Merry Christmas 2025

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“THE PECULIARITY of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic history of nations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its leading personages face to face with the crowning action of his life, a work terrible, violent and sanguinary, at the point when he must either recoil from it altogether or carry itthrough to its inexorable completion. It matters little whether or no, as modern criticism supposes, theGita is a later composition inserted into the mass of the Mahabharata by its author in order to invest its teaching with the authority and popularity of the great national epic.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-12

“India has from ancient times held strongly a belief in the reality of the Avatara, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life and taken firm root in the consciousness of the race.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-13

“When we thus understand the conception of Avatarhood, we see that whether for the fundamental teaching of the Gita, our present subject, or for spiritual life generally the external aspect has only a secondary importance. Such controversies as the one that has raged in Europe over the historicity of Christ, would seem to a spiritually-minded Indian largely a waste of time; he would concede to it a considerable historical, but hardly any religious importance; for what does it matter in the end whether aJesus son of the carpenter Joseph was actually born in Nazareth or Bethlehem, lived and taught and was done to death on a real or trumped-up charge of sedition, so long as we can know by spiritual experience the inner Christ, live uplifted in the light of his teaching and escape from the yoke of the natural Law bythat atonement of man with God of which the crucifixion is the symbol? If the Christ, God made man, lives within our spiritual being, it would seem to matter little whether or not a son of Mary physically lived and suffered and died in Judea. So too the Krishna who matters to us is the eternal incarnation of the Divine and not the historical teacher and leader of men.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita-15
“But if we look at after results, an easy optimism becomes even less possible. See the patriot dying in order that his country may be free, and mark that country a few decades after the Lord of Karma has paid the price of the blood and the suffering that was given; you shall see it in its turn an oppressor, an exploiter and conqueror of colonies and dependencies devouring others that it may live and succeed aggressively in life. The Christian martyrs perish in their thousands, setting soul-force against empire-force that Christ may conquer, Christianity prevail. Soul-force does triumph, Christianity does prevail, — but not Christ; the victorious religion becomes a militant and dominant Church and a more fanatically persecuting power than the creed and the empire which it replaced. The very religions organise themselves into powers of mutual strife and battle together fiercely to live, to grow, to possess the world.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita-44

“The Gita in later chapters speaks highly of the Veda and the Upanishads. They are divine Scriptures, they are the Word. The Lord himself is the knower of Veda and the author of Vedanta, vedavid veda¯ ntakr.t; the Lord is the one object of knowledge in  all  the  Vedas,  sarvair  vedair  aham  eva  vedyah. , a  language which implies that the word Veda means the book of knowledge and that these Scriptures deserve their appellation. The Purushottama from his high supremacy above the Immutable and the mutable has extended himself in the world and in the Veda. Still the letter of the Scripture binds and confuses, as the apostle of Christianity warned his disciples when he said that the letter killeth and it is the spirit that saves; and there is a point beyond which the utility of the Scripture itself ceases. The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; “I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge,” says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanad rasya, guhayam. That origin is its sanction; but still the infiniteTruth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, na¯nyad astı¯ti va¯dinah.. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heart of man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita-92-93

“The second portion of these passages which has here been given in substance, explains the nature of divine works, divyam˙ karma, with the principle of which we have had to deal in the last essay; the first, which has been fully translated, explains the way of the divine birth, divyam˙  janma, the Avatarhood. But we have to remark carefully that the upholding of Dharma in the world is not theonly object of the descent of the Avatar, that great mystery of the Divine manifest in humanity; for theupholding of the Dharma is not an all-sufficient object in itself, not the supreme possible aim for themanifestation of a Christ, a Krishna, a Buddha, but is only the general condition of a higher aim and a more supreme and divine utility. For there are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhavam agatah; it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. It is that new birth which Avatarhood and the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve. This double aspect in the Gita’s doctrine of Avatarhood is apt to be missed by the cursory reader satisfied, as most are, with catching a superficial view of its profound teachings, and it is missed too by the formal commentator petrified in the rigidity of the schools. Yet it is necessary, surely, to the whole meaning of the doctrine. Otherwise the Avatar idea would be only a dogma, a popular superstition, or an imaginative or mystic deification of historical or legendary supermen, not what the Gita makes all its teaching, a deep philosophical and religious truth and an essential part of or step to the supreme mystery of all, rahasyamuttamam.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita-147-148

“If there were not this rising of man into the Godhead to be helped by the descent of God into humanity, Avatarhood for the sake of the Dharma would be an otiose phenomenon, since mere Right, mere justice or standards of virtue can always be upheld by the divine omnipotence through its ordinary means, by great men or great movements, by the life and work of sages and kings and religious teachers, without any actual incarnation. The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow. That is why each Incarnation holds before men his own example and declares of himself that he is the way and the gate; he declares too the oneness of his humanity with the divine being, declares that the Son of Man and the Father above from whom he hasdescended are one, that Krishna in the human  body,  manusım˙   tanum  asritam,  and  the  supreme Lord and Friend of all creatures are but two revelations of the same divine Purushottama, revealed there in his own being, revealed here in the type of humanity.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-148-149

“The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha in external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth, may be repeated in the inner life of all human beings.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-160

“On the other hand, this entering into the divine conscious- ness may be attended by a reflex action of the Divine entering or coming forward into the human parts of our being, pouring himself into the nature, the activity, the mentality, the corporeality even of the man; and that may well be at least a partial Avatarhood. The Lord stands in the heart, says the Gita, — by which it means of course the heart of the subtle being, the nodus of the emotions, sensations, mental consciousness, where the individual Purusha also is seated, — but he stands there veiled, enveloped by his Maya. But above, on a plane within us but now superconscient to us, called heaven by the ancient mystics, the Lord and the Jivastand together revealed as of one essence of being, the Father and the Son of certain symbolisms, theDivine Being and the divine Man who comes forth from Him born of the higher divine Nature,1 the virgin Mother, para prakriti, para maya, into the lower or human nature. This seems to be the innerdoctrine of the Christian incarnation; in its Trinity the Father is above in this inner Heaven; the Son orsupreme Prakriti become Jiva of the Gita descends as the divine Man upon earth, in the mortal body; theHoly Spirit, pure Self, Brahmic consciousness is that which makes them one and that also in which theycommunicate; for we hear of the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus and it is the same descent whichbrings down the powers of the higher consciousness into the simple humanity of the Apostles.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-162-63

“A merely supernormal or miraculous Avatar would be a meaningless absurdity; not that there need be an entire absence of the use of supernormal powers such as Christ’s so- called miracles of healing, for the use of supernormal powers is quite a possibility of human nature; but there need not be that at all, nor in any case is it the root of the matter, nor would it at all do if the life were nothing else but a display of supernormal fireworks. The Avatar does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divineleader of humanity and the exemplar of a divine humanity. Even human sorrow and physical sufferinghe must assume and use so as to show, first, how that suffering may be a means of redemption, — asdid Christ, — secondly, to show how, having been assumed by the divine soul in the human nature, it can also be overcome in the same nature, — as did Buddha. The rationalist who would have cried to Christ, “If thou art the Son of God, come down from the cross,” or points out sagely that the Avatar was not divine because he died and died too by disease, — as a dog dieth, — knows not what he is saying:for he has missed the root of the whole matter. Even, the Avatar of sorrow and suffering must come before there can be the Avatar of divine joy; the human limitation must be assumed in order to show how it can be overcome; and the way and the extent of the overcoming, whether internal only or external also, depends upon the stage of the human advance; it must not be done by a non-human miracle.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-165

“No doubt, too, the inner descent of the Godhead to raise the human soul into himself is the main thing, — it is the inner Christ, Krishna or Buddha that matters. But just as the outer life is of immense importance for the inner development, so the external Avatarhood is of no mean importance for this great spiritual manifestation.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita-167

“But obviously the purely practical, ethical or social and political mission of the Avatar which is thus thrown into popular and mythical form, does not give a right account of the phenomenon of Avatarhood. It does not cover its spiritual sense, and if this outward utility were all, we should have to exclude Buddha and Christ whose mission was not at all to destroy evil-doers and deliver the good, but to bring to all men a new spiritual message and a new law of divine growth and spiritual realisation. On the other hand, if we give to the word dharma only its religious sense, in which it means a law of religious and spiritual life, we shall indeed get to the kernel of the matter, but we shall be in danger of excluding a most important part of the work done by the Avatar. Always we see in the history of the divine incarnations the double work, and inevitably, because the Avatar takes up the workings of God in human life, the way of the divine Will and Wisdom in the world, and that always fulfils itself externally as well as internally, by inner progress in the soul and by an outer change in the life.

The Avatar may descend as a great spiritual teacher and saviour, the Christ, the Buddha, but always his work leads, after he has finished his earthly manifestation, to a profound and powerful change not only in the ethical, but in the social and outward life and ideals of the race. He may, on the other hand, descend as an incarnation of the divine life, the divine personality and power in its characteristic action, for a mission ostensibly social, ethical and political, as is represented in the story of Rama or Krishna; but always then this descent becomes in the soul of the race a permanent power for the inner living andthe spiritual rebirth. It is indeed curious to note that the permanent, vital, universal effect of Buddhism and Christianity has been the force of their ethical, social and practical ideals and their influence even onthe men and the ages which have rejected their religious and spiritual beliefs, forms and disciplines; later Hinduism which rejected  Buddha,  his  san˙gha  and his dharma, bears the ineffaceable imprint of the social and ethical influence of Buddhism and its effect on the ideas and the life of the race, while in modern Europe, Christian only in name, humanitarianism is the translation into the ethical and social sphere and the aspiration to liberty, equality and fraternity the translation into the social and politicalsphere of the spiritual truths of Christianity, the latter especially being effected by men who aggressivelyrejected the Christian religion and spiritual discipline and by an age which in its intellectual effort of emancipation tried to get rid of Christianity as a creed. On the other hand the life of Rama and Krishna belongs to the prehistoric past which has come down only in poetry and legend and may even beregarded as myths; but it is quite immaterial whether we regard them as myths or historical facts, becausetheir permanent truth and value lie in their persistence as a spiritual form, presence, influence in the innerconsciousness of the race and the life of the human soul. Avatarhood is a fact of divine life andconsciousness which may realise itself in an outward action, but must persist, when that action is over and has done its work, in a spiritual influence; or may realise itself in a spiritual influence and teaching, but must then have its permanent effect, even when the new religion or discipline is exhausted, in the thought, temperament and outward life of mankind.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-170-171

“It is these things that condition and determine the work of the Avatar. In the Buddhistic formula the disciple takes refuge from all that opposes his liberation in three powers, the  dharma,  the  sangha, the  Buddha.  So  in  Christianity  we have the law of Christian living, the Church and the Christ. These three are always the necessary elements of the work of the Avatar. He gives a dharma, a law of self-discipline by which to grow out of the lower into the higher life and which necessarily includes a rule of action and of relations with our fellow men and other beings, endeavour in the eightfold path or the law of faith, love and purity or any other such revelation of the nature of the divine in life.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita-173

“Equality has always been held up to admiration as the philosophic ideal and the characteristic temperament of the sages. The Gita takes up indeed this philosophic ideal, but carries it far beyond into a higher region where we find ourselves breathing a larger and purer air. The Stoic poise, the philosophic poise of the soul are only its first and second steps of ascension out of the whirl of the passions and the tossings of desire to a serenity and bliss, not of the Gods, but of the Divine himself in his supreme self-mastery. The Stoic equality, making character its pivot, founds itself upon self-mastery by austere endurance; the happier and serener philosophic equality prefers self-mastery by knowledge, by detachment, by a high intellectual indifference seated above the disturbances to which our nature is prone, uda¯ sı¯navad  a¯ sı¯nah. ,  as the  Gita expresses it;  there  is  also  the religious or Christian equality which is a perpetual kneeling or a prostrate resignation and submission to the will of God. These are the three steps and means towards divine peace, heroic endurance, sage indifference, pious resignation, titiksa, udasınata, namas or nati. The Gita takes them all in its large synthetic manner and weaves them into its upward soul-movement, but it gives to each a profounder root, a larger outlook, a more universal and transcendent significance. For to each it gives the values of the spirit, its power of spiritual being beyond the strain of character, beyond the difficult poise of the understanding, beyond the stress of the emotions.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-190

“He constructs for the Godhead the name and form of Indra or Agni, of Vishnu or Shiva, of a divinised Christ or Buddha, or else some composite of natural qualities, an indulgent God of love and mercy, or a severe God of righteousness and justice, or an awe-inspiring God of wrath and terror and flaming punishments, or some amalgam of any of these, and to that he raises his altars without and in his heart and mind and falls down before it to demand from it worldly good and joy or healing of his wounds or a sectarian sanction for an erring, dogmatic, intellectual, intolerent knowledge. All this up to a certain point is true enough. Very rare is the great soul who knows that Vasudeva the omnipresent Being is all that is, va¯ sudevah.  sarvam iti sa maha¯ tma¯  sudurlabhah. .” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-286

“The thought of the Gita here is not on a par with the indulgences and facilities of popular religion; it has nothing in common with the crude fancies that make the absolution and last unction of the priest, an edifying “Christian” death after an unedifying profane life or the precaution or accident of a death in sacred Benares or holy Ganges a sufficient machinery of salvation. The divine subjective becoming on which the mind has to be fixed firmly in the moment of the physical death, yam˙  smaran bhavam˙ tyajatiante kalevaram, must have been one into which the soul was at each moment growing inwardly during the physical life, sada tad-bhava-bhavitah. . “Therefore,” says the divine Teacher, “at all times remember me and fight; for if thy mind and thy understanding are always fixed on and given up to Me,mayi arpita-mano-buddhih. , to Me thou shalt surely come. For it is by thinking always of him with a consciousness united with him in an undeviating Yoga of constant practice that one comes to the divine and supreme Purusha.”” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-296

“Teachers of the law of love and oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation. But not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone, but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand. And meanwhile the fierce forward labour of mankind tormented and oppressed by the Powers that are profiteers of egoistic force and their servants cries for the sword of the Hero of the struggle and the word of its prophet.” CWSA-19/ Essays on the Gita/p-386

“The Vedic law becomes a convention and a Buddha appears with his new rule of the eightfold path and the goal of Nirvana; and it may be remarked that he propounds it not as a personal invention, but as the true rule of Aryan living constantly rediscovered by the Buddha, the enlightened mind, the awakened spirit. But this practically means that there is an ideal, an eternal Dharma which religion, philosophy, ethics and all other powers in man that strive after truth and perfection are constantly endeavouring to embody in new statements of the science and art of the inner and outer life, a new Shastra. The Mosaic law of religious, ethical and social righteousness is convicted of narrowness and imperfection and is now besides a convention; the law of Christ comes to replace it and claims at once to abrogate and to fulfil, to abrogate the imperfect form and fulfil in a deeper and broader light and power the spirit of the thing which it aimed at, the divine rule of living. And the human search does not stop there, but leaves these formulations too, goes back to some past truth it had rejected or breaks forward to some new truth and power, but is always in search of the same thing, the law of its perfection, its rule of right living, its complete, highest and essential self and nature.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-478-79

“Altruism, philanthropy and service, Christian love or Buddhist compassion have not made the world a whit happier, they only give infinitesimal bits of momentary relief here and there, throw drops on the fire of the world’s suffering. All aims are in the end transitory and futile, all achievements unsatisfying or evanescent; all works are so much labour of effort and success and failure which consummate nothingdefinitive: whatever changes are made in human life are of the form only and these forms pursue each other in a futile circle; for the essence of life, its general character remains the same for ever.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-433

“In the West where the syncretic tendency of the consciousness was replaced by the analytic and separative, the spiritual urge and the intellectual reason parted company almost at the outset; philosophy took from the first a turn towards a purely intellectual and ratiocinative explanation of things. Nevertheless, there were systems like the Pythagorean, Stoic and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But later on the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of philosophy with life and its energies or spirit and its dynamism was either cut or confined to the little that the metaphysical idea can impress on life and action by an abstract and secondary influence.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-912

“Beyond and above this preoccupation, as soon as mind is sufficiently developed, there awakes in man the spiritual preoccupation, the discovery of a self and inmost truth of being and the release of man’s mind and life into the truth of the Spirit, its perfection by the power of the Spirit, the solidarity, unity, mutuality of all beings in the Spirit. This was the Eastern ideal carried by Buddhism and other ancient disciplines to the coasts of Asia and Egypt and from there poured by Christianity into Europe. But these motives, burning for a time like dim torchlights in the confusion and darkness created by the barbaric flood that had submerged the old civilisations, have been abandoned by the modern spirit which has found another light, the light of Science.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1088

“Even then his nature calls for a human intermediary so that he may feel the Divine in something entirely close to his own humanity and sensible in a human influence and example. This call is satisfied by the Divine manifest in a human appearance, the Incarnation, the Avatar — Krishna, Christ, Buddha. Or if this is too hard for him to conceive, the Divine represents himself through a less marvellous intermediary, — Prophet or Teacher. For many who cannot conceive or are unwilling to accept the Divine Man, are ready to open themselves to the supreme man, terming him not incarnation but world-teacher or divine representative.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-65

“Nor should he forget the aim of these external aids which is to awaken his soul to the Divine within him. Nothing has been finally accomplished if that has not been accomplished. It is not sufficient to worship Krishna, Christ or Buddha without, if there is not the revealing and the formation of the Buddha, the Christ or Krishna in ourselves. And all other aids equally have no other purpose; each is a bridge between man’s unconverted state and the revelation of the Divine within him.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-66

“It  is indeed by the religio-ethical sense that the law of universal goodwill or universal compassion or of love and service to the neighbour, the Vedantic, the Buddhistic, the Christian ideal, was created; only by a sort of secular refrigeration extinguishing the fervour of the religious element in it could the humanitarian ideal disengage itself and become the highest plane of a secular system of mental and moral ethics.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-152

“The later religions endeavour to fix the type of a supreme truth of conduct, erect a system and declare God’s law through the mouth of Avatar or prophet. These systems, more powerful and dynamic than the dry ethical idea, are yet for the most part no more than idealistic glorifications of the moral principles sanctified by religious emotion and the label of a superhuman origin. Some, like the extreme Christian ethic, are rejected by Nature because they insist unworkably on an impracticable absolute rule. Others prove in the end to be evolutionary compromises and become obsolete in the march of Time. The true divine law, unlike these mental counterfeits, cannot be a system of rigid ethical determinations that press into their cast-iron moulds all our life-movements. The Law divine is truth of life and truth of the spirit and must take up with a free living plasticity and inspire with the direct touch of its eternal light each step of our action and all the complexity of our life issues. It must act not as a rule and formula but as an enveloping and penetrating conscious presence that determines all our thoughts, activities, feelings, impulsions of will by its infallible power and knowledge.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-203

“It is immaterial whether he wears the garb of the ascetic or lives the full life of the householder; whether he spends his days in what men call holy works or in the many-sided activities of the world; whether hedevotes himself to the direct leading of men to the Light like Buddha, Christ or Shankara or governskingdoms like Janaka or stands before men like Sri Krishna as a politician or a leader of armies; what heeats or drinks; what are his habits or his pursuits; whether he fails or succeeds; whether his work be one of construction or of destruction; whether he supports or restores an old order or labours to replace itby a new; whether his associates are those whom men delight to honour or those whom their sense of superior righteousness out- castes and reprobates; whether his life and deeds are approved by hiscontemporaries or he is condemned as a misleader of men and a fomenter of religious, moral or social heresies.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-271

“To use Christian language, the Son of God is also the Son of Man and both elements are necessary to the complete Christhood; or to use an Indian form of thought, the divine Narayana of whom the universe is only one ray is revealed and fulfilled in man; the complete man is Nara-Narayana and in that completeness he symbolises the supreme mystery of existence.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-329

“He is each separately and all altogether. He is Vishnu, Krishna, Kali; he reveals himself to us in humanity as the Christ personality or the Buddha personality. When we look beyond our first exclusively concentrated vision, we see behind Vishnu all the personality of Shiva and behind Shiva all the personality of Vishnu. He is the Ananta-guna, infinite quality and the infinite divine Personality which manifests itself through it. Again he seems to withdraw into a pure spiritual impersonality or beyond all idea even of impersonal Self and to justify a spiritualised atheism or agnosticism; he becomes to the mind of man an indefinable, anirdesyam. But out of this unknowable the conscious Being, the divine Person, who has manifested himself here, still speaks, “This too is I; even here beyond the view of mind, I am He, the Purushottama.”” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-586

“These are those forms of Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, Kali, Durga, Christ, Buddha, which the mind of man seizes on for adoration. Even the monotheist who worships a formless Godhead, yet gives to him some form of quality, some mental form or form of Nature by which he envisages and approaches him. But to be able to see a living form, a mental body, as it were, of the Divine gives to the approach a greater closeness and sweetness.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-601

“To this day I remember the experience. Truly, that’s what I felt – I did not intellectualize it. Exactly the impression of what Christ must have experienced when he felt the weight of the cross. It was the weight of a whole world of darkness, unconsciousness, universal bad will, total incomprehension, something ...And it really felt like that ... as if I were carrying a frightful weight – which was frightful because of its darkness, not because of its weight. So I thought, ‘Well, well. This must be how Christ felt when they laid the cross on him.’” The Mother’s Agenda/ August 20, 1960

“Regarding Christmas, I’ll tell you a curious story. 
For a while, there was a Muslim girl close to me (not a believer, but her origins were Muslim; in other words, she wasn’t at all Christian) who had a special fondness for Santa Claus! She had seen pictures of him, read some books, etc. Then one year while she was here, she got it into her head that Santa Claus had to bring me something. ‘He has to bring you something for Christmas,’ she told me.
 
‘Try,’ I replied. 

I don’t know what all she did, but she prayed to him to bring me money. She fixed a certain sum. And on Christmas Eve, exactly this sum was given to me! And it was a large sum, several thousand rupees. Exactly the amount she had specified. And it came on that very day in quite an unexpected way. 

I found it very interesting.” The Mother’s Agenda, December 20, 1960

“Seen from the European angle, Sri Aurobindo represents an immense spiritual revolution, redeeming Matter and the creation, which to the Christian religion is fundamentally a fall – it’s really unclear how what has come from God could become so bad, but anyway, better not be too logical! it’s a fall. The creation is a fall. And that’s why they are far more easily convinced by Buddhism. I saw this particularly with R, whose education was entirely in European philosophy, with Christian and positivist influences; under these two influences, when he came into contact with Theon’s ‘cosmic philosophy’ and later Sri Aurobindo’s revelation, he immediately explained, in his Wherefore of the Worlds, that the world is the fruit of Desire – God’s desire. Yet Sri Aurobindo says (in simple terms), ‘God created the world for the Joy of the creation,’ or rather, ‘He brought forth the world from Himself for the Joy of living an objective life.’ This was Theon’s thesis too, that the world is the Divine in an objective form, but for him the origin of this objective form was the desire to be. All this is playing with words, you understand, but it turns out that in one case the world is reprehensible and in the other it is adorable! And that makes all the difference. To the whole European mind, the whole Christian spirit, the world is reprehensible. And when THAT is pointed out to them, they can’t stand it.” The Mother’s Agenda- December 20, 1961

“And to Théon, the God of the Jews and Christians was an Asura. This Asura wanted to be unique; and so he became the most terrible despot imaginable. Anatole France said the same thing (I now know that Anatole France had never read Théon's story, but I can't imagine where he picked this up). It's in The Revolt of the Angels. He says that Satan is the true God and that Jehovah, the "only God," is the monster. And when the angels wanted Satan to become the one and only God, Satan realized he was immediately taking on all Jehovah's failings! So he refused: "Oh, no – thank you very much!" It's a wonderful story, and in exactly the same spirit as what Théon used to say. The very first thing I asked Anatole France (I told you I met him once – mutual friends introduced us), the first thing I asked him was, "Have you ever read The Tradition?" He said no. I explained why I had asked, and he was interested. He said his source was his own imagination. He had caught that idea intuitively.” The Mother’s Agenda/ January 27, 1962

“You know, I don't like the story of Christ.
Yes, that's....
That's exactly the point.
The crucified god – no thanks.
If he loses his skin, he loses it – so what, it doesn't matter. You understand?” The Mother’s Agenda-March-13, 1962

“(Satprem) I don't know why, but every time I come into contact with a Christian thought, it fills me with anger.

Oh, I understand! Because it's true, you know, that an Asura is behind it all – not Christ! Sri Aurobindo considered Christ an Avatar (a minor form of Avatar). One emanation of the Divine's aspect of Love, he always said. But what people have made of him! ... Besides, the religion was founded two hundred years after his death. And it's nothing but a political construction, a tool for domination, built with the Lord of Falsehood in the background, who, in his usual fashion, took something true and twisted it. It's a real hodgepodge, that religion – the number of sects! The only common ground is the divinity of Christ, and it became asuric when he was made out to be unique: there has been but ONE incarnation, Christ. That's just where it all went wrong.

We'll see.

It is resisting, resisting everywhere. It's even more resistant than materialism.” The Mother’s Agenda-December-15, 1962,
 
“The Vedic Rishis thirsted for Immortality, Buddha wanted Permanence....
Then I looked, wondering, "And what was Christ's path?"... Basically, he always said, "Love thy neighbor," in other words brotherhood (but that's a modern translation). For him, the idea was compassion, charity (the Christians say it's the "law of Love," but we're not yet there – that will come much later). So I wrote:
Jesus preached Compassion....

Then I thought: now, Sri Aurobindo, it's quite clear; for him, 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 realization of which will stretch over thousands of years. So it must come in stages. And I saw that what I find essential, indispensable (everything is there, everything finds a place, yet there is a kind of anguish – not a personal anguish but a terrestrial anguish), is Security. A need for Security – whatever you attempt, whatever you seek, even Love, even Perfection, it needs Security. Nothing can be achieved with the feeling that all opposing forces can come and sweep everything away. We must find the point where nothing can be touched or destroyed or halted. Therefore, it's Security, the very essence of Security. So I wrote:
Sri Aurobindo promised Perfection and to attain it, the first requisite, what men need today, is Security.” The Mother’s Agenda-March-27, 1963

“Catholicism has two things that Protestantism lacks: the occult sense (not only the sense but even a certain occult knowledge), and the Mother – the Virgin. The Protestants have something the Catholics lack: the inner divine presence.
It's only through those two things that you can catch them. But ... Well, we'll see.” The Mother’s Agenda-June-29, 1963

“I think the foremost idea of the one who left was to prevent war. Consciously, he (new Pope) wanted all Christians to love each other! (Mother laughs) A childish hope. To love each other in Jesus – whom theyleave on the cross.
As Sri Aurobindo says, men ... men LOVE grief, that's why Jesus is still nailed on the cross.
It's magnificent, that thing.” The Mother’s Agenda-June-29, 1963

“What seems ... bizarre to those who have gone beyond the petty, purely terrestrial limits – human terrestrial limits – is that belief in a SINGLE divine manifestation on the earth; all the religions are based on that, everyone says, "Christ was the only one," or "Buddha was the only one," or elsewhere"Mohammed was the only one," and so forth. Well, that "only one" is something IMPOSSIBLE as soon as you rise a little above the ordinary earth atmosphere – it appears childish. You can understand thething and accept it only as a sort of recurrent movement of the divine Consciousness on the earth.
Of course, officially there is only Christ; may be for this man [Paul VI], he is still the greatest, but I would be surprised if he thought Christ was the only one. Only, Christ "has to" be the only one – you'd cut out your own tongue rather than say he's not!
I don't think the question bothers him much (!) His concern is how to exert his power and keep people init, so as, maybe, to prove his superiority.
This much conviction they still have, you see, that their religion IS superior to all others, their power is superior to all others, and therefore they have to be more powerful than the others. That's the main idea: "To be the most powerful." And what's the way, now, for them to gain that all-powerfulness? Already for two or three generations, they have understood the necessity of a broadening: the narrowness of their dogma gave them too many weak points.... But he [Paul VI] understands maybe even better. We'll see what happens.” The Mother’s Agenda-July-3, 1963

“It's much easier to answer out-and-out materialists who are convinced and sincere ("sincere" within the limit of their consciousness, that is) than to answer people who have a religion! Much easier.

With Indians, it's very easy – they're heaven-blessed, these people, because it takes very little for them to be oriented in the right way. But there are two types of difficult religion, the Christian religion(especially in the form of Protestantism), and the Jewish religion.
The Jews are also out-and-out materialists: you die, well, you die, it's over. Though I haven't quite understood how they reconcile that with their God, who moreover is Unthinkable and must not be named... but who, seen from the standpoint of a vaster truth, seems (I am not sure), seems to be an Asura. Because it's an almighty and UNIQUE God, foreign to the world – the world (as far as I know)and he are two completely different things.
It's the same with Catholicism. Yet, if I remember correctly, their God created the world with apart of himself, no?

(Satprem) No, no!

No? Is it only man that he pulled out of his rib?

(Satprem) No! It's out of Adam's rib that he pulled man, not out of his own rib!

Aah!

(Satprem) It's out of Adam's rib ...

... that he pulled woman. Aah! ...

(Satprem) No, no, he "created" the world.

Out of nothingness he made the world?

(Satprem) That's right.

Then it's the same problem, the same difficulty. It's quite simply an incomprehension.

(Satprem) And in fact he sent his son to "save the world."

Then his son doesn't belong to the creation?

(Satprem) He is the son of God – not so the others.

He is the ONLY son of God?

(Satprem) Yes, of course!

They've twisted everything. But Adam belonged to the creation, didn't he?

(Satprem) Yes, while Christ isn't human, he is the son.

But he took on a human body.

(Satprem) Yes, but he's the son of God. He isn't a human being become divine, he is a divine being – "the son of God" – who took on a human body.

But that's understood! All Avatars are like that.

(Satprem) Yes, but he's the only one.

It's all twisted.
But the Virgin, in that affair? What happened to her? Because she was a woman, wasn't she?

(Satprem) She was human.
Yes ... because in the story, there's even a moment when Christ says, "What do I have to do with that woman"! But then, the Assumption? ...
(silence)

Of course, those who know understand very well – it's all symbolic.
But for instance, I told you I spoke with the Pope for quite a long time the day of his election, and the conversation was abruptly interrupted by a reaction he had. (It was really a mental conversation we were having: I spoke, he replied, I heard his reply – I don't know whether he was conscious of something ... probably not, but anyway; it wasn't at all a formation of my own mind because I received quite unexpected replies.) But the conversation was interrupted abruptly by a reaction he had when I told him that God is everywhere and in all things; that everything is He; and then a great Force came down into me and I added, "Even when you descend into Hell, He is there too."

Then everything stopped dead.
Since then I've learned that it's part of their teaching: that what is terrible in Hell isn't so much the suffering, but that there is no God there; that it's the only part of the creation in which there is no God – there is no God in Hell. And I asserted that He is there too.
But naturally, from an intellectual point of view, all those things are explained and find their place –man has never thought anything that wasn't the distortion of a truth. That's not the difficulty, it's that for religious people there are certain things they have a DUTY to believe, and to allow the mind to discuss them is a "sin" – so naturally they close themselves and will never be able to make any progress. Whereas the materialists, on the other hand, are on the contrary supposed to know and explain everything – they explain everything rationally. So (Mother laughs), precisely because they explain everything, you can lead them where you want to.
There.

(Satprem) There's nothing to be done with religious people.
No. And it's not good to try either. If they cling to a religion, it means that that religion has helped them somehow or other, has helped something in them which in fact wanted to have a certitude without having to seek for it – to lean on something solid without being responsible for its solidity (someone elseis responsible! [Mother laughs]), and to leave their bodies in that way. So to want to pull them out of it shows a lack of compassion – they should just be left where they are. Never do I argue with someone who has a faith – let him keep his faith! And I take great care not to say anything that might shake his faith because it's not good – such people are unable to have another faith.
But with a materialist ... "I don't argue, I accept your point of view; only, you have nothing to say – I've taken my position, take yours. If you are satisfied with what you know, keep it. If it helps you to live, very good.
"But you have no right to blame or criticize me, because I am taking my position on your own basis. Even if all that I imagine is mere imagination, I prefer that imagination to yours." That's all.” The Mother’s Agenda-September-7, 1963
“In the Illustrated Weekly they have published photographs of the Pope's visit to Palestine, and there is one in which he is prostrating himself: he is kissing the ground on the Mount of Olives, where Christ, as the story goes, was informed that he would be crucified.
It put me again in contact with that man.
And his intention is clear: to make religion quite real, in the sense that it isn't a myth, it isn't a legend – it's truly God who came, and so on. So, to him, this is "human greatness" prostrating itself before the"divine sacrifice."
There is another photograph in which he is embracing the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church – heretics formerly, now they embrace each other.
And all the people around him (they are well-dressed, you know, with modern suits) look like puppets, mon petit! Oh, it's awful! ... Awful. He at least has a force
– or a will, at any rate. And he has a plan, he knows what he wants.
(silence)
He is also the first Pope to travel by plane, so they took his photograph in the plane – he gives a "broad smile," he looks very happy.
(long silence)
In sum, it is the glorification of physical suffering as a means of salvation.

(Satprem) I must say I find the whole story repugnant – that crucifixion being flaunted everywhere.There's nothing so clever about Christ! There are millions others who died without making such a fuss!

That was also my feeling, and it was Théon's too. But Sri Aurobindo ... as for him, he clearly said that it had brought a sense of charity, humaneness and fraternity on earth that didn't exist before.

(Satprem) Yes, it certainly did bring something. But they just remain there.

Ah, the Falsehood is to remain stuck there, yes.” The Mother’s Agenda- January 25, 1964
“Have you seen the latest Illustrated Weekly? You know that the Pope is here, in Bombay, for the"Eucharistic Congress" – but what's the Eucharist, mon petit?

(Satprem) It's the Communion.

Ah, that's just what I thought!... There is in the Illustrated Weekly the history of those Eucharistic Congresses, and it seems a French lady was behind the origin of the first Congress (not so long ago, in the last century, I believe). And then (Mother smiles), there's a magnificent portrait of the Pope with a message he wrote specially for the Weekly's readers, in which he took great care not to use Christian words. He wishes them ... I don't know what, and (it's written in English) a celestial grace. Then I saw (he tried to be as impersonal as possible), I saw that in spite of everything, the Christians' greatest difficulty is that their happiness and fulfillment are in heaven.
Instead of a celestial grace, they read to me, or I heard, a terrestrial grace! When I heard that, something in me started vibrating: "What! But this man has been converted!" Then I had it repeated and heard it wasn't that but really a celestial grace.
This is the whole point.

(Satprem) Exactly.

They believe in a divine realization, but the divine realization isn't terrestrial, it's somewhere else, in a celestial world, that is, immaterial. And that is their great obstacle.
Of course, in matters of faith (I don't mean for a very precise and very clear scientific mind), but in matters of faith, there is so far no clear proof that the Lord wants to realize Himself here; except, perhaps, for two or three visionaries who had the experience.... Someone asked me if there had been a supramental realization previously, that is, before historical times (because historical times are extremely limited, of course). Naturally, the question always corresponds to one of the things that are shown to me in moments of concentration. So I answered very spontaneously that there hadn't been a collective realization, but that there might have been one or several individual realizations, as examples of what would be and as a promise – a promise and examples: "This is what will be."

I've had some very precise memories – lived memories – of a human life on earth, quite primitive (I mean outside any mental civilization), a human life on earth that wasn't an evolutionary life, but the manifestation of beings from another world. I lived in that way for a time – a lived memory. I still see it, I still have the image of it in my memory. It had nothing to do with civilization and mental development: it was a blossoming of force, of beauty, in a NATURAL, spontaneous life, like animal life, but with aperfection of consciousness and power that far surpasses the one we have now; and indeed with a power over all surrounding Nature, animal nature and vegetable nature and mineral nature, a DIRECT handling of Matter, which men do not have – they need intermediaries, material instruments, whereas this was direct. And there were no thoughts or reasoning: it was spontaneous (gesture indicating the direct radiating action of will on Matter). I have the lived memory of this. It must have existed on earth because it wasn't premonitory: it wasn't a vision of the future, it was a past memory. So there must have been a moment ... It was limited to two beings: I don't have the feeling there were many. And there was no childbirth or anything animal, absolutely not; it was a life, yes, a truly higher life in a natural setting, but with an extraordinary beauty and harmony! And I don't have the feeling it was (how can I explain?) something known; the relationships with vegetable life and animal life were spontaneous ones, absolutely harmonious, and with the sensation of an undisputed power (you didn't even feel it was possible for it not to be), undisputed, but without any idea that there were other beings on earth and that it was necessary to look after them or make a "demonstration" – nothing of the sort, absolutely nothingof mental life, nothing. A life just like that, like a beautiful plant or a beautiful animal, but with an inner knowledge of things, perfectly spontaneous and effortless – an effortless life, perfectly spontaneous. I don't even have the feeling that there was any question of food, not that I remember; but there was the joy of Life, the joy of Beauty: there were flowers, there was water, there were trees, there were animals, and all that was friendly, but spontaneously so. And there were no problems! No problems to be solved, nothing at all – one just lived! ....An uncomplicated life, definitely.” The Mother’s Agenda-December-2, 1964