some get absorbed in inner experiences which they get lost in and get passionately attached to and this inner life becomes for them the sole reality without the outer to poise it and keep it under check and test—there lies a danger. Again if one remains isolated without the support of a settled inner poise and constant experience over... blunders because the spiritual light was not there. One has not to stop there, but go on and beyond to the spiritual consciousness and the greater light, strength and poise it brings. The consciousness of these things [ such as the forces one feels coming from others ] is intended for knowledge—a psycho-occult knowledge, necessary for the fullness of consciousness and experience. It is not intended ...
... He later served both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo as a personal attendant with rare dedication and devotion. Towards the end of 1925, a young Frenchman, Phillippe Barbier Saint-Hilaire, came to meet Sri Aurobindo. He was a brilliant graduate of the prestigious Ecole de Polytechnique in Paris and, had he wished, could have been an engineer of the first rank. But his spiritual quest led him first to Japan... inmates were housed there and it acquired the name 'Guest House'. As the number of residents grew, the nucleus of a small spiritual community formed itself without any preconceived planning; it developed as an organic growth with Sri Aurobindo as its centre. His own personal routine did not follow a rigid or inflexible pattern binding on everyone, although everything was subordinated to the needs... got was for him a priceless treasure. 'Sri Aurobindo and the Mother went inside. Immediately Datta was inspired. In that silence she spoke: "The Lord has descended into the physical today."' What, you may ask, is the significance of the Siddhi Day, the Day of Victory as the Mother called it? Well, mental explanations of a spiritual event, specially one of such magnitude, can never be really adequate ...
... done but wait? For me!... It is I who mark time waiting for you to be ready! ( Mother laughs. ) It is a very delicate problem, because for a very long time if someone does not feel, does not have this personal aspiration to perfect himself, the personal aspiration to enter into contact with the Divine, the personal aspiration to realise the supramental consciousness, well, he says as you were just... reversed within them and they have an experience—even if it be only the experience of identification with the psychic—then all of a sudden they understand. Identification with the psychic means an identification with the divine Consciousness. So, immediately they understand; they understand and this even makes them laugh. One feels how foolish one was! ( Mother laughs. ) This sense of one's own person... it and understand that it is not for a personal reason that you must do things. For example, it is not for a personal reason that you must want perfection, it is not for a personal reason that you must want union with the Divine, it is not for a personal reason that you must want the supramental transformation. If it is for your own good and for a personal reason, well, follow your path; I tell ...
... pervasiveness of the Divine Action is not difficult to perceive. A beautiful experience of one is a matter for rejoicing by the other: the jealous look is never cast. So it is perfectly right to share with an intimate friend one's happy uplifting experiences." I like the way you have put your morning experience: "A thin layer of darkness still enveloped the sky. One could hear a faint footfall... command by Sri Aurobindo: "Love the Mother. Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you; because she is, indeed, always present." From the Mother deep within us to the Mother who is everywhere and within everyone our life has to move, guided by - in Sri Aurobindo's terminology - our "psychic being" and our "spiritual self". Out of a wide tranquillity beyond "time's unrest" a consciousness dedicated... fortune occurs. It is because of jealous reactions that it is advisable not to share one's precious experiences with people. Through the envious eye of the hearer the hostile forces attempt to snatch away the benefits of our self-deepenings. Not many realise that our goal here is the Divine Mother's victory. And if she is victorious anywhere she is potentially victorious everywhere. For the human ...
... contain conversations of the Mother that took place in her classes. In 1958, the Mother withdrew to her room in order to come to terms with the research in the problems related to the supramental transformation of the physical consciousness at the cellular level. In 1968, the Mother founded Auroville, and International city as a collective field for the material and spiritual researches required for realizing... SwamiVivekananda at Los Angles, California, on January 8,1900, is entitled "The powers of the mind". During the course of this address, Swami Vivekananda has narrated an extremely interesting personal experience, which is worth citing: "I once heard of a man who, if anyone went to him with questions in his mind, would answer them immediately; and I was also informed that he foretold events. I was curious... to the Mother of the idea that the earth is symbolic where universal action is concentrated allowing divine forces to incarnate and work concretely. Madame Theon was an extraordinary occultist, having incredible faculties. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experiencing the surroundings and all that was there, describe it... twelve times. The Mother learned ...
... the famous snake-and-rope, experience in a dream in which everything appears real, the mother-of-pearl, the mirage, the children of a barren woman, the pot and the sky held by it and yet not getting limited by it, and so on. Through all these what is hammered into us is that the reality of the world is unreal, mithya . But the remarkable thing is that the spiritual quality of Jnaneshwar’s poetry... discussion, however, we shall keep aside Page 47 the aspect of poetry and focus the attention only on a few issues of thought. It is necessary that the vastness of a spiritual experience, particularly as we experience in the Gita, does not get confined to a specific sectarian or logical-metaphysical formulation. The Scripture far exceeds the Adwaitic Doctrine of the Quiescent Eternal, the ... Supreme in poises of the individual, the cosmic, and the transcendental. (The Gita: 15.16-17) There are two Purushas (spiritual beings) in this world, the immutable (and impersonal) and the mutable (and personal); the mutable is all these existences, the Kutastha (the high-seated consciousness of the Brahmic status) is called the immutable. But other than these ...
... increased and only the spiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light on these things dallies with vital will-o'-the-wisps like spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religionist; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by them or pass through them in search of a greater Light---- 106 February 10, 1935 It is not for personal greatness that I... the Divine, then it is true that that is something belonging to the inner being and cannot be changed like a house or a cloak for the sake of some personal, social or worldly convenience. If a change is to be made, it can only be for an inner spiritual reason, because of some development from within. No one can be bound to any form of religion or any particular creed or system, but if he changes the... even in the darkened earth-consciousness stands as the one ultimate certitude. 101 * I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights,—yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new Page ...
... or power which is the basis of Karma—of work and action founded in the spiritual consciousness. You can reply to X that the three experiences he is having are the right ones—viz. the opening of the psychic through the heart, the descent of peace and the consciousness of his true being as the witness. But these experiences must be developed, deepened, completed and made the ordinary state of... expressly say anything to the contrary. In all the experiences you have sent me up to now, I have never found any that were not perfectly genuine; moreover, your observation of them is quite sound and accurate. Your first experience was that of the opening of the psychic; you became aware of the psychic being and its aspirations and experiences and of the external being in front, as two separate... Divine from which both individual and cosmos have come and of the individual being (Jivatma) as an eternal portion of the Divine. Foundations of the Sadhana What you are experiencing is the true foundation of the spiritual life and realisation. It has three elements—first, the love which is the heart of Bhakti; then the descent of peace and equanimity which is the first necessary basis for realisation ...
... Yoga-force or spiritual force. It is evident that if spiritual force exists, it must be able to produce spiritual results—therefore there is no irrationality in the claim of those sadhaks who say that they feel the force of the Guru or the force of the Divine working in them and leading towards spiritual fulfilment and experience. Whether it is so or not in a particular case is a personal question... since you have told me that no words of mine have any truth or value and that all my experiences also are subjective delusions without any truth or value. I suppose all spiritual or inner experiences can be denounced as merely subjective and delusive. But to the spiritual seeker even the smallest inner experience is a thing of value. I stand for the Truth I hold in me and I would still stand for it... to have experiences they do not have. Harin's fall after one year's rapid progress had obvious reasons in his character which do not exist in them. But apart from that the fall of a sadhak from Yoga proves nothing against the truth of spiritual experience. It is well known to all Yogis that a fall is possible and the Gita speaks of it more than once. But how does the fall prove that spiritual experience ...
... neutrality, the way a crystal lets light pass through it. At the time of her very first experiences, Mother had already noticed: To acquire a total and perfect awareness of the world as it is in all its details, one must first have no more personal reactions in regard to any of these details, NOR EVEN ANY SPIRITUAL PREFERENCE as to what they ought to be. In other words, a total acceptance with a perfect... take shape and experiences were going to spring up on all sides; but first of all a kind of absoluteness, all-powerful and... natural, you might say. There is no need to do anything: it does it. There is no need "to have the capacity": it is capable. The only need is to be—to be that. The first experience came as a rather evil little specimen one day threw herself inwardly on Mother with a violence... but when the very light of the old species goes, it becomes... precarious. Mother was eighty-three years old. And truly, with the feeling that ALL one has lived, all one has known, all one has done, all of it is a perfect illusion—that's what I was living yesterday evening.... It's one thing to have the spiritual experience of the illusion of material life (some find this painful, but I found it ...
... challenged by others as the rest of my work. Some reviewers have described them as lacking altogether in spiritual feeling and void of spiritual experience; they are, Page 349 it seems, mere mental work, full of intellectually constructed images and therefore without the genuine value of spiritual or mystic poetry. Well, then, what is the upshot? What have I to decide as a result of my aesthetic... vision" or "He took his station on the highest summits of knowledge". The calm is the calm of the highest spiritual consciousness to which the soul has ascended, making those summits its own and looking down from their highest heights on all below: in spiritual Page 333 experience, in the occult vision or feeling that accompanies it, this calm is not felt as an abstract quality or a mental... which describe the spiritual planes. I can understand this hesitation; for these lines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and are less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who has not the mystic experience may seem too large and vague. But they are not padding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would have made ...
... this issue in connection with my editorship of Mother India. A man in Bombay who had been once a devotee had become sceptical and sarcastic. He was contributing a series of commentaries on an Upanishad to Mother India. The articles were appreciated very much. I had kept the man's personal attitude apart from my judgment of his writing. As long as the writing bore no trace of the attitude... lesson to the writer of the commentaries. There cannot be a compromise in such matters. But, of course, as the Mother's talk with me indicated, everything has to be done without personal animosity. A wide and wise serenity has to be at play in all decisive moves. I dare say the Mother's move was even for the benefit of the writer himself — a quiet criticism which was an act of Grace to stir... normally. He will soon be all right." (20-4-1968) Spiritual action, with or without physical props, was always the Mother's advice in dealing with the ailments or defects of the body. Group captain Mona Sarkar had a small but long-standing and resistant handicap owing to an accident during a game. On the morning of 24 August 1960 the Mother gave him a little lecture in front of me as well as ...
... most important point is that the mind is incapable of judging spiritual things. All those who have written on Yogic discipline have said so; but very few are those who have put it into practice and yet, in order to proceed on the path, it is absolutely indispensable to abstain from all mental opinion and reaction. Give up all personal seeking for comfort, satisfaction, enjoyment or happiness. Be... conscious of your destiny, master of your life. And yet this release from all slavery to the flesh, this liberation from all personal attachment is not the supreme fulfilment. There are other steps to climb before you reach the summit... From Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education (Pondicherry: 1982) pp. 89-95, 97-99 and 121-27. Page 524 Contemplation, Painting... your occupation and activity, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must always be living, always present behind all that you do, all that you experience, all that you think. A story-day in the Mother's class for children Page 515 To complete this movement of inner discovery, it is good not to neglect the mental development. For the mental instrument can ...
... remember that in your diary there is a statement by the Mother that before Page 221 she came here she went through all possible occult experiences. She never told them to Sri Aurobindo but later she found them all expressed in Savitri. I should like very much to publish this statement in the February Mother India. Will you permit me and, if you do, will... changes in it if we are truly receptive!" The Mother, while teaching me occultism during our Savitri Page 223 work , disclosed to me the mysteries of the higher as well as the nether worlds. And yet another book of his, The Mother: Past-Present-Future, pp. 161-2; Amal stated my experiences and Nolini-da' s comments on them. Here is one of them:... exhibited here is explained only by this line. For the task which the Mother had given me was so immense, so beyond the capacity of the little instrument she had summoned, that only her Grace working in Sri Aurobindo's Light could have seen me through. I am deeply grateful to the Mother for her constant personal guidance - outward as well as inward. And what shall I say of the Presence ...
... is not my thought or idea. I have told you before that after the Nirvana experience I had no thoughts of my own. Thoughts used to come from above. From the beginning I didn't feel Nirvana to be the highest spiritual achievement. Something in me always wanted to go on farther. But even then I didn't ask for this new experience. In fact, in Nirvana, with that peace one does not ask for anything. But... SRI AUROBINDO: It was a sign of the spiritual consciousness and now it is a danger signal. (Addressing Purani) Have you heard Jean Herbert's opinion of Hitler? PURANI: No. SRI AUROBINDO: Someone told him that the Mother has described Hitler as possessed by a demon. He was greatly shocked and replied that the Mother could not have said so. Of course, the Mother had simply said that he was "possessed"... time this consciousness and peace were there overhanging all and enveloping all. NIRODBARAN: Does it mean in Ramatirtha's case that the experience was not worked upon in the vital and physical planes? SRI AUROBINDO: Certainly. Usually you find these experiences worked upon in the mental and emotional planes, in the vital less while in the physical almost not at all. NIRODBARAN: Where is the ...
... all there. The splendour of sunlight on the Himalayan peaks. "After that half-hour I hadn't the slightest wish to go! "I'd had the FULL spiritual experience of the Himalayas. "It was a grace given to me—a gift." This was Mother's first visit to India. On 7 March 1914 Mirra and Paul Richard had boarded the Japanese liner Kaga Maru at Marseille. After a few halts here... with Mirra. Nolini records, "In this connection the Mother had to pay a' visit to Karikal once. This was her first direct experience of actual India, that is, what it is in its crude outward aspect. She gave us an amusing description of the room where she was put up, an old dilapidated room as dark as it was dirty and a paradise for white ants." Mother must have told them about it much later when she... the afternoon." Interesting also are his notings of the 29 th . "The afternoon & evening taken up by R's visit, Bh's [Bharati's] 8c translation of Rigveda 11.23 8c 24. Bh. has fresh Yogic experiences,—this time of the voice of God 8c miraculous cure____ "Bj. [Bejoy] gets the vision of the colour-body with regard to R—behind the physical body—yellow in blue, then red, red Page 419 ...
... emanation of the Personal Divine. In a special sense we may speak of a third stage: the sheer impersonal unbounded Self Page 341 of selves, which is the same in everyone. But it cannot be strictly spoken of as part of our composite individual existence. We may designate it as not within but behind or beyond. I may add a further aspect of inwardness: the Purusha who is the spiritual truth on... the spiritual map of India Burma is included. When and how long was Burma a part of ancient India?" I have the impression that in the times of Asoka and of the Gupta emperors India had suzerainty over Burma just as over Ceylon, at least Samudragupta speaks of all the islands acknowledging his authority. In any case, the Mother does not seem to have gone by old history. She visioned spiritual India... this "astonishing music" is hinted at on p. vii of "A Personal Preface" to The Adventure of the Apocalypse. In the first para I write: "... Two Page 337 nights back I had kept awake similarly; but there had been no poetic inspiration. I had, however, been making inward contact again and again with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and hearing what I hear in my best and calmest moods, ...
... Science (1996)? From 1950 till 1958, the Mother gave twice a week French evening classes to the youth of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram School, which had been founded by her during the Second World War. There the children could ask her any question that popped up in their head, and the Mother answered, drawing on her erudition, experience and vast occult and spiritual knowledge. She talked several times about... as that goes against their interests. This means that they are the arch-enemies of any kind of spiritual discipline and of the transformation of the world. Secondly, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother rarely talked about themselves in public. The intimate details known about them are mainly found in personal writings, letters and conversations published after their passing away. When they could not avoid... thought, life and actions; we attempt to understand and approach it by our religion and philosophy, at last we touch it directly in some partial or, it may be, some complete spiritual experience. It is that spiritual experience, it is the method, it is the attainment of this realisation that we call Yoga.” 58 This being the general principle, what specifically is Integral Yoga? “What is Integral ...
... the end of next week. The end!... People really need it. I get ten-page letters telling me "spiritual experiences" — which are completely in the vital. They don't understand a thing. Even in Auroville they're like that, they don't understand. Page 218 So I wrote... (Mother tries to recall) what did I write?... I don't remember. TRUE SPIRITUALITY... I know I put SIMPLICITY... she say? Is she responding? Well... I don't know. (Mother nods her head) Page 217 In places. You know my impression? They're all old and I am the only one who is young! That's it, you know, that flame, that will... what is called "push" - they are satisfied with stupid little personal satisfactions... which lead nowhere, preoccupied with what they're going... might help people, but on the other hand I have the feeling that... it's not the solution. From your personal point of view, you were quite right. Yes, but then I wonder if it isn't egoistic? No, my child! Sri Aurobindo used to tell me, "The Divine is the supreme egoist!" (Mother laughs and everyone laughs) Page 230 ...
... the reality or otherwise of the dynamis of the Absolute, let us listen to Sri Aurobindo describing his own personal spiritual realisation : "The solution of the matter must rest not upon logic, but upon a growing, ever heightening, widening spiritual experience — an experience which must of course include or have passed through that of Nirvana and Maya, otherwise it would not be complete... or weak points, of a particular philosophical formulation, the spiritual experience that it seeks to represent remains in itself eternally valid and can only be integrated in the compass of another experience much more wide and much more lofty. For, as Sri Aurobindo has so forcefully pointed out, "a single decisive spiritual experience may undo a whole edifice of reasonings and conclusions erected... Ibid., p.375. Page 104 opposition of transcendent Reality and unreal cosmic Maya." 1 But the difficulty is that it is often trenchantly asserted as a fact of spiritual experience that the Reality is indeed featureless and immutable and the universe of manifestation is brought about by the illusionary Maya-Power of the Supreme. Although this assertion that the only ...
... consciousness, with the work which I am here to do." Of course, the Mother in her non-personal aspect would be in Page 147 touch with every kind of spiritual experience anywhere. What is at issue is the Integral Yoga of Supramental Descent and Transformation whose radiating centre was the embodied Divine Mother gathering around her all those children of hers who had in these... way of his inner response to me." Not only will mere spiritual belief fail to bring a man into relation with the Mother, but even spiritual experience can keep him still apart from her. I have heard her comment on a person who had been meditating with her: "People sit before me and go into meditation and are quite pleased with the spiritual state they feel themselves in — and yet they may not... with his spiritual force to bring about the Revolution against Czardom. It was only with the advent of Stalin that Sri Aurobindo turned his spiritual force against communist Russia, Communism in its Stalinist "Asuric" form was anathema to him. Here it would be well to realise that the politicians in charge have to be differentiated from the common folk. Both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had a warm ...
... said anything of the kind, since I have at least some faint sense of spiritual values? The passage you have quoted is my considered estimate of Ramakrishna. 1 3 February 1932 I have heard that if one learns logic or philosophy it can be a great help in the yoga, because it makes the mind wider to spiritual experiences so that once the mind gets beyond the intellect and reaches the intuitive... unveiled and unmixed above mind, life and body and not in mind, life and body. It is a matter of the undeniable experience of many that this can descend and it is my experience that nothing short of its full descent can thoroughly remove the veil and mixture and effect the full spiritual transformation. No metaphysical or logical reasoning in the void as to what the Atman "must" do or can do or needs... standpoint of sadhana Vivekananda has never attracted me—he was more of a missionary. As far as I have studied Ramatirtha, he seems to have been on a higher level. That can be judged from the personal experience only—not from the books which are too highly mentalised to give any indication of the full achievement in the lower part of the nature. 2 December 1933 Ramatirtha used to say that all ...
... on Amal will be entirely personal in orientation. Scholars to come will no doubt qualify for their doctorates in philosophy by researching into the many-sided achievements of this extraordinary life. To talk about a poet-child of Sri Aurobindo, one needs to begin with the Master himself. So no apologies arc offered for dwelling a little more on the spiritual spark-plug of Amal's creative... seldom allow them to play any part in determining my own tastes in the matter. Personally, I find that I am better off without their opinions. Opinions are worthless, as Mother said. It is experience, and experience alone, which is the touchstone of all truths - not opinions - whether mine, yours or anybody else's. We might usefully recall Virginia Woolf’s words about the opinions of literary... beautiful poetry in all languages which is our precious heritage from the richest vital, mental and intuitive expressions of mankind in the past, and, on the other, the poetry of direct spiritual experience — at once a veridical descent from several levels of the heights - and a bone-chilling upsurge from Page 168 the depths. We recall Sri Aurobindo's Pilgrim of the ...
... But the inner consciousness can see behind the thing, it is aware of the play of forces, personal or universal — for it is in conscious touch with the universal action. Letters on Yoga, p. 312 ...nothing is more difficult than to bring home the greatness and uplifting power of the spiritual consciousness to the natural man forming the vast majority of the race; for his mind and senses... the presence of the Divine, the Mother. One is then aware of two consciousnesses, the inner one and the outer which has to be changed into its counterpart and instrument — that also must become full of peace, light, union with the Divine. Letters on Yoga, p. 307 The outer consciousness is shut up in the body limitations and in the little bit of personal mind and sense dependent on the... activities which is the true support of our individualisation; the ego is only an outward false substitute: for it is this secret soul that supports and holds together our self-experience and world-experience; the mental, vital, physical, external ego is a superficial construction of Nature. It is only when we have seen both our self and our nature as a whole, in the depths as well as on the ...
... weaknesses and without shadows. … Yes, perhaps the overman.” 15 The Mother has always warned that, if one has a spiritual experience, one should let it work itself out, without limiting and thereby fixing it through a mental formulation or interpretation. This is one of many examples how she proceeded herself, evoking the experience without defining it, by carefully letting it continue to have its effect... demise.) Then there is also the inner coherence of the facts of their spiritual adventure into the unknown, supported by a mass of direct and indirect evidence. It must be remembered that spiritual matters are not subject to scientific proof; they can only be confirmed through faith and direct experience. What Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are, what they have done, and what continues to happen as the co... Arya , the Mother’s Prayers and Meditations , and personal correspondence. No doubt, this literature contained the foundations on which Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s avataric mission could be understood. Books like The Life Divine , The Synthesis of Yoga and Essays on the Gita contained all essentials of the Aurobindian Revolution. But the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was an adventure ...
... book The Mother, has drawn our attention to the interesting fact that although in Yoga the Divine is considered to be the Goal of attainment, he himself at the same time acts as the sadhaka, also the sadhana. Still, so long as a sadhaka remains under the control of his lower human nature, it becomes altogether imperative that he make some personal effort for his progress. This personal effort... (v) Along with these rather negative personal efforts at rejection, the sadhaka has to turn immediately to the Divine and his Shakti and pray fervently and constantly that these weaknesses and impulses of his nature be vanquished and removed. Now this combined operation of a sincere effort at rejection on the sadhaka' s part and the Divine Mother's intervention as a response to his earnest... sadhaka is only because of the fact that the spiritual aspirant is still clinging to them due to some lax inertia and calling them back again and again although they have the tendency to disappear in the past. The defect the sadhaka is suffering from is that he has made an about-turn with his attention fixed behind. The inevitable consequence is that his spiritual progress gets slowed down or even completely ...
... it is released from itself—the Silence that is the foundation of spiritual experience. What you have felt (the former experiences were probably preparatory touches) is indeed the beginning of this foundation—a consciousness free, wide, empty at will, able to rise into the supraphysical planes, open to the descent of whatever the Mother will pour into it. Nothing needs to be done to bring the... Integral Yoga The Spiritual Transformation Letters on Yoga - III Chapter II Ascent to the Higher Planes Contact with the Above These are the ordinary normal experiences of the sadhana when there is an opening from above—the contact with the peace of the Brahman, Self or Divine and the contact with the higher Power, the Power of the Mother. He does not... above the Head This is a fundamental experience of the Yoga. It is the free ascent of the consciousness to join the Divine. When, liberated from its ordinary identification with the body, it rises upward to have experiences of the higher planes, to link itself with the psychic or the true being or to join the Divine Consciousness, then there is this experience of ascension and of speeding or expanding ...
... justify Sri Aurobindo's solution of this problem, as well Page 364 as to bring out the symbolism of the ancient myth and incorporate the experiences of his own Yoga. Aswapati had to ascend to hitherto undreamed-of spiritual heights and invoke a consciousness and force greater than any yet manifested in the terrestrial evolution, since only the intervention of such a force, embodied... language of exceptional beauty in its own kind. No doubt, the intense feeling expressed in this poem was drawn from a general empathy with the human condition more than from any experience in Sri Aurobindo's personal life. But this does not diminish the authenticity of Rum's words: He spoke, with sorrow pale: "O grim cold Death!... O secrecy terrific, darkness vast, At which we shudder... more than a pleasing fiction. To overcome this objection and to make the victory of love over death both artistically convincing and spiritually inevitable was perhaps the greatest challenge Sri Aurobindo faced in writing Savitri. For the whole of human experience seems to point to the opposite conclusion, that death is more powerful. The expansion of Savitri to the epic it is today was ...
... the call to the way and spiritual purpose of this Yoga, an entire and one-minded readiness for surrender and the giving up of all else for the one Truth, acceptance by myself and the Mother. Those who practise, are not always admitted at once to the Asrama. 11 September 1928 The obstacles to his coming here are of two kinds. (1) There is nothing as yet in his experiences, at least as he has recorded... in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion and the possibility or the advisability for one to take the step, the decision resting with the Mother. 24 April 1947 Not a School or Teaching... your case is this doubt of your own capacity. As I have told you, the capacity for having inner experience—and that is the one thing all sadhaks must have or develop—this you have, for it showed itself clearly. The rest does not depend on personal capacity, but on reliance and opening to the Mother's force. It was because you had that that you were progressing for some time very well. It got covered ...
... 301 an expression of an experience which I often had whether in the mountains or on the plains of Gujarat or looking from my window in Pondicherry... and I am unable to find any feebleness either in the experience or in the words that express it. 60 One reason why parts of Savitri, especially those that try to project spiritual experiences, cause puzzlement to the average reader... them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. About Savitri as Sri Aurobindo's (and her own) spiritual autobiography, the Mother was equally explicit: These are experiences lived by him, — realities, cosmic truths. He experienced all this, as one experiences joys or sorrows physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, Page 311 even in the ... Sri Aurobindo is spiritual, scientific and modem; what Dante did with such superb psychological and clinical precision for his time, Sri Aurobindo has done for all time. For Aswapati himself, the whole arc of occult experience between the poles of superconscience and inconscience has already been covered in its entirely, and he is beyond all knowledges, all experiences: He had reached ...
... heart has fallen asleep down to the very depths of my being. "No more personal limits, no more any individual action, no more any separatist concentration creating conflict; nothing but a single and infinite Oneness. "My heart has fallen asleep down to the very depths of my being."¹ In this experience the Mother has been completely identified with the material universe, its life and... integral experience, for she is identified with the One in all the ways of His Being and in all forms of His self- manifestation. She knows at once the essential and phenomenal truths of existence as truths of her own self and its becomings, for, it is an experience in which "it is not a second or other than and separate from himself that he sees, speaks to, hears, knows."¹ In spiritual life the... the above quotation that the Mother is speaking of her experience of that plane of consciousness which is intermediate between the featureless unity of the Divine Existence and the multitudinous flux of the manifested world. The experience is born of identification, and it gives her a perfect knowledge of the transcendent ¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—May 15, 1914. Page 357 ...
... there on the idea, image or name of the Divine Mother, whichever comes easiest to you. (2) A gradual and progressive quieting of the mind by this concentration in the heart. (3) An aspiration for the Mother's presence in the heart and the control by her of mind, life and action. Page 225 But to quiet the mind and get the spiritual experience it is necessary first to purify and prepare... there. Of course all work helps provided it is done in the right spirit. Why argue from your personal experience great or little and turn it into a generalisation? A great many people (the majority perhaps) find it [ sadhana through work ] the easiest of all. Many find it easy to think of the Mother when working; but when they read or write, their mind goes off to the thing read or written and they... cosmic; one experiences the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and is liberated from the shackles of the outer nature; one becomes aware of one's inner being and feels the outer as an instrument; one feels the universal Force doing one's works and the Self or Purusha watching or witness but free; one feels all one's works taken from one and done by the universal or the supreme Mother or by the Divine ...
... of its discovery. All what I meant was that one can have a guru inferior in spiritual capacity (to oneself or to other gurus) carrying in him many human imperfections, and yet, if you have the faith, the bhakti, the right spiritual stuff, contact the Divine through him, attain to spiritual experiences, to spiritual realisation, even before the Guru himself. Page 73 Mark the “if... the necessity through Yoga of purifying the emotions as she is emotional though not of the nervous type. But I told her vital emotions were not helpful if one wanted to touch spiritual depths though spiritual experience needed vital power to find full poetic expression. I hope I didn’t err here. But I am not quite clear about the nervous as I have not lived on the nerves except in rare moments... earth’s surface. * November 22, 1943 ( ...) should be still ten years. Fifty six! Good god! However, perhaps before that age I will have some authentic spiritual experience that will make the spiritual voyage more heartening. Rather latish, but if it is the goal you reach and if it is “sure “! Obviously many things ought to happen before you reach the final goal ...
... will lave a chance. "If our aim is not success and personal fame but to arrive at the expression of spiritual truth and experience of all kinds in poetry, the English tongue is the most wide-spread and is capable of profound turns of mystic expression which make it admirably fitted for the purpose; if it could be used for the highest spiritual expression, that is worth trying." And then in... but have not the same subtle spiritual appeal; they touch the mind and vital strongly but the other goes home into the soul.... "His remarks about 'immensity' etc. are very interesting to me; for these are the very words, with others like them, that are constantly recurring at short intervals in my poetry when I express not spiritual thought, but spiritual experience. I knew perfectly well that... such "experiences", however startling. One must aspire only for the most startling, of all experiences: the change of nature without which no abiding change of consciousness could be achieved. But, unhappily for me, she induced in me an expectation that gave me no end of trouble. For I started meditating for hours Page 279 but, alas, not even the shadow of such an experience so much ...
... approached through them. Direct personal experience of God was forbidden. ‘Mystics’, people who had direct experiences and confessed they had them, were persecuted, even those later canonized as saints, and many were cruelly executed as heretics. Therefore all “God within” movements had to go underground, as one finds in the fascinating history of Gnosticism, spiritual alchemy, Hermetism, Rosicrucianism... their result or their process. All reality, all experience must indeed, to be held as true, be capable of verification by a same or similar experience, so, in fact, all men can have a spiritual experience and can follow it out and verify it in themselves, but only when they have acquired the capacity or can follow the inner methods by which that experience and verification are made possible.” (Sri Aurobindo... spirituality is not a matter of superstition or mental negation of facts the mind cannot grasp: it is a matter of experience, prepared by longtime patient attention and accurate perception. Science has its value within the limits it has imposed on itself. Of another kind is the value of the experiences and formulations of the countless seekers after truth in their life-long exploration of domains which differ ...
... and ignorance, whose inevitable happy culmination will be the spiritual transformation of the entire instrumental being of the sadhaka,consisting of his mind and heart and body in all their parts and functionings. It will be a constantly repeated delightful experience for the sadhaka to discover with surprise that it is the Divine Mother herself and not he himself, who, dwelling within him as aconstantly... successful building up and consummation of our spiritual life. Has not Sri Aurobindo assured us? - "Strength has a value for spiritual realisation, but to say that it can be done by strength only and by no other means is a violent exaggeration. Grace is not an invention, it is a fact of spiritual experience.... Strength, if it is spiritual, is a power for spiritul realisation; a greater power... intervene in his life andhelp him in every situation to lead him finally to his goal of spiritual fulfilment? The first thing we have to know is that in this particular sadhana, principally based on the action of Grace, the sadhaka need not take recourse to any outer austerities or any violent effort of his personal will. What he has to do is to build up a 'state of Grace' in his consciousness and ...
... around an experience made perceptible to others, I think it becomes clearer, doesn't it, instead of being something quite diffuse. Therefore, even from this external standpoint of the external realization, you can be satisfied. In the great universal work, your existence has its place and its usefulness. From the personal standpoint... my own feeling is that you are BOUND to have experiences after some... to die." And ever since I had the experience of psychic immortality, the immortality of consciousness, that is, in 1902 or 3, or 4 at the latest (sixty years ago now), all fear of death went away. Now the body's cells have the sense of their immortality. There was also a time when I almost had a sort of curiosity about death; it was satisfied by my two experiences in which, according to the surface... is the one open. Changing this body is something new; but having experiences already exists, so it has to happen to you, it's bound to happen to you. But I believe your experiences Page 290 will be of a very particular character, in the sense that they will be very positive. You have categorically refused the experiences that consist in going out of the present existence in search of ...
... the inner mind and vision and the inner or yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature. Page... difference between the "spiritual"and the "psychic"? Are they different planes"? Yes, the psychic plane belongs to the personal manifestation; the psychic is that which is divine in you put out to be dynamic in the play. But when we speak of the spiritual we are thinking of something that is concentrated in the Divine rather than in the external manifestation. The spiritual plane is something static... for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way. That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here ...
... she possessed nothing, she was to learn everything right from the start, as if she had known or heard about nothing. Now to come back to a personal experience. The first thing I heard and came to know about the Mother was that she was a great spiritual person. I did not know then that she might have other gifts; these were revealed to me gradually. First I came to know that she was a very fine... core of this lies in elevating our life to a cleaner level, and the first and most important need is to put each thing in its place. The training that the Mother has throughout been giving us—I am not here referring to the side of spiritual practice but to the daily routine of our ordinary life—is precisely this business of putting our things in order. We do not always notice how very disorderly... a complete obliteration of the past, erasing it with its virtues and faults. The Mother has referred to this in one of her Prayers and Meditations. When she came here, she gave herself up to the Lord, Sri Aurobindo, with the candid simplicity of a child, after erasing from herself all her past, all her spiritual attainments, all the riches of her consciousness. Like a new-born babe, she felt she ...
... longs ) or a molossus (three longs) elsewhere. To play on words in a more sober spiritual way, let me state that to long sincerely for the Mother in however brief a span of time is not to fall short of her expectations of her little ones. (4.4.1986) Here are my answers to your questions. (1) The experience of a Presence silently radiating love from the heart is surely of what Sri Aurobindo... (2) In the course of individual evolution it is the psychic being that "grows" through the various experiences from life to life. The apparent movement is towards the True, the Good, the Beautiful, but inwardly the movement is towards the Divine and when this inward fact is recognised the genuine spiritual life has begun and one is aware of one's soul directly and not only of the reflection or rather... Upanishad mentions as the rending asunder of the knot of the heartstrings, except that this experience relates to everything connected with one's feelings, and does not relate merely to the dear people to whom one is attached. It marks a passage from the finely and profoundly psychological to the sheer spiritual. A prominent aspect of it is shown in those lines of Sri Aurobindo: A poised serenity ...
... Well, that's not so bad! ( Mother laughs ) Yes, but it's a sign of the times! For them it's not so bad, because with me ( laughing ) there are always ways and means! But there are other organizations.... Most people start an industry to earn their livelihood—now they can't. They can't because personal expenses aren't allowed. But this fact of personal expenses "not allowed" has been there... s! ( Mother laughs ) Otherwise it can't work. So... there are going to be a hundred very difficult years, very difficult. Afterwards, maybe we'll emerge towards something.... ( silence ) What this man [the marquis] writes you here, lots of people are like that! Lots of them have written it, people from every country. They're exasperated by the way things are. They say, "No more personal property... ons are based on: the visible fact (which is a falsehood), public opinion (another falsehood), and moral sense, which is a third falsehood! ( Mother laughs ) So... ( silence ) Ah! Have you read the latest answer to the Aphorisms ? Your experience of "God"? Yes, I am not sure I was very clear.... I'm not yet convinced it can be published! She asks, "What does Sri Aurobindo mean by ...
... the spiritual consciousness. I see no reason to doubt that H saw things in vision (hundreds of people do) or had experiences. Some people seem to be quite misled in the matter of the higher planes. When they are in these planes or receive something from them, they begin to think that they have reached a great height, and that the higher planes have nothing to do with the Mother. Especially... Supermind they have such queer notions — that it is something greater than the Mother. Page 268 If they have a greater experience or consciousness than the Mother, they should not stay here but go and save the world with it. If the Supermind has not been established in Mother's body-consciousness, it is not because she is not ready for it like us, but because... Supermind is. That is a very important truth. In our sadhana, at times we experience seas of the Mother's Peace, Force, Ananda, etc. But let not such heights or depths be usurped by our little human ego and make us feel, as some already do, that we shall belong to the Mother's select band of Supermen. I do not wish to be a Superman (with an 'S' big or small)! ...
... earth-embracing Integral Yoga, full of constructive physical and mental vigour no less than creative spiritual vision, went home to Nehru's ever-young heart. Time and again he expressed in private his sense of the preciousness of the Aurobindonian experiment constantly developed in all directions by the Mother even after the passing of the Master. Deeply happy he seemed each time he was in her presence and... the best "sattwic" and Brahmin type, precisely made, as it were, for turning to supreme spiritual truths in the twentieth century it was our Prime Minister for all his lack of concern with what is popularly labelled as religion. In fact, this very lack of concern would distinguish, on the negative side, the spiritual aspiration of our modern age that had come out into the light by discarding the fears... "attachment" he speaks of all these spiritually-charged things of the past having become "attached" to the Ganga and the Jamuna, especially the former. We may also emphasise his statement that this river, "a symbol of India's agelong culture and civilization", is through all her changing and flowing "ever the same Ganga". Are not these words a recognition of the ancient spiritual India that never dies and a ...
... activities for the sake of Yoga ... but after years of spiritual effort I had failed to find the way and it was for that I had asked to meet him. His first answer was, 'It would be easy for you as you are a poet.'" Sri Aurobindo wanted neither Sannyasa nor Nirvana, nothing which required him to give up action and life. "I wanted spiritual experience and political action together," he said. "I had to... and have done so ever since." A liberation. As a result "the whole being became Page 439 quiet and in seven days I got the Nirvanic experience...." Nirvana, said Sri Aurobindo, "in my case was the first positive spiritual experience and it made possible all the rest of the sadhana." Lele was astonished with his student. He "said to others that he had never met anyone before who... Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire." Sri Aurobindo said, "It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this." Sri Aurobindo describes his experience in his poem, 'Nirvana.' All is abolished ...
... 182 spiritual experience which has an equally ancient history, though he also knew that the seeming illogical ratiocination of poetic recordation might not be appreciated easily by the general public: Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect... He gained valuable inputs for his Yoga from his spiritual collaborator, the Mother. When Sri Aurobindo turned from ratiocinative arguments in The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga to the seemingly perilous paths of mystic poetry in Savitri, he was not giving in to fanciful conjectures. Even as epics of action record a racial experience, Savitri records a 3 Ibid., p. 704. ... his own dynasty, his Madra kingdom, his personal hegemony over a portion of the earth. After the yogic experiences he has been through, his vision has embraced all creation. He now addresses himself to the task of saving the entire human race and transforming it, and avoid the mistake of Pururavas who had been satisfied by the fulfilment of his personal need for Urvashi, while the earth was abandoned ...
... the most important thing to obtain. Happiness is not the aim of life. The aim of ordinary life is to carry out one's duty, the aim of spiritual life is to realise the Divine. In the world, as it is, the goal of life is not to secure personal happiness, but to awaken the individual progressively towards the truth-consciousness. It is not in order to be happy that we are upon earth... therefore to become conscious of the Divine and to surrender himself entirely to His Will. All the rest, whatever the appearance, is falsehood and ignorance. 26 December 1972 We seek not our personal salvation but the absolute surrender of our being to the Divine. Concentration on the Divine is the only truly valid thing. To do what the Divine wants us to do is the only thing valid. 6 January... impossibility. We are upon earth to find and realise the Divine, for the Divine Consciousness alone can give true happiness. Do not live to be happy, live to serve the Divine and the joy that you will experience will be beyond all expectations. March 1972 The life of a man is unfulfilled unless he has found the Divine. 2 June 1972 The Divine is everywhere and in everything; and we are ...
... act as out of Nothingness — Shunya — and they have no connection with my personal volition. It is a well-known experience — when even the body consciousness feels only the self-existence. Till lately my physical being was all void — as the emptiness had entered there too. But now the Mother's Force seems to have begun to occupy it. Very good. Page... cannot do that — it is not meant to be the leader. It can by its own regeneration become the fit instrument of the higher powers. EXPERIENCES IN BODY CONSCIOUSNESS While concentrating, sometimes I get the experience of gathering different lights and forces on the head at the same time. I am surprised. I suppose the physical consciousness is not... subconscient inertia. The Mothers Light flows in my forehead. I am surprised to see that it works with a tranquil intensity, while the whole Page 29 head is completely filled with it. Good. At times I feel in the midst of an experience that the physical form of the organs where the experience is going on does not exist at all. ...
... or with personal effort either? Why bloat the ego still further when you know that suggestions and that sort of thing are no use? In Yoga, you say surrender, and in poetry—this personal effort business? No, Sir, no! Wait a minute—Where have I said that there is to be no personal effort in Yoga? Kindly read the passages in The Mother about tamasic surrender and the place of personal effort in... and the intolerableness of Mother's withdrawal and loss of the Pranam which had made his sufferings just tolerable), of Mother's sternness, desire of death, never never shall I come back here—finally joy of going accompanied with sentimental effusions. That's the whole story. Will he come back with his lower fires run down and, thus a changed man, jump into the spiritual sea? For a time perhaps,... because by self-deprivation he would land himself in the seas of despair—not as a method of reaching the Brahman. He was trying to do what his nature would not allow. It was only if he got intense spiritual experience that he could give up tea and talk without wallowing in misery—Is it so difficult to understand a simple thing like that? I should have thought it would be self-evident even to the dullest ...
... s to concentrate on his heart -centre and go inward. if he maintains faith in the constant action of the Grace of the Mother. instead of relying too much on the efficacy of his own personal effort, if he develops in his heart a genuine love and devotion for the Divine Mother, if all the se concomitant conditions Page 266 are fulfilled by the sadhaka, his psychic being will surely... constant Presence of the Divine Mother; (iii) sure indications coming from within as regard s the way to be followed at any moment; (iv) quietening and purification of the mind and heart and the vital of the sadhaka; (v) opening of all the parts of the lower nature towards the spiritual consciousness reigning above; (vi) mixing of sweetness to the dry rigours of spiritual discipline; (vii) being able... rid of the mixture of vital motives with his sadhana and is capable of a simple and sincere self-offering to the Mother. If there is any kind of egoistic tumor insincerity of motive, if the yoga is done under a pressure of vital demands, or partly or wholly to satisfy some spiritual or other ambition, pride, vanity or seeking after power, position or influence over others or with any push towards ...
... mystic aura and intense sincerity and spiritual poise coupled with her capacity to deal expertly with outer things struck him at once. He even invited her to take charge of the cultural activity he was engaged in organising. For Mirra, these years in Japan were an opportunity to learn the ways of perfection in elegance, and orderliness and propriety in personal and communal life. With her own composite... of her earlier musings and meditations - "awkward attempts at expression" - and feels that she remains at heart a child of the Divine. Really, she has had no new experiences, no strikingly new ideas; only the old ideas and experiences return, but perhaps with a new freshness. How is she to view this drying up of the the unexpected, this reign of monotony? The words are at last wrung from her: ... tortured earth, and she made quite a few explorations into the Unknown, and spiritual conquests as well, and these were duly recorded in her prayers and meditations. Richard had now to visit Japan on an assignment, but even as in 1910 and 1914, he had combined politics and electioneering with a serious spiritual quest when he visited Pondicherry, now also he hoped and planned to continue his inquiries ...
... that we may suppose the working of the Force is not altogether in vain, as this experience is a very big affair and is supposed to be, if stabilised, the summit of the old Yogas—For us it is only a beginning of spiritual transformation. I have said this though it is personal so that you may understand that outside defects and obstacles in the nature .or the appearance of unYogicness does not necessarily... atom is merging peacefully and beautifully into the wideness of the Mother, and yet this alarming "Lila" of the stomach and the whole body! Is the Spirit separating itself from Matter and enjoying all this, while giving an impersonal account of material suffering? Z is a humbug and I don't believe in her atoms. She has had experiences but on the mental and vital plane. It is only a real descent of... purpose, was sensible enough to see that that wasn't what she came here for. She didn't want to question everything and be satisfied in her limited intellect before she took the way of spiritual self-giving and inner experience. How did this 'fundamental calm" get established in her? It came of itself through the sincerity of her will to open and to live for the Divine—there was insincerity and ego ...
... Oh! R: Yes! ( Mother concentrates for two or three minutes ) It is because when you want something, it is the ego that wants. So, the ego... must be ignored. The first thing to do is not to act for yourself but to act in obedience to the Divine, to express the divine Will. For your part, you have no orders to give. As long as it is a personal will, a personal desire, it is not the true... at the Ashram we have learnt that life is something else. True life is not the satisfaction of desires. I can affirm from experience that all the experiences brought by drugs, all that contact with the invisible world, can be had in a much better, more conscious and controlled way without drugs. Only, one must control oneself. It is more difficult than swallowing poison. But I am not going to preach... through us, not we ourselves. The greatest objection is: How can we know the divine Will? But as a matter of fact, I tell you: if you sincerely renounce your personal will, you will know. R: Yes, that is clear. Yes, that's it. ( Mother remains silent, concentrating on each person present, for about fifteen minutes. Then to A: ) So, you will explain that to them. We want to change life―we ...
... specifically include even the ultimate experience, 'le yoga du corps' - 'the yoga of the body'." According to you, the Mother's position may be summed up as follows. She does not deny that doing Yoga, including the Yoga of divinising the body, is possible without a Guru but her own experience has been always with a Guru and she can give only her own experience. She repeats that it is possible and... to be merely theoretical - not anything coming as a real concession by her. And such a situation is confirmed by her later declaration: "I don't know, I can't say, since I can speak only from personal experience - all else has no value" ("je ne sais pas, je ne peux pas dire parce que je ne peux que parler d'experience personnelle - ca n'a pas de valeur"). Finally, we have to be sensitive to the note... be called pleasant." In short, the Mother does not believe that anyone except herself is meant to try this terribly hard experiment for the first time. And as for doing, without an embodied Guru, anything in the Integral Yoga -most of all physical transformation - her own experience tells her that it can't be done. What worth is there in going outside her experience and granting the bare possibility ...
... have experiences they do not have. Z 's fall after his one year's rapid progress had obvious reasons in his character which do not exist in theirs. But apart from that the fall of a sadhak from Yoga proves nothing against the truth of spiritual experience. It is well known to all Yogis that a fall is possible and the Gita speaks of it more than once. But how does the fall prove that spiritual experience... great height. The experiences of Y have been those of many others before him and will be those of many others who do not yet have them; I fail to see why the fact of people having them or their intensity or the joy and confidence they give should make them suspect as untrue. A man who has risen high can fall low, especially if his experiences are only through the spiritual mind and the vital... advance and for the growth of the spirit. Pain and Suffering The sufferings and distress which come to people are part of their karma, part of the experience the being has to go through on its way through life after life till it is ready for spiritual change. In the life of the sadhak all vicissitudes are part of the path and, if he is a sadhak, he will recognise them as such though he may not understand ...
... objective knowledge, on the other it depends largely on personal and subjective experience, and here there is much chance of invention, distortion or false building. To reach the truth of these things, your experiencing consciousness must be pure and limpid, free from any mental interference or any vital interference, liberated from your personal notions and feelings and from your mind's habit of in... I must tell you that the beings of the vital world are immortal—they cannot die. They can be destroyed, but it is only the pure spiritual force which can destroy them. For example, in a vital battle (there are people who have a vital fighting power), the experience is always the same: if you fight in the vital world with a vital being, you can crush it, kill it, but it will be reborn always—always... different from what they were. Very often it is this that happens. You have said that these beings of the vital world are attracted by the spiritual life. Why? They are attracted, but this does not mean that they have decided sincerely to follow the spiritual life. The chief characteristic of these beings is falsehood: their nature is made of deceit. They have a power of illusion; they can take ...
... born free and victorious. It has never been afraid of anything in the vital world; the most fantastic experiences were practically child's play. But when I had that experience, it was so interesting that for a few weeks I was tempted to stay in it; it was.... I once told you a little about that experience (it was quite a while ago, at least two years). 5 I told you that even during the day I seemed... make something out of it.... But it's a new experience. Isn't it interesting? I have to put it into the form of an experience—there's no other way for it to be. But keep it as impersonal as possible! Do you need this thing [Mother's note to Satprem]? Here, take your piece of paper—it's nothing but an intellectual notation. ( Later, as Mother is leaving ) If we continue along this path... stopping there, accepting that experience as final—I went on. Well. So now, what can I tell you that's interesting—everything I've just said is a sort of miscellany, and three-fourths unusable. But, Mother.... I didn't say it with the idea of writing an article! Page 38 When I read that note 6 you sent me, I immediately reconnected with the experience, and things became clear. ...
... keep up my practice of getting out of the body. It is extremely fascinating, but is it a necessary part of Yogic development for keeping the consciousness open to inner spiritual things?) "It is much better to stop the experiences altogether. They seem to take you into levels which are undesirable and most unsafe; they are not at all necessary for any opening in the Yoga." (28-3-1944) *... You Page 79 are quite capable of the realisation if you make up your mind to it, and the experience you relate seems to me a valid promise that it will come." "As for what I meant in my last letter it was simply that there were things which might act to delay your spiritual realisation and might be otherwise dangerous for you. This does not mean that the realisation will not come... wrong in its action; it is not an anger personal to you but the wrath of a divine power and it must be allowed to act; in fact, I think you could not stop it from burning in you even if you wanted to stop it. This man has drawn it on himself and there is nothing wrong in what is happening, he alone is responsible. Of course, it must not be used for any personal aim or in any self-regarding way." ...
... Sri Aurobindo by letter his desire for a personal meeting. Sri Aurobindo naturally agreed to receive him. Tagore reached Pondicherry by steamer, and I had the privilege to see him on board the ship and escort him to the Ashram. The Mother welcomed him at the door of Sri Aurobindo's apartments and led him to Sri Aurobindo. Tagore already knew the Mother, for both were together in Japan and stayed... first break in the old order to usher in the new. The significant year 1914 was also the period when Rabindranath expressed in the magnificent series of poems of the Balaka his visions and experiences of the forces at work on earth, and Sri Aurobindo began revealing through the pages of the Arya the truths of the supramental infinities that were then pouring down into him and through him... spirit give new meanings to the finer subdeties of life." Characterising Tagore's poetry, in reference to a particular poem, Sri Aurobindo once wrote: "But the poignant sweetness, passion and spiritual depth and mystery of a poem like this, the haunting cadences subde with a sub-dety which is not of technique but of the soul, and the honey-laden felicity of the expression, these are the essential ...
... to Sri Aurobindo by letter his desire for a personal meeting. Sri Aurobindo naturally agreed to receive him. Tagore reached Pondicherry by steamer, and I had the privilege to see him on board the ship and escort him to the Ashram. The Mother welcomed him at the door of Sri Aurobindo's apartments and led him to Sri Aurobindo. Tagore already knew the Mother, for both were together in Japan and stayed... effect a first break in the old order to usher in the new. The significant year 1914 was also the period when Rabindranath expressed in the magnificent series of poems of the Balaka his visions and experiences of the forces at work on earth, and Sri Aurobindo began revealing through the pages of the Arya the truths of the supramental infinities that were then pouring down into him and through him into... spirit give new meanings to the finer subtleties of life." Characterising Tagore's poetry, in reference to a particular poem, Sri Aurobindo once wrote: "But the poignant sweetness, passion and spiritual depth and mystery of a poem like this, the haunting cadences subtle with a subtlety which is not of technique but of the soul, and the honey-laden felicity of the expression, these are the essential ...
... vital exaltation which can be very great when the experience is on its own plane, falls away and the obscure, obstructive physical and material consciousness appears in its unrelieved inertia. Inertia, tamas, stupidity, narrowness and limitation, an inability to progress, doubt, dullness, dryness, a constant forgetfulness of the spiritual experiences received are the characteristics of the unregenerated... of Yoga and a bargain or demand for a replacement of this kind can be no legitimate or healthy element in the sadhana. If it is there, it will surely impede the flow of spiritual experience. Ananda, yes; but Ananda and the spiritual happiness which precedes it ( adhyātma-sukham ) are something quite different from joys and pleasures. And even Ananda one cannot demand or make it a condition for pursuing... Yoga is not for our own sake but for Page 161 the sake of the Divine. It is not our own personal manifestation that we are to seek, the manifestation of the individual ego freed from all bounds and from all bonds, but the manifestation of the Divine. Of that manifestation our own spiritual liberation, perfection, fullness is to be a result and a part, but not in any egoistic sense or for ...
... certain extent very effectively. And one of the manifestations of this action was my experience – truly so very new – of yesterday evening. And the result of all this I have noticed step by step in almost daily experiences … “Firstly, it [the ideal of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother] is more than a ‘new concept’ of spiritual life and the divine Reality. This concept was expressed by Sri Aurobindo, I have... uninterrupted flow of experiences. Only, it so happened from time to time that an external or internal occasion, in herself or in “the family of the aspiration” she was guiding, caused her to reveal something to others. Compared to the whole of the experiences of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s Yoga, we know just about nothing – the incredible literature they have left us, the richest spiritual literature in... Tom Thumbs to retrace to a certain extent the path they have hewn in “the virgin forest”, and they contain the magic power, when assimilated, to trigger any experience needful for the personal progress on that path. The experience the Mother had on 3 February 1958 is a revealing one, but once again we have to summarise. She starts by comparing the world of the animals with the one of the humans: ...
... and all our physical experience daily tell us —so the spiritual search passes beyond the domain of scientific or rational enquiry and it is impossible by the aid of the ordinary positive reason to test the data of spiritual experience and decide whether those things exist or not or what is their law and nature. As in Science, so here you have to accumulate experience on experience, following faithfully... which compares the experiences, see what they mean, how far and in what field each is valid, what is the place of each in the whole, how it can be reconciled or related with others that at first might seem to contradict it, etc., etc., until you can move with a secure knowledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That," he stated, "is the only way to test spiritual experiences, I have myself tried... yoga. He made test after test and accumulated experience upon experience. He frankly told his intellectual disciples that testing Yogic experiences by the ordinary reason won't do. "For I am unable to see by what valid tests you propose to make the ordinary reason the judge of what is beyond it." Because, he explained in his precise way, "the experiences of Yoga belong to an inner domain and go according ...
... (I stopped reading for only three days), I read a passage where Sri Aurobindo speaks of his own experience and his own work and explains in full what he means by the 'supramental transformation.' This passage confirmed and made me understand many experiences I had after that Page 257 experience of the body's ascent [January 24, 1961] (the ascent of the body-consciousness, followed by the... to be like this ( Mother turns her hands towards the Heights in a gesture of abandonment ). Provided you don't fall asleep! You mustn't enter into a beatific state where you.... No, we must keep moving on. I don't know what to do. It's not easy. ( Mother rises ) Ah, I have something for you, but I forgot to bring it! ( Mother laughs ) 4 It's part of an experience.... I was told that... × Since Mother began reading Sri Aurobindo's letters in On Himself , which seemed to put her into contact with all the difficulties of the Work. × Experience of November 8, 1957. Mother has commented on this experience in 'Questions and Answers' of January 1, 1958 ...
... some gloomy moment when the poet had fancied the time his sister might die".* * Sri Aurobindo has read a purely spiritual — pantheistic — experience in the lyric and the present author has written at length to substantiate Sri Aurobindo's interpretation (Mother India, August 1956). Coleridge's authority is not definitive. Does not Wordsworth himself declare in general that nobody ... Wordsworth in sustained artistry and far behind him in Page 226 either poignancy or amplitude of spiritual perception suffusing and transfiguring the powerful analytic and synthetic mentality. POETIC EXPERIENCE In that poignancy, in that amplitude of spiritual perception is Wordsworth's uniqueness in the poetic literature of England. There have been attempts to depreciate... " But it is impossible to take seriously any detraction of Wordsworth's far-reaching spiritual quality. He was the first Seer in English poetic literature, answering in however limited a measure to the definition of seerhood current in the mystic Orient: one who has known by direct intuition and by intimate personal realisation and by concrete entry of consciousness a Divine Reality at once emanating ...
... the Government much-adoed about in Sri Aurobindo’s trial! 2 It was curious that I had no spiritual experience to speak of during my long stay, while my previous short visit had been so strikingly different. Still a month’s quiet sojourn in the spiritual atmosphere, with the daily touch of the Mother, could not have gone in vain. At least, it was a very welcome interlude after a life of bhoga in... spite of Doraiswamy’s personal influence. Our destiny led us far away. During our stay in his house, Doraiswamy paid a visit to the Ashram at the week end. My niece requested him to Page 12 get some blessing-flower from the Mother. When he returned I asked him, "Is there none for me?" He replied, "You didn’t ask." I felt humbled: the first cognizance of the Mother’s way of action. ... supraphysical ambience. "Eternal beauty wandering on its way" - one could repeat with Yeats. The next ceremony of importance was the morning Pranam. Spiritually as significant, the atmosphere was Page 8 quite different. Here the Mother appeared nearer to our earth - "Near to earth’s wideness, intimate with Heaven." The Pranam was held at 7.30 a.m. in the room now occupied by Bula. A few ...
... possible. If you can annul yourself completely, then the experience is total. And if your 'disappearance' could be constant, the experience would be constantly there—but that's still far away.... I don't know if all this... ( Mother looks at her body ). ( silence ) Obviously, the body needed a test, a VERY SEVERE test, because... from a personal viewpoint, it's the only explanation I can find for... question. I replied very briefly in English. I haven't brought my answer with me, but I can tell you right away that there are two signs—two certain, infallible signs. I know them through personal experience, for they are two things that can ONLY come with the supramental consciousness; without it, one cannot possess them—no yogic effort, no discipline, no tapasya can give them to you, while they... understand. The second sign is a sense of ABSOLUTENESS in knowledge. As I have already told you, I had this with my experience of January 24 . This state CANNOT be obtained through any region of the mind, even the most illumined and exalted. It's ... not a 'certainty,' it's ( Mother lowers both hands like an irresistible block descending ), a kind of absoluteness, without even any possibility of ...
... statement of faith. I thought he had said once you should not hanker after experiences. As for experience being necessary for faith and no faith possible without it, that contradicts human psychology altogether. Thousands of people have faith before they have experience and it is the faith that helps them to the experience. The doctrine "No belief without proof" applies to physical science, it would... however, is by the way. I have no objection to you or anybody having experiences. I am not a fool. Let everybody have as many experiences as possible. What I say is that the hankering for experiences should not be there in such a way as to replace the true attitude and bring disappointment and revolt. Bhakti is not an experience, it is a state of the heart and soul. It is a state which comes when the... the change of your nature. I certainly did not mean a moral but a spiritual change. Freedom from ego is not a moral but a spiritual change—a moral man may be chock full of ego, an ego increased by his sense of goodness and rectitude. Freedom from ego is spiritually valuable because then one can be centred, no longer in one's personal self, but in the Divine, and that too is the condition of bhakti. ...
... good health, lightness and an increased power of thinking. Side by side certain experiences also came. But not many nor important ones. I began to see things in the subtle. Then I had to give it up when I took to politics. I wanted to resume my yoga but did not know how to begin again. I wanted spiritual experience and political action together. I would not take up a method that required me to... depends on the Guru. If he is a human Guru then his personal vital or mental preferences may play a part and often they falsify the purpose of grace. The less they interfere the better. But what did you mean by the personal and the impersonal ? Do you mean to say that if you gave me a lot of fruits and other things every day there would be a lot of spiritual things going from me to you ? ( Laughter ) ... all right." X got this experience : the vision of the golden Mother over the head, and then the descent of a great calm. Then the next thing was to purify the whole being so that the experience might remain. But he could not do it and so he lost it. He got the experience and thought he had done everything. ! He could have asked : 'What after all is this experience ? What next ?’ These people ...
... wait for the number of days to pass. But if it happens that you have this personal relation with the little conscious entities which are Page 380 behind the wind, behind the storm, behind the rain, the thunder, behind all these so-called forces of Nature, which are forces and personal forces, if you have a personal relation with them and can create a kind of friendship through this relation... it", then it becomes your friend. Is time only subjective or it is something concrete like a personality? Perhaps this also depends on how you consider it. All forces are personal; all things in Nature are personal. But if we consider them as impersonal things, our relation with them is impersonal. Take for instance what has just happened. If you are a meteorologist and have calculated all... longer know what they are doing. There was a time at the end of the War, when things had truly become terribly chaotic up there, they lived in a kind of absurdity; and as these unfortunate experiences continue, they have not yet come out of their panic. They are panic-stricken. Truly men play with things which they know only from outside, that is, don't know at all. They know just enough to make ...
... synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning experience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw... widely embracing harmonisation of our gains is both an intellectual and a spiritual necessity of the future. But just as the past syntheses have taken those which preceded them for their starting-point, so also must that of the future, to be on firm ground, proceed from what the great bodies of realised spiritual thought and experience in the past have given. Among them the Gita takes a most important place... action in the illumination of God-experience; works can be made one spirit with knowledge. For works done in a total self-vision and God-vision, a vision of God in the world and of the world in God are themselves a movement of knowledge, a movement of light, an indispensable means and an intimate part of spiritual perfection. "Therefore now to the experience of a high impersodality Page 90 ...
... the whole of our existence, is what we have placed before us as our goal. But a further point remains to be elucidated here. A well-established Page 142 line of spiritual experience shows that whenever our soul gets involved in action, it loses hold and becomes nescient of its immobile, passive and so-called true status, whereas a withdrawal from dynamism and an involution... Supermind. But what is meant by soul or by Nature, by Purusha and his Prakriti ? Any relatively profound psycho-spiritual inquiry makes us aware of two elements of our being, a soul and a Nature. Purusha or soul, individual or universal, is the observing and experiencing conscious existence seemingly inactive but in relation with its becoming, while Prakriti or Nature, again individual or... which thus appears to be just a false superimposition upon the freedom and bliss of the soul. Now, if this experience is the only or the ultimate experience possible, then we have perforce to admit that an active life cannot be compatible with the conscious experience and enjoyment of the soul-status. But fortunately this is not so. This alternation in the nescience of the active and ...
... she possessed nothing, she was to learn everything right from the start, as if she had known or heard about nothing. Now to come back to a personal experience. The first thing I heard and came to know about the Mother was that she was a great spiritual person. I did not know then that she might have other gifts; these were revealed to me gradually. First I came to know that she was a very fine painter;... implies a complete obliteration of the past, erasing it with its virtues and faults. The Mother has referred to this in one of her Prayers and Meditations. When she came here, she gave herself up to the Lord, Sri Aurobindo, with the candid simplicity of a child, after erasing from herself all her past, all her spiritual attainments, all the riches of her consciousness. Like a new-born babe, she felt she... Upanishads, the Yoga-sutras, the Bhakti-sutras of Narada. I mention all this merely to tell you that the Mother's capacity of making her mind a complete blank was as extraordinary as her enormous mental acquisitions. This was something unique. In the early days, when she had just taken charge of our spiritual life, she told me one day in private, perhaps seeing that I might have a pride in being an intellectual ...
... that this spiritual figure should be at home in such a number of languages and therefore of literatures. Here was somebody who possessed a Light from beyond our earth and yet saw meaning in earthly endeavour and expression. Such a seer could not but have some meaning for me. However, I was engrossed in my own pursuits and they were not always such as might lead one to the spiritual path. The... Him. A subtle discipline in the midst of a wide freedom lay at the basis of this "Integral Yoga". Yes, it was not a smooth canter all the way. But the returns were great. There were intense inner experiences. The discovery of an inmost self whose very nature is bliss, the sense of being free from the shackles of the body, the enlightening influx of a force from above the brain-mind — these were no small... what it was to what it was not. Page 14 I did it by a special manner, not by a miracle and I did it to show what could be done and how it could be done. I did not do it out of any personal necessity of my own or by a miracle without any process. I say that if it is not so, then my Yoga is useless and my life was a mistake, — a mere absurd freak of Nature without meaning or consequence ...
... extravagant in outer semblance. It is possible also to arrive at a temporary ordered spiritual expression of the self which is sufficient for the stage one can reach for a time or in this life; or it may be a personal order of self-expression valid according to the norm of what one has already realised of the spiritual truth but afterwards changing freely by the force of spirituality to express the yet... evident indeed that supramental nature must be a perfect integration and consummation of spiritual nature and experience: it would also contain in itself, by the very character of the evolutionary principle, though it would not be limited to that change, a total spiritualisation of mundane Nature; our world-experience would be taken up in this step of our evolution and, by a transformation of its parts... inseparable and pervading significance of supramental self-experience. In the liberation of the soul from the Ignorance the first foundation is peace, calm, the silence and quietude of the Eternal and Infinite; but a consummate power and greater formation of the spiritual ascension takes up this peace of liberation into the bliss of a perfect experience and realisation of the eternal beatitude, the bliss ...
... terrestrial order, still a spiritual evolution of the individual being is not an inevitable consequence of any of these admissions or even of all of them together. It is possible to take another view of the spiritual significance and the inner process of terrestrial existence. If each thing created is a form of the manifest Divine Existence, each is divine in itself by the spiritual presence within it, whatever... understand or not? A little. A little. Ah! That's already something. So, to round it off, do you think there is an individual evolution or not?... Do you have any experience of it?... And how could you have the experience? That would become interesting. How can individual evolution be experienced apart from the collective evolution of Nature? Can you give the answer? Unless one is conscious... new progress and becomes capable of entering into a higher form, more and more, until this "something" becomes a perfectly conscious being at the end of the evolution. Then this being would have a personal evolution which would duplicate—it won't be independent but simultaneous—and complement the evolution of Nature or rather make use of the evolution of Nature as a field for its own individual evolution ...
... the Mother's Prayers and Meditations is a guide to Jnana and Yoga, if it throws open the doors of the occult and the spiritual, if her periodic dialogues with the Divine give us tremors of mystic recognition and moments of ecstatic adoration, her Words of the Mother makes us a participant in the Divine's commerce with average humanity, and we are at once edified by her wisdom and experience, reassured... common experience that in sleep we are often as active as in the waking state. In that sleep of apparent inactivity what dreams do come! Also, in the waking state itself, one may at unpredictable moments be surprised by visions. What is the role of such dreams and visions in life, especially in spiritual life? The problem bristles with so much complexity that, in Conversation III, the Mother declines... sustained and fulfilled by her all-understanding love. The Divine - the Mother as the mediatrix - aspirant Humanity: such is the sequence, such is the three-in-one mystic relationship. The Mother shows her human side to the Divine in Prayers and Meditations, and her Divine side to us in Words of the Mother. Together, these two spiritual classics make a double testament of lasting significance. Like ...
... also the powerful sense of that form still permeating the atmosphere and the rare inner experience that overwhelmed those who were attuned to this perception. The Divine Light which the Mother had manifested during her life-time persisted even after she had her body. Under its guidance her spiritual children could continue on the great path it had shown to them. But her departure from physical... for good and fixed in the physical mind of the Mother, constituting what he had called the Mind of Light. We have learnt from the Mother that Sri Aurobindo, in leaving his body, sacrificed his own personal fulfilment in order to hasten the fulfilment of mankind. We may take as a sign of the hastened process the fact that what the Mother has described as the Supermind's manifestation on... French "Mere" for "Mother" is considered, we have no more than 4 letters instead of 6. The same would be true about the Mother's original personal name "Mirra" as balanced against "Sri Aurobindo": the number of letters would be 5. The later "Mira's" number would be 4. Of course "La Mere" would provide the required quantum, but then its English counterpart would be "The Mother", a 9-letter ...
... the utility diminishes—you have to find the right knowledge and experience in yourself. This [ inclination to meditate while reading books on spiritual life ] is quite a normal movement. In reading these books you get into touch with the Force behind them and it is this that pushes you into meditation and a corresponding experience. It depends upon the nature of the things read, whether... consciousness and experiences begin within the being. Nor is it good to force yourself too much to do only the one work of painting. Such compulsion of the mind and vital tends usually either to be unsuccessful and make them more restless or else to create some kind of dullness and inertia. For the work simply aspire for the Force to use you, put yourself inwardly in relation with the Mother when doing... habit for centuries to make every novel turn around that—except in the few which deal with history or adventure or similar things. In a novel based on spiritual philosophy should not the man and woman idea go into the background or disappear, the spiritual love not having anything based at all on sex, but on the relation between soul and soul? It is not necessary to be in touch with the outside ...
... are set up in the field of work, dividing and breaking it up, the work can never be according to the spiritual Will. So bear this in mind: no collaboration, no right working. 1 December 1957 There is no question at all of "position"―nor of prestige. X has a lot of knowledge and experience of the stage that we do not have.She is willing to share it with us. So the only sensible thing for... the best of his capacity and with his eyes fixed upon the magnitude of the Divine's work which will surely help him in his personal difficulties. Times are hard for everybody and in everything―but it is surely to teach us to overcome our limitations. ( For some time Mother was supposed to have retired from day-to-day work. ) This is very interesting but not unexpected. Since I have "retired"... kept neat and tidy, free from all personal objects (cups, tumblers, flasks, shoes and sandals, etc.) straying all over the place. It is the most unbecoming sight to give to the visitors entering through the Ashram gate. I expect not to have to repeat it another time, and that this order will be carried out scrupulously. 6 June 1932 Gate Duty The Mother considers the duty of the gate-keeper ...
... boughs..."] is an expression of an experience which I often had whether in the mountains or on the plains of Gujarat or looking from my window in Pondicherry... and I am unable to find any feebleness either in the experience or in the words that express it. 67 One reason why parts of Savitri, especially those that try to project spiritual experiences, cause puzzlement to the average reader... them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. About Savitri as Sri Aurobindo's (and her own) spiritual autobiography, the Mother was equally explicit: These are experiences lived by him, - realities, cosmic truths. He experienced all this, as one experiences joys or sorrows physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighbourhood of death, endured... Sri Aurobindo is spiritual, scientific and modem; what Dante did with such superb psychological and clinical precision for his time, Sri Aurobindo has done for our time. For Aswapathy himself, the whole arc of occult experience between the poles of superconscience and inconscience has already been covered in its entirety, and he is beyond all knowledges, all experiences: He had reached ...
... in the psychic consciousness is that you have the right awareness and its will being in harmony with the Mother's will, you can call in the Mother's Force to make the change. Those who live in the mind and the vital are not so well able to do this; they are obliged to use mostly their personal effort and as the awareness and will and force of the mind and vital are divided and imperfect, the work done... Yogic experience, eternal reality of consciousness inherent in the eternal reality of existence, as in the concept and experience of Sachchidananda. This is the crucial point in the question, what is consciousness, whether it is a temporary phenomenon of Nature or a reality in itself fundamental to existence. The first is the conclusion that is drawn, and must be drawn, from normal experience on the... instinctive feeling in humanity unless we go beyond the normal experience, deepen and widen the range of our present consciousness and test its inner depths and inferior abysses and supernormal heights, until we can touch its fundamental or its ultimate or its total reality as is done in Yoga. To judge from only normal and superficial experience as the ordinary mind does with phenomena is to miss the truth ...
... the Mother summed up, on the basis of her experiences, three approaches to the problem of transformation: (1) the 'spiritual': contact with the supreme Love-Consciousness-Power, identification with it, to enable the cells to receive and express That; (2) the 'occult': making the intermediary worlds (including those of the Overmental Gods: Shiva, Krishna, all the aspects of the Mother) intervene;... perhaps in an asexual - world where there was neither Man nor Woman, and it was this Force that was inhabiting the Mother and making use of her body. 26 In her most recent experiences, the Mother felt that her body was learning to replace the mental regime of intelligence by the "spiritual government of consciousness". This was a revolutionary development, and her body, now released from the old rules... including details of the report by Dr. Albert Hofman who had a personal experience of the drug's effects But even before the Mother could find time to read the treatise she had a similar eerie experience: Early one morning I felt something so heavy in my head and weight in the chest.;.. I had never felt this before. All sensation became a kind of violence. I closed my eyes and - along came an avalanche ...
... sadhana. I want to get a solution from the Mother's lips. This method of asking questions and getting solutions in an interview is one of which the Mother does not approve. She finds it useless and it forces her to come down to meet a superficial mental consciousness which she has long left. 2 October 1935 The Mother did not say Yes [ to giving a personal interview ]. Nothing could be worse for... in you and is returning again and again—it is not a psychic aspiration, for the psychic aspiration always respects the judgment and will of the Mother. It is after long years of experience of the disastrous result of yielding to these vital demands that Mother has drawn back from them and now no longer sees many people whom she saw before. You must not expect her to go back upon her resolution so long... complaints, laments and revolts just as there are now. People would soon find some other ground for accusing the Mother of partiality and injustice (the people who get the most interviews are generally those who revolt the most, though there are exceptions). It is precisely this treating of the spiritual life as if it were a "government" or a court or a school (with places and marks and rewards and punishments) ...
... Thus he entered into a 'world of power', or 'a world of beauty', or 'a world of spiritual grandeur'....He would commune with invisible beings — forms of the Divinity or Divine Incarnations of the past. "Such visions however belong to the domain of Personality, which is not the last word in spiritual experiences. So long as a sadhaka is satisfied with this kind of samadhi, his attainments... he be aroused.' " 2 The Trance-Experience of Sri Ramakrishna : Now we come to the very authentic historical case of the Sage of Dakshinesvara whose trance-experiences as depicted in his authoritative biography published by the Ramakrishna Order itself we reproduce below: "Sri Ramakrishna's Samadhi covered a wide range of experiences from his perception of various visions to... 500-01. 2 Ibid., pp. 499-500. Page 80 impossibility for any records or transcripts of the experiences therein to reach the portals of the normal waking consciousness. This is the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi claimed to be the highest status of spiritual attainment and assiduously sought after by every seeker after trance. In this ultimate trance-state of pure ...
... reference is not the outward form of a given belief and practice but the spirit behind and the justifying spiritual experience. Indian scriptures and records abound with the statements and descriptions of varieties of spiritual experience. But there are three central spiritual experiences in terms of which all these varieties can be readily understood. The first is that of the individual in... the pupil to experience the significance of free-choice, particularly the choice between the good and the pleasant, shréyas and préyas. What was discouraged was personal indulgence or undisciplined preference; but the very object of education implied free choice at every important stage of a pupil's growth. In other words, freedom of choice and an increasing experience of spiritual freedom blended... and conation, and arrived at extraordinary experiences of higher levels of consciousness and their corresponding objects of knowledge. Those ancient seers also made a distinction between Yoga and philosophy. Philosophy was restricted to mean intellectual reasoning about the ultimate source of things or intellectual transcription of spiritual experience. It was recognized that Yoga transcended ...
... Self which is ever free - and the persistent undisturbed remembrance of the Personal Divine (who, for me, is Sri Aurobindo and the Mother) and the sincere offering of all our movements and all happenings to this'God-figure, a gesture which will eventually bring you a deep delightful dynamism full of the concrete experience of God within and without." (7.6.1991) I am jotting down for... have a spiritual ideal, keep it steady yet without drawing a line dividing you from general humanity. A change of attitude will be to some extent a help towards getting rid of the "fear-complex". And as an aid to acquiring Page 55 normalcy continue with the psychiatrist's prescriptions. Try also to realise that you are in the saving gracious hands of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. No ultimate... insecurity - especially with regard to your future. There is also an uncertainty about your spiritual status. You have to proceed in your sadhana without too much self-concern, too much asking, "Am I progressing adequately? Will I be a first-rate follower of Sri Aurobindo, a full-fledged child of the Mother?" Perhaps there is a streak of Page 57 unacknowledged ambition - a jealousy ...
... a supreme, absolute influence. The Mother’s day-to-day experiences were baffling and could not have been possible without her avataric Yoga and, yes, the solidity of her physical constitution. In our experience our body feels like the centre or axis of the material universe, and this feeling is firmly grounded in our ego-sense. Mentally and vitally the Mother had not had an ego for a very long time... what this means: cells of the body, tiny living organisms, that have acquired a spiritual consciousness? The Mother must have read the incomprehension in the mind of the persons she was talking to, for she said so often something like: “It is the experience of the body, you understand, physically, materially: the experience of the body!” 4 The aspiration, the equanimity, the sincerity – all basics... the meaning of the whole, spoken in English by the Mother and possibly misunderstood by the French disciple, Pavitra, who noted it down. × The Mother apparently means that everything was an experience of her universal personality as the Universal Mother, not of her physical incarnation on the earth. ...
... If you need to clarify your mind, tell your experiences to your spiritual teacher and to no one else, and even before your spiritual teacher you must be very careful. When you present or explain to him what has happened in you, if you observe yourself closely, you will see that there are things in you of which you are not wholly aware; in your experiences often there are gaps, interruptions in the ... in the spiritual world, you don't have to deal with human beings, you have to deal with the Divine; it is impossible for you to pretend that you are this or that, for the Divine knows better than you, doesn't He? He knows what you are and it is not what you will say which will influence Him. In all spiritual disciplines the first thing that you are taught is not to narrate your experiences to others... resolution, it comes from the higher part of your being, and it is upon this that you have to take your support, not upon anything else—that is the "I". And it must understand in the end that it is not a personal "I", but universal and divine. But is it not the vital itself which finally should take the decision to change? I may assure you that the vital, left to itself, will never take the decision ...
... succeed at once. These are things one has to learn by personal experiences, how to get into touch with the cosmic forces, how to relate or equate our individual action with theirs, how to become an instrument of the Master Consciousness which we call the Divine. There is something a little too personal in your attitude—I mean the insistence on personal strength or weakness as the determining factor. After... excitement that there are these things. It is probably because the nerves are strung in the daytime and you do not relax into ease that it is difficult to sleep. One can assimilate [ spiritual experience ] in sleep also. Remaining awake like that is not good, as in the end it strains the nerves and the system receives wrongly in an excited way or else gets too tired to receive. You should... passage through other worlds (planes or states of conscious existence). It is these ten minutes that restore the energies of the being, and without it sleep is not refreshing. According to the Mother's experience and knowledge one passes from waking through a succession of states of sleep consciousness which are in fact an entry and passage into so many worlds and arrives at a pure Sachchidananda state ...
... the strongest motive force that sadhana can have and the best means for all else that has to come. It is why I said that it is through the heart that spiritual experience must come to you. The loyalty and the rest that you have for me and the Mother Page 352 may not, as you say, be part of the bhakti itself, but they could not be there were not the bhakti deep inside. It is its coming out... bhakti. The idea is contrary to the spiritual truth of things, to reason, to nature and to experience. As regards your defence of X , they sound like X 's own ideas and very queer ideas they are. If they are right, we should have to come to the following conclusions— 1) Sattwa is not the best passage towards realisation, Rajas is the best way to become spiritual. It is the rajasic man with his... more and more. It is into this that the experience and growing realisation come. Because the opening is growing in you, you are getting this ābhāsa of the presence (beyond form) of the Mother. It is as the inner realisation grows that the presence in the physical form takes its full value. Viraha or Pangs of Separation Viraha is a transitional experience on the plane of the vital seeking for ...
... light and joy. In Thee is supreme Peace. 34 In her meditation of 5 January, she experiences the consciousness of personal insignificance ("I am a veritable zero in the world") while the state a day earlier was an unquestioning surrender: I do not struggle; and like a child in its mother's arms, like a fervent disciple at the feet of his master, I trust myself to Thee and surrender... innumerable experiences of every kind and every instant" . 12 When one is involved thus in a variety of experiences, inner and outer, one will come to know that, unless the intimate sense of the Divine prevails always, thinking may only invite the darkness of ignorance, and feeling and doing may precipitate disorder. On 3 December, Mirra records: Last night I had the experience of the ... closely about her. After a brief session of intense meditation, she set down on paper her ruminations, feelings, hopes, aspirations, anxieties, visions and experiences. Being a private and a spontaneous recordation, she kept this spiritual diary scrupulously under lock and key; it was, after all, a secret between the Divine and herself. These diary-jottings, these articulate approaches to the ...
... will not lower the consciousness or becloud the vision of the soul? Those spiritual seekers who emphatically assert the impossibility of these realisations and hence, a fortiori, the impossibility of a divinised waking physical existence, seek to do so basing themselves on their own personal experience. Therefore, it becomes incumbent upon us, if we would like to establish the validity... the world to its foundation through the strength of his intellectual and spiritual powers. I have prayed that the Divine Mother may keep this realisation of the Absolute veiled from Naren. There is much work to be done by him." 1 We have made a brief survey of some of the main grounds upon which most spiritual seekers would seek to contest the possibility of any divine transformation... action without attachment is possible, action without ego is possible. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga p. 684) Many are the spiritual seekers who would feel skeptic about the feasibility of the high goal of our spiritual endeavour which is no less than the dynamic divinisation of our total existence even to the dark dungeon of the subconscient. What the Yoga of Transformation ...
... a wise teacher...who has himself passed through the experience and achieved 'freedom' of subtle body from gross body." 1 The spiritual destiny for the individual soul is, of course, attained when it can effectuate its permanent release from this gross terrestrial body and depart to a desired supraterrestrial world of existence and experience at the fall of the present physical 'sheath'. ... truths of existence; for, it arises out of an integral spiritual vision and experience and is not merely the brilliant product of a speculative mind. Now, this integral vision of world-existence and self-existence views "our existence here as a Becoming with the Divine Being for its origin and its object, a progressive manifestation, a spiritual evolution with the supracosmic for its source and support... itself as part of a total purpose of the embodiment of the spirit here", 1 and the Yoga of supramental Transformation as brought into action by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo seeks to realise in the not too distant future this sublime ideal of total spiritual perfection of which the high watermark, the crowning achievement, so to say, will be a supreme and entire divine transfiguration of the body itself ...
... which will awaken spiritually the outer mind and set on fire the vital being, is the way out. * Yoga means union with the Divine - a union either transcendental (above the universe) or cosmic (universal) or individual or, as in our Yoga, all three together. Or it means getting into a consciousness in which one is no longer limited by the small ego, personal mind, personal Page 9 ... share the immortality of the psychic. The soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for further experience. It is really for the vital part of the being that Shraddha and rites are done -... scient, potent, extended and wide; it is there waiting for manifestation and to this Force we have to open ourselves - to the power of the Mother. In the mind it manifests itself as a divine mind-force or a universal mind-force and it can do everything that the personal mind cannot do; it is then the Yogic mind-force. When it manifests and acts in the vital or the physical in the same way, it is there apparent ...
... any embarrassment. I remember that in your diary there is a statement by the Mother that before she came here she went through all possible occult experiences. She never told them to Sri Aurobindo but later she found them all expressed in Savitri . I should like very much to publish this statement in the February Mother India . Will you permit me and, if you do, will you please send me as soon as... pictures exhibited here is explained only by this line. For the task which the Mother had given me was so immense, so beyond the capacity of the little instrument she had summoned, that only her Grace working in Sri Aurobindo's Light could have seen me through. I am deeply grateful to the Mother for her constant personal guidance - outward as well as inward. And what shall I say of the Presence... description of the required picture and Huta following her instructions, invoking Sri Aurobindo's spiritual help, keeping the Mother's presence constantly linked to both her heart and hand producing the final finished painting. It was a long-drawn-out pleasure - my study-sessions with the young artist who proved to be a most eager and receptive pupil, indeed so receptive that on a few occasions ...
... According to A. B. Purani's notes of these talks, the Mother said, explaining her prayer of 19 April 1915: The prayer refers to an experience I had when I was not physically well and was in fact narrowly saved from death. I had an inflammation of the nerves. I was lying in an easy-chair, in front of a garden. I saw that the spiritual power was still active in me: I could go on with occult... occult inclinations and activities. Presently her arduous spiritual practices _ reverent study, meditation, prayer - had given an edge to the occult side of her life and also kept it under firm control. The close association and collaboration with Sri Aurobindo since 29 March 1914, the sharing of dreams, aspirations and experiences, and the launching of the New Idea society, and of the Arya... humility. Basically, Mirra's experience of 26 November 1915 was an adventure of consciousness. First, her whole being felt the joy of immersion in "a supreme and vast felicity", then there came "a sacred trembling" in the different parts of her body, and the body as a whole: she experienced a Page 145 progressive and methodical transcendence of all personal limits, an allshattering surge ...
... happen. I concur with you. It is not only philosophers who keep disagreeing. Yogis also take up positions poles apart from one another on the basis of their actual spiritual experiences. This is possible because reality can be spiritually experienced, no less than intellectually reconstructed, in various aspects. But we are naturally led to inquire what should be considered the ultimate truth of... equilibrium will collapse. For, there is an imperative in man's constitution driving him towards the spiritual integrality insisted on by Sri Aurobindo. Without our openly feeling that imperative, there will never be a common "insight" for all persons. How can we reach in the sphere of spiritual experience a common insight unless we envisage with unblurred eyes our total constitution's bedrock need... to establish the Gods in our nature-parts, the Vaishnava attempt to incarnate the personal deity through the love-surge Page 22 of the central person in us, the soul or psyche round which our personal nature is organised, and the Tantric attempt to render the Shakti, the Mother-power, of the Supreme effective in all our chakras come near to it. There has, ...
... movements. The Yogic or spiritual attitude has to be applied to the small outward details of life as well as to inner experiences or high ideals on a large scale. You ought to know by this time that the Mother attaches a great importance to the true spirit in the organisation of the material life. It is more often in relation to these petty things that the genuineness of one's spiritual change is tested—so... question of sanction does not arise (for the one month's stay); only if he wants to live in the Asram. As to personal instructions, he knows I suppose that I see nobody—Mother also is unable to see people freely—the personal element comes in not so much through verbal instruction as through a spiritual influence and reception between the Guru and disciple. 24 March 1937 Page 808 ... the Asram engineer's brain. It is rather surprising that X should speak like that, for he knows that it was Mother's personal order that the remnants of the old tectine should be used this time as there was an emergency. After all the tectine fad, if it is one, was not Y 's; it was the Mother who introduced the tectine as a trial (and, as I say, it was quite successful at first) along with other new ...
... of the Hospital Campus, the doctor's wife noticed me from their house on the way and reported it to her husband. She also had started taking care of me. Counouma never claimed to have spiritual experiences and Page 49 was completely free from hypocrisy, a disease from which many suffer. He always worked in the interest of the Ashram as he saw it. One of the several things I... State to elicit public opinion and giving personal hearing. Counouma and I went together to Cuddalore to appear before the Select Committee for both the Ashram and Auroville would be affected by the provisions of the Bill. Later, it was thought advisable to meet the Chief Minister at Madras. The matter was reaching its final stage and after asking Mother, both of us went together to Madras. ... clarifications. That trouble ended. Next morning, Dyuman was emotional in telling me, "We all are Mother's children. Let us forget the past. We work together." It was a short-lived emotion. Counouma, in later years, showed considerable affection for me and was also interested in my personal welfare. In 1981, he came to see me at the Ashram Nursing Home where I was lying in bad condition. He ...
... almost every sadhak and sadhika in the Ashram used to have rich spiritual experiences at that time - but also in the fields of poetry, painting and music. On the one hand Sri Aurobindo was either creating poets out of non-poets or inspiring inborn poets to greater endeavour, to 'faather sail' in Whitman's words; on the other, the Mother was doing the same for the painters. It was a wonder Page... world as much as he was in our Ashram. "The vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam' of his spiritual experiences were perhaps too ethereal to be grasped by the average western reader but, mystic experiences being universal by nature, they were readily identified here by people engaged in spiritual pursuit. Dilip Kumar Roy had corresponded with "A.E." and had sent him six of Amal Kiran's... players who opposed the Mother on the tennis court would have a quicker spiritual realisation on that count. Even now, although a part of my mature intellect ridicules that idea, another part nods gravely and thinks that there might be something in that notion. Whether they made spiritual progress or not, it is an undisputed fact that all the players who played against the Mother improved their game greatly ...
... lie within the scope of our present object, we shall just touch upon it and pass on to the Mother's experiences of the divine union as transcribed in the "Prayers and Meditations". And in order to obviate a possible misunderstanding, we shall make it perfectly clear at the very outset that the union the Mother aspired for and realised, is not the traditional union experienced and held in the depths... is this thou wilt carry into their midst.’ ” ¹ Sweeping through unimaginable experiences of ineffable ¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, January n, 1915. Page 146 ecstasy and utter desolation, the Divine lands her at long last on the threshold of the "Marvellous Way", where the Mother feels that "in the perfect union I am this plan and this Will, and I taste the supreme... is a synthesis, not achieved by an intellectual or emotional eclecticism, but by an integral spiritual experience — a synthesis which reflects the manifold unity of all existence. It is an epitome of all the conceptions of the Divine, past and present, and bids fare to be the sovereign, dynamic spiritual conception of the future. "An omnipresent Reality”, says Sri Aurobindo in "The Life Divine" ...
... extraordinary conversations are a recordation without a parallel in spiritual history: almost ECG recordings of the very heart of the Ashram, the pulse-beats of the Mother. These are not quite Conversations either; these are musings rather, almost recitations of experience; or call them intimations, insights, soulscapes! The Mother often exclaims: It is interesting!... it is amusing! Or she says... Ashram, and within too, who sometimes wondered why the Mother, if indeed she was the Mother Divine, Page 720 should ever fall ill at all, or should need to battle so long and so unceasingly in the attempt to achieve the desired transformation of the body, or of the material consciousness. But for the Mother, it was not a matter of a personal victory isolated from the rest of the world. She was... of the papers read were almost like academic exercises. And yet it meant a re-reading of Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's writings and pondering over their meaning; and there was also the Mother's personal interest and involvement. The more important papers were duly published in Mother India so as to reach a wider audience and, in 1977, were published in book form as The New Age. The seminars ...
... recognise them at all. Then Mother said, "Look at these people, they don't know us, they don't recognise us." But here 163 the resemblance was there, one could make out that this was Mother's face. The form and the shape were still there, but the beauty was unearthly. Before this, many people have told me about their spiritual experiences. They said that Mother is becoming young, very young... were wiped away. I was happy, but I could not retain that experience. It comes now and then, and passes, as all experiences do. It takes time for these experiences to stay permanently in one's consciousness. So this was the unique gift I had for the first time in the Darshan. Then, in this context, I am reminded of a vision the Mother had long, long ago, I don't know whether it was after Sri... then about my experiences, it would be justice if I demand from you some of your own experiences in return, like friends. Otherwise it will be all one-sided indeed. [Some of the listeners narrate stories of similar experiences.] ... I hope all of you can hear me? Yes, soon after the Darshan, I don't remember on which day, one of our young friends asked me about an experience I'd had and if ...
... familiar to the external consciousness, through which the inner experiences have to express themselves, if they are to be expressed at all. These material objects represent various kinds of forces and movements and subtle and occult and spiritual dynamisms. Strictly speaking, however, symbols are not chosen in a subtle or spiritual experience, that is to say, they are not arbitrarily selected and constructed... terminology has to be understood, its code deciphered. Page 345 It is not a jargon, but a foreign language that must be learnt and mastered. In the same way, the world of spiritual experiences is also something methodical, well-organized, significant. It may not be and is not the rational world of the mind and the sense;, but. it need not, for that reason, be devoid of meaning, mere... the life and the mind. This. triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within ...
... hope or that your remaining cannot really help and would only be an unnecessary strain on you, then it is different. Of course I will try to the end; for my experience is that even a hopeless effort in the fields of the working of the spiritual force is often better than none and can bring in the intervention of the miracle. Page 251 One very serious difficulty has been the entire... the sadhana personal and collective necessary for the realisation and a common life of God-realised men, secondly for help to the world to move towards that, and to live in the Light – is the whole meaning and purpose of my Yoga. But the realisation is the first need and it is that round which all the rest moves, for apart from it all the rest would have no meaning. Neither the Mother nor myself... was certainly as much an Avatar as Christ or Chaitanya. “ Page 256 February 11, 1950* You will have with you for your work in Delhi my blessing and the Mother’s and all the spiritual support we can give. You can convey our blessings also to Jahar. 50 As to Janak Kumari’s coming here for the Darshan in this February, we have every sympathy with her desire, but ...
... century. My personal number, as decided by the Mother, is 15 which also reduces itself to 1 +5=6, the number of what she has called "The New Creation", something which I am very much in need of in both my inner and outer being. The flower symbolising "New Creation" is the tuberose, a flower which used to be a favourite of mine before I knew my number was 15. But what the Mother considered to be... can now come home more vividly. Her individual aspect acted on you in the very way the embodied Mother used to do: she put her hands over your eyes just as she often did when she was tangible on the earth. But she repeated the old gesture with a luminosity and a meaning-fulness which exceeded the old personal relationship. This meaningfulness, disclosed by your vision, acquires a plenitude by... and calmly move apace. You have written: "I experience a greater joy in doing Page 181 work with full involvement than in exclusive meditation. During meditation I feel peaceful and concentrated no doubt, but the joy of progressing comes only while working with dedication and sincerity even if I don't remember the Mother continuously during work but only occasionally. But again ...
... though the work has begun. That victory will form part of the triumph of Truth. Wealth should not be a personal property and should be at the disposal of the Divine for the welfare of all. 4 January 1968 Page 372 When Mother says that wealth should not be a personal property, I understand that what should come is more a change of psychological attitude on the part of those... The Mother, Prayers and Meditations , 17 May 1914 . × "O India, land of light and spiritual knowledge! Wake up to your true mission in the world, show the way to union and harmony."—Message for the inauguration of All India Radio, Pondicherry, 23 September 1967. Words of the Mother - I , CWM... in the integral yoga the chakras open from above by the descent of the Mother's force. What is the difference between the results of the opening of the chakras in these two systems? In Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga, there are no such rigid rules and distinctions. Each one follows his own path and has his own experiences. Nevertheless, Sri Aurobindo has often said and written that his yoga begins ...
... more truly and spiritually concrete substance emerges, a greater luminosity and potent stuff of consciousness, a subtler, sweeter, purer and more powerfully ecstatic energy of delight.” 47 Again, Sri Aurobindo is clearly relying on his personal spiritual experience. The philosophic masterpiece that is The Life Divine is in fact from beginning to end an account of his own experiences. Interpen... words are of immense importance for people who do not have the experience and who are interested in this kind of adventure. For, firstly, they tell us that a realisation of one of the spiritual levels has a direct repercussion on the physical body, on the adhara. We will have to come back to this when we learn about the work the Mother did for “the new humanity”. For the Mind of Light, which is the... and we will have again to content ourselves with a few key passages. It is important to remember that these are not philosophical abstractions, but condensed and highly expressive wordings of spiritual experiences. In “the natural configuration of the stair of ascent” there are “many steps, for it is an incessant gradation and there is no gap anywhere”, writes Sri Aurobindo, “but from the point of ...
... total personal transformation. The Mother actually speaks of an individual showing "the way by himself realising it". Of course, his realisation cannot change the creation into a new world, but it can change his own physical existence into a new being. The full supramentalisation of others is not indispensable for it and an individual's change into a new being is suggested also when the Mother speaks... "that increases the labour." 2 Again, she has announced: "The result remains still far, very far; much has to be done before the crust, the experience of the most external surface as it is, manifests what is happening within (not 'within' the inside spiritual depths: within the body). To enable that to manifest what is within it... This will come last, and it is good to be so, for if it came before... There are two issues involved here. We must carefully distinguish them. They are: first, the establishment of a divine life on earth and, second, personal divinisation. Evidently, if one individual got divinised, it would not mean 1 Mother India, December 5,1953, "A 'Call' from Pondicherry", p. 187. 2 Ibid. Page 54 that a divine life had been terrestrially established ...
... future...* Sweet Mother, excuse me, but why didn't you put "spiritual" instead of "religious"? I'm not sure yet. It gave me a funny feeling! Yes, I noticed!... Maybe it's better to put "spiritual". I'll see. "It is only in experience that there can be knowledge of the Truth. No one ought to speak of the Divine unless he has had experience of the Divine... That's... changed. (Mother nods her head) He is another man. And I found him near, not far. I had the feeling that he was very near. (Mother nods) Page 202 And he was enormously interested in this new consciousness. He said, "I would really like to experience this new consciousness, so what has to be done?" He told me, 'All the spiritual stories tell you you... should free himself from the idea of personal possession. " But it's not the "idea"! It's the "sense"! (Mother writes.) 3.The Aurovilian should lose the sense of personal possession. For our passage in the material world, what is indispensable to our life and to our action is put at our disposal.... You don't say by whom? (Mother laughs) No!... By the All-Possessing ...
... with a detailed letter dated 30 August, giving convincing political reasons as also a clinching personal explanation: The central reason however is this that I am no longer first and foremost a politician, but have definitely commenced another kind of work with a spiritual basis, a work of spiritual, social, cultural and economic reconstruction of an almost revolutionary kind, and am even making... In the Prayers and Meditations , there is a single entry between 10 October 1918 and 22 June 1920. Perhaps it was a lean period for fresh spiritual harvests; may be, it was a period of quiet consolidation; or, what was equally likely, the experiences defied formal expression. But the opening sentence in the entry under "Oiwake, 3 September 1919" has a rather startling tone: Page 195... and stayed there till after the Peace of Versailles had been signed. What was Japan's role in the epic of Mirra's manifestation and ministry? What did she hope for? What was the nature of her experiences in Japan? What were the real gains of the visit? IV Ever since her years of 'discretion', one thing had appeared so amusing, so tragi-comic, in human affairs: the readiness of people ...
... of too much personal emotion. The English racial climate may have, I suppose, added its own large share to it. Moreover, the Yoga he had practised, beginning with the transcendental nirvanic experience, must have crowned the natural disposition. Buddha, I believe, for all his compassion, could not but have been impersonal in his daily communication. This vast impersonality even in personal relations... worldly experience and how much a result of Yoga? In a letter to me he had said, "Don't try to throw allopathic dust in my eyes, sir! I have lived a fairly long time and seen something of the world before my retirement and much more after it." So Yoga must have opened to his vision "thoughts that wander through eternity" and made him the possessor of infinite knowledge, secular as well as spiritual: "World... laugh all the more. Here the personality remained behind and the subject-matter became more prominent, His talks with Dr. Manilal deserve special notice. The doctor had medical and worldly experience. The Mother considered him a master in his own field. But he still had a child-soul in him and it talked freely with Sri Aurobindo. The Guru with an equal paternal or friendly smile would listen to his ...
... inimical to the spiritual life. 3 Page 782 Even so, in auspicious centres near and far away, the world was preparing for the big change; and wherever such centres sprang up, it was the destined role of select human beings to meet the descent of the spirit with a corresponding leap of aspiration. II All the while, like the unperceived underground river, the Mother's personal sadhana... suffering and bliss - were almost simultaneous. 6 III On 1 July, the Mother had an experience which was "almost a material vision", she saw it with her eyes open: the psychic being of a sadhika who had come to her loomed about twenty centimetres taller than her physical being and was unsexed as well. It made the Mother understand that it was the psychic being which would materialise itself one... obstruction to the Power that wants to manifest itself. " Page 796 The disciple told the Mother that, lately, exposure to her presence actually seemed to make his body - all the parts of the body - pray. It was for the disciple an extraordinary, an indescribable, experience. That the Mother, for all her absorption in the sadhana of the body and her endeavours to ensure the progressive ...
... Work of Sri Aurobindo 32.Sri Aurobindo - The Poet 33.The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and the Mother's Contribution to it 34.The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo 35.Sri Aurobindo on Shakespeare 36.Our Light and Delight—Recollections of Life with the Mother 37.The Mother: Past-Present-Future 38.Life-Literature-Yoga: Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo 39.The... such a task is incumbent on one who stands as the maker of a new spiritual epoch. Without it he would not establish on earth in a fully effective shape the influence brought by him. All evolutionary influences, in order to become dynamic in toto, must assume poetic shape as a correlate to the actual living out of them in personal consciousness and conduct. In that shape they can reach man's inner... novel quantitative scheme the experience of an upward movement of the mind as an intermediary between our consciousness and the Unknown. He Page 87 depicts the mind as caught up into layer after layer of what is beyond, leaving behind in the consciousness here a superb calm unbounded by the brief and the finite, a sense of some ultimate Self without personal confines. The poetic expression ...
... struggle, " he said, "no one can arrive at full illumination. " It was only after a series of powerful, undeniable experiences that Narendra accepted Sri Ramakrishna as, his Master. But before his final surrender Narendra Nath was to pass through a long period of suffering in his personal life. He had grown up in relative luxury, with few material worries. Then his father suddenly died. When the estate... are you doing to me? I have my parents, brothers, and sisters at home. " Then Sri Ramakrishna laughed and stroked the young man' s chest, and the experience vanished as quickly as it had come. Narendra was tremendously puzzled by these experiences and was angry with himself for having succumbed to the influence of a "madman". But what the sceptic in him refused proved irresistibly fascinating... conversations he had with them:) You will go to hell if you seek your own salvation! Seek the salvation of others if you want to reach the Highest. Kill out the desire for personal mukti. This is the greatest spiritual discipline. Work, my children, work with your whole heart and Page 246 soul! That is the thing. Mind not the fruit of work. What if you go to hell working for others ...
... inner support. But my personal loss counted for nothing before the tremendous void felt by the entire Ashram. The Mother had made us forget Sri Aurobindo’s most painful absence by her all-encompassing divine love and solicitude. But who is there to console us now? Who shall guide and protect us? We have to seek for that consolation within our hearts. As Nolini says, "The Mother’s physical body was... himself has in a letter summarised the Mother’s role in his yoga and work. Here are extracts from that letter sent by him to Arindam Basu on 17th August, 1941, dictated to me. Sri Aurobindo saw and approved of the written version. It runs thus: "The Mother is not a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. She has had the same realisation and experience as myself. "The Mother’s sadhana started when she was very... evening many teachers came to her and taught her various spiritual disciplines. Among them was a dark Asiatic figure. When we first met, she immediately recognised me as the dark Asiatic figure whom she used to see a long time ago. That she should come here and work with me for a common goal was, as it were, a divine dispensation. "The Mother was an adept in the Buddhist yoga and the yoga of the Gita ...
... Is it to satisfy little personal needs that you have come to Auroville? That was really not necessary. The ordinary world is there for that. One comes to Auroville to realise a divine life which wants to manifest on earth. Each one should make an effort in this direction and not remain hypnotised by the so-called "needs" which are nothing but personal fancies. Look upward and forward... live a life essentially divine but who renounce all religions whether they be ancient, modern, new or future. It is only in experience that there can be knowledge of the Truth. No one ought to speak of the Divine unless he has had experience of the Divine. Get experience of the Divine, then alone will you have the right to speak of it. The objective study of religions will be a part of the... from " A Dream ", an essay by the Mother. × A spoken comment of the Mother which was noted from memory by a sadhak and approved by the Mother for publication. × Mother answered these questions orally in ...
... Page 488 using merely a figure of speech but is expressing his own personal experience. Again when he says Missioned voices drive to me from God's doorway Words that lived not, save upon Nature's summits, Ecstasy's chariots, 6 he is stating his own profound experience. Vishwarupa, the vision of the Cosmic Divine, expressed so beautifully in the... ideal and Illumined Mind and passes beyond the borders of manifested creation to the Centre from which creation proceeds. Here he comes face to face with the World-Soul. He now experiences the presence of the Divine Mother who supports the cosmos. It is She, the Power of the Supreme, supporting the cosmos, who bestows on him the boon that saves mankind from the stark imprisonment of Ignorance and... and both are "ensouled images of a great culture." These epics give us the spiritual significance of individual and collective life from a strong and noble thought-power of a mind that has high social, political and ethical ideals and is artistically delicate and refined. Savitri too offers us a whole world of experience, but it is altogether a Page 486 new world in which the ...
... familiar to the external consciousness, through which the inner experiences have to express themselves, if they are to be expressed at all. These material objects represent various kinds of forces and movements and subtle and occult and spiritual dynamisms. Strictly speaking, however, symbols are not chosen in a subtle or spiritual experience, that is to say, they are not arbitrarily selected and constructed... its terminology has to be understood, its code deciphered. Page 12 It is not a jargon, but a foreign language that must be learnt and mastered. In the same way, the world of spiritual experiences is also something methodical, well-organized, significant. It may not be and is not the rational world of the mind and the sense; but it need not, for that reason, be devoid of meaning,... body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within ...
... consciousness and realise oneness there. 31 October 1935 I don't think it is much use writing about personal relations in the true spiritual life (which does not yet exist here). None would understand it except as a form of words. Only three points— (1) Its very base would have to be spiritual and psychic and not vital. The vital would be there but as an instrument only. (2) It would be a... out of the ordinary atmosphere of human life is one of the most natural movements of spiritual life. One who cannot appreciate that movement, knows nothing about spirituality or Yoga. Your husband's letters are like the reasonings of the scientists and men of the world who know nothing about Yoga or spiritual experience; they only pass mental opinions and judgments on it from outside. It is not even worth... Please ask the Mother to tell her to return to us. We will let her go back to the Ashram within a year. Page 733 The Mother cannot give the advice you call on her to give to X . It is your mother's free choice alone and sense of inner need that should guide her. No one has a right to interfere with her spiritual progress or pull her back in order to satisfy their own selfish demands. Her ...
... faith in the Divine Power and Grace and in the divine element within you, psychic and spiritual, that through these the nature will be transformed and the ego replaced by the true person and the animal by the true vital and physical being become fit instruments of the Divine Mother. Yes, these experiences [ of the smallness of the egoistic person ] always come when one is opening into the wideness... control and then dismissed from the nature. But the egoism which made people go away from here through pride in their sadhana and attachment to the supposed greatness of their experiences is another kind and far more dangerous spiritually. You do not have it and I do not think you are in danger of ever having it. Self-Respect, Amour-Propre, Superiority Self-respect and a sense of superiority are two... which needs a high siddhi in Yoga—even many Yogis of a great spiritual attainment are not free from it. For a sadhak at your stage of development to think he is free from ego and desire is to blind himself and prevent the clear perception of one's own nature movements which is necessary for progress towards spiritual perfection. The Mother does not need to have your writings before her in order to ...
... of his experiences soon after they occurred. I give here three of them which reveal some aspects of his spiritual quests and the peaks Page 202 that have been climbed. Following Mother's words that the time to rest is not now, Amal continues unceasingly this great adventure that is the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. All these three experiences have probably... that no spiritual personality can be fathomed or measured. I have tried to give a glimpse of what he is in his own words. All the words quoted and the experiences narrated have either been already published or have been seen and confirmed by him. I have often seen him to be of immense help, spiritually and psychologically, to many Sadhaks and devotees of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo... What it was like has been indicated in a part of my 'Personal Preface' and poetised in one of the pieces in The Adventure of the Apocalypse. * The utmost vigilance is needed to guard against insidious spiritual pride. Active 'on the guard' ness is essential all the time. Best, of course, is complete surrender to the Mother. * You can always see Amal Kiran ...
... make the comment you have asked for. The trouble with Nair is that he is amazingly ill-versed in Sri Aurobindo — amazingly because he is expected to be a good student of both spiritual thought and spiritual experience. At the very outset he should know that Sri Aurobindo is not spouting mere philosophy: he is putting in intellectual terms the insights brought him by Yogic realisations. The question... passivity, but Work by Yoga (inner spiritual unification with God), not by ego-impelled desire and revulsion. Nair completely misconstrues the true drift of the Gita and the basic drive of Sri Aurobindo's interpretation in this context. There is some mis-seeing by Nair of Sri Aurobindo's experience of Vasudeva (Krishna) being behind everything. This experience is identical with what is implied... Nobody, he avers, can cease from action. True, but action should not arise from personal desire, from private like or dislike, from any motive of the separate ego. There must be a vast equanimity and a surrender of the individual self to the Divine Presence, the Inner Lord, the Universal Oversoul. By a constant spiritual gesture of union (Yoga) with the dynamic Divinity (Ishwara) by the intelligent ...
... insist on the spiritual experience and in addition to recognize that there can be infinite and valid varieties of spiritual Page 119 experiences is the important step in the solution. It is not by insisting on religion that India and the world can be reconstructed. The new world will transcend religions and will insist on the purity of spiritual experience. Instead... The solution lies in the following words of The Mother: 'The conflict of religions arises because each one claims the exclusive truth and demands a complete adherence to it by the method of dogma, ritual, ceremony and prescribed acts. The solution would be, first to recognize that the real truth of religion is in the spiritual experiences of which it is an outer formulation. To transcend... declare that the spiritual motive is to be the leading power behind all our actions. The Future Let us now look at the future and see how India can fulfil her true destiny. For India to be secure and progress according to her natural Swadharma three steps have to be taken. The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its ...
... this talk was first published in 1958, Mother added the following note on the "uplifting" of an entire part of humanity by the action of the new forces: But those who cannot be lifted up, those who refuse to progress, will automatically lose the use of the mental consciousness and will fall back to a sub-human level. I shall tell you about an experience I had which will help you to understand... the elements of humanity was the method of the human evolution, the appearance in the human being of a spiritual type resembling mental-animal humanity but already with the stamp of the spiritual aspiration on it would be the obvious method of Nature for the evolutionary production of the spiritual and supramental being." The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 841-42 One thing seems obvious... literature; even in his spiritual endeavour, less surprisingly lofty and less massive in power of spirituality than that of the ancients, there has been this increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking. There have been falls from a high type Page 295 of culture, a sharp temporary descent into a certain obscurantism, cessations of the spiritual urge, plunges into ...
... Integral Yoga cannot be pursued to its glorious consummation by those who have any exclusive leaning towards personal salvation, or the vast peace and silence of the immutable Self. EXPERIENCE AND VISION The realisation of the psychic or the soul, as described above, is an experience which operates a basic change in a Page 174 great part of our consciousness, and from which... eternally belonging to the Divine. It is this consciousness that is the most decisive factor in the spiritual turning of a man. Some subtle intuitive perception, some inner vision or experience, some living faith and divination gives the start and serves as the germinating nucleus of the spiritual life. This tiny nucleus becomes the rock of safety against the blows and buffets of adverse forces... till, one day, as the Mother says, the passage suddenly dissolves in a splendour of light, or a door swings open upon a flaming Presence, or it is a well or abyss of dazzling effulgence in which we find ourselves. It is an experience unlike any that ever takes place in our ordinary life, unlike any that even the sharpest human mind can ever conceive or imagine. It is an experience in a new dimension of ...
... field, the spiritual field, there are far too many people (I could say even the majority of those who take to the spiritual life and do yoga), far too many of these who do it for personal reasons, all kinds of personal reasons: some because they are disgusted with life, others because they are unhappy, others still because they want to know more, others because they want to become spiritually great, others... in order to stress the point. It means that all this perfection which we are going to acquire is not for a personal and selfish end, it is in order to be able to manifest the Divine, it is put at the service of the Divine. We do not pursue this development with a selfish intention of personal perfection; we pursue it because the divine Work has to be accomplished. But why do we do this divine Work... Work? It is to make ourselves... No, not at all! It is because that's the divine Will. It is not at all for a personal reason, it must not be that. It is because it's the divine Will and it's the divine Work. So long as a personal aspiration or desire, a selfish will, get mingled in it, it always creates a mixture and is not exactly an expression of the divine Will. The only thing which must ...
... the experience at the beginning is often very powerful, so powerful that the resisting elements remain quiescent — afterwards they rise up. The experience has then to be brought down and settled in these parts also. In one place you say, "The experiences prepare the different parts of the being for loving in the right way." Somewhere else you write that the higher experiences leave... think that I remained too much in the higher consciousness and in the yogic experiences ? That I really never thought enough of bringing all that down to change my human nature? Page 262 Your tendency was to go up and to leave the higher consciousness to deal with the lower nature without any personal effort for that. That could have worked all right on two conditions: (1) that... dynamic descent is for change. The physical consciousness is too weak to hold the experience even for a short time. It gets fired. The mechanical mind takes advantage of this and rushes in. How to prevent such obstacles? It is really a pity that in spite of having the higher experiences before me I cant respond to them. What is the remedy? No remedy except the possession ...
... the four things that transform the nature. Light, Peace, Force, Ananda constitute the spiritual consciousness; if they are not among the major experiences, what are? Presence, Peace, Force, Light, Ananda, these are five things that most commonly come down. The being is not supposed to remain always empty. When the calm and peace of the pure existence is established, Force also has... of the descent changes the darkness into light, the ignorance and unconsciousness of the human mind into spiritual consciousness. Page 459 The Descent of Light The descent of the Light producing a concrete illumination of the consciousness is always one of the decisive experiences of the sadhana. You can tell her that Light like peace is one of the things that come down from the... the difficulty. The Power above the head is of course the Mother's—it is the power of the Higher Consciousness which is preparing its way of descent. This Higher Consciousness carrying in it a sense of wide and boundless existence, light, power, peace, Ananda etc. is always there above the head and when something of the spiritual Force comes down to work upon the nature, it is from there that ...
... but this is not like the rigid mental structures; it is plastic, organic, something that can grow and develop and stretch into the infinite. All spiritual experiences are taken up and become habitual and normal to the new nature; all essential experiences belonging to the mind, life, body are taken up and spiritualised, transmuted and felt as forms of the consciousness, delight, power of the infinite... parts, higher ranges of Mind, degrees of spiritual consciousness and experience; without them there would be no links, no helpful intervening spaces to make the immense ascension possible. It is indeed from these higher sources that the secret spiritual Power acts upon the being and by its pressure brings about the psychic transformation or the spiritual change; but in the early stages of our growth... the worse because they are its own, natural to its energy, natural to its substance. A complete and radical change can only be brought about by bringing in persistently the spiritual light and intimate experience of the spiritual truth, power, bliss into the recalcitrant elements until they too recognise that their own way of fulfilment lies there, that they are themselves a diminished power of the ...
... us to pinpoint these fallacies here. But know for certain that "all our spiritual and psychic experience bears affirmative witness, brings us always a constant and, in its main principles, an invariable evidence of the existence of higher worlds, freer planes of existence." (The Life Divine, p. 787) "...the experiences there are organised as they are in our own physical world, but on a different... the disbelievers; it addresses itself to those spiritual seekers who are honestly eager to know more about the process of death and what follows thereafter in the occult world. And it is for them that we are recording here two narrations which are, at the same time, amusing, interesting, and instructive. The first account is based on the personal experience of a clairvoyant sadhaka of our own times, Andrew... evidence or intimations of its truth are fundamentally false and undeserving of inquiry because incompatible with the axiomatic truth that only Matter and the material world and its experiences are real; all other experience purporting to be real must be either a hallucination or an imposture or a subjective result of superstitious credulity and imagination or else, if a fact, then explicable by a physical ...
... state was a state of Victory). But things haven't come back as they were, and they will never come back as they were. Something has really been clarified. And it isn't a personal, individual question: it's something general. ( Mother starts making a fair copy of the last "sedimentation": ) You understand, the word "favor" is deliberate. It's quite deliberate, it really means a favor—to be helped... October October Mother’s Agenda 1964 October 21, 1964 On the 18th, I had an interesting experience. It was the doctor's birthday and I gave him a meditation, and after the meditation, he asked me to write for him what I had seen during the meditation. I had no intention of doing so, but an hour later, that is, at lunch time... To be clear, I should... translated into words), "You MUST NOT have powers." And the total understanding. You must not have powers. And it was a world of... Incidents of this kind bring about a world of parallels, of experiences and so on. So I began writing (it came, as always, through successive "sedimentations"). The first sedimentation gave this: If you approach me in the hope of obtaining favours, you will be ...
... want something sincerely, the Divine, the Lord or the Mother helps. Some have recorded how help came to them, and my friend Champaklal tells me of many experiences of this kind - how the Divine helps him in his work. He has a big stock of materials - like I have books, he has cards and boxes and materials for making birthday cards, which the Mother uses for giving to the sadhaks and others. The corridor... portrait of Sri Aurobindo. He is more known as a writer than as a painter. There are stories of his travels and experiences in the north, his contact with the tantric 47 sadhus, etc. - he's a venerable old summer oak. He came to show the painting to the Mother and luckily we too were there. Mother was standing near Her chair, the artist was on the carpet and the portrait was resting on an easel. Addressing... which gives him life, energy, power dynamism, desires, emotions or feelings, ambitions, etc. Page 23 quarrels are necessary. I was saying, "You're not giving me any touch of spiritual experience; you're sitting tight over all the treasures you have gained and you're holding them back like a miser. How can a man walk on the path without any encouragement ? I admit you have given me some ...
... only reality and it says that in it, this phenomenon of Ignorance has no place. It amounts to saying that the experience of Ignorance is unreal. But then the question remains: who experiences this Ignorance. Philosophical schools of so-called absolute monism assert that this unreal experience of Ignorance is on< due to the Mind, and Mind has no place in the Absolute, the ultimate Reality. Mind, according... his detention as an under-trial political revolutionary in 1908 that he got the second crucial experience of yoga that became the turning point of his life. In a certain sense, it was an epoch-making experience and he gave expression to it at a meeting in Uttarpara in 1909.S This spiritual experience in jail turned his mind to a problem; of far greater magnitude than winning the freedom of the... beyond Mind. This is the great spiritual Odvssey that man has now to undertake consciously.If material science lays open before man a wide—practically unlimited- field of adventure, research and experience in the outer interstellar space, the supramental, is not without its own attractive elements. The Life Divine is a call " to spiritual adventure, to a spiritual exploration; it initiates a vision ...
... judicious study of their dream-experiences become an essential part of their spiritual effort, for one can learn much by controlling one's dreams. As the mother has said, "It is a tremendous field of observation — there is no end to the discoveries you can make in you dreams." (M C W, Vol. 15, p. 349) All dreams do indicate something, and dream-experiences can convey truths that are not... habitual to the nature, personal formations of the vital plane. But when one begins to live within then the dreams are often transcriptions of one's experiences on the vital plane and beyond that there is a large field of symbolic and other dreams which have nothing to do with memory.... there are also prophetic dreams and many others." (Letters on Yoga, p. 1496) As the Mother has pointed out, although... possession of a brilliant mind, a limpid life-force and a clear subtle physical sense of things. Now about what we have termed the 'superconscient'. A whole line of beyond-mental spiritual experiences testifies to the exist-Type of a range of being superconscient to all the three elements e have so far spoken of. There is not only something deep within hind our normal self-awareness, but ...
... sincere, but if in your exterior being there is insincerity and if you are seeking not spiritual life but personal powers, that can mislead you. It is that and not your faith that misleads you. Pure in itself, faith can get mixed up in the being with low movements and it is then that you are misled. The Mother Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): Faith ... register things, it does not act. The Mother Questions and Answers (1953): 23 December 1953 The perception of the exterior consciousness may deny the perception of the psychic. But the psychic has the true knowledge, an intuitive instinctive knowledge. It says, "I know; I cannot give reasons, but I know." For its knowledge is not mental, based on experience or proved true. It does not believe... understanding and generous, wide and progressive. Its constant effort is to understand and progress. The mind describes and explains. The psychic sees and understands. The Mother Some Answers from the Mother: 13 December 1971 One may have knowledge from the psychic—though it is of another kind and is not formulated as in the mind. It is a sort of inner certitude which makes you do ...
... logic which deals in words and ideas, but by a spiritual experience which goes beyond Mind and enters into spiritual realities. Each mind is satisfied with its own reasoning, but for spiritual purposes that satisfaction has no validity, except as an indication of how far and on what line each one is prepared to go in the field of spiritual experience. If your reasoning leads you towards the Shankara... there not be a higher than that highest, parātparam ? That is not a question of logic, it is a question of spiritual fact, of a supreme and complete experience. The solution of the matter must rest not upon logic, but upon a growing, ever heightening, widening spiritual experience—an experience which must of course include or have passed through that of Nirvana and Maya, otherwise it would not be complete... supermind itself has not been attained, but the reflection of it in intuitive spiritual consciousness is there and that was what was evidently realised in experience by your Guru and what he was expressing in mental terms in the quoted passage. It is possible to go towards this knowledge by beginning with the experience of dissolution in the One, but on condition that you do not stop there, taking ...
... for Ramakrishna. But Sri Aurobindo did not accept altogether Vivekananda's philosophy or Advaitic standpoint; and though spiritual experiences interested him greatly, and he had had some himself, he was not — not as yet — inclined to the actual practice of yoga. His experiences began in England, perhaps in 1892, and from the moment he stepped on the shores of India they became more frequent and... part, had admired her distantly as the author of Kali the Mother, and now found in her a fiery spirit utterly consecrated to the cause of the liberation of Mother India from despotic foreign rule. They discussed neither spiritual questions nor Ramakrishna or Vivekananda; they saw themselves as fellow-votaries of Kali the Mother, as children of Bhavani Bharati, and this was the adamantine... to India, both this-worldly and other-worldly without any exclusiveness on either side. .. .since I set foot on the Indian soil on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, I began to have spiritual experiences, but these were not divorced from this world but had an inner and infinite bearing on it, such as a feeling of the Infinite pervading material space and the Immanent inhabiting material objects and bodies ...
... stand for an incarnation of the universal Mother and Satyavan for an incarnation of the soul of the Earth which the Mother, in her Love for it and through her yoga, wins back from the Inconscient, symbolised by Death; Sri Aurobindo more and more substituted himself for the figure of Aswapati, using the role of the latter to describe his own spiritual experiences, discoveries and conquests. Sri Aurobindo... previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told him my experiences and that he had noted them down afterwards, no, he knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences he has presented at length and they were his experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind.’ 35 The Mother also said... peoples.’ 7 On that occasion the Mother had her flag hoisted above the Ashram, more specifically over the terrace of Sri Aurobindo’s room. She called it the spiritual flag of India. ‘It is the flag of India’s spiritual mission. And in the accomplishment of this mission will India’s unity be accomplished,’ 8 she declared on 15 August. The Mother’s flag contains her symbol in gold, centred ...
... India as the truest Indian— Gandhi! Weighed in the ultimate spiritual balance, Gandhi is at once a promise and a disappointment. He has the obvious orientation of the great mystics, the mighty yogis, but their essential realisation is not his. None of the five main points of his gospel guarantees the mystical experience: they are no more than a preparation for it. He is profoundly moral... disposal of his mother and sisters, asking them to consider themselves the real owners of Anand Bhawan and all that Motilal had left and to think of him as only a trustee and adviser! As for honesty, it has been an obstacle in the path of his politics: he can never stoop to the shifts and meannesses and trickeries that go mostly with them. He will never set a great cause below personal ambition... philosophies did so: it seems to have done so much less than Christianity." (The Discovery of India, pp. 82-3.) As for the existence of God, his Marxist penchant makes him turn down the experiences of the mystics as probably phantasms of the self-deluded imagination; he chooses to admire only the passion connected with them for truth and for practical endeavour: "What interests me is the ...
... the life of its origin, the spiritual life. Therefore, the psychic being in the human being is the manifestation of spiritual aspiration; but there is a spiritual life independent of the psychic. 24 — The Mother Is there a difference between the "spiritual" and the "psychic"? Are they different planes? Yes, the psychic plane belongs to the personal manifestation; the psychic... time one understands, necessarily, the reason of his present existence and the experience this psychic being wants to have; and instead of having it somewhat half consciously and more than half unconsciously, one can shorten this experience and so help his psychic being to cover in a limited number of years the experiences it would perhaps take several lifetimes to go through. That is to say, the help... to return to have all the experiences it needs. Well, if it happens that once the physical being is developed and conscious enough and has enough goodwill to be able to become fully aware of the psychic being, it can then and there create all the circumstances, the outer experiences necessary for the psychic being to attain its maturity in this very life. 30 — The Mother * ... every ...
... Experiences of the Inner Consciousness and the Cosmic Consciousness Experiences of the Inner Consciousness and the Cosmic Consciousness Experiences of the Inner Being and the Inner Consciousness Letters on Yoga - III Chapter II Inner Detachment and the Witness Attitude Inner Detachment It [ the individual consciousness ] is not by its nature detached... neutral void is made for a higher nature to manifest. It must be fulfilled and replaced by a sense of large silence and freedom into which the Mother's Page 240 consciousness can flow from above. In the ordinary consciousness one takes a personal interest in what is done, feels joy or feels sorrow. When one does sadhana, a condition may come in which the consciousness draws back from... Of course there is afterwards an experience in which the two sides of the Divine Whole, the Witness and the Player, blend together; but this poise of the spectator comes first and leads to that fuller experience. It gives the balance, the calm, the increasing understanding of soul and life and their deeper significances without which the full supramental experience cannot come. Page 243 ...
... education’ for someone who had come to do a great and difficult work. All her inner experiences had occurred totally unexpectedly, which according to the Mother is the necessary condition for them so as not to be falsified. Expectation limits the experience and distorts it. Often expectation even creates the experience which then adapts itself to the artificial, imaginary world of the subject which no... great Presence in that lightly bronzed girl, whom all of us probably would have passed by without noticing anything at all, as we are wont to do. ‘Between 11 and 13 a series of psychic and spiritual experiences revealed to me not only the existence of God but man’s possibility of uniting with Him, of realizing Him integrally in consciousness and action, of manifesting Him upon Earth in a life divine... these texts and that moreover they presented her with a method of spiritual realization. She always took up every task with a total dedication — which she did this time too. Her inner growth progressed from one realization to the next. But who was she actually? Who was this young Parisian woman who had such extraordinary experiences, who was probably the greatest occultist of her time without anybody ...
... do it?” Then I remembered Mother’s words and said “Yes”. Acting gave me so many experiences. I could plunge into the innermost depths of my being and it put me in touch with my psychic being. Mother said if you perform anything written by Sri Aurobindo, he, too, will always be there. All of my performances were an offering to them. The audience was not important to me. Mother said acting is not for show... during performance it was very clear to me that Mother, herself, was speaking through me. Performing was so helpful for my sadhana. I would make a personal prayer to Sri Aurobindo and call to him strongly. My prayer was, “I pray that I do this in the way in which you would want me to do it.” His help did come. I felt his Force. From December 1, 1958 Mother no longer came physically to the theatre, but... have tried to take my music from her. My music is my labor and my aspiration for the Divine and what I try to convey through it are the voices of my inner experiences. “My grateful thoughts are with her who has been my Guide, Guru, Mentor and Mother. One day it was her Light that sparked my heart, it is her Light that has sustained its glow, it is her Light that I seek through my music. If this music ...
... light. Still, as one of the major aims of my reminiscences is to testify to Yogic truths and experiences as I and others have realised them in the Ashram, a personal impression of the Mother may well be recorded here as germane to my purpose. Naturally, I hesitate to deal with a personality such as the Mother's in such a summary fashion, but she will, I hope, pardon such babbling tributes knowing that... capacity for spiritual experience, no congenital power of vision which can glimpse Grace even in this world of awful wars and petty preoccupations." She shook her head. "But you have the vision," she said. "And you have had evidences galore of the reality of the Divine Grace. Only you do not yet know how to appraise the one and recognise the other." "I see what you mean, Mother," I answered... Page 217 She would have said more had I not burst into tears. That day I had a new glimpse ( or shall I say vision?) of humility derived from true spiritual reverence. I accepted her on her own as my spiritual Mother on that morning — of my full and final initiation. I have often enough, in my wrong moods, criticized her — sometimes with no excuse at all, at others goaded by a ...
... One-4h-many. This divine seeking is Page 191 expressed in the world as the Attraction of the One exercised on the One-in-many. And as a consequence the 'many', which ignorantly experiences itself to be different and cut off from the One, is unknowingly but constantly feeling a reflex urge, albeit obscure and distorted, to move towards the One. But as the essential truth is hidden... irrespective of sex (ii)The love of the Sadhaka should be for the Divine. It is only when he has that fully, that he can love others in the right way. (iii)A Sadhaka should not establish personal relationship with any other person in the sense of what Sri Aurobindo calls "exclusive mutual looking to each other." (iv)There should be no relationship based on sex differentiation: no friendship... consciousness and a wrong turn of the emotional being and vital nature." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, pp. 811-12) (x)"Since we have decided to reserve love in all its splendour for our personal relationship with the Divine, we shall replace it in our relations with others by a total, unvarying, constant and egoless kindness and goodwill that will not expect any reward or gratitude or ...
... that time you were trying to look spiritual. Now there is a great change." This was such a bewildering announcement that I cried out: "It sounds like a paradox, Mother. At present I don't at all appear so spiritual." "Yes, but my comment is quite true." Then I asked: "This picture goes back to a period before I may have had the need to look spiritual. There was a truth pressing through... very conscious, and not for your exterior being." (18-6-1942) A similar note is struck in another statement of the Mother's: "Understand that blessings are for the best spiritual result, not necessarily according to human wishes." The implication here is that the Mother's blessings may bring Page 97 about in the exterior life even what we commonly consider misfortune.... It is not too much to say the Mother proved for her an overwhelming experience. Her deepmost self broke open. That typical sign of the inmost soul budding forth was in ample evidence: the almost constant vision of all kinds of wonderful flowers the moment the eyes were shut. A harmonious happiness overflowed her being. After she had responded thus to the Mother's light and love I took her to ...
... is still lacking is a positive spiritual side of the Sadhana. However the clearing of the system seems to have gone far enough for him Page 358 to have had at least glimpses of psycho-spiritual experiences and a promise even of the supramental awaiting its time for manifestation. I shall, if I can make time, write separately my comments on his experiences and if he understands and follows... bulldog nature as in P. Mitter. These things can only go with spiritual development and experience and then the strength behind them becomes an asset. It is also evident from what you say about his past experience of the voice and the vastness that there is, as I thought, a psychic something in him waiting for and on the verge of spiritual awakening. I understand that he is waiting for intellectual ... another till they have been entirely thrown out from the personal experience. Even then, they may remain and come back on the being from the surrounding universal forces and it is only when no part of the consciousness makes any response to these forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete. 4) His experience that whenever he gains a conquest in the mental plane ...
... Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have categorically affirmed on many occasions that the whole of Savitri is a very precise and authentic transcription of their spiritual-visional experiences: not a single line has been introduced in the body of this epic simply to satisfy the exigencies of a sublime and superb poetical creation. There is everywhere in the Poem "a spiritual objectivity, an intense... al mystical visions would be reproduced, thus validating their subjective-objectivity. But the results were almost opposite to those in Huxley's case. Zaehner's damaging conclusion was that the experiences produced by mescalin were simply trivial, though they seemed hilariously funny. Thus the visions appearing in the altered state of consciousness produced by psychedelic drugs are all h... psychedelic drug possessing the capacity of temporarily altering the state of the consciousness of the viewer. 2. Psychedelic Drugs: The well-known novelist and writer Aldous Huxley did some personal experiments on the effect of the drug mescalin, and claimed in his book The Doors of Perception that in suitable doses this drug 'changes the quality of consciousness very profoundly'. Huxley took ...
... at the Ashram we have learnt that life is something else. True life is not the satisfaction of desires. I can affirm from experience that all the experiences brought by drugs, all that contact with the invisible world, can be had in a much better, more conscious and controlled way without drugs. Only, one must control oneself. It is more difficult than swallowing poison. But I am not going to preach... abolished in themselves or in some way or other got rid of every personal desire and every attachment. To this should be added a vision vast enough to understand the needs of the earth, a knowledge complete enough to know how to organise all these needs and use this force by these means. If, besides this, these beings have a higher spiritual knowledge, then they can utilise this force to construct gradually... consciousness and the inner truth, becomes, one day or another, altogether intolerable. It is usually paid for very dearly—outer success. (Mother's voice becomes extremely deep.) One must be very great, very pure, have a very high and very disinterested spiritual consciousness in order to be successful without being affected by it. Nothing is more difficult than being successful. This, indeed, is the ...
... what it lacks and it can choose the opposite line in a future life, a negation, so to say, of this experience in order to have complementary experiences. Page 151 × At the time of the publication of this talk, Mother added the following note for the sake of precision: "Some parts of the vital are worlds of disorder... serially. It wants to realise a particular attitude towards the Divine. Hence it looks for all favourable experiences in order to have the complete series of opportunities, so to say, which will allow it to realise this attitude towards the Divine. Take someone, for example, who wants to have the experience of nobility—a nobility which makes it impossible for you to act like an ordinary person, which infuses... answered quietly, "We shall die afterwards".... This is an example from a whole series of experiences one can have in the life of a king, and it is this which justifies the choice of the psychic being when it takes up this kind of life. It is memories of this kind which prove the authenticity of the experience; for what generally happens when people tell you about their past lives is this: in these ...
... c eternity without denying either of them or taking anything from the reality of either. It harmonises the pantheistic, the theistic and the highest transcendental terms of our spiritual conception and spiritual experience. The Divine is the unborn Eternal who has no origin; there is and can be nothing before him from which he proceeds, because he is one and timeless and absolute. "Neither the gods... sarva-pāpaiḥ pramucyate . The human soul that can dwell in the light of this supreme spiritual knowledge is lifted by it beyond the ideative or sensible formulations of the universe. It rises into the ineffable power of an all-exceeding, yet all-fulfilling identity, the same beyond and here. This spiritual experience of the transcendental Infinite breaks down the limitations of the pantheistic conception... which is born of the ignorance." These results must arise inevitably from the very nature of the knowledge and from the very nature of the Yoga which converts that knowledge into spiritual growth and spiritual experience. For all the perplexity of man's mind and action, all the stumbling, insecurity and affliction of his mind, his will, his ethical turn, his emotional, sensational and vital urgings ...
... he is not using merely a figure of speech but is expressing his own personal experience. It is by such an onrush from above the mental level that, as K.D. Sethna says, "knowledge of the Deathless Divine leaps on the human consciousness and by whose thronged and glittering invasion the revelatory speech of the Overhead spiritual is bom." Again when he says Page 109 Missioned... accomplishes two difficult tasks: it creates a personality, Savitri, a human-divine character and, secondly, it succeeds in making all the inner spiritual experiences of man real, concrete and direct. It is well known that the highest spiritual experiences defy expression in language. But Savitri for the first time succeeds in such a thorough objectification of them in terms of images and symbols... even beyond it from the Overmind. It is the spiritual alchemy of this overhead poetical expression that renders this immeasurably remote realm of experiences intimately near to us, and carries a sense of their reality to our most outward mind. While reading those inspired utterances one feels opening before him altogether a new world of experiences, a world of beings "more real than living man"; ...
... inspiration, he is not using merely a figure of speech but is expressing his own personal experience, it is by such an onrush from above the mental level that "knowledge of the Deathless Divine leaps on the human consciousness and by whose thronged and glittering invasion the revelatory speech of the Overhead spiritual is born".—K. D. Sethna. Again when he says: "Missioned voices drive to... accomplishes two difficult tasks; it creates a personality, Savitri, a human-divine character and secondly it succeeds in making all the inner spiritual experiences of man real, concrete and direct. It is well known that the highest spiritual experiences defy expression in language. But Sāvitrī for the first time succeeds in such a thorough objectification of them in terms of images and symbols... and even beyond it from the Overmind. It is the spiritual alchemy of this overhead poetical expression that renders this immeasurably remote realm of experiences intimately near to us, and carries a sense of their reality to our most outward mind. While reading those inspired utterances one feels opening before him altogether a new world of experiences, a world of beings, "more real than living man" ...
... come surging The sensitive light of Truth withdraws once more* Sri Aurobindo once wrote: "My aim in writing or encouraging others to write is not personal glory, but to arrive at the expression of spiritual truth and experience of all kinds in poetry... You are right when you say that till now the English people have not favoured Indian poets writing verse in English. But the mind of... day for a long time and concentrated and struggled for five years without the least spiritual result, (when spiritual experiences did come, they were as unaccountable and automatic as — blazes) but poetry came like a river and prose like a flood and other things too that were mental, vital or physical, not spiritual richnesses or openings. I have seen in many cases an activity of the mind in various... possible to have consciousness of things going on at a distance and to intervene — you will hear from the Mother one or two instances from her own experiences. In this instance we had no such knowledge of the actual accident. When Bhavashankar was about to return to Bengal, both the Mother and myself became aware, independently, of a danger of death overhanging him — I myself saw it connected ...
... experiences of the utmost import, to a growth of psyche and spirit, to deepest realities and [?finally] to the deepest of all; [... ...] But what precisely do we mean by the word Yoga? It is used here in the most general sense possible as a convenient name including all processes or results of processes that lead to the unveiling of a greater and inner knowledge, consciousness, experience. Any... indivisible in its pure being, it is freely self-divisible in its conscious experience & can concentrate itself in many states at a time. It is by this tapas, by this varied concentration of self-knowledge that Divine Existence creates & supports the world & is at one & the same [time] God & Nature & World, Personal & Impersonal, Pure & Varied, Qualitied & without Qualities, Krishna & Kali, Shiva... We seek after union or closeness to the Divine, whatever the Divine may be. We see the Divine as a personal Godhead or as an impersonal Existence. A God of Love or compassion attracts us or a God of might and power. It is a divine Friend who meets us or a Divine Master or a World Father or World Mother or an almighty Lord of all or a Divine Lover. We are in the presence of a Cosmic Spirit in whose universal ...
... together the experiences but it is absurd to identify consciousness (even in the restricted European idea of consciousness) with memory. This theory of memory is part of Bergson's fundamental idea that Time is everything. As for spirituelle , in Europe mostly no distinction is made between the spiritual and the mental or vital. Dream-Experiences Yes, certainly, dream-experiences can have a great... the experience there, when it returns, nothing is remembered. The subconscient remains in the body [ during sleep ]. The being really goes out into different planes of consciousness, but its experiences are not kept in the memory, because the recording consciousness is too submerged to carry the record to the waking mind. On coming to the waking consciousness the night experiences are... body but in a passive unsupported subconscient condition not capable of coherent and ordered experience and another that goes out into various planes and worlds of consciousness, has experiences there, moves among their scenes and beings and events, sees symbolic figures, scenes, happenings etc. The experiences of the two mix together often and make a double texture. The quiescent part is subject during ...
... remain enclosed in a meditation that's altogether personal, you may enter into a total illusion and never come out Page 287 of it, and believe that you have realised extraordinary things, while really you have only the impression, the illusion that you have done so. That's what Sri Aurobindo means. Then, Mother why do all the spiritual schools in India have as their doctrine escape... Mother reads from Lights on Yoga , "Work". "All work" is "a school of experience"? Yes, surely. You don't understand? No, Mother. If you don't do anything, you cannot have any experience. The whole life is a field of experience. Each movement you make, each thought you have, each work you do, can be an experience, and must be an experience; and naturally work... live in this illusion you cannot realise the Divine. For him there was not even the Divine, I think; for the Buddha, at least, there wasn't any. Then did they truly have experiences? That depends on what you call "experience". They certainly had an inner contact with something. The Buddha certainly had an inner contact with something which, in comparison with the external life, was a non-existence; ...
... Both were attracted to spiritual and mystical poetry. Significantly, it was the city of Bombay that was to provide for both a catalytic experience for their growth into spiritual consciousness. Both championed atheism with a degree of youthful enthusiasm and in both the turning to spirituality was equally powerful. While Sri Aurobindo had the Nirvanic experience in Bombay, thanks to the... in later childhood, felt emotionally drawn to his mother. A touch of self-deprecatory humour constantly marks the recollection of his childhood experiences, even when it involved family accounts: The moment I was born the big lamp in our drawing-room flared up. My father had to answer the frightened servant's cry and run from my mother's side to prevent Page xvii a fire... world of national and international politics And finally, Sethna has given us a valuable understanding regarding the place of the Mother in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. His slim book, The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and the Mother's Contribution to It provides us with a rare perspective. 21 Sethna has always been a leading exegete of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy and ...
... in Mother's yoga. × Decidedly, Mother could imagine only one possible choice! × In fact, in the Agenda conversations of 1958 and '59 (never noted by Satprem because he believed them too "personal"),... long as something seems normal, natural, acceptable, there's no escaping it. You have one life on the side and then "this" [the life in the body], that's the way people with a spiritual life always lived: they had their spiritual life and let "this" continue on automatically, without attaching any importance to it—it's very easy. But what a relief to live the Truth at each instant!... I haven't... THE SAME TIME, SIMULTANEOUSLY (not even one behind the other, but both together), a glory of divine splendor. Both together. Page 80 Both together. I always have the most acute experiences when I am getting ready to go down for the balcony [darshan]. That's when they come, during the most prosaic part of daily life. When I am meditating or walking or even seeing someone, it's different: ...
... would progress in our spiritual quest the less must our paths diverge, that is to say, beyond a certain level (underlining the last phrase). To that he replied: "You are quite right. Beyond a certain level the experiences along different paths are the same. In the first place, this is a bare fact as you can find by a study of genuine mystical Page 342 experience all the world over.... 347 experiences ( for if his knowledge and experience are not greater than yours, why did you choose him as a Guru?). One has faith in the path leading to the Goal even when the Goal is very far off and the way covered by mist and cloud and smitten repeatedly by the thunderbolt and so on. Even in worldly things man can do nothing great if he has no faith — in the spiritual realm it is still... understand this and keep it in mind, Krishnaprem's experience and the image in which he saw it should be sufficiently clear. The needle is this power in the soul and the card with its directions the guiding indications given by it to the mind and life. The ship is the psychological, structure of ideas, beliefs, spiritual and psychic experiences, the whole building of the inner life in which one ...
... had told me a few things about his spiritual sadhana. We used to meet pretty regularly, though for a brief while only, in the Ashram when he would tell me about the experiences he was having then. The record of these experiences, as narrated by him, forms part one of the present book. More than his sadhana, what we see in it is the work the Master and the Mother do in each prepared soul of theirs.... there were no inhibitions or reservations in talking about Nagin-bhai's sadhana as far as it was made known to us, or as far as we understood it. Nagin-bhai spoke very rarely about his personal experiences to anyone; in fact he always avoided talking about these. Only during the last few weeks he would speak something, now and then, but that also very briefly. It was 25th April 1997, i... did not want any other influence to be present there. As far as the presence of a woman was concerned, he did not have any feeling of that sort. Definitely the Mother had worked it so in him and he was free of it. Once the Mother told Sri * N.B. To signal the end of meditation in Sri Aurobindo's Room, a small jingling bell is rung. Page 71 Aurobindo that her ...
... the recovery. However all this has, as you know, spiritual significance and one must not complain of any suffering that comes in the course of sadhana. 2.07.66 Page 47 Our path is very long and steep and rugged. It is indeed a virgin forest through which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have hewn a path for us. Experiences, however great and alluring, have only to be past... him and for Ann." I am glad also that your "mind is much quieter than it has ever been before." We have to pass through many experiences, but we must see that we gain by each experience. The way is long and rugged—very long and full of pitfalls, but the Mother is holding us by the hand, and there is no power on earth and in heaven that can balk us of our divine destiny. 9.09.64 ... all his lectures. After his first experience of Samadhi, he came running to Sri Ramakrishna and begged him to let him remain in that state of ecstatic release for ever. But Sri Ramakrishna was not at all a Mayavadin, and he came down upon him with a bang : "Fie on you, you want personal salvation! Here, I lock the door of samadhi; you have come down to do the Mother's work and till that is done, you ...
... impossible, they returned without success in their mission. In my school days, Sri Ramkrishna and Vivekanand were a great source of inspiration and help to me in my spiritual quest. I had started to meditate and had many experiences, but I did not like the idea of renouncing the world for the realization of the Divine. It was for this main reason, that I was in search of a Guru who can help me to... the ignorant and self-centred human .life. This double process of sadhana was a journey to be performed with a return-ticket, in a most natural and normal way. This sadhana was not for personal gain, not for personal moksha , but for establishing the Divine life upon earth, by transforming the triple human nature of mind, life and body. In short it is a sadhana of self-perfection, which is to be... throughout India and abroad that a lighthouse has been erected at Pondicherry to guide the spiritual seekers, to help them to their destination—to realize the Divine, and in addition something new and unprecedented, to help divinize the human consciousness by a special Yoga of self-perfection, a stream of spiritual seekers from all sides, especially from Gujarat and Bengal, began to flow towards the b ...
... knowingly or unknowingly done, cannot but proportionately dislodge from his heart the already existent love for the Divine. It is because of this fundamental truth of spiritual life that Sri Aurobindo has warned us in his book The Mother: "Do not imagine that truth and falsehood, light and darkness , surrender and selfishness can be allowed to dwell together in the house consecrated to the... rarity in the sadhaka' s life: it is often a habitual feature of his daily, life. Did not the Mother say in surprise — "It is amazing, amazing — this power of self-deception, the mind's skill in finding an admirable justification for any ignorance, any stupidity whatsoever. This is not an experience that comes only now and then. It is something which you can observe from minute to minute."... secret of living a truly spiritual life. And Sri Aurobindo has reminded us that, in practice, this "self-giving... means a change from ego-centricity to God-centricity". (Letters on Yoga, p. 1374) But this 'God-centricity' is not so easy to obtain: it can come only if we truly and integrally love the Divine. Now the question arises whether, as sadhakas of the spiritual Path, we fulfil the ...
... Somnath was drawn to the spiritual life through reading novels like Jean Christophe. I have not read Jean Christophe , but Rolland is an idealist who takes interest in spiritual mysticism—not himself a man of spiritual experience. It is quite natural that such a man's writings should produce an effect on an intellectual man more easily than a religious or spiritual work. Somnath was not reli... religious-minded, so a religious work would not move him because it would be too far from his own way of thinking and turn of seeing. A spiritual book would not reach him, for he would not understand or feel the spiritual experiences or knowledge contained in it, they being quite foreign to his then consciousness. On the other hand a book by an intellectual idealist with an intellectual turn towards s... mental matters, I cannot be blamed for finding the ideas of Russell about spiritual experience, of which he knows nothing, very much wanting in light and substance. You have not named the Yogis in question, and till you do, I am afraid I shall cherish a suspicion about either the height or the breadth of their spiritual experience. 1932 I have not yet found a moment's time to go through Russell's ...
... and the most complete and creative embodiment of the descending Love, Light and beatific Force of Sachchidananda upon earth. It is a commonplace of spiritual philosophy that God is the ultimate goal of life, and it has also been an experience of countless men, purchased at the cost of many a cruel pang and bitter remorse and cheerless roving in the wilderness of the world. Even the politicians... darkness, but to illumine and transform it and render it an abode of the Divine. The overstress on the individual salvation was a passing phase of human aspiration when the spiritual vision was contracting and the spiritual force receding before the advancing tide of materialism. The great primeval prayer of the human heart is, in the words of the Rig Veda, "Become high-uplifted, O Strength, pierce... the gospel of peace and harmony, the dissemination of lofty truths, and the imparting of true cultural education are some of the ethical goals they endeavour to pursue They renounce most of their personal desires and try to rise superior to the formations of their lower nature, so that their life may get out of the rut of vital-physical preoccupations and emerge into some kind of transparent purity ...
... relation itself, the contact of man's life with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than our own entirely self-reliant straggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 543) This should be the aspiration of every sadhaka... highly limited way of living. And there is a negligible minority which aspires after a greater spiritual life, a life divine. What distinguishes man from other subhuman species is a consciously felt ideal of perfection that one can hopefully yearn after and attain to with adequate and proper personal efforts. But what is the exact nature of this perfection? — There is no universal agreement... only to gratify his personal egoistic desires. His attitude should rather be: "O Divine, I am asking for this in my ignorance; I place my problem before Thee with the innocence and candour of a child. Now you are free to do whatever you will to do in your divine wisdom. I shall in all cases accept your decision with a joyous heart." The sadhaka will remain always spiritually safe with this attitude ...
... its action and modalities. Certainly, it is the usual case. But the usual is not the limit of the possible. Now, about your personal example. You speak of the evolution theory to prove that "it can be done", though the domain I touched upon was only the spiritual. If the scientists say that man has not been able to create living things up to now, and therefore he will not be able to do so in... here can be Sri Aurobindo or the Mother—I have pointed out what I meant when I objected to your explaining away my sadhana as a perfectly useless piece of Avatarian fireworks. So in my comment on the Muthu logic, I simply pointed out that it was bad logic—that someone quite ignorant and low in the social scale can manifest a great spirituality and even a great spiritual knowledge. I hope you are not bourgeois... fellow has been saying that you have told him that he has played great parts in the Divine Lila, in former births, had beautiful experiences! Hallo! How often have I intimated that G was no great clergy. As for experiences, anybody with an occult bent can have experiences. The thing is to know what to do with them. Am I to say alas, human nature! Or alas, Divine Power! Excuse me. It was ...
... one passes from the individual Divine to the universal Divine and finally to the Transcendent. The spiritual change puts you directly in contact with the Supreme. 9 September 1959 Sweet Mother, How can one make one's psychic personality grow? It is through all the experiences of life that the psychic personality forms, grows, develops and finally becomes a complete, conscious... Series Eight (1959 - 1960) Some Answers from the Mother Letters to a Young Captain To a young captain in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Department of Physical Education. Sweet Mother, What is the difference between the psychic change and the spiritual change? The psychic change is the change that puts you in contact with the immanent Divine... the Gita. 30 May 1960 Page 237 Sweet Mother, Is it possible to have a correct conception of the Divine? No conception of the Divine can be correct; for conceptions are mental activities, and no mental activity is fit to manifest the Divine. It is only by experience that one can know Him, and the experience cannot be translated into words. 20 June 1960 Page ...
... will have a chance. If our aim is not success and personal fame, but to arrive at the expression of spiritual truth and experience of all kinds in poetry, the English tongue is the most widespread and is capable of profound turns of mystic expression which make it admirably fitted for the purpose; if it could be used for the highest spiritual expression, that is worth trying. 10 December 1935... temperament. But Tagore's Gitanjali is most un-English, yet it overcame this obstacle. For the poetry of spiritual experience, even if it has true poetic value, the difficulty might lie in the remoteness of the subject. But nowadays this difficulty is lessening with the increasing interest in the spiritual and the mystic. It is an age in which Donne, once condemned as a talented but fantastic weaver of ... them a fine promise. Binyon and Manmohan had almost the relations of Wordsworth and Southey in the first days, strongly admiring and stimulating each other.) Let me say then that my opinion was a personal one, perhaps born of brotherly intimacy—for if familiarity breeds contempt, fraternity may easily breed criticism—and based on insufficient data. I liked Manmohan's poetry well enough, but I never ...
... gallop, as it were; never are two experiences identical nor do they recur in the same way. As soon as something is established, the next thing begins immediately. It may appear to fade away, but it doesn't fade away; rather, it is the basis upon which the next thing is built. This morning while I was on the balcony, I had an interesting experience: the experience of man's effort, in all its forms... consciousness was established above the head. In the first experience [of 1910], the consciousness was established in the psychic depths of the being, and from that poise issued the feeling of no longer doing anything but what the Divine wanted—it was the consciousness that the divine Will was all-powerful and that there was no longer any personal will, although there was still some mental activity and... it will be difficult for them. Unless they go beyond all this and have enough spiritual knowledge to be able to make the ego surrender ... in which case the realization will naturally be much greater—it will be more difficult to accomplish, but the result will be far more complete. When you had this experience of February 3, 1958 [the supramental ship], the vision of your usual consciousness ...
... endless future end. The Gnostic Explanation The following story told by the Mother to the Ashram youth contains in essence the theodicy of Gnosticism throughout the centuries, while also completing it. The Mother stressed that it was “a story,” and that one could know its inner meaning only by experience on the spiritual path. “When the Supreme decided to exteriorize Himself in order to be able... ; the divine manifestation is the work of the divine Power, the Consciousness/Force, also called the Great Mother, or known as Maya, Prakriti, Lila. 20 “World is the play of the Mother of things moved to cast Herself for ever into infinite forms and avid of eternally outpouring experiences.” 21 This leads to the conclusion that there cannot be any mistakes in Nature. “When we speak indeed of... floating somewhere above the clouds or sitting on a throne in heaven. The “integral Vedantic affirmation” agrees with the mystics, because its perception of God is a matter of spiritual experience confirmed by many great experiencers: rishis, seers, yogis, mystics. According to this affirmation all is God, all is the Brahman, all is That, all is the Self, and there cannot be anything outside or apart from ...
... your will.”¹ The psychic experience is, as I have said above, indubitable —it carries with it a sense of absolute certainty, of unchallengeable authenticity. One knows without doubt that one is immortal; that one has always existed and will never cease to exist; that one assumes different names and forms in different lives, passes through various experiences, and grows and profits by them all... to push and push against the door, push more and more with increasing ¹ Words of the Mother. ² ibid. ³ ibid, Page 87 energy until all on a sudden the door gives way and you enter thrown as it were into the light. It is a powerful, unforgettable experience : you go through a sudden and radical change of consciousness, with an illumination that completely... disappears for ever. ” ³ The experience of the psychic is something crucial and decisive, unforgettable and indubitable. It changes the orientation of the being and gives it a new vision, a new outlook, and a new aim to pursue in life. ” In no yoga the complete psychic realisation is so much insisted upon as in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother; for, the secret of divine ...
... than our own entirely self-reliant struggle and effort and it brings a fuller spiritual growth and experience. Necessarily in the end prayer either ceases in the greater thing for which it prepared us,—in fact the form we call prayer is not itself essential so long Page 567 as the faith, the will, the aspiration are there,—or remains only for the joy of the relation. Also its objects, the ... much that is mere egoism and self-delusion; but afterwards we can draw towards the spiritual truth which is behind it. It is not then the giving of the thing asked for that matters, but the relation itself, the contact of man's life with God, the conscious interchange. In spiritual matters and in the seeking of spiritual gains, this conscious relation is a great power; it is a much greater power than... and his ignorance of the laws that govern the world. It attributed to the higher powers caprice and human passion; it made them in the image of the great ones of the earth, capable of whim, tyranny, personal enmity, jealous of any greatness in man which might raise him above the littleness of terrestrial nature and bring him too near to the divine nature. With such notions no real devotion could arise ...
... Influence, although the work has begun. That victory will form part of the triumph of Truth. Wealth should not be a personal property and should be at the disposal of the Divine for the welfare of all. 4.1.1968 When Mother says that wealth should not be a personal property, understand I that what should come is more a change of psychological attitude on the part of those who own money... all personal effort. 27.5.1968 What is the most effective way to overcome the ego? 1 Savitri(1912), p. 448 Page 45 The simplest and most effective way is to offer it to the Divine; the more sincere and radical the offering, the speedier the result. 28.5.1968 Now I can conceive that the Divine is all and everywhere, but I do not have the experience of... that I come to You I should make of it an occasion to progress towards the goal. Aswapathy was very fortunate. For him, Page 55 "Each day was a spiritual romance, Each happening was a deep experience ."' 1 This possibility is open to all whose aspiration is fervent. .1.11.1968 How can one keep what You give! It does not go away but enters the ...
... the children and to yourself. Never speak of your own spiritual experiences but remain always what you truly are: a child of The Mother among other children of The Mother. 3. When a peaceful atmosphere of work has become the normal condition of the class and many children have reached the stage of responsibility, then one day after a friendly talk to a group of children and as the outcome... speak of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo to a child? It will naturally depend on the personal approach of the teacher; he must act and speak to the best of his knowledge and feeling. But this is a matter of considerable importance for the evolution of the class and the teacher has to be extremely careful. I shall give here a few suggestions in a negative form: Speak of The Mother to a child, to... The atmosphere is of silent intensity. The faces express a peaceful and smiling gravity, a translucent beauty, the beauty of the soul that reaches the surface. The feeling that this experience (for it is truly an experience!) stirs up in the teacher is one of wonder and respect. It will surely mark the children's life, and the teacher's also, although all the children may not be equally conscious of what ...
... clarity and liberty in the new world which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother aim to manifest, the principal moving element in it is Spiritual India of the ages with her face of past illuminations turning to a yet vaster light from the future. An immense precursor of that light brought about the birth of the Ashram and threw into relief the Mother's mission. A. B. Purani, who was one of the twenty-four disciples... deepest compassion during an interview with the Mother. He has never disclosed the fact in print before, but in this survey of the Ashram's existence he has been persuaded to communicate what may be deemed the most heartening event in his early spiritual life. His private record, dated May 1929, of his inner response to the interview reads: "Mother divine, ever since the day you told me that... blessing him through the Mother. After the blessings, in the same silence there was a short meditation. "In the interval of silent meditation and blessings many had distinct experiences. When all was over they felt as if they had awakened from a divine dream. Then they felt the grandeur, the poetry and the absolute beauty of the occasion. It was not as if a handful of disciples were receiving blessings ...
... Source Watching Over One's Faith Certainly a personal effort is needed to preserve one's faith, to let it grow within. Later—much later—one day, looking back, we may see that everything that happened, even what seemed to us the worst, was a Divine Grace to make us advance on the way; and then we become aware that the personal effort too was a grace. But before reaching that point, one... best happens to you. This may not be in conformity with what you would like, your preference or desire, because these things are blind: it is the best from the spiritual point of view, the best for your progress, your development, your spiritual growth, your true life. It is always that. And you must keep this faith, because faith is the expression of a trust in the Divine and the full self-giving you... studied. After all, all your education is based upon a faith of this kind. Those who have educated you have told you certain things. You had no means of checking, because you were too young and had no experience. But you have faith in what they told you and you go forward on that faith. So everyone has a tiny bit of faith, and to increase it one can use one's aspiration. Source A Childlike Trust ...
... In the Mother's Light The Service of the Divine A SPECIAL sense attaches to the word "service" in the Mother's philosophy of Yogic action. She has given the word such a heightened connotation that it has become the key- word of human evolution and spiritual fulfilment. According to her, human birth has only one objective : the service of the Divine; and all... action; and, last, dealing with and acting for individuals, but seeing, contacting and communing with the One everywhere, in all individuals and units. This last experience of service establishes its sovereignty in a life of spiritual perfection—it is the only means by which the Divine can be loved and adored and served, embraced and communed with in every individual and thing and circumstance... do the act, yet it must be done for her. All stress of egoistic choice, all hankering after personal profit, all stipulation of self- regarding desire must be extirpated from the nature. There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the fulfilment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness ...
... the ideal power of a spiritual being." 13 Psychoanalysis carried the reductionism to an extreme and earned notoriety by reducing even mystical experiences to the unconscious strivings of the id. In this regard, Sri Aurobindo made the following remarks: "I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their... discipline lies perhaps Sri Aurobindo's greatest relevance to modern psychology. However, besides foreshadowing the "greater psychology awaiting its hour", Sri Aurobindo has through personal exploration and experience, mapped out and intimately described the entire terrain of consciousness in all its gradations. Embodied in his yoga, such a science of consciousness, which is also a discipline for ... across images which could not be explained in terms of the personal unconscious, and which Jung ascribed to the collective unconscious of the human race, common to all individuals. Jung thus added a new dimension to the concept of the unconscious, distinguishing the personal from the collective unconscious. Jung's distinction between the personal and the collective is somewhat akin to, though narrower ...
... 1959) You have touched upon an extremely personal as well as delicate subject when you ask me what I have to say apropos of the Mother's having once referred to me in the Agenda with the French term imbecile for having written to Sri Aurobindo about Savitri in what is termed a questioning vein. You are also asking me whether I consider the Mother to have made a mistake in using that word. ... multiplied himself innumerably in his dance with his devotees and each devotee had the experience that she and he were all in all to each other. Our Mother's Grace was something like that to us. I remember Counouma once telling me that one could have quite a delusion about oneself if one did not know well enough the Mother's way with those who had an intimate relationship with her. She often made them feel... aim to dispel them by subjecting them to the Light. How and when the occasion would arise for this dispelling has to be left to the Mother's discretion. We cannot dictate to her what she should do. But we must have the faith that all she does is for each one's spiritual good. And we would quite misunderstand her motive if we tried to use her comments with the intention to do the other person down and ...
... passage expressing perfectly a spiritual experience. Indra is the Divine Mind and as one ascends higher and higher in it or on it, all that has to be done becomes clearly visible. One who has that experience can at once see how perfectly true it is and that it must have been written from experience and not from imagination. Disciple : Cannot one write about .spiritual truths sometimes, even without... hazy. The Vaishnava poets state their experience clearly in their poems. Disciple : D told me that Tagore in the agony of pain tried to concentrate hard and he could mentally separate himself from the pain and get relief. Sri Aurobindo : That is a spiritual experience. Disciple : In another of his early poems also he speaks of an experience; one day on the terrace of the Jorasanko... Page 230 Swapna Bhanga" is the outcome of the experience Sri Aurobindo : That is also a spiritual experience, what does he say in that poem? Disciple : He speaks of a fountain that flows breaking all the barriers rushing towards the sea Sri Auroblndo : But why did he adopt the symbol? Did the experience come with the symbol? Disciple : It does not seem so ...
... positive reason to test the data of spiritual experience and decide whether those things exist or not or what is their law and nature. As in Science, so here you have to accumulate experience on experience, following faithfully the methods laid down by the Guru or by the systems of the past, you have to develop an intuitive discrimination which compares the experiences, see what they mean, how far and... sufficient experience and knowledge. If that is accepting things a priori, well, you have to accept a priori. For I am unable to see by what valid tests you propose to make the ordinary reason the judge of what is beyond it." 176 The above quotation is an effective reply to those sceptics, scientific rationalists and materialists who impugn super- sensory and spiritual experiences. But... among some of the leading political workers. But he was soon called back by the Maharaja who wished that he should accompany him on his tour to Kashmir as his personal secretary. In Kashmir, Sri Aurobindo had his third spiritual experience of a decisive character, as unexpected and unbidden as the first two, but of a capital importance from a certain standpoint. He says about it: "There was a ...
... another till the end without arriving at any sure way or any spiritual harbour. The mind can think and doubt and question and accept and withdraw its acceptance, make formations and unmake them, pass decisions and revoke them, judging always on the surface and by surface indications and therefore never coming to any deep and firm experience of Truth, but by itself it can do no more." ( Letters on Yoga... towards spiritual illumination, the reason itself has to be transcended and be replaced by intuition. But that is still miles and miles away. In the meantime the sadhaka has to make the enlightened reason, the liberated in page-277 telligence, — freed from the slavery to vital impulses and physical appetites,— the governor of his life. Here is a relevant passage from the Mother's writings:... suspicious and disbelieving. It is prone to indulging in doubting everything and in every field. Many a sadhaka' s sadhana-life has been shattered because of this doubting mania. The Mother has warned the aspirants on the spiritual path about this crafty enemy and advised them what to do in this regard. Let us listen to her: "... when faith has been granted, when one has had this sudden inner illumination ...
... desires, sensations, emotional feelings, vital imaginations and see and experience and judge everything from that point of view. It is the vital that moves them, the mind being at its service, not its master. In Yoga also many people do sadhana from that plane and their experience is full of vital visions, formations, experiences of all kinds, but there is no mental clarity or order, neither do they... has to become fit by aspiration, by abhyāsa , by sincerity and surrender. If you have always desired the spiritual Page 108 life, it is the psychic part of you that desired it, but your vital has always come in the way. Establish a sincere will in the vital; do not allow personal desires and demands and selfishness and falsehood to mix in your sadhana; then alone the vital in you will... the end and become your instrument and not your master. Purification of the Vital Purification of the vital is usually considered to be a condition for successful sadhana. One may have some experiences without it, but at least a complete detachment from the vital movements is necessary for a sustained realisation. Discipline of the Vital It is true that for the external vital an outer discipline ...
... one thing that stands out Page 20 is that as far as self-knowledge is concerned, intuitive methods of self experience become ultimately indispensable. We consider the knowledge of the human body to be an important aspect of self-knowledge, since everyone experiences one's body, rightly or mistakenly, as a part of oneself. Even when one comes to distinguish between one's inner self and... sweetness which impart to us the experiences not only of the true source of our sincerity, but also of our self-possession and self identity. We also discover that the deeper states of the self transcend the ambiguous and narrow movements of egoistic consciousness. We then come to correct our mistaken idea that ego is the self and we are transported into experiences of what the Upanishads term antaratman... Page 16 We note that everyone of us has some kind of self-experience and that much of the effectivity of our action depends upon certain states and qualities of self-experience. The quality of sincerity, for example, imparts to our state of being some kind of indefinable but intrinsically satisfying and effective self-experience. Having reached this point of exploration, we are in a position ...
... time. Only, he is not bound by his action. Another difficulty arises because most of the yogis are very bad philosophers. And so they cannot put their experiences in mental terms. But that does not mean that they have no real spiritual experience. They do not want to acquire intellectual development; for, they wanted only to reach a Higher consciousness and they are satisfied with that. When you look... Consciousness. That is to say, you see one Consciousness in all and all contained in the One Self and then you rise above to the realization of One that is both personal and impersonal and is above both. Disciple : Is it true that men with spiritual bent are born with "Adhikara – qualification – for it? Sri Aurobindo : Yes. Disciple : Can one acquire Adhikara – such qualification, i... : You say about experience, but I have no experience. All I feel is pressure at the time of meditation. Sri Aurobindo : You at least feel the pressure. Disciple : But how to know that it is due to the working of the Higher Power? Sri Aurobindo : If you can wait you will know yourself, or you have to accept it from the Guru who has gone through the experience – that is to say ...
... their personal lives. No sermonising. No. But daily converse and books that contained lofty examples of the past as things of supreme human interest, the great thoughts of great souls, the records of history and biography which exemplify the living of those great thoughts, the passages of literature which set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest ideals and aspiration. And personal example... appointed Professor of History directly working under him. 1 recall my personal anecdotes about his life and Page 335 work in those stirring times when the country, especially Bengal, was thrown into a whirlwind agitation over the partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon. "At that time Sri Aurobindo took up the personal leadership of the Revolution which ushered in the nation's battle for... to her. Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice. All is contained in that one single advice. My last word to you is that if you have sympathy for me, I hope to see it not merely as a personal feeling, but as a sympathy with what I am working for. I want to see this sympathy translated into work so that when in future I shall look upon your career of glorious activity, I may have the pride ...
... pseudo-spiritual light to flush and embellish it. Inadequate too is the very frequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic experience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or exalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a spiritual sanction; for this too is a precarious and never successful compromise and it... that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience—or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, repre... attached, bound and limited by any nor has he any personal motive of fame, greatness or personal satisfaction in these works; he can leave or pursue them as the Divine in him wills, but he need not otherwise abandon them in his pursuit of the higher integral knowledge. He will do these things just as the supreme Power acts and creates, for a certain spiritual joy in creation and expression or to help in ...
... movement from my personal web going to eliminate it from the world web? Some root must be touched somewhere. And Mother used to explain to me her method of those days, the one She had used for decades (and it could probably be used for centuries without making any real radical change). It is the spiritual method of all genuine yogis (those who work for the world, silently). Mother would go out of her... the end. Years later, after completing the whole course and going through quite a number of experiences, Mother came back to this "twinkling" infiltration and suddenly, "like that," in the middle of the conversation, She made a remark that left me completely dumbfounded. And this happened all the time with Mother. Those discoveries, so enormous that scientists could write volumes on them, never seemed... was putting a much more tricky question to Mother, and in effect I was right to do so, because at that point She had yet to find the real mechanism: She was being led to it "by fist and hammer blows." She replied, It's an ERROR to think that there can be a single "personal" movement in the world; it's man's ignorant consciousness which MAKES IT PERSONAL, but it isn't: it's all terrestrial attitudes ...
... disillusioned world to which the "spiritual" is just more theatricals: you suddenly discover you have a "spiritual soul." So she is acting in that milieu, she makes a great effect there, and I suppose she wants to go back and work in that milieu. But the only thing I am bothered with is: does it have an effect on P. L.? Because P. L. is quite... Yes, but Mother, P. L. has something that can't... ( long silence ) When she told me about her projects, I said absolutely nothing, but I looked, and I was very clearly told, "She needs this experience." Yes. She needs the experience. I also felt that. Only, it's a dangerous experience. Ah... it may put off realization to another life. ( long silence ) I think I told you that when P. L. caused that scandal there [at the... the Vatican], I was clearly told that it was "the beginning of the conversion of Christianity." And naturally, that's what interests me, much more than personal questions.... But I see that P. L. may only be an intermediary, and R. may be... how should I put it? The channel. Yes, there, to let the Current in. ( silence ) I had already been told that the Pope is the richest man in the ...
... meetings with other spiritual beings, often deceased friends and relatives. Near-death experiences are reported by about one-third of those who come close to death. Cultural and physiological explanations have been offered, but the causes remain uncertain. Typical aftereffects include greater spirituality and decreased fear of death.” As this definition indicates, “the near-death experience varies with... our understanding. Knowledge Physical and Spiritual, and its Seasons If one had read earlier about the Mother’s protective pathways across the afterlife, say before the publication of the first books on NDE, her narrative of what she had accomplished in the beginning of the 20th century might have looked like another of those chimerical experiences mystics think they have. Yet this is only one... person perceives the Light of the higher, spiritual hemisphere (in fact the Mother’s Light). The more he comes nearer to it, the more intense it becomes. As Kübler-Ross writes, that light “radiates intense warmth, energy, spirit and love – love most of all, unconditional love; they feel peace, tranquillity and the anticipation of finally going home.” The experiencers who have gone that far do not want to ...
... ons of Life with The Mother 1 The Mother and Sri Aurobindo "The Mother is not a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. She has had the same realisation and experience as myself. "The Mother's sadhana started when she was very young. When she was twelve or thirteen, every evening many teachers came to her and taught her various spiritual disciplines. Among them... directly psychic, vital, physical and her spiritual knowledge is predominantly practical in its nature. It is, that is to say, a large and detailed knowledge and experience of the mental, vital and physical forces at play and, with the knowledge, the power to handle them for the purposes of life and of yoga." A very crucial pointer to the Mother's central place in Sri Aurobindo's world-work... Nirodbaran.¹ ¹ The Mother — Sweetness and Light (Editions Auropress, Auroville, 1978), pp. 203-204. Page 1 The Mother herself, in various places, has alluded to the truth of occultism and spirituality compassed by her both before and after coming to take her place by the side of Sri Aurobindo. In a many-faceted article entitled Spiritual and Occult Truths ¹ , Huta ...
... to acquire a certain experience of the mental going-out and a mental knowledge of the planes before attempting the exit in the vital body. So in this yoga the going-out in the mental body precedes that in the vital body? Yes, but both these are yet subordinate to the spiritual experience which is much more important. I understand that the spiritual experience is fundamental and that... pushes ahead. You easily gave up your ideas when you came to me; but if they had been mixed with personal psychic experiences, this would have been much more difficult. If there is a little pride in us—quite unconscious, even hidden under humility—it makes us exaggerate to ourselves our personal importance and we believe ourselves called to something special. So she writes this book, takes disciples... Play of Prakriti. But Purusha is not free then: Prakriti casts her action on Purusha. Purusha must first recover his attitude of witness. Then he experiences that he has a certain power over the activities of Prakriti. *System of Philosophy and spiritual practice founded on a detailed analysis of nature and consciousness. **Witness. Is this consent of the Purusha conscious? Or is it ...
... resolution in Ash- Wednesday are not spiritual in the true sense and they are more misty than mystic. Not that a state of mind is not infused into us by them but they give Page 64 us neither the concreteness nor the intensity of spiritual vision and mystic experience. Mr. Lal's ignorance of this fact proves that he has no clear idea of spiritual poetry. St. John of the Cross... Cross is a real mystic and in his poems there is the immediacy of inner contact with the Eternal. But they are spiritual and mystic in a certain way - a highly personal devotion-coloured lyricism, deeply intense yet not charged with the powerful amplitude of vision and vibration such as we find in verses of the Upanishads, verses which seem to be the Infinite's own large and luminous language. Kabir and... a first-rate religious poet , not a spiritual or mystic one : he was well-versed in theology, perfectly conversant with the living symbols of the Catholic creed, his imagination was finely and powerfully touched by religious fervour, but there never was any invasion of his consciousness by the superconscious and he had not the temperament or the experience of the Saints who figure in his Paradiso ...
... × Mother gradually goes into trance and 'follows the experience.' × It seemed to us that Mother's experience, related while in a deep trance, could be likened to that of the Rishis, who spoke of 'an eye extended... to work towards 'world union,' and proselytes making so-called 'spiritual' propaganda without having found, within and by themselves, the true spiritual foundation. Mother goes on. ) But these people just can't get out of their education! Here is a lady [A. Bailey], quite renowned, it seems (she's dead now), who became the disciple of a Tibetan lama... and she still speaks of Christ as the sole... Aurobindo, that's all. But no spiritual responsibility; I have nothing to teach to anyone, thank God! (Pavitra.) But Mother, A. has also been bitten by the propaganda bug; in the by-laws he sent, he put: 'The goal of the Centre Page 181 d'Etudes de Sri Aurobindo [Sri Aurobindo Study Center, in Paris] is to steer people towards Pondicherry and the Mother....' Ooh!... OH!... How dreadful ...
... eternity. Around the ‘divine spark’ the psychic being grows and develops, fed by its experiences in life after life. For this reason the realization of the psychic being was considered by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as the first and fundamental of the three essential realizations of their yoga, the other two being the spiritual and the supramental. During the working out of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, an important... in the Integral Yoga was doubtlessly the result of his own experiences and explorations which we find described in Savitri, culminating in ‘The Book of the Divine Mother.’ To understand Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s venture, it is essential not to forget that she was an incarnation of the transcendent, cosmic and individual Divine Mother in a human body, just as he was an incarnation of the transcendent... 61 The Mother’s body was not an ordinary human body anymore (and neither was Sri Aurobindo’s). We have already seen how refined and sensitive it had become after her occult schooling in Tlemcen and the sequence of experiences described in her Prayers and Meditations. ‘Behind the physical body [of the Mother] there are many forms and powers and personalities of the Mother,’ wrote Sri Aurobindo; ...
... Education, The Mother has stated the' following: " The psychic being is a great discovery which requires at least as much fortitude and endurance as the discovery of new continents. A few Page 29 simple words of advice may be useful to one who has resolved to undertake it. "The first and perhaps the most important point is that the mind is incapable of judging spiritual things... 18, Centenary Edition, pp.225-7 Page 35 and possessed fully in experience by the mind. This point marks the climax of the mental development as also a clear sign of the limitations of the mind. Having reached there its office is to fall into contemplation of silence and to open to the higher realms of experience, to receive clearly and precisely the intuitions and inspirations from those... senses which are to be discovered and similarly developed. Third, the seekings of these senses have to be trained to reject grossness and coarseness and to enjoy the finer tastes and higher aesthetic experiences. Finally, there has to be a deeper and piercing observation of the desires, passions, ambitions, lusts, etc., their risings, revolts and contradictions, and an attempt by various methods to separate ...
... about thinking with ideas. When you think with experience, you go much deeper and you can express the same experience with many kinds of ideas. Then thought can take this form or that form in any language and through all of them the essential realisation will remain unchanged. To be convincing when you speak, think not in ideas but in experiences. Did you attend the teachers' meeting with... should like to know what exactly you mean by "objective" in the above answer. Do you mean that no personal feeling must be allowed to enter in thought and speech while explaining Sri Aurobindo's and your views concerning sadhana to the students? Yes, that. Do not speak of yourself or your own experience. 5 June 1967 Page 191 Teachers must not be absent on the days and at the times... the decisive progress, that is, instead of thinking with ideas, to think with experiences . When one can do that, one really begins to understand. You have asked the teachers "to think with ideas instead of with words". You have also said that later on you Page 185 will ask them to think with experiences. Will you throw some light on these three ways of thinking? Our house has a ...
... swallowed up and lost, is it? No, but this is something else. Those who are capable of personal experiences pass through everything. But not the common herd. ( silence ) I have had discussions—not 'discussions,' exchanges of views—with prelates. There was one cardinal in particular.... I told him my experience, what I KNEW. He replied, 'Whether you want to or not, you belong to the Church; because... having such an intense need in me to KNOW.... Because I was having experiences—I had all kinds of experiences—but my surroundings offered me no chance to receive an intellectual knowledge which would have given me the meaning of it all: I couldn't even speak of them. I was having experience after experience.... For years, I had experiences during the night (but I was very careful never to speak about them... April April Mother’s Agenda 1961 April 29, 1961 ( Some fragments of this conversation were originally published in Mother's 'Commentaries on the Aphorisms' of Sri Aurobindo. Considering it too personal, Mother had not wanted the unabridged text to appear even in her Agenda. However, we felt it should be kept. This conv ...
... the realisation was not lost. At the same time," here Sri Aurobindo comments on his later and fuller experiences, Page 252 "an experience intervened: something else other than himself (Sri Aurobindo) took up this dynamic activity and spoke and acted through him but without any personal thought or initiation. What this was remained unknown until Sri Aurobindo came to realise the dynamic... one finds a rare opportunity for experiencing God's infinite grace and attaining union with Him.... God, who is All-Good, turns even evil into supreme good. The third purpose154 (for which he took me to Alipore jail) was to teach me that my personal efforts would avail nothing in my Yoga, that faith and total self-surrender alone were the means of attaining spiritual perfection, and that the only object... Swami Vivekananda's help in his spiritual life, he says in Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on The Mother, ".. .It is a fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence.... The voice spoke only on a special and limited very important field of spiritual experience and it ceased as soon as it had ...
... believe—but not in the way I want it. They achieved it as a personal siddhi maintained by Yoga-siddhi—not a. dharma of the nature. Secondly, the supramental transformation is not the same as the spiritual-mental. It is a change of mind, life and body which the mental or overmental spiritual cannot achieve. All whom you mention were spirituals, but in different ways. Krishna's mind, for instance, was... greater creator. One may rise to spiritual planes of inspiration undreamed of by Shakespeare and yet not be as great a poetic creator as Shakespeare. "Greatness" is not the object of spiritual realisation any more than fame or success in the world—how are these things the standard of spiritual realisation? I find that people are greatly fortunate who can approach the Mother often. If they know how... without having any eagerness about it. That is not what is meant by pulling. When one is open and too eager and tries to pull down the force, experience etc. instead of letting it descend quietly, that is called pulling. Many people pull at the Mother's forces trying to take more than they can easily assimilate and disturbing the working. The other night while I was doing a little "easy-chair ...
... message for distribution on 21 February 1927, the birthday of the Mother. Three months earlier, after an important spiritual experience of 24 November 1926, Sri Aurobindo had withdrawn from outward contacts and placed the Mother in charge of the disciples who had gathered around him. He told them at that time to turn entirely to her for spiritual and practical guidance. This message therefore had a special... la marche interne de l'univers — the inner march of the universe PART THREE: TRANSLATIONS OF PRAYERS OF THE MOTHER Prières et Méditations de la Mère The Mother's Prières et Méditations de la Mère consists of extracts from her spiritual journal which she selected for publication. The first edition of the French original was printed for private circulation in 1932... The Mother with Letters on the Mother Note on the Texts "THE MOTHER WITH LETTERS ON THE MOTHER" consists of two separate but related works: The Mother , a collection of short prose pieces on the Mother, and Letters on the Mother , a selection of letters by Sri Aurobindo in which he referred to the Mother in her transcendent, universal and individual aspects ...
... have had myself the experience of this rising to a height, during a certain stage of the spiritual development, of things that before hardly existed and seemed quite absent in the pre-Yogic life. These things rise up like that because they are fighting for their existence—they are not really personal to you and the vehemence of their attack is not due to any "badness" in the personal nature. I dare say... consciousness internally then you raise the risk of doing like those who are satisfied to have experiences and some inner quietude or Ananda, but leave the external nature and surface active movements unchanged, either thinking them of no importance or justifying them under the plea that there is the psychic or spiritual consciousness behind them. I asked you to look for the cause of the abatement of energy... at once to harbour the opposite suggestions and at the same time keep itself open to the Mother, so that the Mother's Force may come down into it and occupy it and work there. Vital Restlessness I have no idea why he wants to change [ his work ]. If he wants to make himself some day fit for the spiritual life, the first thing to be avoided is vital restlessness. To do the work one has to do with ...
... by this method [of religion]? Those who carry within themselves a spiritual destiny and are born to realise the Divine, to become conscious in Him and live Him, will arrive, no matter what path, what way they follow. That is to say, even in religion there are people who have had Page 146 the spiritual experience and found the Divine―not because of the religion, usually in spite of it... express their experience, they naturally use the terms of the religion in which they were brought up, so they restrict their experience and inevitably limit it very much, they make it sectarian, so to say. But they themselves may very well have gone beyond all the forms and all the limitations and all the conventions and may have had the true experience in its pure simplicity. Sweet Mother, in the world... May 1956 Sweet Mother, what is the difference between yoga and religion? Ah! my child... it is as though you were asking me the difference between a dog and a cat! ( Long silence ) Imagine someone who, in some way or other, has heard of something like the Divine or has a personal feeling that something of the kind exists, and begins to make all ...
... which presides over the new formation of its earth-experience and assents not merely to an outward compulsory process, but to a secret Will and Guidance. That secret Will is not mechanical, but spiritual... Self-expression and experience are what the soul seeks by its birth into the body; whatever is necessary for the self-expression and experience of this life, whether it intervenes as an automatic... the psychic entity, puts forward on the surface, - it is not the self in its abiding reality. In each return to earth the Person, the Purusha, makes a new formation, builds a new personal quantum suitable for a new experience, for a new growth of its being. When it passes from its body, it keeps still the same vital and mental form for a time, but the forms or sheaths dissolve and what is kept is only... s of world-experience and of a disguised, imperfect, but growing self- Page 165 expression. All this it does from behind a veil..." (Letters on Yoga, p. 438) "But a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfilment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life." (Ibid ...
... Sri Aurobindo’s reciprocal surrender to the Mother. ‘A vast surrender was his only strength.’ 29 Moreover, Sri Aurobindo himself has written explicitly, probably to straighten out some distorted opinions among his disciples: ‘The Mother is not a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. She has had the same realisation and experience as myself.’ 30 ‘The Mother stands on an equal and exactly complementary... Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from various periods and sources speak for themselves and leave no room for relativism or toned down interpretations. Either they were That or they were not That (and if they were That, they still are That). This is not a matter of devotion or bigotry but a question of spiritual fact which one accepts or does not accept. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have never imposed their... of the Mother’s weekly French evening classes, asked for a clarification of the Purusha-Prakriti relationship, she abruptly turned towards Nolini, who with some other adults also attended the classes: ‘Nolini, you will have to explain this … I don’t understand a thing of it. It does not correspond with an inner experience as far as I am concerned. I have never had this kind of experience, therefore ...
... Letters in Mother India, then a fortnightly from Bombay instead of a monthly review from Pondicherry as at present. Page 170 show it before it reached the intensest spiritual perfection. It was I, on the contrary, who kept showing him my own little efforts at expressing the few strange glimmers of beauty and truth that at times my discipleship under so gracious a spiritual and literary... Sri Aurobindo - The Poet SRI AUROBINDO'S LETTERS ON SAVITRI* A Personal Recollection Sri Aurobindo intended to write a long Introduction to Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol Together with the final revision he seems to have had in mind of a few parts of his epic, the eagerly awaited Introduction never got under way. But, as some compensation, we have... so vastly and variously creative a genius can lay claim to the tide, his literary lifework. They have been arranged to make an introductory ensemble —necessarily in certain places more informal, personal, unreserved, focused on details, quick-shifting, repetitive than a specially composed piece for the public would be. Very few, however, know how these illuminative letters came to be written ...
... since you have told me that no words of mine have any truth or value and that all my experiences also are subjective delusions without any truth or value. I suppose all spiritual or inner experiences can be denounced as merely subjective and delusive. But to the spiritual seeker even the smallest inner experience is a thing of value. I stand for the Truth I hold in me and I would still stand for it... putting your reliance on the Mother. These questionings and depressions are very foolish movements of the mind. If you were not open to the Grace, you would not have had these descents or experiences and there would have been no such progress as you have made. You have not to put such questions but to take it as a settled fact, and with full faith in the Mother and her working in you go on with... or trance in which they remain within themselves and prepare their new birth in future. The experiences related are of a high character and show an advanced state of the consciousness. The overhead station especially is not common and is usually attained only after a considerable psychic and spiritual growth. It is always possible indeed to ascend and descend in the consciousness reaching very high ...
... several implications pertaining to our outer existence, the master implication by virtue of this particular pattern remains the Infinite and the Divine. In Sri Aurobindo's flag of Mother India and her spiritual mission we have also the promise of India's unity. For, the genuine indefeasible unity can come only of a sense in all men of the one God within, the God in whom alone are eternal liberty... is blissfully forgotten that the heart and core of Buddhism is none of these aspects of Buddha's message but the all-annulling all-transcending experience of Nirvana, an experience which throws away the entire universe as a trifle or an illusion, an experience intensely and immensely other-worldly and hence the absolute opposite of everything secular, everything connected with the outer life of mankind... Infinite. The Ideal Flag for India Luckily, in our opinion, we do not have to cast about for the right pattern: we already possess it in the symbolisation made of India's spiritual mission by the greatest spiritual figure of our day. The symbolisation by Sri Aurobindo uses a simple yet subtle combination of the three colours that we associate most with the overarching heavens - blue, silver ...
... impact that she was not only the divine mother, she was my physical mother as well. There was a blending of the human and the divine, which far transcended the human relation of a mother for her offspring or a spiritual relation of a guru with the disciple. A black curtain was drawn over my spiritual life for several years. But even in that total change the Mother's aid was there, her hand of succour... the Mother about the lady who looked after me, over some trivial personal matter. Sri Aurobindo wrote to me that though I was growing and progressing, I could not judge people. However, he added, the Mother was making arrangements to change my room. It was a reprimand to a spoilt boy, undisciplined in habit, and erratic in temperament. Even this reprimand was a gesture of Grace, for the Mother or the... the Ashram. The Mother retired for a while from us. The distribution of evening soup was stopped and so also the morning meditation and pranams. About six months later the new year came and we had meditation and darshan of the Mother at midnight. It was a memorable experience. The Mother appeared to me like a Queen of Beauty in the semi-darkness of midnight. Next day, the Mother led me to her little ...
... So long as the vital or mental think themselves wiser than the Mother and able to judge her how do you expect these stupidities to disappear? 22 March 1934 The Mother's injunction to work in peace and harmony with the others concerned those whom you meet for work, not a personal relation such as you had with X . The Mother is the sole judge of what is necessary for each and she is not bound... parts of my being have felt that the Mother has restricted the former physical manifestation of her love. But I am sure that this change was meant for the good of my sadhana. Whatever is done by the Mother is for the good of the sadhak and the sadhana. 9 December 1935 X wonders why people like Y are allowed here when it is obvious that they have no spiritual possibility in them. But unless X... Nature, Destiny, the way of the Divine all seem a mystery. The Mother does not act by the mind, so to judge her action with the mind is futile. But why should X or anyone assume that Y will have no profit for her spiritual future from her stay here? 5 May 1936 Can the physical mind have a correct understanding of the Mother's dealings? Not until it is enlightened by the true consciousness ...
... is; and I don't know what Japan will be in future; but, I think, speaking from a few of my experiences, that this is a good sign because you must break your strict moral rules in order to be spiritual, and they are passing through this change, this transition. That is my way of looking at things, my personal opinion. Anyhow, this is what Japan is. Now a few points about the difference between... being because he was morally bound to his emperor. He would betray the emperor if he obeyed the inner voice. So that shows the distinction between the moral law and the spiritual law. He wasted a great chance that the Mother had granted him. As you know very well, we are trying hard to awaken in us the psychic being, which, as per the Katha Upanishad, is "no bigger than this thumb" 89 , but very... within being heard. So in order to be able to lead the spiritual life, you have to break some of the moral rules - the moral barriers. But so long as you don't hear that voice, you have to obey the moral law. In our land here, you see, we have become spiritual. Moral laws are not for us brothers. The first thing we have established in our spiritual life is freedom. Now the word "brother" reminds ...
... still yawns between the spiritual experiences in the depths of the being, and its natural action on the surface: the former are irradiated with the native Light of the Spirit, and the latter only with the pale limpidities of the mind, intermittently shot with flashes of intuition. That is perhaps about the utmost we have had, barring a very few exceptions, in the spiritual lives of those who accepted... forces of ignorance and falsehood and suffering, which sway the life of humanity and impede its spiritual evolution. From the cells of the physical body to the summits of our mental being, all, without exception, must be divinely converted and rendered perfectly plastic to the supramental Force of the divine Mother. "So long as one element of the being, one movement of the thought is still subjected... and nature, immersed in an ineffable peace and bliss, and moved by the Divine Mother for the furtherance of her evolutionary ends in the world. Because he embraces the Divine in all beings and things, and clearly sees His Hand in every event, he knows that all in the universe are knit together by an invisible spiritual bond, and that there is a developing harmony everywhere in spite of the apparent ...
... ভক্তি, then? But even if you are serious, I don't know why I can't take it calmly and in the right spirit. Quite so! You have no personal interest to be serious. It is for my good alone. Not at all. It is simply the vital's imagination that the Mother is serious because of its tamas. There is not the least truth in it. I understand all this but the emotion gets the upper hand. And you... plenty of knowledge. Mother says in the "Prayers and Meditations" that there is a knowledge which surpasses all other knowledge which means knowledge of the Divine. In that case, psychics or otherwise who realise the Divine, will have the same width, vastness of knowledge. Certainly, there is nothing to prevent it. By the higher knowledge, I understand, you mean spiritual knowledge about Almon... that Ramakrishna's mind or Christ's mind was as powerful as that of Buddha? Buddha's mind as a mind was more powerful, but had he as much or as many-sided a spiritual knowledge as Ramakrishna? I leave out Christ, because his spiritual knowledge was from the heart only and intense but limited. Or can we ever imagine that a supramental X will have the same mental range and altitude as the ...
... discrimination which compares the experiences, see what they mean, how far and in what field each is valid, what is the place of each in the whole, how it can be reconciled or related with others that at first sight seem to contradict it, etc. etc. until you can move with a secure knowledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That is the only way to test spiritual experience. I have myself tried the other... convince one who starts from exactly the opposite viewpoint to the spiritual, the way of looking at things of a Victorian agnostic. His points of doubt about the value—other than subjective and purely individual—of Yoga experience are that it does not aim at scientific truth and cannot be said to achieve ultimate truth because the experiences are coloured by the individuality of the seer. One might ask whether... and all our physical experience daily tell us—so the spiritual search passes beyond the domain of scientific or rational enquiry and it is impossible by the aid of the ordinary positive reason to test the data of spiritual experience and decide whether those things exist or not or what is their law and nature. As in science, so here you have to accumulate experience on experience following faithfully ...
... of Sri Aurobindo. We were enjoined to open ourselves to the Mother and conceal nothing from her. But it was Sri Aurobindo who mostly replied to our correspondence. He never had any personal animus against anybody. His criticisms had always an impersonal love, devoid of anger, prejudice or ill-feeling. I need not dilate upon the spiritual and psychological effect the letters have produced and even... failures, complexities of nature (each one an impossibility, according to the Mother), all these coming to the surface as a result of the pressure of yoga. On the other hand the Mother and Sri Aurobindo treating each case with amazing love and patience in order to give each one the full chance of finding his soul. Such is the spiritual saga I have tried to unfold with innumerable illustrations. I myself was... however, that whenever Sri Aurobindo wrote to me about individual sadhaks or personal matters, it was done to help me see things in their proper perspective and not get disturbed by outer happenings. For instance, when any departure from the Ashram made me apprehensive of my own destiny, I had to place my misgivings before the Mother, and Sri Aurobindo enlightened me by revealing the true facts about such ...
... point towards certain things in my own knowledge and experience. But after incorporating certain parts of the Vedic method as far as I could interpret or recover it, I found it was insufficient and I had to seek farther. Transformation is a word that I have brought in myself (like supermind) to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral Yoga. People are now taking them... unveiled and unmixed above mind, life and body and not in mind, life and body. It is a matter of the undeniable experience of many that this can descend and it is my experience that nothing short of its full descent can thoroughly remove the veil and mixture and effect the full spiritual transformation. No metaphysical or logical reasoning in the void as to what the Atman "must" do or can do or needs... heights we can always reach" very obviously "we" does not refer to humanity in general but to those who have a sufficiently developed inner spiritual life. 3 It is probable that Sri Aurobindo was thinking of his own experience. After three years of spiritual effort with only minor results he was shown by a Yogi the way to silence his mind. This he succeeded in doing entirely in two or three days ...
... that for the sake of argument the writer has to proceed as if he did not believe ab initio in the spirit, the personal God and Christ. The apologist commences on what is common ground between his interlocutor and himself: here this ground should be the world of natural experience, which one pragmatically accepts as worth living in and working for. An additional merit of the world for a modern... natural experience. He cannot precisely define this faith with which he starts, but there is no denying that the faith is most firm and is felt as intrinsically justified. What is even more unusual for an apologist who has Christianity at the back of his thought, Teilhard's world-mysticism is openly declared to be the first and last and only thing he believes in. All else - spirit, personal God, Christ... towards faith in spirit, personal God and Christ, he is prepared to embrace that faith. But even if it does not, he is ready to follow its lead, confident that it will never let him down and that somehow it will fulfil him. He can doubt everything else but he will succeed in banishing at all times all hesitation here - and this world-mysticism is the single religious experience he requires for the very ...
... conversations for a good number of years. Basing himself on his close observation and personal experience, he makes an illuminating contrast between the styles of Tagore and Sri Aurobindo and remarks apropos: "Tagore was a conversationalist par excellence. Those who have heard or talked to Tagore, recall their experience as 'great'. When we read his talks, we can well imagine how brilliant he must have... more often dazzle us with their impersonal effulgence than warm our hearts with any soothing personal touch. This personal touch is, of course, very much present in the five bulky volumes of Sri Aurobindo's collected Letters — three Page 3 on Yoga, and one each on himself and on the Mother. But even there, in those more than three thousand pages of printed matter, is there any sign... periodic "Darshan" of himself and of the Mother, and even towards his most intimate disciples like Nirodbaran and Dilip Kumar, Sri Aurobindo wore the appearance of a calm and serene but smileless countenance. We have already referred to Nirodbaran's witty complaint on this score made to Sri Aurobindo. Here is a very interesting and altogether revealing experience that came to Dilip Kumar on the same score ...
... of small value or importance for the history of thought or for a living spiritual experience. 291 But in the original, he discovered a constant vein of the richest gold of thought and spiritual experience.... 292 I found that the mantras of the Veda illuminated with a clear and exact light psychological experiences of my own for which I had found no sufficient explanation either in European... regions, at a spiritual and supramental level where the Matter-Spirit contradiction will vanish like a mirage, and where we will no longer need to "get Page 134 out" because we will be everywhere Within. Nevertheless, It would be wrong to believe that the experience of Nirvana is a false experience, a kind of illusion of the illusion; first, because there are no false experiences but only... Sri Aurobindo had not gone beyond the mental plane when he experienced Nirvana: I myself had my experience of Nirvana and silence in the Brahman long before there was any knowledge of the overhead spiritual planes. 120 It is after ascending to higher, superconscious planes that he had experiences superior to Nirvana, where the illusionary, immobile and impersonal aspect merged into a new Reality ...
... 2 TO DILIP KUMAR ROY The terms "saint" and "saintly" are used very loosely in English, just as "spiritual" and "mystical" are applied to anybody who believes in and thinks about supernormal and supernatural things and experiences. But we must take the English language in hand and chisel the meaning of its great words to represent precisely the inner life. I suppose... plane of the Life-Force. I myself, however, prefer to give a mystical and spiritual tinge to the term - so that the profound Mother-worshipping fervour of Bankim Chandra would make him a rishi in his vivid and visionary national anthem while the emotional patriotism of Iqbal in his richly imaginative "Hindustan Hamara" wouldn't. So too would I deem Tagore a rishi in his intensest ecstasy of utterance... proper to him, a supreme creative pitch in his poetry of the inner life or of mystical and spiritual realities, he could be hailed as a rishi. In a general sense, the poet who gives sovereign expression from the inside, so to speak, to any plane becomes a rishi, no matter if he does not touch the mystical and spiritual aspect of things. Thus I suppose Shakespeare can be described as the rishi of the plane ...
... those two or of the others we have listed is less, but profundities and amplitudes and heights of experience greater than any they command are compassed and there is a royal quantity of quality in excess of anything done by them. Face to face with a multiaspected Page 58 spiritual epic like Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, with its nearly twenty-four thousand lines, we cannot help... finest utterances in Four Quartets, like the lines about "being still and still moving" or those about "the moment in and out of time," are not only broadly traditional—at the same time that they are personal—in their religious insight and urgency and akin to Rilke's during some of his tensions of passionate prophetic loneliness: they are also embodied in a flexible verse which is not at all amorphous... not if he took past forms and bent them to his own uses, chose past themes and infused them with a new significant vitality driving towards things to come, least of all if he plunged to bedrock spiritual purposes and problems instead of getting mazed in superficial or else merely fashionable perplexities. To overlook or underrate his poetic quality would be a misfortune for the lover of literature ...
... political motives, this is the true impetus of most historical emotion and commotion. In the view of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, India occupied a special place in the world. This country has always been the cradle of the most important spiritual discoveries and the highest spiritual realizations, which have spread out in the world from there. It is also the place where the essential gains of humanity... life which belongs to the age of decline, it would be to experience a much more depressing sensation, the sense of a national, a cultural debacle, a fall from the highest summits to discouragingly low levels. He might well ask himself what this degenerate posterity had done with the mighty civilisation of the past … He would compare the spiritual light and energy of the heroic ages of the Upanishads and... Part Two: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Beyond Man Chapter Seventeen: The Five ‘Dreams’ of Sri Aurobindo It is not for personal greatness that I am seeking to bring down the Supermind. I care nothing for greatness or littleness in the human sense … If human reason regards me as a fool for trying to do what Krishna did not try, I do not in the least care ...
... You are quite right and I approve of your attitude. Never mix in your thought spiritual power and money because it leads straight to catastrophe. A gift made through vanity is profitable neither to the giver nor to the receiver. Page 50 I wanted to make him understand and experience that the thought, the feeling and the force that is in a gift is much more important... is preparing to do Yoga and has made it a general rule to offer You everything and depend entirely on You, accept gifts, in money or kind, coming from others? Because if he accepts, he is put under personal obligations and duties. Can a sadhak allow this? Can he say to himself: "The Divine has many ways of giving"? What is to be done if a person begins to quarrel because one has accepted a gift... Distributed on the Feast of the Epiphany, which the Mother designated as "the festival of the offering of the material world to the Divine". × Distributed on the Feast of the Epiphany, which the Mother designated as "the festival of the offering of the material world to the Divine" ...
... 2 Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 85. Page 351 of another prevalent misconception that the practice of Yoga, having for its result the amassing of spiritual experiences, far from helping the health of the body — not to speak of accomplishing the conquest of death — is rather "inimical to the health of the body and tends to have a bad effect of one kind... manifestation in the earth-consciousness occurred on February 29,1956. About this momentous spiritual event "for which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had luminously laboured for decades and for whose swifter advent Sri Aurobindo sacrificed his body in 1950" (Towards February 29, 1956, p. 1), the Mother has remarked: "The greatest thing that can ever be, the most marvellous thing since the beginning... 266. Page 352 the illness of a Yogi with his spiritual endeavour. For, as Sri Aurobindo has made abundantly clear in course of his refutal 1 of a disciple's contention that the illness of a lady devotee was due to her trances, "illness and deterioration of the body" witnessed in the case of some spiritual seekers is not "the natural and general result of the practice of Yoga" ...
... the inner mind and vision and the inner or Yogic consciousness and its experiences and powers. From here also one can open upwards and act also in the lower centres; but the danger of this process is that one may get shut up in one's mental spiritual formations and not come out of them into the free and integral spiritual experience and knowledge and integral change of the being and nature. Page 307... It was by your personal efforts without guidance that you got into difficulties and into a heated condition in which you could not meditate etc. I asked you to drop the effort and remain quiet and you did so. My intention was that by your remaining quiet, it would be possible for the Mother's Force to work in you and establish a better starting-point and a course of initial experiences. It was what was... plane and its experiences. But from that one can get to the psychic by drawing more and more inwards, not getting absorbed into the vital experiences but separating oneself and looking at them with detachment as if one were deep inside and observing things outside oneself. Similarly one can get the mental experiences by concentrating in the thought and by it bringing a corresponding experience, e.g. the ...
... deviate, misled from the true way of the inner life and seeking into false paths, or to be left wandering about in an intermediate chaos of experiences and fail to find his way out into the true realisation. These perils were well-known to a past spiritual experience and have been met by imposing the necessity of initiation, of discipline, of methods of purification and testing by ordeal, of an entire... of the heart by love and devotion and spiritual joy and ecstasy, illuminations of the sense and the body by higher experience, illuminations of dynamic action in the truth and largeness of a purified mind and heart and soul, the certitudes of the divine light and guidance, the joy and power of the divine force working in the will and the conduct. These experiences are the result of an opening outward... equilibrium which are the character of the Ignorance. Page 941 This is the first result, but the second is a free inflow of all kinds of spiritual experience, experience of the Self, experience of the Ishwara and the Divine Shakti, experience of cosmic consciousness, a direct touch with cosmic forces and with the occult movements of universal Nature, a psychic sympathy and unity and inner ...
... is Sri Aurobindo. But my fear is that it will be too personal as well as a little sentimental. You will excuse me if it is so. That is why I always avoid speaking much about 262Two subtle centres (of the seven) in the human body. 263 'ben is a name suffix meaning 'sister'. Page 207 these too-personal experiences. Well, memories surge up, as it were, from the... according to the prescription of Dr. Manilal. Now and then, the Mother coming into the room, with a sweet smile, sometimes with a glass of coconut water in Her hand, casting a very quick glance at us mischievous fellows, and many other memories come. Then the memory of the famous 'talks' when the impersonal aspect of the Purusha became personal, very intimate, like that of a human being, talking with... rarely to be found in spiritual history. Perhaps you have some idea of Arjuna's association with Sri Krishna, Ananda's with Buddha, St. Paul's with Jesus Christ, and similar ones of others; in our modern days, associations of Vivekananda, particularly, and of his friends with Ramakrishna, and lastly, in our present time, here, of Pranab-da and Vasudha-ben 263 with the Mother. Our association too ...
... And the Mother's Light in her rooms on the second floor maintained an unceasing vigil. The Mother of course was still bombarded by the usual queries and requests for messages and SOS appeals, and she could hardly fail to respond appropriately in every instance. Auroville? It was "the ideal place for those who want to know the joy and liberation of no longer having any personal possessions"... On The Mother CHAPTER 57 Superman Consciousness I The Mother's New Year message for 1969 ("No words - acts ") had doubtless been decided upon in the last weeks of the previous year. During the small hours of the night preceding the dawn on 1 January, however, she had the experience of the descent of a new power of consciousness: In the... become this hideous monstrosity of our everyday experience? The solution was not to run away to the Nirvanic oblivion, but to accept even this monstrosity with a view to transform it. The disciple then suggested that the Mother herself should first transmute hers into a golden body - and all could then see what transformation really meant. The Mother agreed that somebody - she or anyone else - should ...
... it and given it such a great cohesive power that I can BE in the experience, I can LIVE this experience, and at the same time respond with the most amiable of smiles to the most idiotic questions! And then, it always ends in the same way, by a canticle to the action of the grace: 'O, Lord! You are truly marvelous! All the experiences I have needed to pass through You have given to me, all the things... power ... ( Mother brings down her hands ) as he said, will be able to rule over everything. And when that happens, it will be all over—including Nature. For a long time, Nature rebelled (I have written about it often). She used to say, 'Why are you in such a hurry? It will be done one day.' But then last year, there was that extraordinary experience. 5 And it was because of that experience that I told... enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right to enter.' In other words, these forces would not be able to prevent him from entering. A personal realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one thing, but the power to control it among all men—that is, to control or master such movements at will, everywhere—is quite another. I don't believe ...
... coming younger humanity, to that in which already the soul of the mother has learned to find and fix its spiritual joy. The eyes, brows, lips, face, poise of the head of the woman are filled with this spiritual emotion which is a continued memory and possession of the psychical release, the steady settled calm of the heart's experience filled with an ineffable tenderness, the familiar depths which are... 2 The Indian artist sets out from the other end of the scale of values of experience which connect life and the spirit. The whole creative force comes here from a spiritual and psychic vision, the emphasis of the physical is secondary and always deliberately lightened so as to give an overwhelmingly spiritual and psychic impression and everything is suppressed which does not serve this purpose... singularly to misunderstand the spirit in which the Indian mind turns from the transient to the eternal, to mistake the Indian art motive and to put a vital into the place of a spiritual emotion. It is not at all his own personal sorrow but the sorrow of all others, not an emotional self-pity but a poignant pity for the world, not the regret for a life of domestic bliss but the afflicting sense of the ...
... peaceful. I hope others felt the Force, the Descent. Some say there was a great descent; others say that nothing came down. How do they know, either of them? Personal experience? Then it was a personal descent or a personal non-descent. No General de Bruno yet. Some say there was so much resistance that Sri Aurobindo could not do much in spite of himself. Didn't try, sir, so that's... The Bande Mataram (in English) from 1906-1909 in Calcutta. × (N.B. When the spiritual experiences did come, they were as unaccountable and automatic as—as blazes) × I never did him a good... challenge your assertion that the Force is more easily potent to produce spiritual results than mental (literary) results. It seems to me the other way round. In my own case the first time I started Yoga, Pranayama etc., I laboured 5 hours a day for g long time and concentrated and struggled for five years without any least spiritual result 131 , but poetry came like a river and prose like a flood and ...
... but they agreed to differ! He quoted his own hospital experiences in his favour. Though ten weeks was too long a period, none of us were willing to take the risk. "What risk is there?" he argued. "Besides, Sri Aurobindo is an extraordinary patient; we can expect him to take good care of himself." As a result of his repeated insistence, the Mother at last asked Sri Aurobindo to adjudicate. He replied... prompted the Mother to ask, "Is it hurting you?" Throughout the investigation he uttered very few words, only to answer the doctor's questions. Finally the doctor pronounced that there was a fracture of the thigh bone. Sri Aurobindo simply heard the verdict and made no comment. A team of attendants was formed consisting of Dr. Manilal, three other medical men, Champaklal (Sri Aurobindo's personal attendant)... doctors now took their leave and Dr. Manilal resumed the charge of the patient. The X-ray plates were kept in Sri Aurobindo's room for a number of years. One day the Mother said, "Remove them from here." I kept them in my personal custody, but could not trace them afterwards. One thing I could not fail to notice was that from the moment of the fall to the doctor's departure, Sri Aurobindo remained ...
... his mighty spiritual force to the task of 'politicising' the Editor's grey cells. He also got every editorial, however lengthy, read out to him before publication and sent a telegram of approval or modification. Matter for Mother India received preferential treatment among the sundry call s on the precious time of the Avatar of Supermind. And his interest in it had a directly personal touch . On... questioned, both she and Sri Aurobindo , on being informed, assured him of their spiritual support. The confrontation with the authorities got happily resolved. Two days before Sri Aurobindo passed away, the disciple had an interview with the Mother late in the evening. As the Master could not do his usual job, the Mother listened to the new editorial. She let it stand, but asked the writer to be... he was devoted to the cause of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Feeling the need to bring into the dust and heat of the common world's arena the breath of the New Life they embodied, he conceived a paper which would busy itself with that world's problems without any narrow business-concern. It was meant to make current the gold of a spiritual light at any material expense, and no calculation was ...
... Page 231 Sri Aurobindo also, by telegram and by personal envoy¹ pressed the leaders of the Congress to accept Cripps'offer. His efforts, however, were in vain. The offer was rejected and Sri Aurobindo having done his "bit of niskama karma" [desireles work] ² returned to his reliance on the use of spiritual force alone against the aggressor and had the satisfaction of seeing... for the sadhaks to approach the Mother. Even the most everyday activities – receiving the necessities of the month from "Prosperity", the Ashram's stores, for instance, or the daily taking of food – were made means of spiritual communion. The life of the Ashram – the sadhana and the work of the sadhaks, and the greater, unseen sadhana of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother – went on rhythmically until the... especially to the spiritual evolution of mankind: it would lead also to the enslavement not only of Europe but of Asia, and in it of India, an enslavement far more terrible than any this country had ever endured, and the undoing of all the work that had been done for her liberation."³ A. B. Purani, who was one of Sri Aurobindo's attendants, writes: "It was a priceless experience to see how he ...
... souls prepared by past lives or otherwise lifted beyond the ordinary spiritual capacity may attain realisation more swiftly; some may have uplifting experiences at an early stage, but for most the siddhi of the path, whatever it is, must be the end of a long, difficult and persevering endeavour. One cannot have the crown of spiritual victory without the struggle or reach the heights without the ascent... claim to be the decisive authority in matters of Yoga or in spiritual things is untenable. The activities of the outward intellect there lead only to the formation of personal opinions, not to the discovery of Truth. It has always been understood in India that the reason and its logic or its judgment cannot give you the realisation of spiritual truths but can only assist in an intellectual presentation... does not imply an unfitness for the sadhana or justify hopelessness. But you must train yourself to overcome this reaction of depression, calling in the Mother's force to aid you. All who cleave to the path steadfastly can be sure of their spiritual destiny. If anyone fails to reach it, it can only be for one of two reasons, either because they leave the path or because for some lure of ambition, vanity ...
... without losing its essential identity. This origin is what she has called, by inner observation and experience, the Supreme Self or Spirit, a deepmost Reality directly known as an Infinite that is One-in-Many and Many-in-One. No doubt, India has not always or, rather, invariably been "spiritual" in the obvious connotation of the word. She has also thought and lived along lines which may be considered... . The supermind of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has a greater potency for earth's fulfilment in the this-worldy manner which the scientific temper calls for. The Integral Yoga, demanded by the supermind, has not only a super-science orientation: it has, too, a super-Yoga direction. No doubt, by its very integrality, it would make use of past spiritual techniques wherever necessary. But it cannot... Page 34 are eager to help it achieve full greatness. The intensity and continuity of the inspired and intuitive super-life which the Ashram aims at will make India, as the Mother has hoped, "the spiritual leader of the world". Then, by her sovereign answer to an inner need which the whole world, bewildered by its own uncontrollable complexity, is coming to feel more and more, India will ...
... upon as the supreme work of the Indian mind. They are a record of the deepest spiritual experiences, written in a language which is profoundly poetic, manifesting an unfailing inspiration inevitable in phrase, wonderful in rhythm and expression. Like the Veda, they express the intuitive mind and intimate psychological experience, but although they start from concrete images and symbols of the Vedic seers... We notice here allusions to the experiences of Agni described in the Rig Veda, particularly those by Vishwamitra (RV., 3.1) and Vrisha Jana (RV., 5.2), the experiences of the "boy suppressed in the secret cavern", of Kumara, of the immortal in the mortals, amartyeshu amritah. Immortality of the inmost soul derived from the immortality of Aditi, the Supreme Mother, who is one with the eternal and... one has to awaken to the perception of something exceeding itself, exceeding the personal manifestation. Man has to enlarge his conception of self as to see all in himself and himself in all. 42 He has to see that the real "I" which contains all and is contained in all, is the One, is universal and not his personal ego. To That he has to subject his ego, that he has to reproduce in his nature and ...
... leave aside reason in their dealing with the material sciences, but when they come to Yoga or Spiritual experiences they Page 68 do not seem to keep their heads ; they are like children in these things. For instance, take Dr. Bucke's case. It is evident there has been some experience. It must be the case with many other people in Europe. Immediately they break a little out of... he told me that Madame Y who is a Theosophist and has some experiences in yoga on the mental level is coming to India from France. She has an idea of regenerating India by settling some spiritually-minded Europeans in India. She has got an illusion of work and many Europeans have got the same. They think that they can do spiritual work, with their ideas they come to India and get lost in the... then it merely comes to the old Adwaitavada of Shankaracharya. Really speaking, it is not a matter for the mind to decide. It is a matter of experience. In a certain experience you find that "All is One" and Shankara is true. But there are other experiences in which the Vishishtadwaita and even the Dwaita – the dualistic idea – finds justification. Mind only cuts, differentiates, analyses, represents ...
... also hinted at. We are given simultaneously a satisfying sight and a felicitous insight. This is the function of all inspired poetry. We get an inner experience through an outer stimulus: our perceptions get subtilised. Without even a directly spiritual communication attempted we undergo an exquisite refinement which can prepare us for it. As a critic has intuitively said, "Poetry may not save souls... large, this sort of spiritual composition, the reading of it is bound to induce movements of yoga. But the reader must approach it rightly. He should imagine the twofold birth of the Mantra: high above in an ether of Superconsciousness and deep within where the Rigvedic hrdaya samudra, the heart-ocean, the wondrous in-world into which opens the individual emotional-psychic experience, echoes and images... "bright" through the hushing experience. Besides, "bright" is at the tail-end of a series of five monosyllables, a sort of climaxing of the process they represent. And this fivefold process thus climaxed terminates and culminates in a massive reality of transcendent transformation indicated by the single four-syllabled word "Omniscient". To feel and recognise the spiritual afflatus of so superb a ...
... participants by virtue of experiences of different levels of consciousness and realization. The highest experience that we find described in the Vedas and the Upanishads culminates in the Upanishadic or Vedantic terms as the experience of 'Sadbrahman’, Existence pure, indefinable, infinite, absolute. It is the experience of the fundamental Reality discovered by experience that transcends the senses... transcends the plane of the mental thought; it is the experience that transcends the forms that are seen and caught by our sense-experience; it transcends even the Ideas or universal Forms which are caught by the Pure Reason; it transcends even our intuitions of Space and Time which our Pure Reason inevitably conceives as the conditions in which our experiences of the phenomenal world are arranged and organized... mind Page 4 and intimate psychological experiences of Vedic seers pass into a supreme culmination in which the Spirit, as is said in a phrase in Kathopanishad, discloses its very own body, reveals the very word of its self-expression. The Upanishads are estimated to be the supreme work of the Indian mind, a large flood of spiritual revelation, inspiration and intuition of a direct and ...
... as it appears at first sight. For if I have to express my spiritual experiences I must do that with truth — I must record them with their bhava, their thoughts, feelings, extensions of consciousness which accompany them. What am I to do with the experience in which one feels the whole world in oneself or the force of the Divine flowing in one's being and nature or the certitude of one's faith against... dancing Page 165 well or dressing nicely. Just as there are very good and kind men who are boorish and rude in their manners, so there may be very spiritual men (I mean here by spiritual men those who have had deep spiritual experiences) who have no grasp over physical life or action (many intellectuals too, by the way are like that) and are not at all careful about their manners. I suppose... reached perfection or is anywhere near it, be a proof that spiritual experience is null? You write as if the moment one had any kind of spiritual experience or realisation, one must at once become a perfect person without defects or weaknesses. That is to make a demand which it is impossible to satisfy and it is to ignore the fact that spiritual life is a growth and not a sudden and inexplicable miracle ...
... pp. 67-68. Page 114 Mahratta Yogi and discovered the foundations of my Sadhana; but from that time till the Mother came to India I received no spiritual help from any one else. My Sadhana before and afterwards was not founded upon books but upon personal experiences that crowded on me from within. But in the jail I had the Gita and the Upanishads with me, practised the Yoga of the Gita... important field of spiritual experience and it ceased as soon as it had finished saying all that it had to say on that subject."² Regarding this Alipore period he wrote: "I was carrying on my Yoga during these days, learning to do so in the midst of much noise and clamour but apart and in silence and without any participation of the others in it. My Yoga begun in 1904 had always been personal and apart;... jail there were many such extraordinary and, one may say, abnormal experiences. As I was doing Sadhana intensely on the vital plane I think these might have come from there. All these experiences passed away and did not repeat themselves."¹ It was during his jail life that Sri Aurobindo resorted to fasting to see how far spiritual results could be attained by it. In Alipore jail he fasted for eleven ...
... the Mother asks of you, persisting however difficult it may be or seem to be. It is so that the psychic can fully awaken and establish its influence—not on your higher vital where it is already awake and growing through your poetry and music and certain experiences so that whenever your higher vital is active you are in good condition, full of delight and creativeness and open to experience; but... its own. If it were not for this, there would be little or no difficulty in throwing off the depression when it tries to come. You seem to rely very much on X and his experiences and ideas about them. X 's experience proves nothing because he is quite ignorant. His depression comes from outside and has its causes, only his vital mind does not record or understand the causes, but there is a... special objects of such persistent assaults, as I have indeed indicated in Savitri in more places than one—and that was indeed founded on my own experience. In the nature of these recurrences there is usually a constant return of the same adverse experiences, the same adverse resistance, thoughts destructive of all belief and faith and confidence in the future of the sadhana, frustrating doubts of what ...
... of which may be seen from the following statement: "Transpersonal content includes any experiences in which an individual transcends the limitations of identifying exclusively with the ego or personality. Transpersonal content also includes the mythical, archetypal, and symbolic realms of inner experience that can come into awareness through imagery and dreams." 40 According to Sri Aurobindo... touch, hearing, etc; the subliminal is therefore "the seer Page 41 of inner things and supraphysical experiences." 32 Jung, who reports having had frequent supraphysical experiences such as visions or what he called "extremely vivid hypnagogic images", 33 ascribed such experiences to the collective unconscious. Another striking resemblance between Sri Aurobindo's description of the subliminal... Transpersonal Psychology - has come to recognise a wider range of phenomena, experiences and states of consciousness which have hitherto been regarded by most psychologists as belonging to a "fringe" area, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, clairvoyance and clairaudience, "peak" experiences, altered states of consciousness, etc. which are now classed under the ill-defined ...
... realise the Divine”. “To follow the path of spiritual experience”, she said, “one must have within oneself a ‘spiritual being,’ 32 one must be ‘twice born’, as it is said. For if one does not have a spiritual being within which is at least at the point of becoming self-aware, one may try to imitate these [spiritual] experiences, but it will only be a crude imitation or hypocrisy, it will not be... permanent in the Hindu religion, must form the basis on which the world will increasingly take its stand in dealing with spiritual experience and religious truth,” 79 wrote Sri Aurobindo. And “that which is permanent in the Hindu religion” may well prove to be the synthesis he and the Mother first realised and then formulated. It has already been stated in one of the previous chapters that there is a... The Mother: Questions and Answers 1950-51, p. 259. × Words of the Mother , CWM 13, p. 112. × By “spiritual being” the Mother here means a soul, or divine spark, that ...
... of the divine nature, sādharmya , it declares to be the very essence of spiritual freedom and the whole significance of immortality. This supreme importance assigned to sādharmya is a capital point in the teaching of the Gita. To be immortal was never held in the ancient spiritual teaching to consist merely in a personal survival of the death of the body: all beings are immortal in that sense... with a life, mind and body that are oblivious of their inner spiritual reality and of the innate Godhead. To get back to self-knowledge and to the knowledge of the real as distinct from the apparent relations of the soul with Nature, to know God and ourselves and the world with a spiritual and no longer with a physical or externalised experience, through the deepest truth of the inner soul-consciousness... is the supreme knowledge and the highest of all knowings because it leads to Page 423 the highest perfection and spiritual status, parāṁ siddhim , and brings the soul to likeness with the Divine, sādharmya . It is the eternal wisdom, the great spiritual experience by which all the sages attained to that highest perfection, grew into one law of being with the Supreme and live for ever in ...
... suffering. Ever since division began and creation lost its direct contact with the Creator, ignorance has reigned, and all suffering is its result. All those who have had the inner experience have had this experience, that the moment one re-establishes the union with the divine source, all suffering disappears. But there has been a very persistent movement, about which I spoke to you last week, which... beyond this state, entered into Union and Delight, when division and inconscience and suffering have disappeared, then one may very wisely say, "Ah, yes, we have gained an experience we would never have had otherwise." But the experience must be behind, we must not be right in the midst Page 11 of it. For, even for someone who—this is something I know—even for someone who has come out of this... conscious of all those who, far from knowing that they are playing, take the game very seriously and find it rather unpleasant, well... I don't know, one would prefer it to change. That is a purely personal opinion. I know very well: the moment one crosses over to the other side... instead of being underneath and enduring, when one is above and not only observes but acts oneself, it is so total a ...
... everything. It was in 1964 that Mother touched that cellular foundation for the first time, and what is extremely interesting is that there is no more “personal” experience at that level⎯of course, as there is no more person there, it is the whole world⎯and when you have an experience there, it is as if, it is (not “as if”) the whole terrestrial field that has the experience, is put into contact with... the least if people aren't aware of it. 2 As Sri Aurobindo observed: it explains itself. And Mother added: At any rate, the experience was decisive in the sense that it coordinated all those scattered little promises, all those scattered little advances [the hundreds of little experiences that sprouted up on every side, while She advanced blindly through the Forest]. But there was a fairly... this mind saying a prayer. A prayer ... you know how I used to make prayers before, in “Prayers and Meditations” [Mother’s former diary at the beginning of the century]. It was the Mind saying prayers; it would have experiences and say prayers; well, here we are, now it's the experience of all the cells: an intense aspiration, and suddenly all that starts expressing it in words. It is as if this body-mind ...
... keep steady — it will go. My love and blessings are with you. 7.12.37 Sahana, I am very glad to hear of this new opening and fine experiences. Always when one faces difficulties and over-comes them it brings a new spiritual opening and victory. Our love and blessings are with you. 19.4.39 Sahana, I fully approve of your singing in your room and see no... not wrong either in refusing it as he was simply obeying a general rule and there was in this nothing personal against you. If you had not been upset you would certainly have thought of a very simple thing — coming up the steps of the Meditation House and passing a note in these terms: "Mother, I am very hungry, I have asked a plantain from Dyuman who did not give it; what am I to do?" I would... Divine Rapture!' No date It is always better to control an experience of this kind rather than to be controlled by it. I mean that the experience in itself is good and useful but it must come when we want it and not at any time whenever it chooses to come— it seems to me that it is better to allow this experience to come only when you are quietly at home or during the time of meditation ...
... refinement in spiritual development? Sri Aurobindo : The aesthetic sense is easily purified and can then open the path of approach to the Supreme through beauty. It is very difficult to purify a rough and gross being. 12-10-1942 Disciple : We have heard, and partly known, that the experience of delight is possible on the higher planes. Is it possible to experience "beauty"... the essential beauty is there without which the thing would not be beautiful. In the experience of beauty you can perceive two distinct elements : the form and the spiritual element of beauty. But the formal beauty is only an expression of the spiritual beauty, it is not something quite separate. Of course, the mind can make a distinction and speak of them as two distinct things. Disciple... friend of mine visited Italy, and found that the Italians still have a sense of beauty and art. Sri Aurobindo : Of music also; Art and music are their passion. The mother had a remarkable experience. She was staying in North Italy for some time and was once playing on the organ all alone in a church. After she had finished, there was a big applause. She found that a crowd had gathered ...
... The truth is that the Omnipresent Reality is the centre and mind and all its experiences have to find their true significance in the Universal and in the Transcendent Divine. Therefore, to transcend the ego, to transmute all experience into radically different values, a complete trans-valuation of experience is a spiritual necessity. The question is : is such perfection possible here on earth... height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his yoga is not only to realize the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning... with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action. For it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of mind and life and body in matter there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above. There is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness ...
... original creative impulse, of the creative Truth. There are many sayings in the Bible that express profound spiritual experience. But it does not seem to have been understood in the right sense by the followers. First of all, the Bible is not the expression of Christ's personal experience. This is one difficulty. We know it should be 90 % authentic because there is no reason why the disciples... Divine. Page 125 Q : But the intellect, or the intellectual, is not necessary for spiritual experience, is it ? A : Not necessarily. But one who hasn't developed the intellect and is seeking, for him there is an answer. And there is a place for the intellect in the spiritual life. But intellect is not indispensable. There are plenty of people who do not have any intellectual... knowledge of modern Page 124 problems, knowledge of modern attitude of man toward problems, and also the difficulties of man today—all are known to him. He has in addition, the experience of spiritual life. Q : Some people understand this when put in terms so that the mind can understand and accept and it can be consistent with the mental approach. Do some people find it too intellectual ...
... background and worked from there, while the Mother as the ‘feminine’ Prakriti , Shakti or Creatrix converted his spiritual acquisitions into practical facts of change and growth. But they always were one divine Consciousness and therefore acted on a plane far above, behind and within the physically perceptible. ‘I already had all my experiences,’ said the Mother in 1962, ‘but in the thirty years I... dualities, weaknesses, ignorance of human nature as you do and a great deal more,’ he wrote to a disciple. ‘The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Ashram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider... reason of hell. 8 Expressed in an almost freely floating, singing rhythm, the words ring through with the ominous, conjuring force of the experiences undergone by Sri Aurobindo. To those who are not familiar with the work Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have performed for the Earth, these lines will probably be not much more than bizarre fiction, but when one has got some insight in their pioneering ...
... that Other as our own essential being. It is as though Brahman were invoked to let us experience Him as Atman. An aspiration finds voice in the accents of a prayer. A question which must be fairly common is: "Isn't never having seen the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and not living in the Ashram a bit of a spiritual handicap? Or can the Integral Yoga be done with the same intensity without the above-named... there were special possibilities of spiritual experience for those whom the Divine had willed to be bodily with them, but no essential realisation is debarred to those whom the Divine has willed to be not so. The central point is the inward touch the Divine has given to a seeking soul. All who have become disciples and children of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother under any circumstances have had their... concerned with getting his deplorable plight changed. I may add that his appeal is, more specifically than the aspirant's, to a personal Divinity and is more than the aspirant's in tune with the Grace in its particular aspect. Aspiration and prayer are both of value in the spiritual life and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them. How would Page 101 one characterise the famous cry ...
... too personal—I said no. I am just showing it to you, but I told him, "No, I don't want." Q. "I have been wondering whether the Mother has been able to establish a direct connection with Mars or any other far off planet which is probably habitable and inhabited." Someone put this question to Sri Aurobindo. So now that people have landed on the moon... A. "A long time ago Mother was... life, only varied by inner experiences and transferred to the framework of the Asram instead of that of the world outside. It is not enough and there is great need that this should change." 9 Sri Aurobindo 9 September 1936 Page 258 × When she read Sri Aurobindo's answer, Mother remarked, "This answer is... every side: all of India's spiritual sects were represented, and everyone came, sat down, and told me... ( laughing ) the "virtues" of his creed. It was pricelessly funny! It was... I spent a good while, but I really had great fun! Some wore big turbans and were dressed in white, "very important" people who had had special seats brought for them, and they were quite... ( Mother puffs herself up ) they ...
... won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe.’ 26 The Mother, now alone, was of course... which might be comprehensible to others. True, all spiritual experience is incomprehensible as such because it belongs outside the domain of the mind. ‘I am using words for what is not expressible in words,’ 9 she said, and: ‘It [i.e. her experience] is difficult to put into words, it is still too much only an action.’ 10 Moreover, what the Mother has told is but a minute part of what she actually... stand up. It was not her personal Subconscient, but the Subconscient of humanity. She understood now why nobody had tried this before and why all the spiritually great had chosen to get out of such a mess by the quickest possible way. Sometimes she asked herself if it was not folly to try and fight ‘against habits millennia old.’ Then came the upward movement, and the Mother emerged from her battles ...
... flattening our egos. For personal pleasure and satisfaction we never mind if others are hurt. We never lend a moment's thought to it! Incessant and global wars are waged ostensibly for the establishment of peace. But we have fallen into the wont of cultivating unhappiness and unrest, instead of happiness and peace. Physical Science is the glory of life in the West, while Spiritual Science is the soul... centuries ago. Yet the most of men remained unaware of this. And so after all these ages, this stubborn question is still astride awaiting spiritual awakening and its active application in life. It is seldom realized that life means active application of spiritual findings. How can we find solution to this riddle without actually moulding life by that practical application of sadhana in one's daily... gradually finds answers to these questions. When we penetrate into the spiritual depth of life, when we make every effort to live on all the three levels—mental, vital, and physical—with the inner light, when we harmonize the entire life with the inner notes or when we reconstitute the outer life at the behest of the inner voice, then spiritual living becomes the normal and natural process of living. Life without ...
... Page 301 one's desires; not to want to take, to receive, but to give; not to insist on the other's response, but be content with one's own love; not to seek one's personal interest and joy and the fulfilment of one's personal desire, but to be satisfied with the giving of one's love and affection; and not to ask for any response. Simply to be happy to love, nothing more. If you do that, you... you have taken a great stride forward and can, through this attitude, gradually advance farther in the feeling itself, and realise one day that love is not something personal, that love is a universal divine feeling which manifests through you more or less finely, but which in its essence is something divine. The first step is to stop being selfish. For everyone it is the same thing, not only for... preoccupied all the time and exclusively with physical circumstances? There is a considerable number of ways. There are intellectual ways, ways which may be called sentimental, artistic ways and spiritual ways. And generally, it is preferable for each one to take the way that is easiest for him, for if one wants to begin straight away with the most difficult, one comes to nothing at all. And here we ...
... and interviews in the morning and the games, talks and the soup ceremony in the evenings of the early years, a new experience was opened to the sadhaks in the form of a daily balcony darshan. Page 361 This unique form of spiritual concordat between the Mother and her children began as an individual grace that very soon grew into a universalist charter.Mridu was a devoted Bengali... the higher psychic sensitivity - were able to see the aura, and even after the Mother's withdrawal from the balcony, some of the devotees are known to have stayed on for a while longer with an abstracted and selfabsorbed air, perhaps seeing the Mother still, and the aura around her. While these were special experiences of a few, it may be said of the others that even their most prosaic reactions... would not have her breakfast until she had a darshan of the Mother. The Mother agreed to come to that balcony, so as to be seen by Mridu from her window across the street. * The usual time of the Mother's coming was 6 to 6.15 a.m. and soon some sadhaks and visitors too began to gather for this early morning grace. It became an experience of immeasurable importance equivalent to a sacramental beginning ...
... exactly meant by "genuine experiences received directly from the Mother?" Could a sadhak here receive Page 134 experiences indirectly or independently of the Mother? Directly means in meditation with her, not only in his separate meditation. About the genuineness of these directly received experiences there can be no doubt, for what the Mother gave was genuine and... Under these conditions the oscillation of the consciousness between experience and a depressed state is inevitable. Even when the condition is good, it is not possible to keep the consciousness always at the same height, but then the depression does not come. How to explain the simultaneous occurrence of the experiences and depression? They take place in part of the being... as things passing through or rising and falling away. There must certainly be something in the physical mind that accepts and probably affects the vital mind also. From my personal experience I make a general statement on how to face a period of adverse suggestions and attacks. (1) Carry on with faith and surrender. This guards us from any danger or serious fall. (2) Whatever the ...
... Supreme, the offering of all these things with such extraordinary intensity, was a kind of reparation so that those adverse forces might disappear. The experience was very intense. It crystallized around a small nucleus of experiences too personal to mention (because I wasn't the only one involved), which translated into this: "Take all my wrongdoings, take them all, accept them, obliterate them, and... door just a crack and catching a glimpse of what's beyond.... It was the same experience when I told Sri Aurobindo that India was free; it was the Universal Mother speaking from what could be called Her origin—it was from that level—and the thing took thirty-five years to come down on Earth. When I had the experience that the time had come for the supramental Force to descend on Earth, I followed... the true movement in its place; when that happens in excess, the sadhak has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable. It succeeds ...
... Silence ) This is an experience I am having more and more: for the contact with this true divine Love to be able to manifest, that is, to express itself freely, it demands an extraordinary strength in beings and things, which does not yet exist. Otherwise everything falls apart. There are lots of very convincing details, but of course, because they are "details" or very personal things, one cannot... cannot Page 199 speak of them; but on the evidence of repeated experiences, I have to say this: when this Power of pure Love—which is so wonderful, which is beyond all expression—as soon as it begins to manifest abundantly, freely, it is as if quantities of things crumbled down immediately—they cannot stand. They cannot stand, they are dissolved. Then... then everything stops. And this stopping... impulsion, to speak only under the divine impulsion, to eat only under the divine impulsion. That is the difficult thing, because naturally, you immediately confuse the divine impulsion with your personal impulses. I suppose this was the idea of all the apostles of renunciation: Page 195 to eliminate everything coming from outside or from below so that if something from above should ...
... 333 longer belong to the limited personal ego. The finite nature thus surrendered becomes a free channel of the Infinite; the soul in its spiritual being, uplifted out of the ignorance and the limitation, returns to its oneness with the Eternal. The Divine Eternal is the inhabitant in all existences; he is equal in all and the equal friend, father, mother, creator, lover, supporter of all creatures... worlds, a greater happiness than earth can give but still a personal and mundane enjoyment though in a larger world than the field of this limited and suffering terrestrial nature. And to that to which they aspire, they attain by faith and right endeavour; for material existence and earthly activities are not the whole scope of our personal becoming or the whole formula of the cosmos. Other worlds there... and phenomenon. He looks upward from this eternal unchanging spiritual hypostasis of the mutable universe to the greater Eternal, the supracosmic, the Real. He knows him as the divine Inhabitant in all things that are, the Lord in the heart of man, the secret Ishwara, and removes the veil between his natural being and this inner spiritual Master of his being. He makes his will, thought and works one ...
... and its rule. As Mother said in her simple language, "What's wrong is to remain stuck there." And Sri Aurobindo with his ever-present humor: "The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past...." We could expect the phenomenon to recur today. In India, Tantrism represents a powerful discipline from the Past and it was inevitable that Mother should experience the better and the... on in all other bodies is... I don't know if the distinction still exists, but it's imperceptible. And the consciousness is aware of all those movements as if they were personal to the physical person. But the physical person ( Mother touches her body ) isn't just this body—I Page 350 am not yet sure whether the physical person isn't the whole earth (for certain things, it is the whole earth)... truth has attempted to manifest upon earth, it has been immediately attacked, corrupted and diverted by pseudo-spiritual forces—which did represent a certain spirituality at a given time, but precisely the one that the new truth wants to go beyond. To give but one example of those sad "spiritual diversions" which clutter History, Buddhism was largely corrupted in a sizable part of Asia by a whole Tantric ...
... also hinted at. We are given simultaneously a satisfying sight and a felicitous insight. This is the function of all inspired poetry. We get an inner experience through an outer stimulus: our perceptions get subtilised. Without even a directly spiritual communication attempted we undergo an exquisite refinement which can prepare us for it. As a critic has intuitively said, "Poetry may not save souls... large, this sort of spiritual composition, the reading of it is bound to induce movements of yoga. But the reader must approach it rightly. He should imagine the twofold birth of the Mantra: high above in an ether of Superconsciousness and deep within where the Rigvedic hrdaya samudra, the heart-ocean, the wondrous in-world into which opens the individual emotional-psychic experience, echoes and images... "bright" through the hushing experience. Besides, "bright" is at the tail-end of a series of five monosyllables, a sort of climaxing of the process they represent. And this fivefold process thus climaxed terminates and culminates in a massive reality of transcendent transformation indicated by the single four-syllabled word "Omniscient". To feel and recognise the spiritual afflatus of so superb a kind ...
... life-situation instead of a state it took his fancy to conjure up, develop and express. The expression should not be regarded as "false". To avoid "falseness" in poetry, one requires not truth of personal experience but what may be termed "artistic sincerity". The imagination may be aroused by something happening yet not necessarily to the writer himself. "Artistic sincerity" consists in putting one's mind... what might take place in a certain context of world-conditions. I believe that this poem is an intense dramatic creation in three vivid stanzas. Balancing it but with a more real life-contact and personal immediacy is "A Strong Son of Lightning" (p. 595 of Collected Poems) with Page 42 again three stanzas. Here is an exultant and not a despondent picture. A play not exactly of d... a note of triumph and not with a cry of despair. So we have a paradox in me theme or. ending. However, a futher shade unflods in the concluding phrase. The very paradox is turned topsy turvy. The spiritual achievement spoken of as a consummating and not a frustrating end is now denied. Can we read sadness here as if a sense of still further labour were conveyed like a regret - like a lament that still ...
... If it had any, it would mean spiritual light with a circle of manifold powers around it apparently in the darkness of the ordinary consciousness. August 22, 1935 C has sent Rs. 2/- on the occasion of his birthday which is on the 27th. He wants me to do pranam to Mother for him also. You can do a second pranam (altruistic, for C) on the 27th and Mother will give you a flower for him... permission. I suppose they are afraid to venture—being a concern with pinhead profits and no capital to speak of. August 30, 1935 You say you have your personal opinions about G's case. Surely the person of this "personal" is not Nirod, Khirode or Binode—it is the Divine who is omniscient. Then I don't see why the Divine should seek for data from humans. Human opinion, G will at once question... Any chance of coming out of the mud or the same caravan speed? What? For whom? Which way? August 26, 1935 About yesterday's poem, Nishikanta says: "Couldn't your experience—if it is an experience—be expressed in a more subdued way? Have you really heard the "apsara sangeet", in the lyre of the wind?" It does not seem to me that so much matter of factness can be demanded in ...
... away; it seemed as if an emanation of X was at his side. How is it that after I had called you, Mother, I had this experience? This is the disadvantage of placing oneself under the influence of several occult forces. In the past, one was recommended, not without reason, to choose one spiritual master and to take great care not to see any others, to avoid a mixture of influences, which has serious... Short Written Statements Letters, Messages and Other Short Written Statements The Gods, Superior Beings and Adverse Forces Words of the Mother - III Adverse Forces Each time that we have made a decisive step in our spiritual progress, the invisible enemies of the Divine always try to take their revenge, and when they cannot injure the soul they strike the... meant when I spoke, but very few people understood what I meant by "Be careful." I meant: "Do always the best you can and make as far as possible no spiritual mistake." On the contrary, most of them started fearing and that in itself is already a big spiritual mistake. Instead of being more vigilant and more faithful, most of them at once opened the door to the hostile suggestions and aggravated the situation ...
... reality they figure cannot be seized by the intelligence, but needs direct intuition, a living contact, a close experience by identity in our self of knowledge. That is work not for a dialectical, but a bright revelatory thinking, a luminous body of intuitive thought and spiritual experience which carries us straight into sight, into vision of knowledge. The first effort of philosophy is to know for... life, yet there breathes behind it a greater thought which is not so far from the truth underlying religious teaching and spiritual experience. The poet, his eyes fixed on life, shows us as if by accident the seed in our normal nature which can grow into the prodigious spiritual truth of universal love. He has to do it in his own way in the mould of poetic Page 235 beauty and delight, and... poetical, because it adds to the fundamental idea the visualising and bringing home of the spiritual experience, the sustaining emotion of the thing felt and a touch of its life. And in the much older Yajur Veda we find breaking out with a different, a more moved and less reflective voice the same truth of experience, the same touch on the soul, "Where I am wounded, make me firm and whole. May all creatures ...
... would be fatal to the adventure. Hence the Mother's pressing call: Remain young, never stop striving towards perfection. II On 21 February, the Mother's ninetieth birthday, there was a phenomenal rush of visitors to the Ashram, and the meditation around Sri Aurobindo's Samadhi in the morning and the Darshan in the evening were memorable experiences for the sadhaks and disciples. There was... subject given by the Mother: "What we expect from the Mother." For a start the Mother herself was asked a series of questions, and pat came the answers: What is the right thing that we should expect from You? Everything. What have You been expecting from us and from humanity in general for the accomplishment of Your Work upon earth? Nothing. From Your long experience of over sixty... months later, the Mother referred to an experience of the night of 21 November when the whole room was filled with the Divine Presence - a dazzling Light, a Peace, a Power, a Sweetness - that stayed the whole night, and some of which overflowed on the succeeding days. How was it that other people didn't experience the Presence? For herself, there was no ambiguity, and the Mother grew ecstatic almost: ...
... believed to be Sri Aurobindo’s mind. Looking at that figure I said, ’It is a negation of all spiritual experience.’ Till then you were not taking any part in all this; you were sitting somewhere inside. But as soon as I uttered that sentence, you came forward like this (stretching out her arms) and exclaimed, ’Mother, you have helped me a lot; you have given Light, Force...’ And immediately everything vanished... can give." "Mother, my material needs are very few. I don’t need to ask for them," I replied. In the afternoon, I went to her with the prayers written on a piece of paper. She read them and said, "They are all granted. I will speak about them tomorrow; they will be pan of our talk." Page 105 The following day when I met her, after a talk on personal matters, the Mother said in a very... and be converted. That was what the Mother meant by "the work is going on". In fact two of them realised their grave error. One came back and settled in Pondicherry. The other also visited the Ashram, his eye-sight practically lost, and had to go away. A truth of deep spiritual significance carrying a great solace to the disciple was revealed here in the Mother’s remark that even if a disciple leaves ...
... though sense-experience may for some sciences (and perhaps eventually for all) be ultimately reducible to scale-readings." 30 Now, spiritual and supraphysical experiences cannot of course be demonstrated in this way, for, by their very definition, they transcend the order of physical facts and are not thus physically tangible. But that does not mean in any way that spiritual experiences lack in... are and must be many ways of approach; but yet the broad lines are the same everywhere and the intuitions, experiences, phenomena are the same in all ages and countries far apart from each other and in systems practised quite independently from each other." 25 The substance of spiritual experience, which takes place always in the inner consciousness, is identical everywhere; only when it gets translated... greatest inner discoveries, the experience of self-being, the cosmic consciousness, 25. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 190. Page 71 the inner calm of the liberated spirit, the direct effect of mind upon mind, the knowledge of things by consciousness in direct contact with other consciousness or with its objects, most spiritual experiences of any value, cannot be brought ...
... a peculiarly intimate light of knowledge by a spiritual identity the inmost thought, sight, image, sense, life, feeling of that which it is missioned to utter. The voice of poetry comes from a region above us, a plane of our being above and beyond our personal intelligence, a supermind which sees things in their inmost and largest truth by a spiritual identity and a lustrous effulgency and rapture... sky above purple-blue sky in its flight towards truth and beauty and delight. Once the Mother mentioned that Amal's personal number is 15. It reduces to 1+5=6, the number corresponding to "The New Creation". This is symbolised by the commonly known flower tuberose or Nishigandha. But the Mother considered his flower to be the one she named "Krishna's Light in the Mind". A certain cosmicity... of poetry itself thus turns into a field of work for making progress of every kind, literary, aesthetic, occult, spiritual. Artistic perfection carrying with it authentic emotional felicity at that time starts acquiring the qualities of the expressive soul it-self. Mystical experience then just becomes one aspect of its rich and many-dimensional possibilities. We have a good glimpse of it ...
... his foot on the soil of India, he experienced a tremendous peace. This is one of the experiences that came to him unasked. Here is what he wrote to a disciple incidentally about this experience : " . . . Since I set foot on the Indian soil on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, I began to have spiritual experiences, but these were not divorced from this world but had an inner and infinite bearing on... be mentioned that Sri Aurobindo only once acted as personal ¹ Chandemagore: Prabartak Publishing House, Magb 1330, pp. 16, 23, 9. ² See Appendix VII, Houses in Baroda, p. 350. Page 38 secretary to the Maharaja. This happened in 1903, when the Maharaja took him as secretary on the Kashmir tour; but as the experience was not pleasant, it was not repeated. The following... momentous. It is the making or unmaking of a nation. We have therefore secured a gentleman of great literary talents, of liberal culture and of considerable English experience, well-versed in the art of writing and willing, at great personal inconvenience and probable misrepresentation, to give out his views in no uncertain voice, and, we may be allowed to add, in a style and diction peculiarly his own ...
... about yourself and your spiritual future, and ideas—or, if you will allow me to call them so, notions—which come to the support of these feelings and sustain them. The result of this is to shut you up against the contact and spiritual influence and help you were once feeling or beginning to feel from us. It also shuts you up against your own deeper self and sterilises your personal effort. An accident... phrase about your having gone so far. I meant that you had had openings in your thinking mind and heart and higher vital and experiences also and had seen very lucidly the condition of your own being and nature and had by that got so far that these parts were ready for the spiritual change—what remains is the physical and outer consciousness which has to be compelled to accept the necessity of change.... such upsettings—it is an obscurity and weakness in the physical mind accompanied by movements of an exaggerated vital nature (e.g. exaggerated spiritual ambition) which are too strong for the mind to bear. That is not your case. You have had long experience of inner peace, wideness, Ananda, an inner life turned towards the Divine and one who has had that ought not to speak of general incapacity, whatever ...
... treasure of vast psychological knowledge; but" they too, like the Veda,. are not intellectual in their method and approach. They contain many spiritual experiences couched in intuitive, inspired and revelatory language. There is a ring of concrete experience in many of the utterances. For example, " I have known this great Purusha of the colour of the Sun, whose light shines from beyond the Darkness"... human activity. Indian psychology bases its acceptances of the " super- conscient "on concrete experiences and modem psychology would remain poorer for the rejection of a field of experience which is open to man. To limit the field of conscious. ness, that is, the field of psychological experience which has been an ever enlarging field from the inconscient to the conscient throughout the course... explain this persistence of past experiences. He was soon led to think that the subconscious is relatively the larger part of man's personality, in fact, as he later chose to put it, the nine-tenths of human personality. But in the employment of the talking-out method he discovered that the past experiences did not always easily come up; more often parts of the experience were held back. This observation ...
... force of rhythmic word, expressing high substance of thought and experience in inevitable style. It is, in other words, a mantric poetry. Secondly, Veda is an exploration of the human life at all the three levels of experience, at the most material level, at the intermediate vital and mental level, and at the highest. level of Spiritual and supramental domains. And, thirdly, the Veda provides well-defined... and spirituality. Page 150 But precisely here the Veda can come to our aid. For Veda is a systematic body of physical, psycho-physical, Spiritual and supramental knowledge. It is a body of knowledge built up by accumulation of experiences and realisations derived from application of appropriate methods which were themselves determined by repeated and assured results. The Veda is an open... of four basic powers of the soul, — knowledge, strength, harmony and skill, — and, the integral System of education developed by the Mother has provided framework that would enable every individual to develop full potentialities of personality as also their Spiritual transformation. These experiments need to be understood properly and we need to draw lessons from there to design a comprehensive process ...
... want to escape from life and go into inexpressible heights, but it is indispensable if you want to express your experience in outer life. Mother, you said that if one develops these faculties of analysis, deduction and all that too much, they become obstacles to spiritual experiences, no? If they are not controlled, mastered, yes. But not necessarily. Not necessarily. It might make the control... the first seekings. Usually, even if one has had experiences one needs a contact of thought or idea with the thing so that the effort may be crystallized more consciously. But the more one knows, the more one must be absolutely sincere in his experience, that is, he must not use the formative power of his mind to imagine and so create the experience in himself. From the point of view of orientation... n it can be useful; but from the point of view of the experience, it takes away from it its dynamic value, it has not the intensity of an experience which comes because the moral and spiritual conditions necessary for it to occur have been fulfilled. There is the whole mental conditioning which is added and which takes away something of the spontaneity. All this is a matter of proportion. Each one ...
... centre of thought. The sustained experience of dedicated love for the Mother emanates an aura of tranquillity to smooth out the repetitive ruffles of the brain. That has been my observation. And such smoothing out prepares for the silence you desire. So let there be, as a result of your bhakti , a deep happy Page 228 stir of serene longing for the Mother or Sri Aurobindo and gradually... a general awakening to the spiritual responsibility of being a Superman may be tried. Your account of your pregnancy and delivery is fascinating. You were certainly in the right frame of mind all through. 1 don't believe you were indulging in mere imagination. There was an unborn soul inspiring you. You were feeling Sri Aurobindo's presence more than the Mother's because a male child was on... as to be born 2 hours after that date -that is, at 2 a.m, on the 25th. In either case the child would be within the glow of the 64th anniversay of the Mother's final settlement by the side of Sri Aurobindo to bring into birth a New Age of spiritual evolution. It is also significant that, on the glimmering edge of an anniversary of a day with such a sign of the fabulous future, exquisite aspiring Yasmin ...
... his mighty spiritual force to the task of "politicising" the Editor's grey cells. He also got every editorial, however lengthy, read out to him before publication and sent a telegram of approval or modification. Matter for Mother India received preferential treatment among the sundry calls on the precious time of the Avatar of Supermind. And his interest in it had a directly personal touch. On one... questioned, both she and Sri Aurobindo, on being informed, assured him of their spiritual support. The confrontation with the authorities got happily resolved. Two days before Sri Aurobindo passed away, the disciple had an interview with the Mother late in the evening. As the Master could not do his usual job, the Mother listened to the new editorial. She let it stand, but asked the writer to be cautious... Ashram, he was devoted to the cause of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Feeling the need to bring into the dust and heat of the common world's arena the breath of the New Life they embodied, he conceived a paper which would busy itself with that world's problems without any narrow business-concern. It was meant to make current the gold of a spiritual light at any material expense, and no calculation was made ...
... accompany the movement of love for our fellows, an intense turn both to the Cosmic Presence and to the Personal Divinity beyond all beings as well as within them. Then alone will love bring heaven to earth. Then alone shall Auroville be the City of Dawn built from the Light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Page 80 ... Time and again he has explained the precise content of these two key-terms of his Integral Yoga and how they make this Yoga very new on the whole in spite of old aims, methods, disciplines and experiences forming part of it, especially in the early stages. Now I come to what you write on love of one's fellows as a builder of Auroville. There is a fundamental truth in what I may call the essence... A LETTER Your circular is full of goodwill and a sincere desire to bring about harmony. You seem to have come across Aurobindo-nians who tend to be more religious than spiritual in their attitudes. It is the usual religious mind that sets up one alleged revelation in opposition to the approaches of other religions towards God. But one who claims to do an Integral Yoga cannot ...
... Shankara, he is second to none in acknowledging the truth of the spiritual experiences on which these philosophies were based and the great contributions made to spirituality by Buddha and Shankara. Similarly, although he does not favour asceticism, he pays high tribute to asceticism and recognise the value of the spiritual experience supporting it. 4 Page 258 Among... his theory verifiable? Sri Aurobindo has explained several times how spiritual truths require verification of a kind other than what is feasible in physical sciences. In A Defence of Indian Culture, he refers to experience, experimental analysis and synthesis, reason and intuition as the tests which are valid for spiritual truths as they are for scientific truths. This is also explained in... achieved except on the foundation of spiritual comradeship or brotherhood; human rationality alone is too frail for this task. For Marx alienation is man's losing himself in the things he makes, man's inability to experience himself as the acting agent in Page 263 his grasp of the world. It is essentially experiencing the world and oneself passively, ...
... with the state of Samadhi. Our object is to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions. But in Rajayoga it tends to withdraw into a subliminal plane at the back of our normal experiences instead of descending and possessing our whole existence. The triple Path of devotion, knowledge and works attempts... soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on Page 36 its object which our philosophy asserts as the primary cosmic energy and the method of divine action upon the world. By this capacity the Yogin, already possessed of the highest supracosmic knowledge and experience in the state of trance, is... life and goes beyond it into the domain of the spiritual existence. But the weakness of the system lies in its excessive reliance on abnormal states of trance. This limitation leads first to a certain aloofness from the physical life which is our foundation and the sphere into which we have to bring our mental and spiritual gains. Especially is the spiritual life, in this system, too much associated with ...
... of discipline of aspiration, they ask for help, they try to come into contact with higher forces, they succeed in this, they have experiences; but they have completely neglected cleaning their room; it has remained as dirty as ever, and so, naturally, when the experience has gone, this dirt becomes still more repulsive than before. One must never neglect to clean one's room, it is very important;... it: you are free at every moment, till the irrevocable transformation comes, to deny and to reject the Divine or to recall your self-giving, if you are willing to suffer the spiritual consequence." Sri Aurobindo, The Mother , p. 4 What does an "irrevocable transformation" mean? The transformation is irrevocable when your consciousness is transformed in such a way that you can no longer... will rise suddenly and eat up your experience. And then, instead of progressing, you will be stuck there marking time because you cannot advance. But if, immediately, you take the opportunity.... Note, sometimes it hurts a little; if you go and brutally put the light upon the thing which wants to enjoy the experience or wants to get knowledge or control the experience by a mental understanding or is too ...
... thought, experience, world of perceptions of the mental Person, the mind Purusha, is truly a self-expression, a self-determination proceeding from some truth of his own spiritual being, a manifestation of that truth's dynamic possibilities, or whether it is not rather a creation or construction presented to him by Nature, by Prakriti, and only in the sense of being individualised in his personal formation... gradually passing away." The writer adds that having had further experiences of a similar sort, he now knows them well. "The spiritual life," he writes, "justifies itself to those who live it; but what can we say to those who do not understand? This, at least, we can say, that it is a life whose Page 132 experiences are proved real to their possessor, because they remain with him... Absolute, our substantial spiritual experience of it is the intuition or the direct experience of an infinite and eternal Existence, an infinite and eternal Consciousness, an infinite and eternal Delight of Existence. In overmental and mental cognition it is possible to make discrete and even to separate this original unity into three self-existent aspects: for we can experience a pure causeless eternal ...
... ( silence ) It's an experience I have more and more clearly: for the contact with that true divine Love to be able to manifest, that is, to express itself freely, it requires a POWER in beings and in things... which doesn't exist yet. Otherwise, everything breaks apart. There are scores of very convincing details, but, naturally, as they are "details" or very personal things, I can't talk about... about them. Page 194 But on the basis of the proof or proofs of repeated experiences, I am forced to say this: when that Power of PURE Love—a wonderful Power, beyond any expression—as soon as it begins to manifest fully, freely, a great many things seem to collapse instantly: they can't hold on. They can't hold on, they're dissolved. Then... then everything comes to a stop. And that stop... divine impulse alone, to speak from the divine impulse alone, to eat from the divine impulse alone. That's what is difficult, because, naturally, you immediately confuse the divine impulse with your personal impulses! That was the idea, I think, of all the apostles of renunciation: eliminate all that comes from outside or from below, so that if something from above manifests, you will be in a fit state ...
... for their child the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have granted Amal-da many beautiful experiences. Here is the description of one of them, the experience of the Psychic coming to the front. In Amal-da's own words: "... every time I closed my eyes to meditate I got a vague pain in my chest as if something wanted to come out and was baulked by a barrier. I spoke to the Mother about the pain. She... distilled through his personal cogitation and experience. Anyone facing Page 29 any problem on the difficult path of Sadhana can place his predicament before K.D.S.; he is sure to receive a luminous solution to his difficulty. We append below a few passages selected at random from his vast corpus of writings; these will show K.D.S. in the roles of a philosopher and a spiritual counsellor. ... when he was confronted a few years back with “an extremely personal as well as delicate subject”. The story is worth narrating. Page 22 Everybody is aware of the superior quality of K.D.S.’s intellect. Even Sri Aurobindo and the Mother lavished on many occasions high praise for the vigour and profundity of his mind. Once Mother told him during an interview: ”If I told you what Sri Aurobindo ...
... encountered in the attitude of many Aurovillians, was the danger that Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and their teaching might be hardened into a new religion. For it is in the nature of the human being to slide, without noticing it, from a living experience (e.g. a spiritual one) into a mental fixation of the experience (e.g. dogmatic religiosity). ‘No New Religion’ All religions have grown out of... until they have become a caricature of the original source. Spirituality is based on the direct experience of a supra-mental reality; as such, it is felt to be irrational by the mental consciousness of the human being. Religion is always suspicious of true mysticism and of the true spiritual experience, for it knows itself to move on a much less elevated plane. Once religion has the worldly powers... n in which all spiritual flowers are artificial. The teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, together with their abundantly documented biographies, contain more than sufficient elements to turn it all into a new religion. One will remember how the Mother experienced this in April 1962 as a distinct possibility. In December 1972, Newsweek published an article about the Mother under the title: ...
... serves. [7] Champaklal Write to Punamchand that now that Vithaldas has seen the Mother, he should communicate his experience or his difficulties direct to her. It is not desirable that in matters of the Sadhana Punamchand or anybody else should come in between, even as a channel of communication. The Mother's force must go direct undisturbed by any other influence. December 1928 Page 432... results from this kind of looseness, it treated whatever money came into your hands as it would have treated your own—I may give as a slight but significant example your lending to your personal friends out of the Mother's money which was never intended for such a purpose. These habits might pass in a man freely supplied by Page 434 Fortune with resources; but they were bound to have undesirable... Divine Force would have arranged themselves accordingly and you would have had enough and to spare for your personal expenses. But in practice the position became quite the opposite. Your first care was to draw money for your expenses there; if anything remained, it could be sent to the Mother. Only express contributions marked for the Asram like Vithaldas' and Kanta's escaped this law—up till now. ...
... fundamental principle. A constant or long continuity of higher experiences produces in this part of the mind a sense of exhaustion or reaction of unease or dullness. Trance or samādhi is a way of escape—the body is made quiet, the physical mind is in a state of torpor, the inner consciousness is left free to go on with its experiences. The disadvantage is that trance becomes indispensable and the... no response and getting into frightful tumults, agonies and desperations—until the response came. Many people here who can't say they have Page 646 had no experiences, do just the same—so it does not depend on experiences. I don't advise this procedure to anybody—mind you. I only want to say that the feeling of never having had a response does not mean that there never will be a response... life, then the path would be clear and your spiritual future not only a strong possibility but a certitude. It very often happens that when there is an exceptional power like this in the nature, there is found in the exterior being some contrary element which opens it to a quite opposite influence. It is this that makes the endeavour after a spiritual life so often a difficult struggle: but the ...
... Perhaps the most "impossible"-looking event from my own personal viewpoint - a change in the life of fumbling, stumbling, grumb- Page 181 ling though luckily, never crumbling Amal Kiran - could also take place just by his constant appeal to the divine and adorable Mother for help. It may be of interest to you to know what the Mother said when once in the meeting in the "Prosperity"-room... by inner problems and outer quandaries. To go back to your dream. Your spontaneous gesture of putting your head on the Mother's feet without the slightest delay is exactly like you - the child-soul's straight answer to its spiritual birth-giver's presence. What the Mother did and said are quite significant. She sweetly encouraged you and fully supported your idea of celebrating her birth-date.... standards of advancement may be egoistic, looking only at apparent immediate results. A lot of spiritual working by the Divine is done behind the scenes for one who is dedicated to Him, We must trust in His wisdom and judgment and cast our gaze ahead. Advancement is assured if we can always pray to the Mother: "Please never let go your hold on me -even if I am foolish enough at times to lose my hold on ...
... Hence, when we come to know from the Mother, his spiritual collaborator in the same great enterprise, that the establishment of a right kind of Centre of Education was conceived by Sri Aurobindo as "one of his most cherished ideals" (Ibid.), we cannot but feel eager to know how education can possibly play such a momentous role in the achievement of a total spiritual transformation of man and his life... " (SABCL, Vol. 17, pp. 192, 193) The basic assumptions guiding the new education of the future,—and those are not mere intellectually cogitated assumptions but wise insights bom of spiritual experience, — are, in an adaptation of the language of Sri Aurobindo: (1)All life, even the vital and material life, is indeed a manifestation of the universal Power in the individual but veiled... of man's spiritual and immortal nature." (Ibid., p. 550) (3)One has to rise beyond the mere terrestrial preoccupation; Page 22 for, a supreme and arduous self-fufilment by self-exceeding is the goal of human endeavour. The spiritual life is a nobler thing than the life of external power and enjoyment. The thinker is greater than the man of action but the spiritual man greater ...
... rise or not to the height of her opportunity in the renaissance which is coming upon her, is the question of her destiny. -Sri Aurobindo The recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is its first, most essential work; the flowing of this spirituality into new forms of philosophy, literature, art, science and critical... Another dream, the spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. India's spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever increasing measure. That movement will grow; amid the disasters of the time more and more eyes are turning towards her with hope and there is even an increasing resort not only to her teachings, but to her psychic and spiritual practice. The final... too world-shunning asceticism which drew away the best minds who were thus lost to society instead of standing like the ancient Rishis as its spiritual support and its illuminating life-givers. But the root of the matter was the dwindling of the spiritual impulse in its generality and broadness, the decline of intellectual activity and freedom, the waning of great ideals, the loss of the gust of ...
... is the natural result of personal feelings getting into the work and there is no remedy except doing the work without personal feelings. I had hoped from what you said in your letter a few days ago that you had determined to get rid of it altogether on your side and do the work looking to the Mother alone and not mind what X did or did not do. If you could do that, Mother would have been better able... personality or a desire on Mother's part to make you a puppet of X . Where there is a big work with several people working together for a purpose which is common to all and not personal to any, it cannot be done unless there is a fixed arrangement involving subordination and discipline in each worker. That is so everywhere, not here alone. X has to act under the Mother, carry out her instructions... friction to be removed and work harmoniously done. Personal feelings ought not to be allowed to come into the work or disturb it in any way. It is you and X who know the Bakery work thoroughly and are the best workers; for some time you two carried it on between you. Mother has relied on this collaboration for the Bakery work to go on well. If personal misunderstandings are allowed to break up the c ...
... Transposed to spiritual values its movement has been made most memorable to me by some words of the Mother. She once told me that the surrender of the vital being to the Divine is the most glorious possible: it has an absoluteness of expressive force, a throwing of oneself at the Divine's feet with a thundering completeness, as it were, which no other part of us can equal. A more personal reference by... fruitful Yoga can be done even by a householder outside the Ashram. I have lived as a married man outside the Ashram for ten years in Bombay: 1944-1954. So what 1 am telling you is from direct personal experience. Sincerity and a quietly burning aspiration and devotion will carry you through, step by step," towards your goal of brahmacharya. (19.9.91) Referring to Savitri as "a wide... the keen devotion to the Mother's guiding light and the enthusiastic confidence in its being all-in-all for you. 1 note also the wide charity of your heart, the fervent good-will towards every creature. But your estimate of me seems too high. True, I have accepted you as a dear friend and I shall do my best to help you in your aspiration to go side by side with me spiritually, but you and not only I ...
... the Mother her self, X for instance, who would never dream of frequenting the playground or engaging in sports and the Mother also would never think of asking them to do it. So equally she could not think of being displeased with you for shunning these delights. Some, of course, might ask why any sports at all in an Ashram which ought to be concerned only with meditation and inner experiences and... things more important, there are Yoga, spiritual progress, bhakti, devotion, service.... I do not understand what you mean by my giving time to sport; I am not giving any time to it except that I have written at Page 778 the Mother's request an article for the first number of the Bulletin and another for the forthcoming number. 3 It is the Mother who is doing all the rest of the work... intention attributed to the Mother of concentrating permanently on sports and withdrawing from other things pertinent to sadhana and our spiritual endeavour is a legend and a myth and has no truth Page 781 in it. Except for the time given to her own physical exercise and, ordinarily, two hours or sometimes three in the evening on the playground, the Mother's whole day from early morning ...
... They call it insincere. A poetsadhak has no justification for using this tone? If such poems are put as a claim, or vaunted as a personal experience of Yoga, they may be objected to on that ground. But a poet is not bound to confine himself to his personal experience. A poet writes from inspiration or from imagination or vision. Milton did not need to go to Heaven or Hell or the Garden of Eden before... intellect and yet understand nothing about spiritual things or spiritual force. X's knowledge in these matters does not seem to go beyond closing his eyes and feeling nice and peaceful. I wonder why these people don't understand the work you are doing. How the deuce do you expect them to understand something quite foreign to their own nature and experience? I suppose they don't recognise your... as it contains Codein which may be more useful? [The Mother drew a line indicating "Shall we try" and underlined "Pulmoserum".] Yes. April 16, 1938 Dr. André asked me if I had any communications from Sri Aurobindo on medical things. May I show him yesterday's letter? [ Mother :] Yes. April 17, 1938 [ Mother :] K is complaining of weakness. I told him to ask you for ...
... subtle and very profound intelligence working on the stuff of sight and spiritual experience. This is the result of the constant unity India has preserved between philosophy, religion and Yoga. The philosophy is the intuitive or intellectual presentation of the truth that was sought for first through the religious mind and its experiences and it is never satisfied by discovering truth to the idea and justifying... intellectual side, does not depart from this constant need of the Indian temperament. It works out from spiritual experience through the exact and laborious inspection and introspection of the intellect and works backward and in again from the intellectual perceptions to new gains of spiritual experience. There is indeed a tendency of fragmentation and exclusiveness; the great integral truth of the Upanishads... ethical degeneracy or licence; but the Indian mind is always compelled by its master impulse to reduce all its experience of life to the corresponding spiritual term and factor and the result was a transfiguring of even these most external things into a basis for new spiritual experience. The emotional, the sensuous, even the sensual motions of the being, before they could draw the soul farther outward ...
... would be a life of spiritual realization, that nothing else counted for me, and that somewhere on Earth, and I mean effectively on Earth, there had to be someone who could give me … who could lead me towards the light.’ 47 The Richards had left Japan a few months before Saint-Hilaire’s arrival. In the following four years he ran a laboratory and was involved in ‘many experiences, the study of Buddhism... form. And to work out the Integral Yoga the form has to be transformed, which is not possible as a personal undertaking but only as a sangha.’ And Sri Aurobindo added: ‘We do not want to exclude any of the world’s activities.’ 37 Sri Aurobindo had initiated the first attempt at a spiritual community through Motilal Roy, the young Bengali who had taken care of him during his brief stay at... – everything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again.” Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Théon: “It will be like that till we touch bottom.” So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us … (I was the one who went through the experience – how to put it? – practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not ...
... become a god.' Then, in the thick of the experience itself, he replied, 'No, I want to serve humanity.' And it was gone. Of course, he took great care to say nothing to my mother, but we were intimate enough for him to tell me about it. I told him, 'Well ( laughing ), what an idiot you are!' That's the story. At that moment he could have had a spiritual realization: he had the right stuff. ... I shouldn't come to the table! ( Mother goes into peals of laughter ) It was during this period that I used to go out of my body every night and do the work I've spoken of in Prayers and Meditations (I only mentioned it in passing). 8 Every night at the same hour, when the whole house was very quiet, I would go out of my body and have all kinds of experiences. And then my body gradually became... knew what it was! They would all think I had gone to sleep! But I remained conscious, with an arm raised or in the middle of a word—and poof! No one there ( Mother laughs ). No one there outwardly, but inwardly quite an intense, interesting experience. That used to happen to me even when I was very young. I remember once (I must have been ten or twelve years old at the time), there was a luncheon at ...
... Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite. One word more. Sri Aurobindo's experience — in fact it was, to quote him, 'a series of tremendously powerful experiences and radical changes of consciousness' — came as a surprise to Lele, for he had not intended it. Indeed to Sri Aurobindo himself the experience came as a surprise, for they were contrary to his own ideas — 'they made me see with... a special significance and importance not so much for political activities, although he was involved in these, but because of a tremendous spiritual experience which, in his own words, was the first of the four great realisations on which his Yoga and spiritual philosophy are founded. I shall now try and give you an account of this, relying largely on his own words. You know that from the year 1904... for a while from outside contacts but he did not have this experience somewhere remote from the world's turmoil, all alone, in Himalayan solitudes. This bears a far-reaching significance, for it shows that karma or action is no bar or bondage to spiritual life. In his sonnet "Nirvana" Sri Aurobindo has given a description of this experience, bringing its reality nearer and more clearly to our vision ...
... of the difficulty? Certain psychological experiences are so handled; notably, the phenomena of sleep, the phenomena of samadhi, the phenomena of ultimate experience in consciousness. But how are we to know that these experiences bear the construction put on them or justify the conclusions drawn from them? how are we to know, for instance, that the experiences in consciousness which we find advanced... the others, superior & anterior to them; we refuse to extend or to subtilise our conception, and according to our personal predilections we argue that such a Personal God cannot exist or that He must exist. But the whole method was illegitimate. We ought rather to fathom in experience all the possibilities of human personality & of divine personality, if such a thing exists, in order to know them &... limitations of the metaphysical schools and showed us Dwaita & Adwaita inextricably yet harmoniously one in experience, even as they are shown to us in Veda & Vedanta. All that at the time still governed our spiritual life he took typically into his soul & into his mental & physical experience, swallowed up its defects & Page 589 imperfections in the infinite abyss of his personality and ...
... statement was: "I used Savitri as a means of ascension." Here the meaning was seriously taken to be that Sri Aurobindo made use of his composition of Savitri to rise to ever higher spiritual experiences. I was amazed at such an interpretation, an impossible one if we go beyond the opening to the sentences that follow, for the word "ascension" connotes only the lifting of the poetic expression... (13.9.1994) I am pleased to hear from you. Your name "Monika" rings a very melodious bell, being the same as that of St. Augustine's mother who was a partner with him in the spiritual quest. And Augustine himself was, according to our Divine Mother, a man very much like me. This pronouncement confirms my own sense of affinity with the young aspirant to monkhood who appealed to God: "Give me... in the original poem..." It is this "new form" that has become for us a guide-book in times of indecision. What is even more important is that it is a magnet to draw for us further spiritual experience. What could be more vivifying to an urge to see a subtle mystical presence in Nature at the break of dawn than the lines? - All grew a consecration and a rite. Air was a vibrant link ...
... had sailed into the air and fallen from a height of about three metres. And not a scratch to show for it! Mirra related to the Théons many of her personal experiences. That of the Palazzo Ducale in Venice was one. She had gone there with her mother. In the Dungeon she had relived a scene from a past life wherein she was strangled and thrown out into the canal. "I related all this to Theon and Madame... done." But she was really keen on understanding her night experiences, for they had left her puzzled. And the Théons were able to give her the key to the riddles of her 'dreams.' Take the mystery of the Being who promised her things in abundance. "When I was a child," said Mother to Satprem, "around twelve, I knew nothing about spiritual things, my family lived in a completely materialistic atmosphere... this is a constant work. Constant. It has given me a considerable number of experiences concerning what happens to people when they leave their bodies. I've had all sorts of experiences, all kinds of examples. It's really very interesting." But something left her puzzled. "I have had all sorts of experiences," Mother said, "for so many, so many years. For about sixty years, constantly I have aided ...
... learnt that any work done with the right attitude creates interest and brings joy. Apart from this, I cannot claim to have had any positive spiritual experience as a timber-supervisor, except one. It happened as far as I can remember after an interview with the Mother. She asked me how my aspiration was formulated. I could not understand what she meant. The language was too yogic or philosophic for my... sweetness in his letters to me. Once during supervision, a heavy beam fell upon my big toe causing acute pain and a black bruise. The Mother sent Dr. Manilal, who had come for the Darshan, to see me. Naturally I was deeply moved by this personal gesture coming from the Mother herself. I had to take a few days’ rest, but, strangely enough, I looked forward to rejoining the work as soon as possible. I learnt... how to contain it, I sat down to write some poetry and no sooner had I started than the whole experience stopped. How foolish of me to lose such a gracious boon from the Mother! Well-deserved was the scolding I received from the Guru when I narrated the story. In that interview the Page 21 Mother had also explained the nature of the work that was being done here. She had said something like ...
... would have the experiences, write them down and the next day I would tell the stories. My writings were passed on to the Mother who gave them to Nolini. Nolini read them and found complete stories in them. Mother told him to separate the ones that could be published. There were no books for children in the Ashram at that time. One day in the playground (a famous date 23-4-56) Mother was giving prasad... father’s friend, Dyuman. My father had written to him that I had been in the Ashram for all this time and had not written home. It was to be my initial personal interview. I sat on the ground and the Mother sat on a low chair. “What would you like to ask?” Mother said. Instead of asking her if I should study law or medicine I found myself asking her if I should stay in the Ashram or go out of the Ashram to... I wanted to study medicine. Mother said, “We’ll forget about law because you are not interested in it.” She asked me in great detail why I wanted to study medicine. I told her that it was not for money but that I wanted to help the poor, unfortunate people of India for no charge. I told her that I had a great love for India and that Shiva was my personal god. The Mother said, “I can see that you would ...
... mixed with to something that until now remained outside their ken: the spiritual experience – the direct, personal, individual encounter with God. The Eastern Way – India To find what the West is lacking, the spiritual experience, we have to turn to the East, more especially to India, “the heart of Asia”, whose spiritual attainments have spread across the whole of Eastern Asia in the form of... inner discoveries, the experience of self-being, the cosmic consciousness, the inner calm of the liberated spirit, the direct effect of mind upon mind, the knowledge of things by consciousness in direct contact with other consciousness or with its objects, most spiritual experiences of any value, cannot be brought before the tribunal of the common mentality which has no experience of these things and... and Vedanta relied entirely upon intuition and spiritual experience. It is by an error that scholars sometimes speak of great debates or discussions in the Upanishad. Wherever there is the appearance of a controversy, it is not by discussion, by dialectics or the use of logical reasoning that it proceeds, but by a comparison of intuitions and experiences in which the less luminous gives place to the ...
... behaviour within his personal capabilities. Experience and training are often required even to recognize the somnambulist state." 3 All the aforesaid behaviour patterns tending to obliterate the borderline between the states of sleep and wakefulness can be explained on the assumption — and this is not merely a conjectural assumption, it is a fact of occult-spiritual experience — that there is... consciousness. "An essential characteristic of the dream is...a manifest discrepancy between dream images and external reality. In other words, dreams are illusory or hallucinatory experiences... [but] such experiences can take 1 The McGraw-Hill Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology, Vol: 5, p. 40. (Italics ours) 2 Irvine McQuarrie, "Epilepsy and Epileptic Fit" in Encyclopaedia... hypnosis there occurs an amnesia of an extensive character, whose experienced utilization along with that of regression may result, on the part of the subject, in the effective forgetting of "all experiences and learning subsequent to a chosen age level and the revivification of the actual patterns of behaviour, responses and understandings of the selected age level." 4 1 2 3 Prof. M. H. ...
... had come on a wave of divine inspiration and on behalf of which Sri Aurobindo sent a special message to Cripps and a personal emissary to the Indian Congress. If accepted, they would have brought about a united front by the Hindus and the Muslims and, by a firm co-operative experience in government, tended to prevent the fissure which led to the tragic break-up of the country into Page 184 ... Clear Ray". I picture this ray to be something like that streak of all-penetrating white light which Indian spiritual mythology sees issuing from Shiva's "third eye" in the centre of his forehead. It is natural that you should feel the Mother smiling, for surely it is the true Amal that the Mother kept always in gracious sight, overlooking all the obscurities which were present in me but which I never... throughout history has ever been such What we have to cling to and what should give us an optimistic vision is the Mother's assurance that a luminous spiritual age awaits us and all that happens before it will be turned in the best way possible towards its arrival. Now that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are not in their physical forms, the age spoken of may be far, but it will certainly come and nothing like ...
... they have so well eliminated from themselves all that was not that, that nothing remains for them to realise that the identification is not perfect. They have the experience of identification, they are lost in the Divine. From the personal, individual point of view, that is the most they can hope for. It is not that what you say is impossible, indeed I think it is possible—but it is rare. It is not... of view of the universal realisation, on a much higher level of the hierarchy than one who could realise Him only at a single point. And that is the true meaning of the spiritual hierarchy, this is why there is a whole spiritual hierarchical organisation, otherwise it would have no basis, for from the minute you touch the Divine, you touch Him perfectly: the point at which you touch Him is perfect... devotion or love, then if he has followed the path of knowledge, well, at the time of identification these will miss something. And then he Page 47 will be able to understand that his experience is not complete. But if they have been so well eliminated that they no longer exist, then who will notice that the union is not perfect? The union is perfect in itself at this particular point. It ...
... for expressing our experience. These words are evidently the best according to us for formulating our experience. But if, in our enthusiasm, we were convinced that they are the only appropriate words to express correctly what Sri Aurobindo is and the experience he has given us, we would become dogmatic and be on the point of founding a religion. He who has a spiritual experience and a faith formulates... doubts of the whole of humanity would change nothing to this fact. But another fact is not so certain—it is the usefulness of my being here in a body doing the work I am doing. It is not out of any personal urge that I am doing it. Sri Aurobindo told me to do it and that is why I do it as a sacred duty, in obedience to the dictates of the Supreme. Time will reveal how far earth has benefitted through... formulates it in the most appropriate words for himself. But if he is convinced that this expression is the only correct and true one for this experience and faith, he becomes dogmatic and tends to create a religion. Forward! towards a better future, the realisation of tomorrow. To cure oneself: [of] a critical judgment expressing itself through an incontinence of speech 1) When one is in ...
... read just one sentence and not read what goes ahead and what follows, because in this way one can prove anything at all. But here, with you, one doesn't need to go through all these experiences, isn't that so, Mother? Need to go through.... But he has said all along that everyone follows his own path, in his own way, and that no two paths are alike, and each one has his own road. So, what "need"... can't, can you?―if you could put the inside out and the outside in, it would be something like what I mean. And one can't say that one "experiences" this reversal―there is no "feeling", it is almost a mechanical fact―it is extraordinarily mechanical. ( Mother takes an object from the table beside her and turns it upside down.... ) There would be some very interesting things to say about the difference... is to say, if you really do it with an aspiration to have an answer, it always comes. For, in books of this kind ( Mother shows "The Synthesis of Yoga"), books of revelation, there is always an accumulation of forces―at least of higher mental forces, and most often of spiritual forces of the highest knowledge. Every book, on account of the words it contains, is like a small accumulator of these ...
... can make use of it for the experience it has come for. So, if we cultivate the body by a clear-sighted and rational method, at the same time we are helping the growth of the soul, its progress and enlightenment. The Mother On Thoughts and Aphorisms: Aphorism - 11 Mother, since in each new life the mind and vital as well as the body are new, how can the experiences of past lives be useful for... qualities, certain powers, etc., but the psychic being always sees what it lacks and it can choose the opposite line in a future life, a negation, so to say, of this experience in order to have complementary experiences. The Mother Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 24 February 1951 "The mind's door of entry to the conception of him [the Divine] must necessarily vary according to the past... part of experience, but have to be outgrown in the spiritual increase of the being. The fundamental psychic entity in us has the delight of life and all experience as part of the progressive manifestation of the spirit, but the very principle of its delight of life is to gather out of all contacts and happenings their secret divine sense and essence, a divine use and purpose so that by experience our mind ...
... The Mother answered: "Both the experiences are valid, but perhaps yours corresponds more to the truth of things." The advantage of my experience is that one can never lose the Divine. Even if one's heart is clouded over and does not sense the Divine within it, one is still aureoled with the Divine, the whole circumambient universe is the embrace of the Supreme. Sri Aurobindo sky-high, the Mother ho... of us have known vague drippings, through some tremulous opening in our heads, from the golden charity pouring at all times out of the spiritual empyrean whose physical image is-d la Fitzgerald's Omar "-that inverted bowl we call the sky." Now to your personal problem. It has two aspects. You are restless because you are lonely - a great gap made by the loss of a companion to your mind and heart... on the individual side. From this stress the ending again' fans out, as it were, into a sort of saviour largeness, the small Dinkar himself flowering forth into a universal radiance, with his own personal pain turned into a Christ-like sacrifice: Page 53 Let the flame of my pain Warm all hearts And remove darkness from everywhere. A very original, even if a slightly abrupt ...
... could call "personal." That is to say, if the atmosphere is troubled, well, there's disorder [in that part in Mother], it's subject [to the outside disorder] and that seems to be the only part. Otherwise, all the rest is... as if bathed, constantly bathed in the Divine, and automatically everything goes to the Divine. The divine Will goes through ( gesture of descent and diffusion through Mother ) and causes... caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers. If we take the facts of the world as they are and the facts of spiritual experience as a whole, neither of which can be denied or neglected, then I do not see what other Divine there can be. This Divine may lead us often through darkness, because the darkness is there in us... vast, immutable gesture ), then it helps restore order. ( Mother takes Satprem's hands ) It's fine. It's fine. Only, for people who don't know that, appearances are misleading: they feel more ill, they have attacks, things of that sort. So they don't understand anymore. ( long silence ) I had, countless times, the experience that when the body can catch hold of that attitude (completely ...
... or work for the Divine is all right. But work must primarily be spiritual and not merely creative in a personal way. Work as part of spiritual creation is, of course, right, but we can't take this up unless the inner difficulties are overcome. Neither can it be according to mental constructions; it must only be according to the Mother's intuition. Even then there are so many difficulties. Not that we... as homoeopathic drugs usually are, he loses all faith and respect for it. So I always keep the price a secret." Then he said something about the Mother testing him. The Mother had come into the room meanwhile and had been listening to him. THE MOTHER: Testing is not the practice here. It is the play of forces or at times the adverse forces that do the testing in order to measure your strength.... AUROBINDO: What do you mean by divine realisation? NIRODBARAN: I mean Peace, Bliss, Presence. SRI AUROBINDO: There is a divine realisation and there is a realisation of the Divine—that is to say, spiritual realisation. If one gains control over the vital nature by the influence of the Atman, the Self, that is a divine realisation. NIRODBARAN: Control by an influence, I suppose, comes and goes. It ...
... energies, mental energies, spiritual energies. Modern science tells us that Matter is ultimately nothing but energy condensed. Our yoga being integral, all these various forms or kinds of energy are indispensable to our realisation. 10 September 1959 * * * Sweet Mother, How can one make one’s psychic personality grow? It is through all the experiences of life that the psychic ... Chapter 1: Sadhana and Life Growing up with the Mother Questions and Answers on Sadhana and Life Sweet Mother, What is the difference between the psychic change and the spiritual change? The psychic change is the change that puts you in contact with the immanent Divine, the Divine who is at the centre of each being and of whom the psychic being... the Divine can be correct; for conceptions are mental activities, and no mental activity is fit to manifest the Divine. It is only by experience that one can know Him, and the experience cannot be translated into words. 20 June 1960 * * * Sweet Mother, Are You with us during the collective meditation at the Playground? Certainly, I am always there. To benefit from it, what ...
... love; they see their love come and grow and then it fades—or, it may be, endures a little longer in some who are more specially fitted for its more lasting movement. But their sense in this of a personal experience all their own was an illusion. It was a wave from the everlasting sea of universal love. Love is universal and eternal; it is always manifesting itself and always identical in its essence... love. The Divine love has thrown itself into a personal form in them that its realisation upon earth may be at once more easy and more perfect. Divine love, when manifested in a personal being, is easier to realise; it is more difficult when it is unmanifested or impersonal in its movement. A human being, awakened by this personal touch, with this personal intensity, to the consciousness of the Divine... through which it manifests. It manifests wherever it finds a possibility for manifestation, wherever there is receptivity, wherever there is some opening for it. What you call love and think of as a personal or individual thing is only your capacity to receive and manifest this universal force. But because it is universal, it is not therefore an unconscious force; it is a supremely conscious Power. C ...
... harmlessly in the outward life yet lose altogether her richly massed and firmly held spiritual experience and knowledge. It would be a tragic irony of fate if India were to throw away her spiritual heritage at the very moment when in the rest of the world there is more and more a turning towards her for spiritual help and a saving Light. This must not and will surely not happen; but it cannot be said... a free nation, her spiritual force will contribute to build for mankind a better and happier life. In this light, I offer my public adhesion, in case it can be of any help in your work. 1 31-3-1942 * SRI AUROBINDO'S POSITION ON INDIA'S INDEPENDENCE 2 Sri Aurobindo thinks it unnecessary to volunteer a personal pronouncement, though... The spiritual gift of India to the world has already begun. India's spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever increasing measure. That movement will grow; amid the disasters of the time more and more eyes are turning towards her with hope and there is even an increasing resort not only to her teachings, but to her psychic and spiritual practice. ...
... a living sense of the spiritual reality. A hint of it comes when the Epistle is about to finish: "Examine yourselves to make sure you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is really in you?" (13:5) 45 Paul's being a true mystic is undeniable. Sri Aurobindo 46 has written in a letter: "... St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound... to Christ, prepared in his mother's womb to serve Christ and born to be at his service in the as yet unworked field of the pagan world. To continue with Brown. While conceding that "revelation" tends to direct us to internality, he 12 confesses: "Nevertheless, the overall evidence does not favor the thesis that Paul was describing a purely internal experience, for he speaks of Jesus' having... Therefore, the reality of the bodily resurrection hinges on the missing body or empty tomb and, above all, on the validity of the experiences of those who claimed they saw Jesus risen." The very material submitted by the first and most enthusiastic proponent of these experiences prompts us to dissociate them from the dead body of Jesus as well as to deny that the body was missing and that the tomb was empty ...
... about these things seem to be very fanciful and elementary. Page 112 EXPERIENCES IN THE SUBTLE AND GROSS PHYSICAL When H wrote in his poem that he felt peace in his body, some people commented that it was impossible to experience peace or anything spiritual in the body itself at such an early stage of the sadhana. According to them, a strong peace ... impersonal experience how does the ego come in? Self (Atman) is one thing, the ego another." Certainly the ego did not come with the experience. It was only when the experience was over that the foolishness of my mind brought it in as an idea. Why? Because I had heard that X's ego became aggrandised after his experiences of the Self. The ego cannot come into the experience as an experience. What... 1 was the Self. When the physical began to widen out still more, I was afraid of a possibility of ego aggrandisement, though the whole experience was taking place in an impersonal aspect. 1 So I called at once for the Personal and put my widened self on the Mother's lap. 2 Was my fear a true one? The feeling of the body enlarging and widening itself is of course an indication of widening out ...
... out of your resolve. Mother did not mean quite what you thought. She was thinking of certain others who had been much more unfortunate than you, their way quite barren in spite of their demand—by their own fault of course, but still—and without any experience or signs of possible progress, and she was thinking that after all you had some things given they had not, experiences, that were not without... dictum—neither the Mother or myself would have accepted you here if you had not capacity for Yoga as great as for art—and greater. And the experiences you have had—however intermittent—would not have come at all in an unfit ā dh ā r [vehicle, vessel]. The facts or arguments you put forward to support your diffidence or depression cannot stand in the light of the Yoga experience of others—if they... the Mother asks of you, persisting however difficult it may be or seem to be. It is so that the psychic can fully awaken and establish its influence, not on your higher vital where it is already awake and growing through your poetry and music and certain experiences so that whenever your higher vital is active you are in good condition, full of delight and creativeness and open to experience; but ...
... receptivity—a humble receptivity that does not put personal pretensions in opposition to the Divine. You have said: "If you surrender you have to give up effort, but that does not mean that you have to abandon also all willed action." Questions and Answers 1929-1931 ( 21 April 1929 ) But if one wants to do something, it means personal Page 45 effort, doesn't it? What then... tension, effort, of counting only on oneself, having recourse to oneself alone which personal effort means; this kind of tension, of something very acute and at times very painful; you count only on yourself and you have the feeling that if you do not make an effort every minute, all will be lost. That is personal effort. But the will is something altogether different. It is the capacity to concentrate... thing; the mind is inert, the feeling is inert, the body is immobile. They can remain like that for hours, for there is nothing more durable than inertia! All this that I am telling you now—these are experiences of people I have met. And these people, when they come out of their meditation, sincerely believe they have done something very great. But they have simply gone down into inertia and unconsciousness ...
... sadhak wrote that after bright periods of sadhana, dark periods returned again and again. ) This is a proof that your whole being is not united around the central psychic Presence. This is a personal task that each individual must do for himself. The help is always there but the effectivity of its action is in the measure of the receptivity and the conscious appeal. After all it is a question... goodwill. Everything else is a mixture which can only have confused and mixed results, and perpetuate the disorder. March 1961 Page 334 It is not the psychic being that suffers for personal reasons, it is the mind, the vital and the ordinary consciousness of ignorant man. This is because the contact between the outer consciousness and the psychic consciousness is not well established... bringing me your problem which, by the way, is the problem of the life of all human beings, especially when they have reached a certain degree of inner development but are not yet on the summit of spiritual freedom through the unification of their being around their conscious soul. For it is the lack of unification which is the cause of all problems. One part of the being pulls one way, another pulls ...
... the luminous seas of the Infinite. This experience and realisation of the utter reality of the Brahman and the unreality of the world is a recognised culmination of the classical path of Knowledge and Adwaitic Mayavada. For Sri Aurobindo, however, this turned out to be only one of the foundational experiences, and a series of spiritual experiences and realisations ³ that followed led Sri Aurobindo... It was after a long stay in India at Baroda that Sri Aurobindo turned decisively to Yoga in 1904. He had, however, a few spiritual experiences even in his pre-yogic period. The first was in London, in 1892, the year of his departure from England. The next experience was when Sri Aurobindo set foot on the Indian soil at Apollo Bunder, Bombay, on his return from England. A vast calm descended... purpose of this Yoga practice was to find the spiritual strength which would support him and enlighten his way. Explaining the results of this practice, Sri Aurobindo has written: What I did was four or five hours a day Prānāyāma.... The flow of poetry came down while I was doing Prānāyāma, not some years afterwards. If it is the flow of experiences, that did come after some years, but after ...
... but this is not like the rigid mental structures; it is plastic, organic, something that can grow and develop and stretch into the infinite. All spiritual experiences are taken up and become habitual and normal to the new nature; all essential experiences belonging to Page 248 the mind, life, body are taken up and spiritualised, transmuted and felt as forms of the consciousness, delight,... what was the personal mind, life or body, it is not with a sense of personality but as a field of manifestation, and this sense of the delight or of the action of Force is not confined to the person or the body but can be felt at all points in an unlimited consciousness of unity which pervades every-where. But there can be many formulations of overmind consciousness and experience; for the Overmind... and revealed in the secret of its spiritual significance. For in this spiritual bliss and being he will be one with That which is the origin and continent and inhabitant and spirit and constituting power of all existence. This will be the highest reach of self-perfection.¹ The integrality of perfection cannot become real, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, if it were confined to the individual ...
... which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being as we know or can conceive of it while in this universe. This Nothing is merely a something beyond positive conception. Atman — the Self; the Spirit; the original and essential nature of our existence; the spiritual being above the mind. In its nature the Atman is transcendent or universal... the Transcendent — the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a divine reflection. See also the Divine. triguṇātī ta — above or beyond the three Gunas. Truth-Consciousness — see Supermind. Turiya — the fourth plane... Gradations between Mind and Supermind. mok ṣ a, Moksha — spiritual liberation. mole ruet sua — (Latin) will collapse by its own mass. Mukta —free. Muladhar —"root vessel or chamber"; the physical consciousness centre (Chakra); see also Centres of Consciousness. Mukti — spiritual liberation, the release of the soul from the bondage of Ignorance. ...
... occultism, spiritual thought and inner spiritual realisation as the "four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt to open up the inner being". 12 But, then, they have their mutual filiations, and also experiment with varieties of association and accommodation: Occultism has sometimes put forward a spiritual aim as its goal, and . followed occult knowledge and experience as an approach... as part of self-knowledge and world-knowledge and for the right dynamisation of that knowledge. 16 III At first Mirra seems to have merely stumbled into occultism, even as spiritual experiences too had come to her, as good as unbidden. "I feared nothing," she said later. "One goes out of one's body, but is tied by something resembling an almost imperceptible thread; if the thread... are things in a box and one says to the hand, "Take twelve"; (without counting, like that), the hand picks up the twelve and gives them to you. That is an experience that I had long long ago. At the age of twenty I started having experiences like that.10 Again, her sense of adventure encouraged her to join excursions with friends. For example, once she joined three others on a week-long walking ...
... supramental transformation. 20 July 1933 How is it that many sadhaks who had a strong spiritual tendency before coming to the Asram have got stuck in vital difficulties after many years of sadhana? It is because outside before people come here, they are quite satisfied with their inner spiritual experiences and there is no idea of changing or attempt to change the vital. The moment this idea is... a question. You have the Yogic capacity in you as your experiences show and it is not by going away from here that you will develop it. I do not understand why it should be insulting to speak always of the cosmic consciousness and the necessity of its settling down. I mean by it the living in the sense of the cosmic Self and the experience of the cosmic forces. A certain number here have contact... but which I do not endorse. It is impossible for me with my limited time to answer such a long series of questions in detail. After the descent, the Mother spoke of the Asrama as the spiritual cell (the word is mine) and Sangha. The Mother was not in the habit of using the word sangha, I think. 9 January 1934 A natural unfolding of the consciousness in manifestation from an involved ...
... others as the rest of my work. Some reviewers have described them as lacking altogether in spiritual feeling and void of spiritual experience; they are, it seems, mere mental work, Page 18 full of intellectually constructed images and therefore without the genuine value of spiritual or mystic poetry. Well, then, what is the upshot? What have I to decide as a result of... peaks of vision" or "He took his station on the highest summits of knowledge". The calm is the calm of the highest spiritual consciousness to which the soul has ascended, making those summits its own and looking down from their highest heights on all below: in spiritual experience, in the occult vision or feeling that accompanies it, this calm is not felt as an abstract quality or a mental condition... describe the spiritual planes. I can understand this hesitation; for these lines have not the vivid and forceful precision of the opening and the close and are less pressed home, they are general in description and therefore to one who has not the mystic experience may seem too large and vague. But they are not padding; a precise and exact description of these planes of experience would have made ...
... not of spiritual experience; the concentration on Krishna is a self-offering to the iṣṭa-deva . If you reach Krishna you reach the Divine; if you can give yourself to him, you give yourself to me. Your inability to identify may be because you are laying too much stress on the physical aspects, consciously or unconsciously. 18 June 1943 You can't expect me to argue about my own spiritual greatness... of want of space) Because I [ the recipient ] am a doctor, I can't see a joke when it is there. 11 February 1935 About your personal example. You speak of the evolution theory to prove that "it can be done", though the domain I touched upon was only the spiritual. If the scientists say that man has not been able to create living things up to now, and therefore he will not be able to do so in... Switzerland named Madame X who is a friend or acquaintance of Y 's mother; she will put up in Boudie House, perhaps for a month, perhaps for a shorter or longer time. We know nothing of her and it is not yet sure whether her profession of seeking the spiritual Truth is really deep or genuine. Therefore till we are fixed about her, Mother wishes that she should not be taken in intimately into the Asram ...
... one must see and live in those higher regions. In X's case, his personal contact rises to the heights, but it's purely personal. While his overall vision (I am not saying universal: overall) stops at the vital-physical plane, with a touch of Page 419 the mental, and THAT'S ALL. There's a contradiction between his personal possibility, which reaches very high (although on quite a tenuous... India Dominion status, as a first step towards an independent government. Sri Aurobindo at once came out of retirement to wire his adhesion to Cripps; he wired all of India's leaders, and even sent a personal messenger to Gandhi and the Indian Congress to convince them to accept this unhoped for proposal without delay. One of Sri Aurobindo's telegrams to Rajagopalachari (the future President of India)... whatever the conditions, otherwise it will be worse later on." That's what Sri Aurobindo told them. Gandhi was there and he retorted, "Why is that man meddling? He should be concerned only with spiritual life." 5 Page 420 They have conscientiously ruined the country. Yes. Yes, as much as they could. 6 That's what X saw: that they have been the ruin of the country. And ...
... perhaps you will say that Yoga of works is responsible. Then I thought if one has big experiences, he will be safe, but G has shattered that delusion. This man is said to have had overmental experiences! And he also gone. I have heard that you don't approve of one's going. He had no overmind experiences—he had something of the opening of the cosmic mind and vital in the intermediate zone and... a state of sleep due to a full stomach? You were going into the inner consciousness and away from the outer, that is all. Is that the medical man's explanation of the experience? If a full stomach can produce experiences, you ought perhaps to treble or quadruple your rations. A letter from C. Is it possible for him to come here without being completely cured? No. Can't decipher C.... furniture, table lamp, management work, etc. I think there is everything needed over there, table Lamp and all. You had better go and see. If so, you will need to take only your personal things. One thing the Mother wants to say—she asks you to keep the Dispensary meticulously clean as D.S. did ; there is a special servant attached to the Dispensary for that. As a "foreign degree doctor" you will ...
... for expressing our experience. These words are evidently the best according to us for formulating our experience. But if, in our enthusiasm, we were convinced that they are the only appropriate words to express correctly what Sri Aurobindo is and the experience he has given us, we would become dogmatic and be on the point of founding a religion. He who has a spiritual experience and a faith formulates... of the whole of humanity would change nothing to this fact. But another fact is not so certain — it is the usefulness of my being here in a body doing the work I am doing. It is not out of any personal urge that I am doing it. Sri Aurobindo told me to do it and that is why I do it as a sacred duty, in obedience to the dictates of the Supreme. Time will reveal how far earth has benefited through... another, they collaborate for the same purpose and are indispensable to the integrality of the result. These three categories of examinations are those set by the forces of Nature, those set by the spiritual and divine forces, and those set by the hostile forces. These latter are the most deceptive in their appearance and in order not to be taken by surprise, unprepared, demands a constant state of vigilance ...
... on the results of that work. And it isn't formulated: I am not told, I am not told what's going to happen; I am only told, "Here's how it might be." ( Mother laughs ) All right. "That's fine," I said. But it was funny; it was really an experience, because had you asked me my impression beforehand ("my," I mean what usually talks), my impression was that I just had to decide to go to the balcony... KNOWS he shouldn't do that, but.... Which means one cannot understand unless one has the experience—you must have the experience of all this somewhere, mon petit, otherwise you couldn't write about it! But it's Sri Aurobindo! And interestingly enough, as I told you last time, it follows my body's experience quite closely and regularly. There are so many sides to the problem, you see, so many ways... hours on end. But I had an interesting experience the other day, when this new room was inaugurated. Those rascals set up a balcony! And there was such a crowd—in all the streets, on the rooftops—that I had no choice but to go out on the balcony.... And I realized that there has been a complete break between my life before and now, with that famous experience 1 as the dividing line: I have to make ...
... everything, you know, from complete fasting to a meat diet—everything, everything. Well, I noticed that you can have pleasant experiences while fasting, but it's not good, it shouldn't be done—these are all old ideas. No, the body must be solid, solid ... otherwise ... ( Mother gives the disciple a carnation, named by her 'Collaboration' ) Page 462 So, I won't see you again? ... No, too... 1960 1960 Mother’s Agenda 1951-1960 October 30, 1960 ( After a meditation with Mother on the occasion of the disciple's birthday. At the outset of the conversation, Mother had given the disciple a small leather wallet with an Egyptian fresco depicted on it. ) Let me see the wallet ( Mother looks at it ) ... Ah, so that... it's good!' Happy ... and rather satisfied because of that. My impression is that in a while, maybe not in such a distant future, we'll be able to do something, a sort of ... it will no longer be personal. We should be able to establish something. 4 ( soon afterwards, when leaving ) Is that all? You have nothing to tell me, nothing to ask? I'm counting above all on your force to put ...
... Sadhak : seeker. × Mother added: 'The most beautiful part of the experience is missing... When I try to formulate something in too precise a way, all the vastness of the experience evaporates. The entire world is being revealed in all its organization down to the minutest details—but everything si... sincerely, honestly, exclusively with a will to know, are difficult paths—yet such sure paths for the total realization. It brings up very interesting things. (What I am going to say now is very personal and consequently cannot be used, but it may be kept anyway:) There are two parallel things that, from the eternal and supreme point of view, are of identical importance, in that both are equally... willed it since the beginning of all eternity (which has no beginning at all! ). Page 208 And for the cycle to be complete, one cannot stop on the way at any plane, not even the highest spiritual plane nor the plane closest to matter (like the occult plane in the vital, for example). One must descend right into matter, and this perfection in manifestation must be a material perfection, or ...
... expression of a vision or an experience of some kind, Page 198 mundane or spiritual. Here it is the vision of the Life Heavens, its perfection, its limitations and the counterclaim of the Earth or rather the Spirit or Power behind the earth consciousness. It has to be taken at that, as an expression of a certain aspect of things, an expression of a certain kind of experience, not of a mental dogma... rising towards the heights. And so on. That is "a deeper power", not a greater actual glory or perfection. All that may be true or not to the mind, but it is the traditional attitude of Indian spiritual experience. Ask any Yogin, he will tell you that the Life Heavens are childish things; even the gods, says the Purana, must come down to earth and be embodied there if they want mukti , giving up the... which the vital makes full surrender, converts itself into an instrument of the Divine, making no demand, insisting on no desire, answering to the Mother's force and to no other, calm, unegoistic, giving an absolute loyalty and obedience, with no personal vanity or ambition, only willing to be a pure and perfect instrument, desiring nothing for itself but that the Truth may prevail within itself and ...
... inner experience, it can generalize to some extent an incomplete spiritual tendency; but it does not transform the race, it cannot create a new principle of the human existence. A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself. Another possible conception akin to the religious solution is the guidance of society by men of spiritual attainment... society governed or sanctioned by religion. But organized religion, though it can provide a means of inner uplift for the individual and preserve in it or behind it a way for his opening to spiritual experience, has not changed human life and society; it could not do so because, in governing society, it had to compromise with the lower parts of life and could not insist on the inner change of the whole... ; it has a solidarity with it because that too is the self, the same spirit. As he moves towards spiritual freedom, he moves also towards spiritual oneness. The spiritually realized, the liberated man is preoccupied, says the Gita, with the good of all beings; Buddha discovering the way of Nirvana must turn back to open that way to those who are still under the delusion of their constructive instead ...
... intimate in the sense that the disciple would relate his experiences Page 32 and difficulties, and visitors from outside generally sought his advice on spiritual matters or individual guidance in some public activity. One such interview is given here to illustrate how he dealt with the questions of Sadhana, – spiritual practice. Disciple : I have, at present, a very strong... members must be able to follow what the Yoga is and its processes. Disciple : What would be the place of personal demand in such a commune? Sri Aurobindo : Personal demand must not remain; everything would be intended for all. But before one joins it one must make sure of his spiritual aspiration. Disciple : Will the collective organisation be economically self sufficient? Sri Aurobindo... to the Divine. Not a city but a spiritual laboratory, a collective being with a daily changing horizon yet pursuing a fixed distant objective, a place fixed to the outer view but constantly moving – Pondicherry to me is always like the Arab's tent. 1920 (Nov. or Dec.?) Interview with a Disciple Disciple : What would be the nature of the spiritual commune? Sri Aurobindo : ...
... never said that for my Yoga; the only thing I insist upon is some faith, inner surrender and opening of oneself to receive,—not absolute, but just sufficient. Experience has to begin long before perfect purification and from experience to experience one comes to realisation and through realisation to more and more perfection; anything that can be called real perfection can only come at the end. But there... The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths The Integral Yoga and Other Spiritual Paths A Yoga of Transformation Letters on Yoga - II Chapter II Asceticism and the Integral Yoga Not an Ascetic Path It is not indispensable to be an ascetic—it is enough if one can learn to live within in the inner being instead of on the surface, discover the soul or... mental work and social contacts is not favourable for Yoga, excessive seclusion has also its spiritual disadvantage. An inner concentration supported by a limitation of external contacts is sufficient. Some kind of activity and service to the Divine is also a very necessary element in the integral spiritual life. To be by oneself very much needs a certain force of inner life. It may be better ...
... comes afterwards. Is that all? Nothing over there? Mother, what is the lotus of knowledge and perfection? What do you want to know? What it is? You have heard of the different centres, haven't you? And these centres are usually represented as lotuses which at first are closed and which gradually open as one progresses spiritually. The lotus of knowledge is the thousand-petalled lotus... You see, it makes a difference—people don't realise it—it makes a considerable difference to be able to ask the question of someone who has realised the thing, that is, one who has had all the experiences and has reached the end and has the knowledge of the thing. You can ask him: "Is this good? Is this useful, is this harmful?" Then in one minute you have the answer: "Yes, no, do this, read that... all movements—when you observe them, you become aware that they have a certain rhythm—the movements of inner consciousness, for example, not only from the point of view of understanding but that of personal reactions, of the ups and downs in progress; of a fairly regular periodic return, at once of advancing and recoiling, of difficulties and of helps. But if each person is attentive he realises that ...
... totally contrary to the spirit and principle of the Ashram. In their perverted logic they felt that the Mother was unwittingly trying to alter the 'spiritual' character of the Ashram. Following the subtle suggestion of the Hostile Forces they wanted to create a cleavage between Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. And it so happened that Dilip Kumar being a highly gifted intellectual among them and being very close... with Dilip Kumar. (1) Mental consciousness viz-d-vis Divine Consciousness: "I would ask one simple question of those who would make the intellectual mind the standard and judge of spiritual experience. "Is the Divine something less than Mind or is He something greater? Is mental consciousness with its groping enquiry, endless argument, unquenchable doubt, stiff and unplastic logic something... or even equal to the Divine Consciousness or is it something inferior in its action and status? "If it is greater, then there is no reason to seek after the Divine. If it is equal, then spiritual experience is quite superfluous. But if it is inferior, how can it challenge, judge, make the Divine stand as an accused or a witness before the tribunal, summon it to appear as a candidate for admission ...
... Questions and Answers Q : Isn't it only the will (grace) of the Lord and Mother that chooses ? A : No, there are two parts of sadhana,—spiritual effort. The yogic life in Sri Aurobindo's path is divided into two parts : the personal effort and the Divine Grace. Personal effort is to be done by the individual and not by the Divine; aspiration, rejection and surrender... same. That is what makes the difficulty of spiritual persons. For instance, somebody says, "This man is bad". The spiritual man says, "There is a bad tendency in Nature; there is no bad man. Universal nature has some tendency which is low. That's all." And there are so many things like that. There is revaluation, the way of looking from the spiritual point of view is absolutely different because... thinking. He admits that a clear, pure and disciplined intellect is necessary even for spiritual life. And this is a great admission by Sri Aurobindo and he kept to it most faithfully throughout his life. How a pure and disciplined intellect, a great balance in the mind is necessary even for true spiritual life is examplified in Sri Aurobindo's own life. In 1920, when I met him for the second ...
... of Purusha and the elan of Prakriti so that there is a quiet intensity of love moving most naturally towards the Divine. Our Bhakti is activated by that speciality of Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's spiritual path - the Psychic Being - the true Soul which lies behind what they term the desire-soul and which passes from birth to birth in a subtle progression and is not set on reaching Page 146... - nor even the bull, for all its figuring the creative power of the Godhead. The cow was the focus of their symbolic spiritual thought. But one of the most laudatory expressions in the Rigveda connected with it has given rise to India's agelong prohibition of cow-slaughter. The Mother of the Gods, Aditi, the Infinite Consciousness, gets the title "Cow unslayable", pointing to her immortal nature, the... "tunnels". Every evening, after the Soup Distribution the Mother used to pass through a "tunnel" from the Library House towards her own building. Dara would be carrying a hurricane lantern in front of her. I used to go ahead and wait on the other side. It was once during my brief passage through this "tunnel" that I had that sudden experience of a total sexlessness. And it was not anything negative ...
... essential elements of its experiences in life and takes up with the sheaths as much of its Karma as is useful for further experience in a new life. This time it is all right—but what the deuce has that got to do with the original sin? Now if I say that the soul has failed this time because it took "so much of its Karma" and requires farther evolution through farther experience before it can turn ... from this, I have observed that whenever I communicate an experience to you, the next moment it stops. What's the truth of it? That is a thing that we used often to note formerly when sadhana was in the early stages—viz. to speak of something experienced was to stop it. It is why many Yogis make it a rule never to speak of their experiences. But latterly it had altogether ceased to be like that.... capacity of any kind, no experience, not a shadow, tittle or blessed pinpoint of it anyhow, anywhere or at any time for years and more years and still more years. Finally some while ago X begins to fancy or feel that X wants Mother and nothing and nobody else. (That was the result of my ceaseless and futile hammering for years). X makes sanguinary row after row because X can't get Mother, not a trace, speck ...
... Aurobindo signed to Champaklal turning his glance towards the Mother. Champaklal understood and jumped up and put some cushions at the Mother's back. That is their way! I am firmly convinced that through the ages he has been closely connected with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, otherwise how could he have been selected as Sri Aurobindo's personal attendant, even as a young man, as soon as he arrived? When... Dr. Savoor I need not mention more than I have done in their proper context. Three of us had the opportunity to serve the Master in our medical capacity. Champaklal had been in the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's personal service since his arrival in 1923, and about Purani and Satyendra, I will state later what relates to them. Though collected from different fields, we made a harmonious bouquet tied... indelible impression on my soul and taught me what true service is. Let me prelude it with the Mother's opinion about him when she introduced him to Andre, her son, in 1949. She said with great warmth: "He came here when he was very young. I taught him many kinds of work. He has himself taken up Sri Aurobindo's personal service. He looks into practically everything with regard to Sri Aurobindo. He is extremely ...
... I have been experiencing calm and silence, but the Ananda and love which I was feeling have disappeared. The basis of calm and silence should be there first — otherwise the Ananda and love may take a too vital character and prove unstable. You once wrote about the disappearance of love and Ananda: "It is so with all the spiritual experiences. The ordinary consciousness... What is the function of the Yogagni? It prepares the system, creates the yogic aspirations, brings in the experiences of the sadhana etc. At about seven a.m. I began to feel the pressure. It was perhaps for the peace because soon I began to experience peace. At eight there was another pressure probably for silence. But I could not maintain the silence properly due to the... through my body, making the adhar stilled for a while. Of course it is the thrill of the Mother's touch coming from above and felt by the psychic and vital together. Day by day it is now becoming obvious that the Mother is bestowing upon her child a psychic and spiritual realisation simultaneously. It is an immense progress. Through my forehead ...
... joined palms on to his forehead in a gesture of 'Pranam' to the Mother and then slowly walks away in a half-indrawn state. He is immensely pleased with himself for having had a successful "concentrated meditation" on the divine Mother for full five minutes. But was it really successful as a meditation ? Did he derive much spiritual benefit out of his routine exercise in daily morning meditation... forward.] 4. Self-surrender to the Mother is the most effective way of one's spiritual fulfilment. [Thought pauses again and ponders in silence what surrender means; and then gives place to the succeeding Bought in this slow-moving series.] Etc. Readers are invited to observe carefully the notable features here.... One thought emerges from the centre, "The Mother", trav- Page 209 ... for the sake of meditation has not much value for us. To have some illuminating experiences while sitting in meditation cannot be the special object of our seeking. What we seek after is to be united with the Divine always and under all circumstances, whether in silent meditation or in active waking life. As the Mother has reminded us: "Whether you sit down to meditation or go about and do ...
... even if, as in spiritual life, we feel the need of silencing or at least quieting the mind, we cannot easily arrive at a total renunciation of its habitual, hampering activities. Especially, in this age of exaggerated intellectuality, we are apt to confuse spirituality with mental accomplishments and let the power of our pen or the eloquence of our tongue to duty for spiritual experience. It is not unoften... In the Mother's Light The Mind WHAT is the proper place and function of the mind in spiritual life ? Is it a help or a hindrance ? Can spiritual illumination come by mere intellectual development ? How should one deal with the mind in order to make it aid and subserve one's spiritual end? The mind is the pride, power and highest possession of man until he rises... Its brilliant, un- spiritual, egoistic, sense-enmeshed, matter-enslaved intellect is leading its life from problems to predicaments and from predicaments to perils. It is a blind chase—after what ? What should we do with the mind in order to make it help our spiritual evolution and become a supple and docile instrument of the Divine, which it is meant to be ? The Mother says, "The mind has ...
... account. For Yoga claims to be, among many other things, a methodised quest of spiritual and eventually of integral knowledge which is found to have succeeded in arriving at certain stable states of consciousness and of plenary illumination and knowledge of truths which can be verified both objectively and in personal experience by means of criteria which can be considered to be as sound as in any inquiry... Advaita, Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita, Purusha and Prakriti, Brahman and Maya, Ishwara and Shakti and hundred other similar concepts have behind them the experiences and realisations which are of central significance to Yoga. And pertaining to each experience and each state of consciousness there are numerous powers of action, and at various levels of being they have varying degrees of effectivity. All these... sanction and master, anumanta and ishwara. One of these experiences or all of them together can provide a sure basis of freedom from the tangles of the problems that the field of circumstances and the battle of life present to us by means of an interplay of the three gunas of Nature, sattwa, rajas, and tamas . But at this level of experience, although there is here freedom from action and its ...
... known) that she came into personal contact with somebody from India. She was evidently on the lookout for any meaningful help she could get in her quest. The inner experiences continued to come frequently, and so did the memories of past lives, as they had done even long before she had the slightest idea of reincarnation. Eager for knowledge and understanding of her experiences, she read everything she... The Mother deemed herself lucky that she had been brought up like that, and said that it was one of the reasons why she had chosen those very parents. Taking into account her numerous inner experiences, her hereditary constitution was the best possible base for her not getting trapped in mental or other aberrations and to prevent her from drifting. Thus she was assured that her experiences were no... aspects of life, the significant as well as the apparently insignificant, and ‘never forgot something she had seen even once.’ It is, however, typical that she transmuted many of the experiences of her youth into a spiritual dimension. ‘Progress,’ the keyword of the nineteenth century, became the keyword of her life too, but widened in a way our story still has to discover. And one day she would quote ...
... who got spiritual inspiration from Raman Maharshi and attained a great spiritual height by becoming a Sannyasi and repeating Ram mantra. Dilip wrote, "Years ago, I had visited Ramdas's ashram and had been captivated by his radiant personality, flawless sincerity and unalterable purity of character." (D.K.Roy & Indira Devi, Pilgrims of the Stars) 17. Sri Aurobindo's own experience in Alipore... Irani (1894 -1969) was born in Pune from parents of Persian origin. He had his first experience of "God-realization" in 1913, while in College. Later on he trained disciples and travelled with them in India and Iran, then established a retreat near Ahmednagar. He released a large volume of works on the spiritual theme of human life. m 1925 he went into silence and in 1927 he stopped writing, in... and Uttararamacarita. He was a great devotee of Shiva. 112. Raihana Tyabji was born and brought up in an aristocratic highly educated muslim family. At the age of 16 she had a profound spiritual experience which she narrated in a booklet: Heart of a Gopi. She was a powerful singer and used to Page 400 sing Meera bhajans in love of Krishna. She passed away in 1976. 113 . Mrinalini ...
... "trying to make them understand" out of the picture. If you want to include those things for your personal satisfaction, because it makes the thing more real, more living, I agree; but get rid of this "trying to make them understand," it's impossible. I tell you, as soon as you go beyond the matter-of-fact ( Mother sticks her hand right under her nose ), they're lost. But tell them what they can see when... still a little too lofty. Oh, listen.... All right, it's all right ( Mother laughs ). A bit too high for them. But this chapter ends here, doesn't it? It's simply to give some background. Still, I can't avoid saying what's new in what Sri Aurobindo brings, precisely because it has nothing to do with "spiritual" India. We can't avoid telling them this one way or another, can we? Yes... and the effort isn't completely wasted. The events in Algeria 2 and certain things in America too.... There's a response. And then (I think I've told you this), some people are suddenly having experiences out of all proportion to their inner state, as though they'd been projected into a curve absorbing several lifetimes. This seems to be what's happening individually. People with the least bit of ...
... these words of Nirodbaran give vivid expression, not to his personal faith and experience alone, but to those of countless others as well: Out of His Samadhi a thousand flames seem to be mounting up and, lodged in our soul, burning in an ever rejuvenating fire, while His Presence enveloping and merging with and radiating from the Mother's being and body is pervading the whole atmosphere. One can... missioned down"... "She only can save herself and save the world." It is impossible not to mark the parallelisms, the correlations, between Savitri's predicament in the poem and the Mother's in December 1950. In both, the personal problem is gathered into the terrestrial, the cosmic; in both, the transcendence of Death is to mean the reign of New Life, the establishment of the supramental mode. But the issue... answered, "Yes, I have come for that." 4 If that was the acknowledged purpose of Sri Aurobindo's avatarhood and spiritual ministry on the earth, anything he did - including his withdrawal from his body - must have had a close connection with that fundamental objective. Even in 1938, the Mother used to see the Supermind descending into the outer physical being of Sri Aurobindo, but it couldn't be fixed ...
... in perspective. Positivist and Spiritual Evolution The central theme of this talk is that the macrocosm, and in it the human being as the microcosm, are brought about by a divine creative Force above and behind them, which Sri Aurobindo calls “Supermind.” What Sri Aurobindo called Supermind, and what he and the Mother discovered through their own experience, was partially known in the great... the wisdom traditions and the oriental spiritualities, with their countless generations of seers, saints, yogis and spiritual masters, and with their immense treasures of knowledge, they have no idea. The spirit of faith has, as its source and touchstone, the spiritual experience. “The ancient Indians through their yogic insight found the idea of similar evolution, which the modern scientists are... Divine that “Supermind is Superman.” The Supermind is the intermediary Power between Sachchidananda, i.e. the ultimate attributes of the Godhead as conceivable by the human intellect and spiritual experience, and the mental ranges at the disposal of the human being. It is “the beginning and end of all creation and arrangement, the Alpha and the Omega, the starting point of all differentiation, the ...
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