
Earth's Spiritual History
“I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not final though everything may be there in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India is a very important stage and the names I mentioned [Ramakrishna and Vivekananda] had a special prominence in my thought at the time — they seemed to me to indicate the lines from which the future spiritual development had most directly to proceed, not staying but passing on. I do not know that I would put my meaning exactly in the language you suggest. I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion new or old for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-411
A Thorough Knowledge of Earth's Spiritual History
“We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future. A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have not only to assimilate the influences of the great theistic religions of India and of the world and a recovered sense of the meaning of Buddhism, but to take full account of the potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking; and, beyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil. All this points to a new, a very rich, a very vast synthesis; a fresh and 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.”22
Sri Aurobindo
Integral Yoga proposes a Sadhaka1 to have a full account of Spiritual history of earth which is ‘a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated.’23 This account also includes knowledge on the limited vision of modern Science,22 long practice of self-disciplines of traditional Shastra of the Veda, the Upanishad and the Gita20 subordinated by the long practice of the methods of Raja Yoga, Hatha Yoga and Tantra. This study of full account also includes Spiritual rise and Spiritual fall of human consciousness, conquest of difficulties,35 and study of the limitations and immense possibilities of traditional and integral Sadhakas. Those who are fit for the Supramental world for them the knowledge of the Spiritual history of the earth will knock at their door. King Aswapati was able to receive such knowledge and by this experience his position in the existence became greater than God. (Refer this line of Savitri, “All that the Gods have learned are there self-known.” Savitri-74)
A complete knowledge on traditional schools of Yoga preconditions total knowledge from within and without on the Spiritual history of Earth. The full knowledge of history of earth can be traced from within by ascending to a higher state of Consciousness40 and it can be traced from without by detailed study and practice of ancient Shastras. An in-depth knowledge on Sri Aurobindo’s Teachings is developed by rigorous practice of traditional schools of Yoga and restatement of Spiritual history of earth. So, a thorough knowledge on Sri Aurobindo preconditions thorough knowledge on traditional schools of Yoga. The Mother’s Teachings is identified as restatement of Sri Aurobindo’s Teachings. So a thorough knowledge on The Mother’s Teachings preconditions thorough knowledge on Sri Aurobindo’s Teachings. The Mother’s Work rests on the thorough knowledge on Her Teachings or detailed knowledge21 on the movement of Her comprehensive Consciousness. The Mother observed, “But the difficulty is to find the “some one” who knows Sri Aurobindo thoroughly…(and subsequently) who is capable of receiving His inspirations directly…capable of understanding Sri Aurobindo’s inspiration and transmitting it…and has at the same time very strong character… (and if possible) to have His genius… For years I have been looking for that man, without finding him.”19
Evolution is a global process. Each species reproduces itself endlessly to rediscover in itself the missing link24 and men are the first sons of nature, who aspire to reach the highest through the organised faculty of purified mind32 and intellect. The individual’s sense of responsibility to the requirement of his evolutionary need can be visualised by dissecting his present faculties and their collaboration in the destined journey from the suffocation of ignorance, falsehood, suffering and death to the ascending stairs of Knowledge, Truth, Ananda and Immortality. If man’s sole objective is to generate more and more wealth, procreation of a family and maintenance of it through out the life and enjoy life with the existing faculty of instincts then we have to be rest satisfied with the arrested development of the species. Or else we have to evolve another formula of self development, which our ancient Seers and subsequent Spiritual disciplines have proposed, that can truly liberate us to its extreme end of integral satisfaction. Fulfillment of life does not ask to possess more and more of what we have and of what we enjoy but to rediscover in ourselves the all-inclusive totality and possession of all that is eternal, infinite and true.
The Importance of Shastras, Gurus, Avataras and the Divine Mother: -
“One must first find one’s soul, this is absolutely indispensable, and identify oneself with it. Later one can come to the transformation. Sri Aurobindo has written somewhere: “Our Yoga begins where the others end.” Usually yoga leads precisely to this identification, this union with the Divine — that is why it is called “yoga”. And when people reach this, well, they are at the end of their path and are satisfied. But Sri Aurobindo has written: we begin when they finish; you have found the Divine but instead of sitting down in contemplation and waiting for the Divine to take you out of your body which has become useless, on the contrary, with this consciousness you turn to the body and to life and begin the work of transformation — which is very hard labour. It’s here that he compares it with cutting one’s way through a virgin forest; because as nobody has done it before, one must make one’s path where there was none. But to try to do this without having the indispensable directive of the union with the Divine within, within one’s soul, is childishness.”33
The Mother
Shastra:
Scriptures are generally secret knowledge descended from above. They are vast records of Spiritual experiences that our ancient Rishis and later Seers have witnessed. Our ancient Scriptures are great in their wisdom. Great pasts always help mankind to arrive at a greater future and dawn succeeds dawn. Mankind shall arrive at its greatest wisdom when it will be able to recover from its lost totality fulfilling all the past promises. Our ancient Seers had foreseen the ultimate future of mankind in the culmination and possession of God, Light, Freedom, Bliss and Immortality.
The importance of reference to the Scriptures were felt because the secret formula of Soul’s ascent were recorded there and these Seers were masters in discovering new heights in Soul’s ascent and arrived at corresponding new siddhis. Each proposed a new path and they are quite essential while tracing one’s own path and each siddhi is a step required in the integral development. So the perfection is to be sought through ascent of thousands of manifold paths leading to the one Divine and the corresponding return of the same Divinity in to multiplicities of the material life. The popular tendency of human mind to attain the Divine through the path of the shortest of the shortcuts is henceforward not considered from our subject of scrutiny.
Guru:
“The Teacher of the integral Yoga will follow as far as he may the method of the Teacher within us. He will lead the disciple through the nature of the disciple. Teaching, example, influence,—these are the three instruments of the Guru. But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a utilisable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanising of process. His whole business is to awaken the divine light and set working the divine force of which he himself is only a means and an aid, a body or a channel. ” 66-67
Guru is an intermediary destined to lead aspirant Souls towards the Supreme and his physical presence is a rare opportunity in the life of disciples. ‘The divine soul reproduces itself in similar liberated souls as the animal reproduces itself in similar bodies. Therefore, whenever even a single soul is liberated, there is a tendency to an extension and even to an outburst of the same divine self-consciousness in other individual souls of our terrestrial humanity…’2 In this integral Yoga, The Mother and Sri Aurobindo are identified as physical embodiment of the Divine, symbol of comprehensive movement of Consciousness, the Primary Source of our Spiritual and Material Life, dual Avatar and a special manifestation of Supreme Guru, Parameswar. Integral Teacher is a symbol of movement of Psychic and Spiritual Consciousness leading it to still higher planes of Consciousness, one Soul centre of the multiple or universal Divine, the secondary Source, Spiritual fosterer of twice-born Souls and his task is to strengthen the contact of twice-born Souls with the primary Source, who is at once Transcendent, Universal and Individual Psychic Being.
Avatara:
Avataras descend on earth equipped with the delegated power from the Supreme, when humanity suffers a crisis in Consciousness and lead humanity to the next step of the ladder in the evolutionary ascent. Avatara’s main work is to reveal in man His Divine nature, madbhava and show Divine work, which becomes a means of rebirth of divinities in man. His other mission is restoration of good, dharma by destruction of the evil as did Sri Rama and Sri Krishna or He may represent Himself as divine messenger preaching the gospel of love and peace as did Buddha, Christ and Sri Chaitanya. Avatara’s birth brings an opportunity in each individual formation of human species to repeat His Spiritual experiences and elevate to His Spiritual status.
‘Islam was a return towards sensation, beauty, and harmony in the form, and legitimization of sensations and joy in beauty.’3 ‘Mahomed, as we know, only developed the existing social, religious and administrative customs of the Arab people in to a new system dictated to him often in trance, in which he passed from his conscient into superconscient self, by the Divinity to his secret intuitive mind.’3 Christ came to show the earth that how sorrow and suffering4 can be means of redemption. The purpose behind Sri Rama’s Avatarahood was to establish on earth Rama rajya, the kingdom of sattwic man by destruction of asuric forces, Ravana; whereas His predecessors, the Dwarf, Bamana and Parsuram were Avataras representing tamasic and rajasic aspect of man respectively in the manifestation.
The successive Avataras after Sri Rama were from trigunatita planes of consciousness representing different hierarchies; Buddha was from illumined mind, Sri Chaitanya41 was from spiritual-psychic plane, Sri Ramakrishna was from intuitive mind and Sri Krishna was from Overmind plane of consciousness. They came to lead the human souls to Divine height, trigunatita chetana and established the passage to the kingdom of God in heaven and a dynasty of self-ruling kings on earth, Dharma-rajya.
Buddhistic Nirvana is the disintegration of samskara and Vedantic Nirvana is the abolition of samskara and one can do all action while remaining in this state of absolute peace and freedom. Samskara is here the accumulated past Karma of this life as well as that of past lives stored in our chitta or in the Subconscient Sheath and this samskara clouds the Soul which we mistake for our Self. Buddha’s Nirvana is the supreme liberation but that liberation is negative, as that Divine state does not return upon earth positively to complete the evolution. He was horrified by the suffering, impermanence, decay of all things and concluded that the disappearance of creation is the true remedy. Sri Krishna represents complete divine manhood leading the race towards Divine Love and Divine Ananda culminating in Jivanmukta State. To grow in Krishna Consciousness is to feel His presence, enter Spiritual relation with Him by union in Soul and know Him as a Friend, Lover, Father, Mother, Play-mate, Guide and Teacher. ‘And in the Gita he speaks of this human world as a transient and sorrowful affair and, in spite of his gospel of divine action, seems almost to admit that to leave it is after all the best solution.’5 The Gita remained silent about the total solution of all problems of existence.
Kalki (His coming is symbolic and His action has already begun), the last Avatara will complete the work that Sri Krishna began and correct what Buddha and Sri Krishna left, by bringing the Divine upon earth and destroying the opposing asuric forces. The Kingdom of God on earth, Deva-rajya is the last promise of future Avataras and Vibhutis in order to complete the work of evolution.
After Buddha those who dominated Indian spirituality were Shankara, Sri Chaitanya and Sri Ramakrishna. Shankara’s main realisation was Brahma satyam Jagat mithya, the Divine alone is truth and all the rest are illusion, maya. He, like Buddha further confirmed that work has to be renounced in order to attain the Brahman and all the ascetic movements after Buddha and its theory of inaction have left India weaker, added to it the lure of Sannyasa isolated the best souls of the then time from the main streams of life and society; whereas Shankara’s predecessor Sri Krishna confirmed that all work, sarva karmani is an indispensable means for continuation of earth life and attaining Brahma Nirvana. India failed to pursue the spirit of The Gita and its method of integral development through Jnana, Bhakti, gospel of Divine action, surrender and equality in the subsequent period of human history resulting in a tamasic decline of a race. ‘The main work of Sri Chaitanya was to establish the type of a Spiritual and Psychic bhakti and love in the emotional vital part of man, preparing the vital in us in that way to turn towards the Divine—at any rate, to fix that possibility in the earth-nature.’6 His mission was to show the secret principle of Bhakta becoming Bhagawan by possession of the Godhead into a human vessel. ‘Ramakrishna’s Yoga was also turned only to an inner realisation of the inner Divine, --nothing less, but also nothing more.’7 Sri Ramakrishna, like Shankara succeeded in generating thousands of perfect Sannyasis, because sannayasa has been widely preached and numerously practiced. Earth shall move forward in order to create thousands of perfect Janaka, who symbolize a dynasty of self-ruling universalised Kings and Karma Yogis. These strong and liberated Souls will not wear the garb and outer token of world shunning Sannyasis who are preoccupied with individual liberation in heaven; for these Janakas wear the garb of the world and they will liberate earth through movement of universal Consciousness.
If humanity fails to reach a favorable atmosphere for substantial change in the present discord and disharmony then ‘Kalki’s sword alone can purify the earth of the burden of an obstinately asuric humanity. Or the Mother revealed in the Kali’s laughter and death dance shall capture an unquiet earth and mankind will be deprived of Krishna’s Ananda. The choice depends on the species itself; for as it sows, so shall it reap the fruit of its Karma.’8 Kalki’s destruction can be avoided if earth consents to become pure, liberating itself from the clutch of Adam and Eve, who symbolize bondage through physical passion. A pure earth can become a play field of Krishna and Kali where God is revealed as “happiest boy and strongest girl of the crowd”9 bringing down the Supreme’s Love and the Kingdom of God on earth.
The earliest school of Indian seers, the Vedic Rishis sought after physical immortality. They proposed double movement of ascent of the Soul in to the Divine height and descent of Divine Shakti into the triple world of mind, life and body in order to reestablish in these domains the lost Divinity. They failed to achieve their goal as the quest was exclusive, which may be analyzed in the following manner; (1) humanity in its collectivity was not ready for such transformation as human evolution in that period was in a formative stage and was far from being matured; (2) their quest for Immortality was individualistic in nature oblivious of a certain amount of collective universal evolution, (3) immortality has to be sought in the transcendence after the universalisation of individual Consciousness, as Sri Aurobindo proposes.37 But the Vedic seers escaped into Transcendent Consciousness from individual Consciousness by bypassing the process of Universalisation; (4) they made little attempt to accelerate the universal evolution and the common humanity of the then time were left in deep darkness, tamas and ignorance.
In the subsequent Spiritual quests, in the post Vedic era, the ascent of Soul into Divine height found its predominance and the importance was confined in the merger of Soul in the Divine state by exclusive samadhi in this life and return of the Soul into Divine state in the after life; and the corresponding descent of these Divinities in to the material life was left into oblivion. Hence material life was left neglected and the gap between Matter and the Spirit grew resulting in an irreconcilable gulf and bankruptcy of material opulence.
The Divine Mother:
In Indian spiritual history the Ishwari aspect of the Divine found its predominance in Tantra. The Divine Mother’s role in our total development has been identified by the saying, ‘How shall he attain to Krishna who has never worshipped Kali?’29 Intimacy with the Divine Mother is felt indispensable in the life of Her children as Her supreme touch protects and nourishes the pure and virgin stuff of our mind, life and body. She is concerned with the total care of Her children and She pursues in each successive life the leading of the children towards their supreme Goal. The supreme task of the Divine Mother is to liberate our nature from the bondage of fixed destiny, narrow creeds, established habits and indispensable Laws, leading us to a higher Spiritual destiny, absolute freedom from habits, transformation of Nature and a Deathless state. She is the author of earth’s high change and Her single perfection can save the earth from intimidating doom. Her ultimate mission is ‘to stay the wheels of doom’10 so that the ‘doom may be left to sleep…for all time.’11 Earth’s Spiritual history saw Her long and endless struggle and suffering, and earth shall wait to see with intense gratitude Her final victory.
Superseding the Spiritual Predecessors: -
Sri Aurobindo was asked by one of His disciples whether He and the Mother were Avataras on earth. Sri Aurobindo’s reply was clear that they came to earth not as Avataras.12 But a study of Them reveals that the above reply was His greatness and humbleness, and They had far exceeded the limits of the Avataras. After landing on Indian soil Sri Aurobindo’s first major Spiritual realisation was Immutable Brahman, which gave a strong feeling that the Divine alone is truth and all the rest were illusion, Brahma Satyam Jagat Mithya. He superseded Shankara with the arrival of His second major realisation at Alipore Jail of Basudev Sarvamiti, which gave a strong sense that this world as well as the Brahman were real and true and this world is as real as the Brahman. Before His arrival at Pondicherry He had already realised the Inner Divine, which was the main objective of Sri Ramakrishna’s Yoga, He went beyond Buddha in the sense that His realisation of Supreme had the capacity of return positively to complete the evolution. He had already realised the Psychic Bhakti as Sri Chaitanya had and was in the process of bringing the Divine Love to the triple world of mind, life and body. At Pondicherry, He concentrated for first sixteen years from 1910 to1926 on difficult side of sadhana related with thirty-five (28+7) siddhis and number of sub-siddhis covering a whole range of Yoga of self-perfection. On 24th November, 1926 He attained along with The Mother, the Overmental siddhi, the highest Divine realisation descended to earth through Sri Krishna. Sri Krishna supports evolution through multiple concentration or Overmind leading it towards Ananda. None of the past attempts to unite with the Divine satisfied Sri Aurobindo; He wanted something more, something more comprehensive. After 1926, He concentrated for about twenty-four years for bringing down the Supramental, the integral concentration that will complete earth’s evolution. Before this, the evolutionary urges that were active for accelerating the earth’s evolution were (1) exclusive concentration, (2) essential concentration and (3) multiple concentration. The above three concentrations, will not be able to resolve the fundamental problems of existence. Supramental concentration puts a big pressure on humanity (and also on the animal and plant kingdoms) in order to transcend its limitations. But the present humanity will fail to understand its all-inclusive benefits due to their confinement within the boundaries of exclusive concentration. This last century had witnessed the burst of genius under the pressure of this new concentration, which had never been witnessed throughout the millennium. But man’s possibility of uniting with Him is open through ever exceeding hierarchies of Consciousness and he has to decide whether he has to remain satisfied with the existing faculties or to explore deeper realms of Consciousness.
Sri Aurobindo confirmed that a comprehensive solution of all problems of existence is possible including the quest of the Vedic Rishis connected with the physical Immortality. Immortality is the final victory and perfection of Spirit over material substance. Here, this quest for immortality is not exclusive in nature but a part of the all-inclusive totality and it can continue in three steps:- (1) accessibility, (2) purification and (3) perfection of all the intermediate planes (Inconscient sheath, Subconscient Sheath, subtle physical, subtle vital, subtle mental, Psychic, Spiritual, Universal sheaths) of Consciousness. Accessibility to these intermediate planes of Consciousness is possible by partial opening of Psychic and Spiritual being which is again possible by quieting the surface mind, surface vital and surface physical instincts and habits. The purification and perfection of these planes of Consciousness are possible by Psychic influence and descent of divinities from the Spiritual plane of consciousness.
A similar account of The Mother’s Spiritual experiences can be recorded. Truckloads of Spiritual experiences dumped over Her head right from the age of four.38 Later on She said that She was forced to refer to Scriptures only to confirm and understand Her own Spiritual experiences. When Sri Aurobindo left His body in 1950, a major part of His accumulated Spiritual force was transferred to The Mother’s body and the rest dispersed into the subtle physical. The Mother continued the work that Sri Aurobindo left for the next twenty-three years. On 29th February, 1956 another major siddhi in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga came when the much awaited Supramental force entered the Earth’s domain through the Mother’s intervention in the subtle physical and was swallowed by the hunger of the Inconscient world. Previously the action of this force on earth was routed through the universalized Consciousness of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. From this day onwards The Mother entered into a new domain of Cellular transformation, most rare in earth’s Spiritual history (some southern saints like Thirumoolar and Ramalingam were aware of Cellular transformation but their quest was individualistic or not universalized.). The Cellular transformation is the behavior of cells of the body, which began to undulate in between the old existing mechanical concentration and a new immortal principle. The cells underwent a training of constitutional change in order to hold the higher intensities of Supramental force. The transition between attachment to the old way of cells living and adopting a new principle is the most difficult issue before mankind that humanity has to face and pursue. Since the Mother left at this transition, the further future exploration shall wait the arrival (or they may be present in earth’s atmosphere) of strong and capable souls. The Mother confirmed that Her Yoga of cellular transformation can be followed by every body13 unconsciously and it is not the privilege of a few exceptional Souls, since the constitution of the cells of Her body is as inert and unconscious as that of others and from a positive point of view this new Consciousness is highly contagious in its nature and one can hardly escape from its Influence. The next difficult task of Mother Nature related to the multiplication of individual Cellular transformation may be understood in The Mother’s language, “If, for any reason this body (The Mother’s body) becomes unusable, the universal Mother will again start manifesting in hundreds of individualities according to their capacity and receptivity, each one being a partial manifestation of the Universal Consciousness.”39 The Mother probably kept a tremendous hope that Her future generation will be born with substantial Spiritual force or born with new material substance or the new Consciousness will contagiously spread over the material substance and it will be easy for them to trace the path and they will cover and spread over the whole of humanity. Sri Aurobindo was absolutely against any propaganda and advertisement34 of His Teachings as that is foreign to the free and dominant functioning of the new Consciousness and He knew that those strong Souls who will pursue His Yoga are destined for it and they are very few in numbers in the present scenario and in future they will spread to cover the whole of humanity. He was also against the generation of thousands of disciples and devotees; for He knew that they will not be sincere enough to universalise and transcendentalise their Consciousness, rather they will ruin and corrupt His action by institutionalization and secterianization.14 His Teachings may dilute through religious movements of ambitious Devotees. Transforming the human destiny is the subject of concentration and perfection of a single individual or few individuals or it is the responsibility of Supramental Concentration and this inner movement is inconsistent with the organised mass movement. Mass association is effective only in religious, political and national movements because their objective is narrow and localised. Or those Spiritual masters or Religious Teachers who are destined for Divine work through essential and multiple concentration may rely on organized mass movement, lokasangraha. The Mother was equally not interested in any action that will lead to name and fame36 and from study we have understood that the name and fame arrest the consciousness in rajasic plane. Sri Aurobindo was not interested to become a Guru and in His earlier Spiritual life He was even against the doctrine of guruhood, guruvad. Later He became Guru as it was destined for Him and He accepted people to live with Him out of His compassion and compulsion of the surrounding world. Gradually the number grew and His house expanded into an Ashram. Those who are ready to become the Mother’s children, which means those who are simple, truthful, not ambitious, there is substantial thirst to grow, ready to serve and surrender before the Divine by giving up ego, they are accepted as His disciples. The Mother defined that those who offer their soul, life, work and wealth entirely to the Divine are Her true children. For Sri Aurobindo, the Guru is an aid and helper and not an indispensable means for self-development and in His Yoga the Supreme Divine above or the inner Divine Guru in the heart will replace a necessity and subordination of physical Guru. In integral Yoga, if a Sadhaka is having Spiritual fosterer within as Psychic being and without as living Spiritual Teacher then that is identified as exceptional privilege.30 Those who ‘follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga’30 Sri Aurobindo confirms in The Synthesis of Yoga that a 'strong (man) but crude vital natures'42 cannot become the true leader of men.
Those who are in a preliminary stage not open to the Divine directly, as Sri Aurobindo proposes, can turn towards The Mother’s subtle-physical help through consecrated action and consecrated Bhakti;43 for She had the exceptional privilege of direct contact with the Divine from Her birth. Through Avatar’s Influence one can transcend his lower Nature and transform his ordinary action to Divine action. In His Ashram the relationship between Bhakta and Bhagawan, Guru and Shishya, Lover and Beloved has transformed into an ecstatic play field of The Mother and Child.
The main contribution of Sri Aurobindo to earth’s Spiritual history is the bringing down the Divine to the material plane or bringing down the Supramental concentration, the comprehensive and strong Spiritual force through which humanity will be able to eliminate four fundamental problems of existence:- Ignorance, Suffering, Falsehood and Death. The pressure of this Integral concentration is all-pervasive and it leaves no corner of earth untouched from the domain of its self-growth. His mission was ‘not to create mathas, ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna and Kali.’18 This means the Psychic heart Centre will be a playfield of Paramatma Satyavan and Para-prakriti Savitri and thus the God’s Supramental door opens.
The Mother’s main contribution was to lead a step ahead in commencing a Cellular transformation in an individual vessel. Bearing earth’s pain in a single body and bearing the weight of the Eternal and Infinite in a death bound finite body is the secret behind Her earthly life. Other Avataras never suffered a physical pain to such an extent because Their objectives were not in bringing down the Divine into a mortal vessel. She created a new history in the management of the Ashram and Auroville, where all the aspect of life were included for a Divine purpose, inspiring millions to restructure and strengthen their social infrastructure and transform them into Divine community. The task before the next evolutionary pioneers is to understand and catch the threads of the Cellular transformation and Subconscient transformation.
The All-inclusive Totality:-
“Among thousands of men one here and there strives after perfection, and of those who strive and attain to perfection one here and there knows Me integrally in all the principles of my existence, samagram-mam.”
Gita-7.3
“A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-187
The Mother said, “for Sri Aurobindo, the goal was perfection. Perfection not in the sense of a summit but of an all-inclusive totality in which everything is represented, has a place. And I saw that this Perfection would come—must come-in stages. He announced something the realisation of which will stretch over thousands of years. So it must come in stages.”15 Clarifying more on it the Mother said, “We thirst for perfection, not this human perfection which is the perfection of the ego and bars the way to the Divine Perfection, but the ONE perfection which has the power to manifest upon Earth the eternal Truth.”16 Sri Aurobindo declared that it is difficult for Him (also for The Mother) to pursue the Yoga that He has evolved; for ‘The only real difficulty which took decades of spiritual effort to work out towards completeness was to apply spiritual knowledge utterly to the world…’17 More reasons behind the difficulties are:- Firstly, the extent of transformation required in the mind, vital, body, inconscient self, subliminal self and universal self is so colossal in nature, the extent of revolt and opposition from the dark domain towards any change is so great that one life span is now too small for completion of such exercise. Secondly, He saw that the progress in Yoga during the last twelve years of the forty years concentrated sadhana at Pondicherry, was not as intended by Him and He felt the work has to be accelerated in the subtle physical and that is possible by leaving the existing body. Thirdly, He saw that the surrounding world was not ready to bear the massive descent of the Supramental force and the revolt and opposition of the surrounding people was disturbing and as a remedy the exercise of accelerating the universal evolution in the individual body must continue. Fourthly, the Yogi-disciples trained by Him were far behind in Yogic perfection of His demand and were not ready to share the Spiritual burden of the Master or as described in Savitri, ‘A distance severed her from those most close.’26 Fifthly, He saw the constitution of the cells of His physical substance are not plastic enough to bear this higher intensities of Supramental force. He felt the constitution of cells of the Mother’s body were supple and plastic enough to continue this exercise and He decided to accelerate this work from subtle physical by leaving the body and helping The Mother from beyond. The Mother observed, “He (Sri Aurobindo) himself has a greater action, a greater power of action now than when he was in his body. Besides, that’s why he left-because it had to be done that way... It’s very tangible, you know. His action has become very tangible. Of course, it isn’t something mental at all. It is from another region. But it isn’t ethereal or-it’s tangible. I could almost say material."27
The Last twelve years in the life of both Sri Aurobindo and The Mother which passed in extreme suffering, remind us of Their bearing the Earth’s burden that has to be exhausted in an individual (or dual) body for the purpose of acceleration of universal evolution. They never came to achieve the goal but to help humanity to enter another domain of growth. They never searched individual immortality in the Himalayan gorge, as with that achievement humanity would not have been benefited; for in this transformation action even the most deprived one will also have to grow and participate to the extent of his capacity and he too is a part and beneficiary of total growth. They never came to confine Their action within the boundaries of Their Ashram and disciples, rather they accepted each member of the Ashram as a specimen for resolving the world problems. An innumerable account of Their Spiritual experiences are left lying before the next generation for further exploration. This will be useful for them those who are sincere, those who believe that the possession of constantly growing Divine is the object of life and before Its Presence all the separtive identity is meaningless.
Yoga through Fourfold Concentration and Fourfold Cognition: -
“By energism of consciousness (or Tapas or Concentration) Brahman is massed; from that Matter is born and from Matter Life and Mind and the worlds.” Mundaka Upanishad-I.1.8
“We are each of us a dynamo into which waves of that energy have been generated and stored, and are being perpetually conserved, used up and replenished. The same force which moves in the star and the planet, moves in us, and all our thought and action are merely its play and born of the complexity of its functionings. There are processes by which man can increase his capacity as an adhara. There are other processes by which he can clear of obstructions the channel of communication between himself and the universal energy and bring greater and greater stores of it pouring into his soul and brain and body. This continual improvement of the adhara and increase in quantity and complexity of action of the informing energy, is the whole aim of evolution.”31
Sri Aurobindo
The Upanishad said that out of tremendous concentration of will heat is generated, which sets the whole being into fire. This concentration is Tapas, which is always present in the manifestation as the inherent power of consciousness and from the pressure of this Tapas Matter has evolved and from Matter, mind, life, and other intermediary worlds:- subliminal Self, inconscient Self and universal Self have evolved. In the progressive evolution this concentration works in four distinct manners in order to evolve four cognitive aspect, which is the subject of our study. The supreme integrality of the Absolute constitutes all these four states of concentration and cognition. Through development of these faculties we can know directly the past, present and future of earth which lies hidden in our Subconscient, Subliminal and Superconscient Sheaths. This knowledge of three times was earlier identified by Seers as trikaladristi. Through development of this triple time faculty, earth’s Spiritual history can be traced directly. Through development of Essential, Multiple and Integral concentration, earth’s Spiritual history can be traced from within and through development of exclusive concentration it can be traced from without. Both are needed for complete understanding and cognition.
1: Exclusive Concentration and Separative Knowledge by indirect contact:-
“The student life was framed to lay the groundwork of what the man had to know, do and be. It gave a thorough training in the necessary arts, sciences, branches of knowledge, but it was still more insistent on the discipline of the ethical nature and in earlier days contained as an indispensable factor a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual knowledge. In these earlier days this training was given in suitable surroundings far away from the life of cities and the teacher was one who had himself passed through the round of this circle of living and, very usually, even, one who had arrived at some remarkable realisation of spiritual knowledge. But subsequently education became more intellectual and mundane; it was imparted in cities and universities and aimed less at an inner preparation of character and knowledge and more at instruction and the training of the intelligence.”25
Sri Aurobindo
The scope of exclusive concentration is confined within the boundaries of ignorance. We understand ignorance as part knowledge or limited knowledge in which mind is separated from the source of knowledge, is oblivious of totality and is narrow and rigid and opposes all harmonious working of the Supreme force. Our forgetfulness of the totality of existence and concentration on an exclusive object is the cause of Ignorance. For clarity we have defined here briefly our totality of existence: - (1) Surface physical self or sthula sarira:- this constitute our surface mind, life, body and desire soul regarding which we remain aware and delude it as our whole of identity; (2) Subliminal self or Sukhma sarira:- we are ignorant of a vast domain of our inner mind, inner life, subtle body and inner Psychic being. This sukhma sarira holds the sthula sarira and it survives after dissolution of sthula sarira; all transformation action of higher possibility takes shape in this domain. Subliminal Self is the meeting ground of all other Selves and all our past, present and future coexist here; (3) Inconscient Sheath (ancient scriptures divide this self into fourteen hells):- we are ignorant of a vast dark and nether domain from which Matter has evolved and this is also the home of all unconsciousness, disharmony and discord like death, disease, accident and past samskara; Subconscient is a world of double twilight, which exists above the Inconscient sheath, (4) Universal Sheath:- we are ignorant of our universal Self through which we enter relation with the universe and become identified with it; (5) Superconscient Self or karana sarira:- we are ignorant of our causal body which holds both our sukhma sarira and our sthula sarira. This is the world of all higher Divine hierarchies from which all the Divine possibilities descend to the material domain. These divine hierarchies are:- higher mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, overmind and the mind of light; (6) Supreme self or Paramatma:- we are ignorant of our Sachchidananda consciousness, which is the source of all other selves including the Supramental.
Yoga through exclusive concentration means quieting the surface physical self and entry in to subliminal self, leading one to a state of self-realisation. This may be practiced by the methods proposed by different Yogic schools and instructions issued by the scriptures. All our scientific research and their inventions, literary creations, work that brings name and fame and success, work related with philanthropy come under the purview of exclusive concentration. With the evolution of mind man has been bestowed with this faculty of exclusive concentration for solution of all problems.
We get the knowledge of ourselves and the surrounding world with the help of our sense organs, mind and intellect. This cognition is Separative Knowledge by Indirect Contact. All diagnostic instruments invented by science fall within this range of cognition. Since this concentration and cognition lie within the boundaries of ignorance, so it fails to give a true and real picture of the world and fails to face and solve the whole problem of existence. The attempt of medical science to eliminate disease and death from earth can not succeed unless they go beyond this gross world and the range of exclusive concentration.
2) Essential Concentration and Separative Knowledge by Direct Contact:-
“As much use as there is in a well with water in flood on every side, so much is there in all the Vedas (Scriptures) for the Brahmin who has Knowledge.” The Gita-2.46
Essential concentration resumes action with the opening of the passage to Psychic Self. A vast domain of inner mind, inner life, subtle physical and inner Psychic being is made accessible. Then a conscious movement begins to undulate in between the Inconscient self and Superconscient self and the Divine Force, Knowledge and Light etc. from Superconscient self will invade the inconscient self, universal self, subliminal self and surface physical self for the purpose of purification and transformation of these domains.
When our sense organs, mind and intellect receive their inspiration from the vast reservoir of Psychic self, then that cognition is Separative Knowledge by Direct Contact. All scientific discoveries and all success stories in the life of individuals find their source of knowledge from this domain, while at the same time they, by their limitation of ignorance live in the boundaries of exclusive concentration.
When our centre of living is changed from surface physical self to the Subliminal and Psychic self, which is a world of truth, knowledge and new creation, which is also a world of meeting place of all other selves for the purpose of transformation, then the essential concentration finds its predominance in life. This concentration is a sole indwelling or an entire absorption in the essence of its own being and undulates in between the discord of inconscient self and the silence and harmony of Superconscient self. Essential concentration culminates in the universalization of individual consciousness.
3) Multiple Concentration and Knowledge by Direct contact:-
“After many births of preparation, a Jnana Yogi with strong foundation of Karma and Bhakti Yoga, attains My Purushottama or Supramental state of Consciousness. He also realises the intermediate stair that all this existence is Divine, the Cosmic Consciousness, Vasudevah sarvamiti. Such great Soul or integral Yogi is very rare.”
The Gita-7.19
Multiple concentration resumes action after the universalization of the individual consciousness. The subliminal self or the sukhma sarira that surrounds the gross body grows by loss of ego and descent of Superconscient divine forces. When this sukhma sarira grows to the proportion of earth, then a Yogi attains universalization. After this realisation of universal Self, one feels the universe within and there is free flow of universal energy into the individual vessel. Sri Aurobindo had this realisation of universal self at Alipore jail and He took around eighteen years, from 1908 to 1926 to exhaust all the siddhis in this domain and reached the final Overmental siddhi. A Guru can protect and guide all his disciples through the intervention of this concentration. Sri Aurobindo’s help was not confined to His disciples alone, His action was global; for instance during world war-II, He sent thousands of His emanations at a time, who materialized in the war field and extended His physical help to those who were in danger. He even applied His Overmental Spiritual force against the Nazis in order to change the course of world event. The Godhead of The Gita presided over the whole war of Kurukshetra through intervention of this concentration. Multiple world problems are resolved at a time by intervention of this concentration.
Knowledge by direct contact is the whole range of knowledge covering the past, present and future, which is available in the subliminal Self. In the subliminal self there is a whole range of inner sight, inner hearing, inner taste, inner touch and smell which far exceed the limit of outer sense organs and the contact with truth of things is more intense, real and profound. But this knowledge has its source in the superconscient self and it suffers some error due to presence of some impurity in the surface part of subliminal self, that is close to gross physical. The foreknowledge of the war at Kurukshetra to the Divine Teacher is an example of this knowledge and He saw through His Divine eye all the happenings of the Kurukshetra before the war and the same capacity of vision was also offered to Arjuna and Sanjaya in the war field. After universalization of individual consciousness, acceleration of universal evolution in an individual body is possible by invasion of Superconscient divinities in to the universal self and the most difficult task in the Integral Yoga is to clean the world debris of impurities in the form of Subconscient ignorance, falsehood, suffering and death in an individual body.
4) Integral Concentration and Knowledge by Identity:-
Integral concentration resumes action after the universalization and Overmentalization of the individual consciousness. Overmind is the world of great Gods and the divine Creators. It is also the world of Universal Divine Mother and Her four-fold Spiritual Mother Powers, who as creatrix Mother of the gross world, transforms the divided and many-sided play of the Truth. This power is not sufficient to overcome the Ignorance at its root, as it is itself under the law of Ignorance. Integral Concentration is the total Consciousness of Sachchidananda, the Supramental Concentration. This concentration is comprehensive, aware of the totality, total being and total becoming of the manifestation. When this Concentration intervenes it leaves no problem untouched and unsolved; it resolves all problem of existence. This Concentration establishes the Law of Immortality, Harmony, Knowledge, Ananda and Truth in the mortal vessel. This Concentration or Tapas has ability to penetrate into the innermost domain of the universal physical and universal inconscient Sheaths. Its movement is not from Inconscience to some imperfect light of Superconscient self, which is the essence behind essential concentration, but movement which begins from Truth to greater Truth, from illumination to boundless luminousness. Sri Aurobindo took eighteen years to transcend the boundaries of multiple concentration, though He was in touch with Supramental right from the beginning of Pondicherry life.28 When the Supramental began to descend, He observed that this force is not stabilizing in the mind center and transformation of mind was not possible. With the arrival of The Mother, She asked Sri Aurobindo to bring the Supramental down to the vital and physical centres because mind is penetrated in the vital and physical substance in the form of vital mind and physical mind, and without the transformation of vital mind and physical mind the stabilisation of Supramental in the mind is not possible. But during those eighteen years of sadhana from 1908 to 1926 covering a whole range of Yoga of Self-perfection, He felt the concreteness of this new Consciousness in earth’s atmosphere, whose intervention is felt essential and He knew that He was destined for this work. After 1926, He devoted a period of twenty-four years of exploring the different hierarchies of Supramental Kingdom and bringing down these divinities into mind, vital, body, subliminal self, universal self, Subconscient self and inconscient self. Transforming the universal Inconscient is a long difficult and painful task; for the roots of all problems are ingrained here. The major difficulty is that mind, life and body are finite substance and are having their respective limitations in bearing the weight of the Infinite, which is the nature of Supramental force, becomes a real practical problem. In order to bring down the higher intensities of Supramental force, the mind, vital and body must be prepared enough to hold them or else it will cause imbalance in the normal functioning of the system. The normal biological functioning of the body and the Supramental invasion cannot go together because of the disparity and the crushing of the finite substance by the infinite force; this interpenetration will continue until the material life will attain a new state of Divine equilibrium. The task of bringing down infinite God into a limited death bound vessel is a real, painful and radical adventure never witnessed by human history.
Knowledge by identity is the comprehensive knowledge and is revealed during complete union with the Supreme Sachchidananda. This cognition is absolutely free from all error, all ignorance and is fully aware of the totality of existence. The past, present and future coexists in its vast domain of Integral Knowledge. All problems of existence can be resolved with the intervention of this Concentration and Cognition but mankind may have to wait and strive for a few hundred years in order to work out the world riddle.
The Task of the next Evolutionary Pioneers: -
“The lack of the earth’s receptivity and the behavior of Sri Aurobindo’s disciples are largely responsible for what happened to his body. But one thing is certain: the great misfortune that has just beset us in no way affects the truth of his teaching. All he said is perfectly true and remains so. Time and the course of events will make this abundantly clear.”
The Mother
Feb-1951/Mother’s Agenda-Vol-1/P: 27,
The first task of the pioneers of evolution will be to assimilate the contribution of their predecessors and draw Spiritual help from them in their evolutionary ascent. The next task is that they must be pure and virgin enough to establish the Soul’s supremacy, followed by Divine’s supremacy over mind, life, body and the surrounding world and must be capable to transcendentalize, universalize and overmentalize their individual consciousness. These strong men are not the emotional children of the Divine Mother and they dare to prepare themselves to share the Spiritual burden of the Guru, which is of the nature of purification of universal Subconscient and Inconscient. They or the New consciousness will capture the whole gamut of human institutions like Politics, Economics, Science, Technology, Sociology, Religion, Literature, Schools, Colleges, Industries, Farmlands and Hospitals in order to generate a pressure and compel them in their extreme self-development. Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga on earth will succeed if few34 young aspirants universalize their individual separative identity through a long movement of Consciousness between the Psychic and Spiritual planes.
OM TAT SAT
References: -
."¹ h² e³ t⁴ ,'⁵ ,'⁶ .'⁷ ,'⁸ ,'⁹ s¹⁰
1: “What is aimed at by us is a spiritual truth as the basis of life, the first words of which are (1) surrender and (2) union with the Divine and (3) transcendence of ego. So long as that basis is not established, a Sadhaka is only an ignorant and imperfect human being struggling with the evils of the lower Nature.” Sri Aurobindo/The Mother’s Agenda-4/p-422, “There are three main possibilities for the sadhak — (1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine. (2) To do everything himself like the full Adwaitin and the Buddhist. (3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the Force.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-171, "The Sadhaka has not only to think and know but to see and feel concretely and intensely even in the moment of the working and in its initiation and whole process that his works are not his at all, but are coming through him from the Supreme Existence. He must be always aware of a Force, a Presence, a Will that acts through his individual nature." SABCL-20/217, CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-229, “Especially, in proportion as the partial lights of the mind become transformed into lights of gnosis, in whatever slighter or greater degree that may happen, we feel it as a transformation of our mentality into his and more and more he (Divine) becomes the thinker and seer in us. We cease to think and see for ourselves, but think only what he wills to think for us and see only what he sees for us. And then the teacher is fulfilled in the lover; he lays hands on all our mental being to embrace and possess, to enjoy and use it.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-603,
2. Life Divine-40,
3. The Mother’s Agenda/Vol8/260, SABCL/Vol-15/p-425
4: “A Church is an organised religious community and religion, if anything in the world, ought to be subjective; for its very reason for existence — where it is not merely an ethical creed with a supernatural authority — is to find and realise the soul. Yet religious history has been almost entirely, except in the time of the founders and their immediate successors, an insistence on things objective, rites, ceremonies, authority, church governments, dogmas, forms of belief. Witness the whole external religious history of Europe, that strange sacrilegious tragi-comedy of discords, sanguinary disputations, “religious” wars, persecutions, State churches and all else that is the very negation of the spiritual life. It is only recently that men have begun seriously to consider what Christianity, Catholicism, Islam really mean and are in their soul, that is to say, in their very reality and essence.” CWSA-25/Human Cycle/p-38
5. SABCL/Vol-26/119,
6. SABCL/ Vol-22/420,
7. SABCL/Vol-26/119,
8. The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-13,
9. SABCL/Vol-17/137,
10. Savitri-19,
11. Savitri-420,
12. SABCL/Vol-24/p-448, “(Q) Since you and the Mother were on earth constantly from the beginning what was the need for Avataras coming down here one after another?
We were not on earth as Avataras. 15 December 1935
(Q) You say that you both were not on earth as Avatars and yet you were carrying on the evolution. Since the Divine Himself was on the earth carrying on the evolution, what was the necessity for the coming down of the Avatars who are portions of Himself?
The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution. The Avatar is a special manifestation, while for the rest of the time it is the Divine working within the ordinary human limits as a Vibhuti. 18 December 1935” CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-91,
13. “No, no, no. If it has been done in one body, it can be done in all bodies… But since it's taking place in one body, it can take place in all bodies! I am not made of anything different from others. The difference is the consciousness, that's all. It's made of exactly the same thing, with the same elements, I eat the same things, and it was made in just the same way.” The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-8/p-377-378, “The feeling is rather one of vibrations gathered together and coagulated somewhere – and even at that, there's a very supple inner play, for it spreads out like this (Mother makes a gesture of diffusion or expansion all around her) through a sort of subtilization or etherization. And it's limitless – how could it have any limits! It goes like this (same radiating gesture) – these same vibrations are everywhere, in all bodies and all things. What people call this body is merely the result of a willed concentration organized in a specific way; that's how it spontaneously feels, all the time (not that it's observing itself, but if something forces it to observe itself, that's what it spontaneously feels). And the delimitation that exists in all beings, and which WAS in this body (was it this body?... Haven't the cells changed?... I don't know), which once existed in what people call this body, has completely disappeared. Before (thirty years or so ago), it used to feel like something separate moving among other separate things – that's all gone.” The Mother’s Agenda- August 14, 1962,
14. “Sri Aurobindo was very, very conscious of this general confusion, and so he didn’t much like … he wanted absolutely no propaganda, but he also didn’t much like attempts to “explain things” to people and make them “understand,” because he very well knew how useless it is. He very, very often said it to me: no propaganda whatsoever, of course, and above all, above all, no attempt to make people understand: the maximum effect one can obtain is the effect of the Consciousness at work in the world (universal gesture), because in everyone it produces the utmost the person can do – the utmost of what he can understand, he understands through the influence of the pressure of the Consciousness. As soon as words intervene, the whole mind makes a mess of it.”The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-10/p-60,
15. The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-4/p-101,
16. The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-2/p-394,
17. SABCL/Vol-26/86,
18: "There is another point. You sent a message about an “Aurobindo Math” which seemed to show you had caught the contagion which rages in Bengal. You must understand that my mission is not to create maths, ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna & Kali. That is my teaching, as you can see from the Review, and my name must never be connected with monastic forms or the monastic ideal. Every ascetic movement since the time of Buddha has left India weaker and for a very obvious reason. Renunciation of life is one thing, to make life itself, national, individual, world-life greater & more divine is another. You cannot enforce one ideal on the country without weakening the other. You cannot take away the best souls from life & yet leave life stronger & greater. Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach, — no other renunciation." SABCL/Vol-17/157, CWSA-36/ Autobiographical Note/p-222,
19: “But the difficulty is to find the “some one” who knows Sri Aurobindo thoroughly…(and subsequently) who is capable of receiving His inspirations directly…capable of understanding Sri Aurobindo’s inspiration and transmitting it…and has at the same time very strong character… (and if possible) to have His genius… For years I have been looking for that man, without finding him.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-8/175, The Mother’s Agenda-2/206,
20: “His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, — if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-p-55, “I may say that the way of the Gita is itself a part of the Yoga here and those who have followed it, to begin with or as a first stage, have a stronger basis than others for this Yoga. To look down on it therefore as something separate and inferior is not a right standpoint… I suggested the Gita method for you because the opening which is necessary for the Yoga here seems to be too difficult for you. If you made a less strenuous demand upon yourself, there might be a greater chance.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-445-446,
21: “To be a Yogi, a Sannyasi, a Tapaswi is not the object here. The object is transformation, and the transformation can only be done by a force infinitely greater than your own; it can only be done by being truly like a child in the hands of the Divine Mother.” 7 June 1928/ CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-142-143, “Everyone who is turned to the Mother is doing my Yoga. It is a great mistake to suppose that one can “do” the Purna Yoga i.e. carry out and fulfil all the sides of the Yoga by one’s own effort. No human being can do that. What one has to do is to put oneself in the Mother’s hands and open oneself to her by service, by bhakti, by aspiration; then the Mother by her light and force works in him so that the sadhana is done. It is a mistake also to have the ambition to be a big Purna Yogi or a supramental being and ask oneself how far have I got towards that. The right attitude is to be devoted and given to the Mother and to wish to be whatever she wants you to be. The rest is for the Mother to decide and do in you.” April 1929/CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-151-152,
22: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-10-11, “As in Science, so in metaphysical thought, that general and ultimate solution is likely to be the best which includes and accounts for all so that each truth of experience takes its place in the whole: that knowledge is likely to be the highest knowledge which illumines, integralises, harmonises the significance of all knowledge and accounts for, finds the basic and, one might almost say, the justifying reason of our ignorance and illusion while it cures them; this is the supreme experience which gathers together all experience in the truth of a supreme and all-reconciling oneness. Illusionism unifies by elimination; it deprives all knowledge and experience, except the one supreme merger, of reality and significance.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-485, “Therefore the age of intuitive knowledge, represented by early Vedantic thinking of the Upanishads, had to give place to the age of rational knowledge, inspired Scriptures made room for metaphysical philosophy, even as afterwards metaphysical philosophy had to give place to experimental Science.” CWSA/21/The Life Divine-74,
23: “I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not final though everything may be there in seed. In this development the recent spiritual history of India is a very important stage and the names I mentioned [Ramakrishna and Vivekananda] had a special prominence in my thought at the time — they seemed to me to indicate the lines from which the future spiritual development had most directly to proceed, not staying but passing on. I do not know that I would put my meaning exactly in the language you suggest. I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion new or old for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-411,
24: ‘As it is, the physical body is really only a very disfigured shadow of the eternal life of the Self, but this physical body is capable of a progressive development; the physical substance evolves through each individual formation, and one day, it will be capable of bridging the gap between the physical life as we know it and the Supramental life that will manifest.’ The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-1/page-251,
25: “The Indian system did not entirely leave this difficult growth to the individual’s unaided inner initiative. It supplied him with a framework; it gave him a scale and gradation for his life which could be made into a kind of ladder rising in that sense. This high convenience was the object of the four Asramas. Life was divided into four natural periods and each of them marked out a stage in the working out of this cultural idea of living. There was the period of the (1) student, (2) the period of the householder, (3) the period of the recluse or forest-dweller, (4) the period of the free supersocial man, parivrajaka. (1) The student life was framed to lay the groundwork of what the man had to know, do and be. It gave a thorough training in the necessary arts, sciences, branches of knowledge, but it was still more insistent on the discipline of the ethical nature and in earlier days contained as an indispensable factor a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual knowledge. In these earlier days this training was given in suitable surroundings far away from the life of cities and the teacher was one who had himself passed through the round of this circle of living and, very usually, even, one who had arrived at some remarkable realisation of spiritual knowledge. But subsequently education became more intellectual and mundane; it was imparted in cities and universities and aimed less at an inner preparation of character and knowledge and more at instruction and the training of the intelligence. But in the beginning the Aryan man was really prepared in some degree for the four great objects of his life, artha, kama, dharma, moksa. (2) Entering into the householder stage to live out his knowledge, he was able to serve there the three first human objects; he satisfied his natural being and its interests and desire to take the joy of life, he paid his debt to the society and its demands and by the way he discharged his life functions he prepared himself for the last greatest purpose of his existence. (3) In the third stage he retired to the forest and worked out in a certain seclusion the truth of his spirit. He lived in a broad freedom from the stricter social bonds; but if he so willed, gathering the young around him or receiving the inquirer and seeker, he could leave his knowledge to the new rising generation as an educator or a spiritual teacher. (4) In the last stage of life he was free to throw off every remaining tie and to wander over the world in an extreme spiritual detachment from all the forms of social life, satisfying only the barest necessities, communing with the universal spirit, making his soul ready for eternity. This circle was not obligatory on all. The great majority never went beyond the two first stages; many passed away in the vanaprastha or forest stage. Only the rare few made the last extreme venture and took the life of the wandering recluse. But this profoundly conceived cycle gave a scheme which kept the full course of the human spirit in its view; it could be taken advantage of by all according to their actual growth and in its fullness by those who were sufficiently developed in their present birth to complete the circle. ” CWSA-20/The Renaissance in India/p-174 to 176
26: Savitri-366
27: Dec-20/1972/The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-13/P-326-328,
28: “(Satprem) What about Sri Aurobindo's experience at Alipore, then? You know, that well-known experience when he saw Narayana in the prisoners, Narayana in the guards, Narayana everywhere?...
(The Mother replied) That is the Supreme. Oneness.
(Satprem) Is it a supramental experience or....
(The Mother replied) It is supramental.
(Satprem)Supramental?
(The Mother replied) Yes, the supramental experience. He called it Narayana because he was Indian.
(Satprem) It's supramental, not overmental?
(The Mother replied) No, no…
(Satprem) Anyway, the important thing is what you told me: the experience at Alipore is supramental.
(The Mother replied) Oh, yes! He used the word Narayana because he hadn't yet developed his own terminology; but he isn't referring to the gods: it's the supramental experience.” The Mother’s Agenda-September 26, 1962,
29: SABCL/Vol-17/146,
30: “This will be to him his exceeding good fortune if he can meet one who has realised or is becoming That which he seeks for and can by opening to it in this vessel of its manifestation himself realise it.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-130, "Two rules alone there are that will diminish the difficulty and obviate the danger. One must reject all that comes from the ego, from vital desire, from the mere mind and its presumptuous reasoning incompetence, all that ministers to these agents of the Ignorance. One must learn to hear and follow the voice of the inmost soul, the direction of the Guru, the command of the Master, the working of the Divine Mother. Whoever clings to the desires and weaknesses of the flesh, the cravings and passions of the vital in its turbulent ignorance, the dictates of his personal mind unsilenced and unillumined by a greater knowledge, cannot find the true inner law and is heaping obstacles in the way of the divine fulfilment. Whoever is able to detect and renounce those obscuring agencies and to discern and follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga... A radical and total change of consciousness is not only the whole meaning but, in an increasing force and by progressive stages, the whole method of the integral Yoga." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-187,
31: “The ancient Aryans knew that man was not separate from the universe, but only a homogeneous part of it, as a wave is part of the ocean. An infinite energy, Prakriti, Maya or Shakti, pervades the world, pours itself into every name and form, and the clod, the plant, the insect, the animal, the man are, in their phenomenal existence, merely more or less efficient adharas of this Energy. We are each of us a dynamo into which waves of that energy have been generated and stored, and are being perpetually conserved, used up and replenished. The same force which moves in the star and the planet, moves in us, and all our thought and action are merely its play and born of the complexity of its functionings. There are processes by which man can increase his capacity as an adhara. There are other processes by which he can clear of obstructions the channel of communication between himself and the universal energy and bring greater and greater stores of it pouring into his soul and brain and body. This continual improvement of the adhara and increase in quantity and complexity of action of the informing energy, is the whole aim of evolution. When that energy is the highest in kind and the fullest in amount of which the human adhara is capable, and the adhara itself is trained utterly to bear the inrush and play of the energy, then is a man siddha, the fulfilled or perfect man, his evolution is over and he has completed in the individual that utmost development which the mass of humanity is labouring towards through the ages.” CWSA-1/Early Cultural Writings/p-370,
32: “We may say that here in India the reign of Intuition came first, intellectual Mind developing afterwards in the later philosophy and science. But in fact the mass of men at the time, it is quite evident, lived entirely on the material plane, worshipped the Godheads of material nature, sought from them entirely material objects. The effort of the Vedic mystics revealed to them the things behind through a power of inner sight and hearing and experience which was confined to a limited number of seers and sages and kept carefully secret from the mass of humanity secrecy was always insisted on by the mystics. We may very well attribute this flowering of intuition on the spiritual plane to a rapid reemergence of the essential gains brought down from a previous cycle. If we analyse the spiritual history of India we shall find that after reaching this height there was a descent which attempted to take up each lower degree of the already evolved consciousness and link it to the spiritual at the summit. The Vedic age was followed by a great outburst of intellectual philosophy which yet took spiritual truth as its basis and tried to reach it anew, not through a direct intuitive or occult process as did the Vedic seers, but by the power of the mind’s reflective, speculative, logical thought; at the same time processes of Yoga were developed which used the thinking mind as a means of arriving at spiritual realisation, spiritualising this mind itself at the same time. Then followed an era of the development of philosophies and Yoga processes which more and more used the emotional and aesthetic being as the means of spiritual realisation and spiritualised the emotional level in man through the heart and feeling. This was accompanied by Tantric and other processes which took up the mental will, the life-will, the life of sensations and made them at once the instruments and the field of spiritualisation. In Hathayoga and in the various attempts at divinisation of the body there is also a line of endeavour which attempted to arrive at the same achievement with regard to living matter; but this still awaits the discovery of the true characteristic method and power of spirit in the body. We may say therefore that the universal Consciousness after its descent into Matter has conducted the evolution there along two lines, one of ascent to the discovery of the self and spirit, the other of descent through the already evolved levels of mind, life and body so as to bring down the spiritual consciousness into these also and to fulfil thereby some secret intention in the creation of the material universe. Our Yoga is in its principle a taking up and summarising and completing of this process, an endeavour to rise to the highest possible supramental level and bring down its consciousness and powers into mind, life and body.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-267-268,
33: TMCW-7/Questions and Answers-1955/p-350-351,
34: “Otherwise what will be ultimately accomplished is an achievement by the few initiating a new order of beings, while humanity will have passed sentence of unfitness on itself and may fall back into an evolutionary decline or a stationary immobility; for it is the constants up ward effort (of the few) that has kept humanity alive and maintained for it, Its plays in the front of creation.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-752, “I do not want hundreds of thousands of disciples. It will be enough if I can get a hundred complete men, purified of petty egoism, who will be the instruments of God.” Sri Aurobindo/Champaklal Speaks-191-192, “That is exactly what Sri Aurobindo wanted and attempted; he used to say, “If I can find a hundred people, it will be enough for my purpose.” The Mother’s Agenda-5/p-195, “Even if one person could put himself faithfully at the disposal of the Truth, he could change the country and the world.” The Mother’s Agenda-10/p-148/19th April-1969, “I don’t believe in advertisement except for books etc., and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom—and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on shores of nowhere or it means a movement. A movement in the case of work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some damned nonsense. It means that hundreds and thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the ‘religions’ and the reason of their failure.” 02.10.1934, SABCL/26/p-375,
35: “…but the healing by faith in the cells is an actual fact and a law of Nature and has been demonstrated often enough even apart from Yoga. The way to get faith and everything else is to insist on having them and refuse to flag or despair or give up until one has them — it is the way by which everything has been got since this difficult world began to have thinking and aspiring creatures upon it. It is to open always, always to the Light and turn one’s back on the darkness. It is to refuse the voices that cry persistently, “You cannot, you shall not, you are incapable, you are the puppet of a dream” — for these are the enemy voices, they cut one off from the result that was coming by their strident clamour and then triumphantly point to the barrenness of result as a proof of their thesis. The difficulty of the endeavour is a known thing, but the difficult is not the impossible — it is the difficult that has always been accomplished and the conquest of difficulties makes up all that is valuable in the earth’s history. In the spiritual endeavour also it shall be so.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-100,
36: “They had wanted to give the Nobel prize to Sri Aurobindo, but he left the year before the decision was to be made. And as they don't give the prize to "dead" people, he never got it. Then they wanted to transfer it to me, and I wrote this note, because the last thing I want is name and fame. That's all there was to it. They didn't give a peace prize that year… I believe the whole affair is now buried and forgotten.” The Mother’s Agenda- May 15, 1962
37: “Here the Yoga of self-perfection coincides with the Yogas of knowledge, works and devotion; for it is impossible to change the human nature into the divine or to make it an instrument of the divine knowledge, will and joy of existence, unless there is a union with the supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss and a unity with its universal Self in all things and beings. A wholly separative possession of the divine nature by the human individual, as distinct from a self-withdrawn absorption in it, is not possible.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-622, “The individual must be the instrument and first field of the transformation; but an isolated individual transformation is not enough and may not be wholly feasible. Even when achieved, the individual change will have a permanent and cosmic significance only if the individual becomes a centre and a sign for the establishment of the supramental Consciousness-Force as an overtly operative power in the terrestrial workings of Nature, — in the same way in which thinking Mind has been established through the human evolution as an overtly operative power in Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti, a gnostic Nature. There must be an emergent supramental Consciousness- Force liberated and active within the terrestrial whole and an organised supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body, — for the body consciousness also must become sufficiently awake to be a fit instrument of the workings of the new supramental Force and its new order. Till then any intermediate change could be only partial or insecure; an overmind or intuitive instrumentation of Nature could be developed, but it would be a luminous formation imposed on a fundamental and environmental Inconscience. A supramental principle and its cosmic operation once established permanently on its own basis, the intervening powers of Overmind and spiritual Mind could found themselves securely upon it and reach their own perfection; they would become in the earth-existence a hierarchy of states of consciousness rising out of Mind and physical life to the supreme spiritual level.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-997-998, "A perfect self- expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence. This cannot be achieved if we have not grown conscious of the supreme Reality; for it is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. But neither can it be done to the exclusion of the cosmic Reality: we must become universal, for without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete. The individual separating himself from the All to reach the Highest, loses himself in the supreme heights; including in himself the cosmic consciousness, he recovers his wholeness of self and still keeps his supreme gain of transcendence; he fulfils it and himself in the cosmic completeness. A realised unity of the transcendent, the universal and the individual is an indispensable condition for the fullness of the self-expressing spirit: for the universe is the field of its totality of self-expression, while it is through the individual that its evolutionary self-unfolding here comes to its acme." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-706, "But this experience with X was really interesting. I learned many things that day, many things ... If you concentrate long enough on any one point, you discover the Infinite (and in his own experience he found the infinite), what could be called your own Infinite. But this is not what WE want, not this; what we want is the direct and integral contact between the manifested universe and the Infinite out of which this universe has emerged. So then it is no longer an individual or personal contact with the Infinite, it’s a total contact. And Sri Aurobindo insists on this, he says that it’s absolutely impossible to have the transformation (not the contact, but the supramental transformation) without becoming universalized – that is the first condition. You cannot become supramental before being universal. And to be universal means to accept everything, be everything, become everything – really to accept everything. And as for all those who are shut up in a system, even if it belongs to the highest regions of thought, it is not THAT." The Mother's Agenda/20.09.1960, "He must accept everything, but cling to nothing, be repelled by nothing however imperfect or however subversive of fixed notions, but also allow nothing to lay hold on him to the detriment of the free working of the Truth-Spirit. This equality of the intelligence is an essential condition for rising to the higher supramental and spiritual knowledge." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-718,
38: “I began my sadhana at birth, without knowing that I was doing it. I have continued it throughout my whole life, which means for almost eighty years (even though for perhaps the first three or four years of my life it was only something stirring about in unconsciousness). But I began a deliberate, conscious sadhana at about the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, upon prepared ground. I am now more than eighty years old: I have thought of nothing but That, I have wanted nothing but That, I had no other interest in life, and not for a single minute have I ever forgotten that it was THAT that I wanted. There were not periods of remembering and forgetting: it was continuous, unceasing, day and night, from the age of twenty-four – and I had this experience for the first time about a week ago! So, I say that people who are in a hurry, people who are impatient, are arrogant fools.” The Mother's Agenda/01.05.1958, "Since my earliest childhood, experiences have come like that: something massive takes hold of you and you don’t need to believe or disbelieve, know or not know—bam! There’s nothing to say; you are facing a fact... Once, during those last difficult years, Sri Aurobindo told me that this was precisely what gave me my advantage and why (how to put it?) there were greater possibilities that I would go right to the end ." The Mother's Agenda/01.05.1958, “When I was five years old...well I began with a consciousness. Of course I had no idea what it was. But my first experience was of the consciousness here (gesture above the head), which I felt like a Light and a Force; and I felt it there at the age of five. It was very pleasant sensation. I would sit in a little armchair made especially for me, all alone in my room, and I had a very pleasant feeling of something very strong, very luminous, and it was here (above the head) .... Then I would pull it down, for it was...it was truly my raison d’être.” The Mother’s Agenda, July 25, 1962,
39: The Mother’s Agenda-11/p-346, “And if you do not want your body to fail you, avoid wasting your energies in useless agitation. Whatever you do, do it in a quiet and composed poise. In peace and silence is the greatest strength.” The Mother’s Agenda-8/p-365,
40: "In one chapter of The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that there is a state of consciousness in which all is from all eternity –everything, without exception, that is to be manifested here…
Q:- In detail?
In a certain state of consciousness (I no longer remember what he calls it—I think it’s in the ‘Yoga of Self-Perfection’), one is perfectly identified with the Supreme, not in his static but in his dynamic aspect, the state of becoming. In this state, everything is already there from all eternity, even though here it gives us the impression of a becoming. And Sri Aurobindo says that if you are capable of maintaining this state, then you know everything: all that has been, all that is and all that will be –in an absolutely simultaneous way… But you must have a firm head on your shoulders! Reading some of these chapters in ‘Self-Perfection,’ I thought it would be better if it didn’t fall into just anyone’s hands…Anyway, in this state the feeling of uncertainty completely disappears (he explains it very well)." The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda/Vol.-2/p-170
“Admitted through a curtain of bright mind
That hangs between our thoughts and absolute sight,
He found the occult cave, the mystic door
Near to the well of vision in the soul,
And entered where the Wings of Glory brood
In the silent space where all is for ever known.” Savitri-74
“There in a hidden chamber closed and mute
Are kept the record graphs of the cosmic scribe,
And there the tables of the sacred Law,
There is the Book of Being’s index page;
The text and glossary of the Vedic truth
Are there; the rhythms and metres of the stars
Significant of the movements of our fate:
The symbol powers of number and of form,
And the secret code of the history of the world
And Nature’s correspondence with the soul
Are written in the mystic heart of Life.” Savitri-74
“Out of the depths the world’s buried secret rose;
He read the original ukase kept back
In the locked archives of the spirit’s crypt,
And saw the signature and fiery seal
Of Wisdom on the dim Power’s hooded work
Who builds in Ignorance the steps of Light.” Savitri-75-76,
41: “When I said, “Why not an unconscious Avatar?” I was taking your statement (not mine) that Rama was unconscious and how could there be an unconscious Avatar. My own view is that Rama was not blind, not unconscious of his Avatarhood, only uncommunicative about it. But I said that even taking your statement to be correct, the objection was not insuperable. I instanced the case of Chaitanya and the others, because there the facts are hardly disputable. Chaitanya for the first part of his life was simply Nimai Pandit and had no consciousness of being anything else. Then he had his conversion and became the bhakta, Chaitanya. This bhakta at times seemed to be possessed by the presence of Krishna, knew himself to be Krishna, spoke, moved and appeared with the light of the Godhead — none around him could think of or see him as anything else when he was in this glorified and transfigured condition. But from that he fell back to the ordinary consciousness of the bhakta and, as I have read in his biography, refused then to consider himself as anything more. These, I think, are the facts. Well then, what do they signify? Was he only Nimai Pandit at first? It is quite conceivable that he was so and the descent of the Godhead into him only took place after his conversion and spiritual change. But also afterwards when he was in his normal bhakta-consciousness, was he then no longer the Avatar? An intermittent Avatarhood? Krishna coming down for an afternoon call into Chaitanya and then going up again till the time came for the next visit? I find it difficult to believe in this phenomenon. The rational explanation is that in the phenomenon of Avatarhood there is a Consciousness behind, at first veiled or sometimes perhaps only half-veiled, which is that of the Godhead and a frontal consciousness, human or apparently human or at any rate with all the appearance of terrestriality, which is the instrumental Personality. In that case, it is possible that the secret Consciousness was all along there, but waited to manifest until after the conversion; and it manifested intermittently because the main work of Chaitanya was to establish the type of a spiritual and psychic bhakti and love in the emotional vital part of man, preparing the vital in us in that way to turn towards the Divine — at any rate, to fix that possibility in the earth-nature. It was not that there had not been the emotional type of bhakti before; but the completeness of it, the e´lan, the vital’s rapture in it had never manifested as it manifested in Chaitanya. But for that work it would never have done if he had always been in the Krishna consciousness; he would have been the Lord to whom all gave bhakti, but not the supreme example of the divine ecstatic bhakta. At the same time the occasional manifestation showed who he was and at the same time evidenced the mystic law of the Immanence.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p- 496-497,
42: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-249
43: "This Yoga (Integral Yoga) too is not a Yoga of knowledge alone — knowledge is one of its means, but its base being self-offering, surrender, bhakti, it is based on the heart and nothing can be eventually done without this base. There are plenty of people here who do or have done Japa and base themselves on bhakti, very few comparatively who have done the “head” meditation; love and bhakti and works are usually the base — how many can proceed by knowledge? Only the few." CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-226-227
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“The supramental word manifests inwardly with a light, a power, a rhythm of thought and a rhythm of inner sound that make it the natural and living body of the supramental thought and vision and it pours into the language, even though the same as that of mental speech, another than the limited intellectual, emotional or sensational significance. It is formed and heard in the intuitive mind or supermind and need not at first except in certain highly gifted souls come out easily into speech and writing, but that too can be freely done when the physical consciousness and its organs have been made ready, and this is a part of the needed fullness and power of the integral perfection.”
Sri Aurobindo
CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-837
