"A Force came down into his mortal limbs, A current from eternal seas of Bliss;" Savitri-79 The Reader's Query “(Question) Am I fit for Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga? Will he take me up? (Answer by Sri Aurobindo ) If by my Yoga you mean the integral Yoga leading towards the supramental realisation, you have not at present the capacity for it. All you can do at present is some preparation for it by Bhakti and self-dedication through Karma; if into this preparation you put a strong sincerity and a settled psychic aspiration, then one day you will be ready for more.” 23 February 1931 Sri Aurobindo CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-544-545, “(Q:) I have been here for one and a half years but I know nothing of the sadhana. I meditate, but nothing happens in the meditation. I feel there is no love in me towards the Mother. What shall I do to feel this love? (Ans.) Become truthful, pure, sincere, straightforward. ” Sri Aurobindo 1 July 1935/CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-462 The Reader's Query “Answer to him that my way of Yoga is a special path and extremely difficult and I do not readily accept disciples — unless there is something to indicate that they have a special call.... The goal of Yoga is always hard to reach, but this one (integral Yoga) is more difficult than any other, and it is only for those who have the call, the capacity, the willingness to face everything and every risk, even the risk of failure, and the will to progress towards an entire selflessness, desirelessness and surrender."¹⁹ SRI AUROBINDO “I do not very readily accept disciples as this path of Yoga is difficult one and it can be followed only if there is a special call.”²¹ SRI AUROBINDO “You will tell him that admission to the Asram is only allowed to those who are already accepted as Sri Aurobindo’s disciples. There are no arrangements for visitors residing in the Asram ; those who come for darshan make their own arrangements outside. Sri Aurobindo does not readily accept disciples as his is a special path of Yoga and very difficult for most. For what he wants, another Guru with an easier way of Yoga would probably be more helpful.”²⁰ SRI AUROBINDO “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.”² SRI AUROBINDO “Even if one person could put himself faithfully at the disposal of the Truth, he could change the country and the world.... The best way to help the world is to transform oneself by an integral and intensive yoga.”¹⁸ THE MOTHER “There are very few people who carry with them an atmosphere which irradiates joy, peace, confidence- it is very rare. But these are truly benefactors of humanity. They don’t need to open their mouth.” THE MOTHER “I know the conditions of the country (India). Even if one person could put himself faithfully at the disposal of the Truth, he could change the country and the world.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-10/p-148/19th April-1969 “All I would need is one man who had an absolute trust and was receptive, with a power of execution.”²² THE MOTHER “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.”² THE MOTHER “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 constant upward effort (of the few) that has kept humanity alive and maintained for it its place in the front of creation.”²³ SRI AUROBINDO “For spiritual rebirth means the constant throwing away of our previous associations and circumstances and proceeding to live as if at each virgin moment we were starting life anew… To give you an idea of the final height of spiritual rebirth, I may say that there can be a constant experience of the whole universe actually disappearing at every instant and being at every instant newly created!”²⁴ THE MOTHER “Well-known or unknown has absolutely no importance from the spiritual point of view…One man who earnestly pursues the Yoga is of more value than a thousand well-known men.”²⁶ SRI AUROBINDO “Many times in his writings, particularly in The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo warns us against the imaginings of those who believe they can do sadhana without rigorous self-control and who heed all sorts of inspirations, which lead them to a dangerous imbalance where all their repressed, hidden, secret desires come out into the open under the pretence of liberation from ordinary conventions and ordinary reason.”²⁸ THE MOTHER After the arrival of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo , the Supramental energy is active in earth’s atmosphere very close to the material world and this inner aid with constant miracle will replace the outer aid of Religion in generalising Spirituality in humanity and this personal contact with Supramental Consciousness will be initiated from individual prepared Soul Centres. Long before the Supramentalisation of humanity, a 'principle of Supramental consciousness'²⁹ must be established in few prepared vessels. So all can open themselves towards the Supramental Light and Oneness and receive its brief touch¹⁶ with miraculous result but the flow of this invisible Sunlight can be stabilised in the well built subtle and causal body of the prepared individual vessel or after one is thoroughly established in the intermediate and 'the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature'²⁹ through prolonged Sadhana. Intervention of this Force changes circumstances, brings very wide spread results and sooner or later the world will come under its direct influence. Thus, the world appears to him with a different meaning, not a senseless and meaningless whirl in space but ‘A Presence and Greatness everywhere’¹⁷ transforming receptive matter to plastic and Spiritual Law and Divine Force can penetrate uninterruptedly into the material world through its conscious human vessel. Man’s future is ‘Decreed (to become God) since the beginning of the worlds.’¹⁵ An Avatara’s mission is fulfilled when the (consenting part of the) humanity arrives at a Consciousness in which He is fully established. Sri Aurobindo’s first and primary objective is accomplished if the surface personalities of a few Sadhakas or ‘one hundred perfect instruments’² reveal and establish the concealed Supramental Mahashakti after long movement of Consciousness between the Psychic and Spiritual plane. And the secondary objective is with this inner movement of universalisation of Consciousness, to expedite the process of descent of Divine Force to earth's atmosphere on a large scale or “His gates to the world were swept with seas of light.” (Savitri-236) Thus, the consciousness of general humanity can be enriched and generalisation of Spirituality and the revelation of Godhead in humanity becomes practicable. A relation between the seeker of truth, the traditional Yogi and the integral Yogi is hinted in the Gita . “A seeker of truth, jijnasu , after many births of preparation, purification of impurity and sin, endeavouring with sincerity becomes a traditional Yogi and attains the highest goal of liberation of Soul or a Soul who fell from Yoga, yogabhrasta, from the past birth, in this birth strives with sincerity to overcome the samskara of many births in brief period of this life and attains the highest goal... After many births of preparation, a traditional Yogi, Jnani, attains My Purushottama or Supramental state of Consciousness. Before realisation of this highest Consciousness, he also realises the intermediate stair that all this existence is Divine, the Cosmic Consciousness, Vasudeva sarvamiti. Such a great Soul with realisation of Vasudeva sarvamiti or integral Yogi is very rare, samahatma sudurlava. ”³ An integral Yogi, after many births of preparation, attains integral Transformation, integral Perfection and integral Knowledge.²⁷ A similar description of a seeker of Truth (Jijnasu) ascending to the state of Consciousness of Godhead (Avatara) is also observed in Savitri through intermediate stairs Dvija, Yantra and Vibhuti through many successive births of preparation known as all life. "Aspiring he transcends his earthly self; ( A seeker of Truth, Jijnasu ) He stands in the largeness of his soul new-born, (A twice-born Soul, Dvija ) Redeemed from encirclement by mortal things And moves in a pure free spiritual realm (Instrument of Truth, Yantra ) As in the rare breath of a stratosphere; A last end of far lines of divinity, (Emanation, Vibhuti ) He mounts by a frail thread to his high source; He reaches his fount of immortality, He calls the Godhead into his mortal life.” (Consciousness of Avatara ) Savitri-486 A traditional Sadhaka , after realisation of Kshara, Akshara and Purushottama consciousness, feels that this realisation cannot be reconciled⁶ with the untransformed nature of the three Gunas. So, he has no unfinished task left and hence his blissful enjoyment of existence concentrates on the issue of freedom from rebirth and escapes into the supreme abode³⁹ of param dham through the passage of Purushottama state. In integral Yoga, after realisation of Kshara, Akshara and Purushottama consciousness or after realisation of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Being, a Sadhaka’s difficult task prohibits blissful enjoyment of the fruit of his labour but begins to reconcile static Matter with dynamic Spirit and thus Divine Shakti pours into the material vessel and confronts the Subconscient dark forces. His Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental purification, transformation and perfection resume action from firmly established Psychic heart centre and from firmly established Karma Yoga where Divine Will, Knowledge and Love are perfectly reconciled. Integral Yoga gives more importance to the emergence of Spiritual Instruments⁴ and traditional Yoga/Religion to the emergence of psycho-physical/religious Teachers;⁵ or “All religions and disciplines in India which use largely the psycho-physical method, depend more or less upon it for their practices.”¹ The manifestation of some intermediate truth through traditional Yoga/Religion can draw large devotees and the manifestation of the highest and comprehensive truth³³ through integral Yoga can draw few strong Souls. Traditional Yoga gives more importance to self-expansion and a traditional Teacher is weighed by the number of disciples and devotees surrounding him. Integral Yoga gives more importance to Subconscient transformation through self-concentration and a Sadhaka of integral Yoga is weighed by his enhanced capacity to bear earth’s suffering and miseries and later transforming them into ecstasies. The perfect Instruments of integral Yoga with universalised Consciousness will preoccupy themselves for the benefit of individuals and humanity through concentration and illumination of their own subtle and causal bodies. They are nameless Spiritual leaders of humanity and their invisible world action through descent of Divine Force or reversal of Consciousness to resolve all problems of existence, are of far greater value than any religious movement can imagine. Those whose frontal surface nature is dominated by Courage and selfless Love, known as Kshatriya Soul Force and frontal Nature dominated by Truth and Wisdom, known as Brahmin Soul Force are recognised as superior human beings and are fit for collective Spiritual life. This work will be accelerated by the emergence of the Kshatriya Soul force of courage and new adventure in the outer world and ceaseless battle against earthly opposition through activation of the Psychic Being. The Mission will further spread by high nobility of Soul which is untouched by any motive,³⁷ littleness, narrowness and baseness and will move with a certain greatness of Spiritual conquest to confront with universal dark forces attached to the present unstable creation and Supramental contagion to enter fierce battle with ‘giant sons of Darkness’⁷ of the Subconscient/Inconscient world and bear ‘inner wounds that are to slow to heal.’⁸ This manifesting action further asks that state of reconciling Wisdom which can perfectly possess all the infinite variety of external circumstances and permeate the Divine Light and Love to all the nether, neglected and less explored domain and thus illumining the whole earth. This endeavour will drive forward towards the realisation of the vision as indicated in Savitri, “Mere men into spiritual beings grow And see awake the dumb divinity .”⁹ A Sadhaka of traditional Yoga, as per the Gita's injunction, 'does not mourn and remains indifferent either for the living or for the dead.' (The Gita-2.11) and always remember the unchangeable law, 'For certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead.' (The Gita-2.27) After fulfilling this condition of traditional Yoga, a Sadhaka of integral Yoga will invoke the Savitri within and remain aware of people dying every day and every moment, through the mantra, 'This was the day when Satyavan must die ' (Savitri-10), and maintain another Spirit always "For about sixty years I have been constantly looking after people who are said to be "dying" – constantly." (The Mother's Agenda-April 28, 1965): "Although our fallen minds forget to climb, Although our human stuff resists or breaks, She keeps her will that hopes to divinise clay; Failure cannot repress, defeat o’erthrow; Time cannot weary her nor the Void subdue, The ages have not made her passion less; No victory she admits of Death or Fate. Always she drives the soul to new attempt; Always her magical infinitude Forces to aspire the inert brute elements; As one who has all infinity to waste, She scatters the seed of the Eternal’s strength On a half-animate and crumbling mould, Plants heaven’s delight in the heart’s passionate mire, Pours godhead’s seekings into a bare beast frame, Hides immortality in a mask of death." Savitri-354 Our task in sadhana is to make Death God’s Inconscient throne³⁴ unsafe by undergoing Subconscient and Inconscient Transformation and to transform this prison-house of the material world into an opulent kingdom, rajyam samruddham . Or Death God's Inconscient throne is “Threatened with this faint beam of wandering Truth” Savitri-585 The Synthesis of Yoga book (Principal Shastra) issues injunctions to a Sadhaka (Seeker of integral Truth) of integral Yoga that he should not remain indifferent to individual, collective and world imperfection and he should become accountable for his Sadhana (askesis) to his own Self, to the World and to the Divine.²⁵ Integral Yoga proposes that a developed Soul must not ‘look with a remote indifference on the’¹⁰ sufferings of the unblessed ordinary human being and blessed devotees and draws all of them towards Spirit’s freedom. Or ‘even if our personal deliverance is complete, still there is the suffering of others, the world travail, which the great of soul cannot regard with indifference.’¹¹ ‘Accepting life, he (a Sadhaka of integral Yoga) has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world’s burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country.’¹² The forceful directive issued in the principal Shastra related to individual and collective imperfection, is to ‘leave nothing around it (liberated Soul Sadhaka) unchanged’¹³ superseding the previous stand ‘which will in no way seek to change their outward appearance...and old human surroundings.’¹³ His personal and communal existence must ‘take full account of’¹⁴ present imperfection and he has to ‘see how it can be converted to the law of a possible perfection.’¹⁴ The Mother linked money power with sex and its need to control universally. That is one of the perfections of Supramental manifestation. He "who will have a total power over the human sexual impulses (not merely in himself, but a universal power – that is, a power enabling him to control this everywhere, among all men) will have the right"³⁰ to rule over the money Power of the world. "The supramentalized body will be sexless since the need for animal procreation will no longer exist."³¹ Recapitulation: “Actually, we are very lazy...Sri Aurobindo wrote that he was very lazy – that consoled me! We are very lazy. We would like (laughing) to settle back and blissfully enjoy the fruit of our labors!...”³² The Mother "The psychic and the spiritual opening with their experiences and consequences can lead away from life or to a Nirvana ; but they are here (in Integral Yoga) being considered solely as steps in a transformation of the nature." ³⁵ Sri Aurobindo The above message indicates that, in integral Yoga, enjoying life from a higher plane of Consciousness is forbidden ("I sacrifice not earth to happier worlds." Savitri-692 This line can be reconciled with the line, "Our souls forget to the Highest to aspire." Savitri-113), whereas in traditional Yoga it is permitted. A traditional Sadhak , after discovering the triple Selves, waits in an ecstatic state to escape into the supreme abode of Param Dham . In integral Yoga, time and space are utilised towards inner and outer adventures of life through movement of Consciousness and the Supreme Sachchidananda Consciousness possesses all the other intermediatee multiple planes of Consciousness. We have to be aware of the higest dynamic Self and its full possession in our external life. (“Thy consciousness forgets to be divine” Savitri-454) Thus, life is divinised. Those whose Psychic being in the heart and Spiritual being above the head have partly opened are identified as beginners of Integral Yoga. Before this opening, they can pursue this Yoga with the aid of purified intellect. These seekers are issued with injunctions in Savitri to renounce 'rest and earthly ease' (Savitri-339) till they find their Psychic and Spiritual being. Those who have found the Psychic being and Spiritual being are issued with injunctions in Savitri to renounce 'the glory and felicity.' (Savitri-136) Because during the transformation of Nature, pain and suffering are treated not as a curse, but as a transitional mechanism and a privilege ("It keeps for her her privilege of pain...But must cross on stones of suffering to its goal." (Savitri-457)) used by the universalized consciousness to shock the inert matter into waking up and evolving. There are two types of liberated Souls. The first type of liberated Soul or a Sadhaka of traditional Yoga, ‘may be content with a subtle and limited action within the old human surroundings which will in no way seek to change their outward appearance.’¹³ The second type of liberated Soul or a Sadhaka of integral Yoga, who ‘will not only alter the forms and sphere of its own external life but, leaving nothing around it unchanged or unaffected, create a new world or a new order.’¹³ Sri Aurobindo insists that the second type of liberated Souls remain accountable for their Sadhana through large Divine action, record the descending overhead Divine Wisdom and enrich Earth's atmosphere through the descent of Divine Love, Delight and Beauty. A long practice³⁸ of traditional Yoga is felt necessary and indispensable before the beginning of Integral Yoga. One may note that after the perfections of traditional Yoga are exhausted (list of perfections of traditional and Integral Yoga ), Integral Yoga begins. For the traditional Sadhaks, accountability in Sadhana is not obligatory, whereas integral Sadhaks are accountable for their Sadhana to the Self, World and Divine.²⁵ The Mother pointed out, "Sri Aurobind o always said that his Yoga began where the former Yogas (traditional Yoga) ended, that to be able to realise his Yoga it was necessary first of all to have reached the extreme limit of what the older Yogas had realised, that is to say, the perception of the Divine, the union, the identification with the Divine... On the contrary Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana starts where the others end. Once the union with the Supreme is realised one must bring down that realisation to the exterior world and change the conditions of life upon the earth until a total transformation is accomplished. In accordance with this aim, the sadhaks of the integral yoga do not retire from the world to lead a life of contemplation and meditation. Each one must devote at least one-third of his time (that means at least 8 hours of a day) to a useful work."³⁶ The spirit in which an integral Sadhak will pursue sadhana : "Content abide not with one conquered realm; Adventure all to make the whole world thine, To break into greater kingdoms turn thy force. Fear not to be nothing that thou mayst be all; Assent to the emptiness of the Supreme That all in thee may reach its absolute." Savitri-536 OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA-23/ The Synthesis of Yoga/p-538, 2: “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/p-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/The Mother’s Agenda- 5/p-195, 3: THE GITA-6.45/7.19, "Her spirit saw the world as living God; It saw the One and knew that all was He. She knew him as the Absolute’s self-space, One with her self and ground of all things here In which the world wanders seeking for the Truth Guarded behind its face of ignorance:" Savitri-556 4: “Teaching, example and influence are three instruments of the Guru (integral Teacher)… He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct…The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-66-67, “The idea of helping others is a subtle form of the ego. It is only the Divine Force that can help. One can be its instrument , but you should first learn to be a fit and egoless instrument. ” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-318, “The best way to help the world is to transform oneself by an integral and intensive yoga.” The Mother/TMCW14/Words of The Mother-II/p-277, 5: “…the (traditional) Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master . This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-55 , 6: Matter cannot be reconciled with the Spirit is understood from following verse: “They who with the eye of knowledge perceive this irreconcilable difference between the Matter, kshetra , and the Spirit, Kshetrajna, and the liberation of Being from Nature, they escape into supreme abode of Param Dham .” The Gita-13.35, In the Gita Matter can be reconciled with the Spirit is hinted but not developed: ‘Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, reason and ego is My eightfold divided Nature, apara-prakriti. Know too My other Divine Nature, Para-prakriti, different from this Apara Prakriti; this Supreme Nature or the Supreme Mother which becomes the Jiva in the heart and by which this world is upheld. This ‘upholding of the world,’ jagat dharayate , means Para-Prakriti also penetrates into Apara Prakriti by which this world can be purified, transformed and perfected.” THE GITA-7.4, 5. 7: Savitri-226, 8: Savitri-230, 9: Savitri-709-10, 10: "The state of the liberated soul is that of the Purusha who is for ever free. Its consciousness is a transcendence and an all-comprehending unity. Its self-knowledge does not get rid of all the terms of self-knowledge, but unifies and harmonises all things in God and in the divine nature. The intense religious ecstasy which knows only God and ourselves and shuts out all else, is only to it an intimate experience which prepares it for sharing in the embrace of the divine Love and Delight around all creatures. A heavenly bliss which unites God and ourselves and the blest, but enables us to look with a remote indifference on the unblest and their sufferings is not possible to the perfect soul ; for these also are its selves; free individually from suffering and ignorance, it must naturally turn to draw them also towards its freedom. On the other hand any absorption in the relations between self and others and the world to the exclusion of God and the Beyond is still more impossible, and therefore it cannot be limited by the earth or even by the highest and most altruistic relations of man with man. Its activity or its culmination is not to efface and utterly deny itself for the sake of others, but to fulfil itself in God-possession, freedom and divine bliss that in and by its fulfilment others too may be fulfilled. For it is in God alone, by the possession of the Divine only that all the discords of life can be resolved, and therefore the raising of men towards the Divine is in the end the one effective way of helping mankind. All the other activities and realisations of our self-experience have their use and power, but in the end these crowded side- tracks or these lonely paths must circle round to converge into the wideness of the integral way by which the liberated soul transcends all, embraces all and becomes the promise and the power of the fulfilment of all in their manifested being of the Divine. " CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-444-445, 11: "It is possible, when we live inwardly in the depths, to arrive at a state of vast inner equality and peace which is untouched by the reactions of the outer nature, and that is a great but incomplete liberation, — for the outer nature too has a right to deliverance. But even if our personal deliverance is complete, still there is the suffering of others, the world travail, which the great of soul cannot regard with indifference. There is a unity with all beings which something within us feels and the deliverance of others must be felt as intimate to its own deliverance."CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-422, 12: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-77, 13: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-268, 14: “But whatever his aim, however exalted his aspiration, he has to begin from the law of his present imperfection, to take full account of it and see how it can be converted to the law of a possible perfection.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-631, 15: Savitri-708, 16: “There man can visit but there he cannot live.” Savitri-659 (All men can get the Supramental touch or God’s touch but are unfit or not prepared to get His embrace.) “There he could enter, there awhile abide.” Savitri-91, “It (child Soul) can only near and touch, it cannot hold;” Savitri-179 17: Savitri-42, 18: The Mother’s Agenda-10/p-148/19th April-1969, TMCW/Vol-14/Words of The Mother-II/p-277, 19: CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-554, CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-27, “Write to him that compliance with his request to see me is impossible. I do not see anyone — I do not speak with anybody or give oral instructions in Yoga. As for the rest, this is a special path of Yoga and only those are accepted who have a special call to it, not merely a general desire for the spiritual life. It is not a life of Sannyasa or a Yoga that can be done by Japa etc. but something much more difficult, so difficult that even those who have a call do not find it easy to go through to the end, and for those who have not the call, it would be impossible. If he likes, however, he can go on practising his Japa with an aspiration towards this path and if he gets any experiences by which a call to it becomes evident, then I can reconsider his case.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-554, “Sri Aurobindo’s way of Yoga is of a special character — it is neither sannyasa nor does it accept the ordinary way of human life. Its first stages can be practised anywhere. But unless there is a personal call to this particular way, there is no use in anybody taking to it. For it is a difficult path and there is little chance of success unless the aspiration is clear and fixed and the demand of the soul sincere and unbreakable. Sri Aurobindo does not admit anyone to this Yoga unless he has some ground to decide that there is in him this special call and that he has an evident capacity for this way — usually it is only after seeing personally at the time of one of the three darshans he gives to disciples and others that he decides whether or not to admit. On the strength of correspondence only he very seldom makes any decision of this kind.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-555, “The difficulty is that she seems to have only vairagya for worldly life without any knowledge or special call for this Yoga and this Yoga and the life here are quite different things from ordinary Yoga and ordinary Asrams. It is not a life of meditative retirement as elsewhere. Moreover it would be impossible for us to decide anything without seeing her and knowing at close hand what she is like. We are not just now for taking more inmates into the Asram except in a very few cases.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-556, “Reply that residence in the Asrama is only allowed to sadhakas who have been accepted into Sri Aurobindo’s path of Yoga, and not to all of them. This path is a special way of Yoga, difficult and different from others; only those are accepted who have a special call to it.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-559, “All are not equally capable of practising Yoga and in Yoga itself some paths are more difficult than others. There are some who have a special call to a path; others have no call; though they may feel drawn to Yoga, it is to other disciplines that they must go. This path is especially difficult and even some of those admitted to it find great difficulty in following it. Therefore Sri Aurobindo is not willing to admit any new disciples unless he has reason to think that they have a special call for it or a special capacity.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-560-561, “The number of sadhaks is over 150 and it is impossible to make farther admissions except in the most sparing way, as the means of the Asram are not unlimited. Moreover Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is of a special and difficult kind and he admits only those who seem to him to have a special call to the life here.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-581, “There is no study of philosophy here; there is only a silent practice of Yoga. But this Yoga is too difficult for everyone to be admitted to it; one must have a special call or a certain capacity (not intellectual, but psychic or spiritual) before he is accepted. And even then all who are accepted as disciples are not allowed to stay in the Asram. The life of the Asram is of a special kind and it is only rarely that those are admitted who have not become permanent members ; a few come and stay for short periods, but these are already accepted disciples of Sri Aurobindo. ” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-595 20: CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-561, 21: SABCL/26/On Himself/p-175, “It may be said generally that to be overanxious to pull people, especially very young people, into the sadhana is not wise. The sadhak who comes to this Yoga must have a real call, and even with the real call the way is often difficult enough. But when one pulls people in in a spirit of enthusiastic propagandism, the danger is of lighting an imitative and unreal fire, not the true Agni , or else a short-lived fire which cannot last and is submerged by the uprush of the vital waves. This is especially so with young people who are plastic and easily caught hold of by ideas and communicated feelings not their own — afterwards the vital rises with its unsatisfied demands and they are swung between two contrary forces or rapidly yield to the strong pull of the ordinary life and action and satisfaction of desire which is the natural bent of adolescence. Or else the unfit adhara tends to suffer under the stress of a call for which it was not ready, or at least not yet ready. When one has the real thing in oneself, one goes through and finally takes the full way of sadhana, but it is only a minority that does so. It is better to receive only people who come of themselves and of these only those in whom the call is genuinely their own and persistent.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-35/ Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-691-692 22: The Mother’s Agenda-5/p-165/14th August-1964, 23: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-752, 24: TMCW/Vol-3/Questions and Answers-1929 to 1931/p-176, 25: “She wrote the account of all that she had lost,” Savitri-117, (Accountability to the Self.) “The Voice replied: “Is this enough, O spirit? And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows The work was left undone for which it came? Or is this all for thy being born on earth Charged with a mandate from eternity, A listener to the voices of the years, A follower of the footprints of the gods, To pass and leave unchanged the old dusty laws?” Savitri-475 (Accountability to the Self) “He (Avatar) has given his life and light to balance here The dark account of mortal ignorance… Pays with the body’s death his soul’s vast light… He dies that the world may be new-born and live.” Savitri-445-447 (An Avatar’s accountability to the world.) “To account for the Actual’s unaccountable sum,” Savitri-269, (Accountability to the Divine.) “Is this then the report that I must make, My head bowed with shame before the Eternal’s seat, — His power he kindled in thy body has failed, His labourer returns, her task undone?” Savitri-476 (Accountability to the Divine.) “And in the transactions of our positive consciousness, even Unity has to make its account with Multiplicity; for the Many also are Brahman.”CWSA/21/The Life Divine-39 (Accountability to the world) “In transparent systems bodied termless truths, The Timeless made accountable to Time” Savitri-273 26: CWSA-35/Letters on Himself And The Ashram/p-691, TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-62 27: “Among thousands of seekers of truth, jijnasu, one here and there strives after perfection and becomes a Yogi. And of those few siddha Yog i who strive and attain perfection of Yoga one here and there attains integral perfection and knows the Divine with all the principles of His existence, betti tattvatah .” The Gita-7.3, 28: The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/Vol-10/p-15, 29: "It is not intended to supramentalise humanity at large, but to establish the principle of the supramental consciousness in the earth-evolution. If that is done, all that is needed will be evolved by the supramental Power itself. It is not therefore important that the mission should be widespread. What is important is that the thing should be done at all in however small a number; that is the only difficulty…It would therefore be a waste of time and energy which should be devoted to the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-288-290, 30: The Mother's Agenda/June 22, 1958, 31: The Mother's Agenda/August 1954, 32: The Mother’s Agenda/ July 18, 1961, 33: “For the disciple of an integral Yoga there can be no hesitation; as a seeker of knowledge it is the integral knowledge and not anything either half-way and attractive or high-pinnacled and exclusive he must seek. He must soar to the utmost height, but also circle and spread to the most all-embracing wideness, not binding himself to any rigid structure of metaphysical thought, but free to admit and combine all the soul’s highest and greatest and fullest and most numerous experiences.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-361, 34: "Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life. Thus is the throne of the Inconscient safe" Savitri-18, 35: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-943, 36: "Sri Aurobindo came to say something new. And it is precisely because people are unable to come out of the experiences they have known and heard being spoken of, that they try to identify this Force which Sri Aurobindo called supramental with their experience of the intermediary worlds including the Overmind. For they cannot conceive that there could be something else.... Sri Aurobindo always said that his Yoga began where the former Yogas ended, that to be able to realise his Yoga it was necessary first of all to have reached the extreme limit of what the older Yogas had realised, that is to say, the perception of the Divine, the union, the identification with the Divine. But that Divine, Sri Aurobindo says, is the Divine of the Overmind which is already something quite unthinkable, in comparison with the human consciousness, because even to reach there one must pass through several planes and in these planes one feels dazzled." TMCW/Vol-5/p-283, "The usual sadhanas have for aim the union with the Supreme Consciousness (Sat-chit-ananda). And those who reach there are satisfied with their own liberation and leave the world to its unhappy plight. On the contrary Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana starts where the others end. Once the union with the Supreme is realised one must bring down that realisation to the exterior world and change the conditions of life upon the earth until a total transformation is accomplished. In accordance with this aim, the sadhaks of the integral yoga do not retire from the world to lead a life of contemplation and meditation. Each one must devote at least one-third of his time to a useful work (that means 8 hours of the day). All activities are represented in the Ashram and each one chooses the work most congenial to his nature, but must do it in a spirit of service and unselfishness, keeping always in view the aim of integral transformation...To make this purpose possible the Ashram is organised so that all its inmates find their reasonable needs satisfied and have not to worry about their subsistence... The rules are very few so that each one can enjoy the freedom needed for his development but a few things are strictly forbidden: they are — (1) politics, (2) smoking, (3) alcoholic drink and (4) sex enjoyment.... Great care is taken for the maintenance of good health and the welfare and normal growth of the body of all, small and big, young and old." TMCW/Vol-13/Words of the Mother-1/p-107-108, 37: ( Blessed Lord said) : “He who expects nothing, anapekhya , (neither from the Creator nor from His Creation) is virgin, skilful, indifferent, untroubled, who has given up all initiation of work, is dear to Me.” The Gita-12.16, “There is a love in which the emotion is turned towards the Divine in an increasing receptivity and growing union. What it receives from the Divine it pours out on others, but truly without demanding a return . If you are capable of that, then that is the highest and most satisfying way to love.” The Mother TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-122, “The true purpose of life — To live for the Divine, or to live for the Truth, or at least to live for one’s soul. And the true sincerity —To live for the Divine without expecting any benefit from Him in return. ” The Mother TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-4, The Mother here recounts the general state of consciousness of devotees and ashramites: “To give a rather curious example, there was a kind of spell of illness over the Ashram, stemming mainly from people’s thoughts, from their way of thinking. It was quite widespread and it was horrible, gloomy, full of fear, pettiness, blind submission, oh! Everyone was in a state of expectation... In short, the atmosphere was such that there was an attempt to prevent me from leaving my room – I had to sneak out! It was disgusting! Well, on the very night I saw the spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was lying sick in his bed, just as I had seen him in 1950.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/ February 18, 1961, “Those who approach me with the intention of obtaining favours will be disappointed, because I have no powers at my disposal.” Or “If you approach me in the hope of obtaining favours, you will be frustrated, because I have no powers at my disposal.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-5/p-250, “There was no strength in her, no pride of force; The lofty burning of desire had sunk Ashamed, a vanity of separate self, The hope of spiritual greatness fled, Salvation she asked not nor a heavenly crown:" Savitri-p-522 38: "His (a Sadhak of Integral Yoga) 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. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses. The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth, —sabdabrahmativartate — beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, —´srotavyasya s´rutasya ca ." 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, “Therefore our integral Yoga will take up these various disciplines and concentrations, but harmonise and if possible fuse them by a synthesis which removes their mutual exclusions. Not realising the Lord and the All only to reject them for silent Self or unknowable Absolute as would an exclusively transcendental, nor living for the Lord alone or in the All alone as would an exclusively theistic or an exclusively pantheistic Yoga, the seeker of integral knowledge will limit himself neither in his thought nor in his practice nor in his realisation by any religious creed or philosophical dogma. He will seek the Truth of existence in its completeness. The ancient disciplines he will not reject, for they rest upon eternal truths, but he will give them an orientation in conformity with his aim.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-341-342, 39: "Although with a vain imaginary bliss Of fiery union through death’s door of escape She dreamed of her body robed in funeral flame, She knew she must not clutch that happiness To die with him and follow, seizing his robe Across our other countries, travellers glad Into the sweet or terrible Beyond." Savitri-472 Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: Download the Odia WEB PAGE as a PDF file: Acknowledgements Header banner image source https://latitudesgallery.com/blogs/photo-blog/imaging-kauai-pre-dawn-light "(1) To give oneself to the Divine, (2) to receive and be the Divine, (3) to transmit and spread forth the Divine: these are the three simultaneous movements which constitute our total relation with the Divine." The Mother TMCW/Vol-14/p-22 "Think only of the Divine. Live only for the Divine. Aspire only to the Divine. Love only the Divine. Work only for the Divine. Be attached only to the Divine. Want only the Divine. Seek only the Divine. Only adore the Divine." The Mother White Roses "The Divine alone is true – all the rest is falsehood. The Divine alone is real – all the rest is illusion. The Divine alone is life – all the rest belongs to the kingdom of death. The Divine alone is light – all the rest is semi-obscurity. The Divine alone is love – all the rest is selfish sentimentality. And yet the Divine is everywhere, in the ignorant man as well as in the sage. And yet the Divine is everywhere, in the sinner as well as in the saint." The Mother The Mother's Agenda/Undated 1958

"There throned on concentration’s native seat He opens that third mysterious eye in man," Savitri-665 The Central Truth ofIntegral Education "It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman , and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen. After that revelation, whatever fadings of the light, whatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably lose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must become more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion and persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our love the hidden Deity." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-305 “It (Concentration) is to bring back all the scattered threads of consciousness to a single point, a single idea. Those who can attain perfect attention succeed in everything they undertake; they will always make a rapid progress. And this kind of concentration can be developed exactly like the muscles; one may follow different systems, different methods of training. Today we know that the most pitiful weakling, for example, can with discipline become as strong as anyone else. One should not have a will which flickers out like a candle... The will, concentration must be cultivated ; it is a question of method, of regular exercise. If you will, you can... But the thought “What’s the use?” must not come in to weaken the will. The idea that one is born with a certain character and can do nothing about it is a stupidity.” (The Mother's above message can be compared with "sometimes full of some divine afflatus or more than ordinary manifestation of the Godhead which is indeed present in all, even in the weakest or most clouded living being, " The Synthesis of Yoga-741) The Mother The Mother's Centenary Works/Vol-4/p-5 The Central Truth of Integral Education “Many times in his writings, particularly in The Synthesis of Yoga, ⁴³ Sri Aurobindo warns us against the imaginings of those who believe they can do sadhana without rigorous self-control and who heed all sorts of inspirations, which lead them to a dangerous imbalance where all their repressed, hidden, secret desires come out into the open under the pretence of liberation from ordinary conventions and ordinary reason.”²⁶ The Mother “It is only by increasing that control that he (a Sadhaka of integral Yoga) can move towards perfection, — and it is only by developing soul-power that he can reach it. Nature-power in him has to become more and more completely a conscious act of soul, a conscious expression of all the will and knowledge of spirit. Prakriti has to reveal itself as shakti of the Purusha .”²⁷ Sri Aurobindo “He does not abandon the animal reactions and enjoyments, but more lucidly, finely and sensitively mentalises them. This he does even on his normal and his lower levels, but, as he develops, he puts his lower being to a severer test , begins to demand from it on pain of rejection something like a transformation: that is the mind’s way of preparing for a spiritual life still beyond it.”¹⁰ Sri Aurobindo “This character of our actually realised being and therefore our Yoga (integral Yoga) imposes on us certain limitations and primary difficulties which can only be overcome by (1) divine help or (2) an arduous practice , and in reality (3) only by the combination of both these aids.”⁴¹ Sri Aurobindo Concentration is defined as ‘the bringing to its full intensity and the mastered and self-directed employment of that energy of being in us for a definite end.’¹ To renounce all types of earthly enjoyments is the general cause of increase of concentration power, samyama . The purpose and necessity of Concentration is to trace the cycle of self-oblivion and self-discovery in Ignorance and Knowledge for the joy of Nature and Spirit. Exclusive concentration is the frontal pragmatic power of concentration in a limited superficial surface working of the all-inclusive Integral Concentration; it is much like that power of our human mentality which is absorbed in a particular object and in a particular work and seems to use so much part knowledge and partial ideas that are necessary for it by forgetting his totality or rest of himself. But it is all the time a part and portion of an indivisible concentration in us that has done all the work that has to be done and seen all thing that has to be seen. This ability of exclusive concentration is rightly held to be one of the greatest powers of the human mind and it is only a supreme self-possessing Knowledge which can thus be powerful to limit itself in the act and yet work out perfectly all its intentions through that apparent Ignorance. Integral education proposes ⁴⁹ that if one does not practice self-control, then one is identified as an animal. If he controls his lower Nature through the practice of Self-control, then he is identified as a man. If he transforms his lower Nature through the descent of Divine Force, then he is identified as God. If intellect is purified, then a student of integral Education or a Sadhaka of integral Yoga can practice self-control. This self-control will be spontaneous and rigorous if his Psychic being in the heart or the Spiritual Being above the head open. In integral Concentration, his self-control will be spontaneously absolute. ⁴³ Integral Education proposes sevenfold concentrations, out of which the first four are exclusive mental concentrations and the last three are beyond the mental concentrations. a) Education through first Exclusive Concentration: "A little curve cut off in measureless Space, " Savitri-148-149 “Then science and reason careless of the soul Could iron out a tranquil uniform world, Aeonic seekings glut with outward truths And a single-patterned thinking force on mind, Inflicting Matter’s logic on Spirit’s dreams A reasonable animal make of man And a symmetrical fabric of his life.” Savitri-255 “Ideals, systems, sciences, poems, crafts Tirelessly there perished and again recurred, Sought restlessly by some creative Power; But all were dreams crossing an empty vast.” Savitri-642 “The mind is a thing that dwells in diffusion, in succession; it can only concentrate on one thing at a time and when not concentrated runs from one thing to another very much at random. Therefore it has to concentrate on a single idea, a single subject of meditation, a single object of contemplation, a single object of will in order to possess or master it, and this it must do to at least the temporary exclusion of all others.”³¹ Sri Aurobindo “The first step in concentration must be always to accustom the discursive mind to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect.”³² Sri Aurobindo “Studies strengthen the mind and turn its concentration away from the impulses and desires of the vital. Concentrating on study is one of the most powerful ways of controlling the mind and the vital; that is why it is so important to study.”³³ The Mother "By studying carefully what Sri Aurobindo has said on all subjects one can easily reach a complete knowledge of the things of this world. "⁵¹ The Mother The first immediate approach towards the realisation of the slow pace of Education in the active mind¹⁵ is the development of (first) exclusive concentration, one form of the self-gathering of the power of Tapas, ¹⁸ which is defined as the complete absorption in the objective world by an entire separation¹² from the true Self; this practical self-oblivion without essential and binding self-ignorance is the nature of exclusive concentration; out of this concentration, the secret of the material world is revealed, in recent times it has justified itself by the many immense and innumerable minute discoveries of Modern Science.²⁴ The limitation of this first exclusive concentration is that it erects a wall of exclusion limiting itself to a single field, domain, or habitation in the movement so that it is aware only of that and unaware of all the rest. Thus, a principle of self-limiting knowledge has emerged which culminates in a positive and effective potential Education which manifests as the genius of an artist, Scientist, Sportsman, Administrator, Educationist. They are identified as the elite of the society. A seeker of Truth utilises the faculty of first exclusive concentration towards calling down the spaceless Infinity to the limited space of his surrounding world and self-expansion in the form of manifestation of objective Divine Work with the aid of three gunas. For a Sadhaka of Integral Yoga, the outer small space of habitation can be utilised as a means of concentration of the highest descent of the Divine Force. b) Education through Second Exclusive Concentration: “Its solitude greatened her human hours” Savitri-14 “At last the traveller in the paths of Time Arrives on the frontiers of eternity.” Savitri-23 “Absorbed no more in the moment-ridden flux Where mind incessantly drifts as on a raft Hurried from phenomenon to phenomenon, He abode at rest in indivisible Time. As if a story long written but acted now, In his present he held his future and his past, Felt in the seconds the uncounted years And saw the hours like dots upon a page.” Savitri-33 “Inheritor of the brief animal mind, Man, still a child in Nature’s mighty hands In the succession of the moments lives; To a changing present is his narrow right; His memory stares back at phantom past, The future flees before him as he moves; He sees imagined garments, not a face.” Savitri-53 “It leaves two giant letters void of sense While without sanction turns the middle sign Carrying an enigmatic universe, As if a present without future or past Repeating the same revolution’s whirl Turned on its axis in its own Inane.” Savitri-56 “It (Overmind) can immortalise a moment's work:” Savitri-85, "Invoking in world-time the timeless truth," Savitri-141, “Absorbed in the present act, the fleeting days, None thought to look beyond the hour’s gains, Or dreamed to make this earth a fairer world, Or felt some touch divine surprise his heart.” Savitri-145 “It (Spiritual Being) sees the hurrying crowd of moments stream Towards the still greatness of a distant hour." (Timeless state) Savitri-160 “His little hour is spent in little things… Time has he none to turn his eyes within And look for his lost self and his dead soul.” Savitri-164-65 “She hopes by the creative act’s release To o’erleap sometimes the gulf she cannot fill To heal awhile the wound of severance, Escape from the moment’s prison of littleness And meet the Eternal’s wide sublimities In the uncertain time-field portioned here. Almost she nears what never can be attained; She shuts eternity into an hour And fills a little soul with the Infinite; The Immobile leans to the magic of her call; She stands on a shore in the Illimitable, Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms And feels around her infinity’s embrace.” Savitri-177 “She has lured the Eternal into arms of Time.” Savitri-178 “But now she turns to break the oblivious spell, Awakes the sleeper on the sculptured couch; She finds again the Presence in the form And in the light that wakes with him recovers A meaning in the hurry and trudge of Time, And through this mind that once obscured the soul Passes a glint of unseen deity.” Savitri-182 “No silent peak is found where Time can rest.” Savitri-197 "A touch supreme surprised his hurrying heart," Savitri-237 “Labours for the hour and not for eternity And trades its gains to meet the moment’s call:” Savitri-240 “Two firmaments of darkness and of light Opposed their limits to the spirit’s walk; It moved veiled in from Self’s infinity In a world of beings and momentary events Where all must die to live and live to die.” Savitri-287-288 “Attracting into time the timeless Light, Imprisoning eternity in the hours, This they (bright gods of Thought) have planned, to snare the feet of Truth In an aureate net of concept and of phrase And keep her captive for the thinker’s joy In his little world built of immortal dreams:” Savitri-274 “The moments there were pregnant with all time.” Savitri-301 “The moment’s thought inspired the passing act.” Savitri-325, “A marriage with eternity divinised Time.” Savitri-327 “His day is a moment in perpetual Time; He is the prey of the minutes and the hours.” Savitri-336 “Immortal movements touched the fleeting hours.” Savitri-352 “Each minute was a throb of beauty’s heart; The hours were tuned to a sweet-toned content” Savitri-355 “That a diviner Force might enter life, A breath of Godhead greaten human time.” Savitri-366 “A moment passed that was eternity’s ray, An hour began, the matrix of new Time.” Savitri-399 “In the immutable ideal world One human moment was eternal made.” Savitri-411 “This now remained with her, her heart’s constant scene.” Savitri-412 “In his floating house upon the sea of Time The regent sits at work and never rests: He is a puppet of the dance of Time; He is driven by the hours, the moment’s call Compels him with the thronging of life’s need And the babel of the voices of the world.” Savitri-478 “The hurried servant senses answer apace To every knock upon the outer doors, Bring in time’s visitors, report each call, Admit the thousand queries and the calls And the messages of communicating minds And the heavy business of unnumbered lives And all the thousandfold commerce of the world.” Savitri-478-79 “A portion of us lives in present Time, A secret mass in dim inconscience gropes; Out of the inconscient and subliminal Arisen, we live in mind’s uncertain light And strive to know and master a dubious world Whose purpose and meaning are hidden from our sight.” Savitri-484 "A Force descended trailing endless lights; Linking Time’s seconds to infinity," Savitri-573 (Savitri said) “All means are held good to catch a single beam, Eternity sacrificed for a moment’s bliss: Yet for joy and not for sorrow earth was made And not as a dream in endless suffering Time.” Savitri-629 (Death said) “Hope not to call God down into his life. How shalt thou (Savitri) bring the Everlasting here? There is no house for him in hurrying Time” Savitri-644 “I (Savitri) claim from Time my will’s eternity, God from his moments.” Savitri-652 "In the truth of a moment, in the moment’s soul Can sip the honey-wine of Eternity." Savitri-662 “And love and joy overtake fleeing Time.” Savitri-664 "Ascend, O soul, into thy timeless self; Choose destiny’s curve and stamp thy will on Time.” Savitri-695 The second exclusive concentration¹⁹ is a contemplation on the present without past and future. Then there is development of second exclusive concentration, which is defined as to preoccupy and limit oneself with the mental knowledge of the present which is hurriedly changing from moment to moment in a helpless succession of events, forms, phenomena and actions, oblivious of the successive past and future happenings except that of memory that holds little and vague inference of future; through this concentration, the objective experience of the ever-changing present environment is realised through a superficial movement of consciousness; thus, the man is practically and dynamically the man of moments; future is withheld from his possession; identifies himself solely in the name and personality of the present narrow existence, lives only in his immediate and outward work and problem and ignorant of his limitation of past births and Spirit’s unending future or put aside the whole infinite course of Time and his rest of total Self and Nature. Yet all the time this existence in the present moment is not the real or the whole truth of his being, but only a practical or pragmatic mental construction for the purposes of the superficial movement of his life and within its limits and he recovers partially from this restriction by linking together the succession of moments, the succession of points of Space, the successions of forms and movements in Time and Space which are beyond his control and comprehension. This second exclusive concentration is 'ignorant but capable of seeking for knowledge and finding it at least in a series of mental representations which may be made clues to the true truth and, more and more refined and illuminated and rendered transparent by the influence, the infiltration and the descent of the light from above, prepare the intelligence for opening to the capacity of true knowledge.' ⁴⁵ The superficial or the apparent man can dissolve this partial concentration of living from moment to moment and go back from its present action at any time to the consciousness of the larger Self and he can only do it to some extent in exceptional conditions of his mentality or, more permanently and completely, as the fruit of a long and arduous self-training, self-deepening, self-heightening and self-expansion. His objective in life is to exist consciously in eternity, in the truth of the indivisibility of Time, in the indivisibility of Force and substance and not in the bondage of the hour and become a patient trustee of the slow eternal Time. The real truth of his being is a time-transcending eternity and living in the whole infinite course of triple Time, but not to a definite succession of moments and all the past, present and future are perfectly stored in every detail in the all-retaining integral Consciousness⁶ within him. This second exclusive concentration, 'can neither live in the infinite time consciousness nor command any direct and real power of the triple time knowledge. The mind of ignorance (or second exclusive concentration) lives, not in the indivisible continuity of time, but successively in each moment. It has a vague sense of the continuity of self and of an essential continuity of experience, a sense of which the source is the deeper self within us, but as it does not live in that self, also it does not live in a true time continuity, but only uses this vague but still insistent awareness as a background, support and assurance in what would otherwise be to it a constant baseless flux of its being. In its practical action its only support other than its station in the present is the line left behind by the past and preserved in memory, the mass of impressions deposited by previous experience and, for the future, an assurance of the regularity of experience and a power of uncertain forecast founded partly upon repeated experience and well-founded inference and partly on imaginative construction and conjecture.' ⁴⁴ Their Divine Will is to utilise time for the preparation of Divine descent, both during success and failure, happiness and sorrow, and opportunities and difficulties. A seeker of Truth utilises this second exclusive concentration towards calling down the Timeless Eternity to the slipping moments . The Synthesis of Yoga book proposes a Sadhaka to become ‘virginally creative at each moment.’³⁰ For a Sadhaka of integral Yoga, the present moment can be utilised as a means of a brief descent of the highest Divine Force. So through the practice of second exclusive concentration, the reception of brief Supramental touch is practicable. “It (child Soul) can only near and touch, it cannot hold;” Savitri-179, (A developing Soul can receive brief Supramental touch.) “There man can visit but there he cannot live.” Savitri-659 (all man can visit Supramental world for a brief period.) A sadhaka of integral Yoga will also remember these two directives of the Mother with reference to our relation with time: (1) "The perfection of this endless variety of relationships between man and God throughout the history of the world is an unutterable wonder. Yet all this together is but a second in the total manifestation of the Divine. " (2) "For if at each moment, you expect to be uplifted and drawn towards the Divine, He will come and uplift you, and He will be there, very near, nearer and nearer. " The Mother's Agenda/Vol-1/Undated 1957 c) Education through Third Exclusive Concentration: “A heavenlier function with a finer mode Lit with its grace man’s outward earthliness; The soul’s experience of its deeper sheaths No more slept drugged by Matter’s dominance. …He lived in the mystic space where thought is born And will is nursed by an ethereal Power And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths Till it grows into the likeness of a god.” Savitri-27-28 “He (Jijnasu ) is a smallness trying to be great, An animal with some instincts of a god, … His hope a star above a cradle and grave. And yet a greater destiny may be his, For the eternal Spirit is his truth.” Savitri-78 “A pilgrim of the everlasting Truth, Our measures cannot hold his measureless mind; He has turned from the voices of the narrow realm And left the little lane of human Time.” Savitri-80 “Where Space is a vast experiment of the soul, In an immaterial substance linked to ours In a deep oneness of all things that are, The universe of the Unknown arose.” Savitri-95 “So must the dim being grow in light and force And rise to his higher destiny at last, Look up to God and round at the universe, And learn by failure and progress by fall And battle with environment and doom, By suffering discover his deep soul And by possession grow to his own vasts.” Savitri-146 “Yet can the mind of man receive God’s light, The force of man can be driven by God’s force, Then is he a miracle doing miracles.” Savitri-457-458 “This is the little surface of man’s life. He is this and he is all the universe; He scales the Unseen, his depths dare the Abyss; A whole mysterious world is locked within. Unknown to himself he lives a hidden king Behind rich tapestries in great secret rooms; An epicure of the spirit’s unseen joys, He lives on the sweet honey of solitude:” Savitri-479 “A reasoning animal willed and planned and sought; He stood erect among his brute compeers, He built life new, measured the universe, Opposed his fate and wrestled with unseen Powers, Conquered and used the laws that rule the world, And hoped to ride the heavens and reach the stars, A master of his huge environment. Now through Mind’s windows stares the demigod Hidden behind the curtains of man’s soul: (Psychic being) He has seen the Unknown, looked on Truth’s veilless face; A ray has touched him from the eternal sun; Motionless, voiceless in foreseeing depths, He stands awake in Supernature’s light And sees a glory of arisen wings And sees the vast descending might of God.” Savitri-622 “Thus arises the attraction and, it would seem, the necessity of the principle of exclusive concentration which plays so prominent a part in the specialised schools of Yoga; for by that concentration we can arrive through an uncompromising renunciation of the world at an entire self-consecration to the One on whom we concentrate.”⁴ Sri Aurobindo “The effective fullness of our concentration on the one thing needful to the exclusion of all else will be the measure of our self-consecration to the One who is alone desirable. But this exclusiveness will in the end exclude nothing except the falsehood of our way of seeing the world and our will’s ignorance.”³⁴ Sri Aurobindo “A long, difficult stage of constant effort, energism, austerity of the personal will, tapasya has ordinarily to be traversed before a more decisive stage can be reached in which a state of self-giving of all the being to the Supreme and the Supreme Nature can become total and absolute .”⁴⁷ Sri Aurobindo “A quietude and stillness is imposed on the body, on the active life-soul of desire and ego, on the external mind, while the sattwic nature by stress of meditation, by an exclusive concentration of adoration, by a will turned inward to the Supreme, strives to merge itself in the spirit.”¹⁴ Sri Aurobindo “Do what I explained to you yesterday — make your brain work by studying regularly and systematically; then during the hours when you are not studying, your brain, having worked enough, will be able to rest and it will be possible for you to concentrate in the depths of your heart and find there the psychic source; with it (finding of Psychic being) you will become conscious of both gratitude and true happiness.”³³ The Mother Concentration on subjective inner world by exclusion of concentration on the objective outer world and by exclusion of concentration on the present moment is identified as third exclusive concentration. This world is identified as the outer body or sheath or Kosha of God. The Self that holds this outer body is known as the universal or cosmic Self. Behind this outer sheath there exist multiple subtle sheaths, mystic inner Spaces whose influence can purify, transform and perfect the external world. And then, the third exclusive concentration⁸ or reverse movement of first exclusive concentration,²² is defined as the complete absorption in the objective means or instruments of Education in finding the subjective Being or concentrates exclusively on the concealed inner being by quieting¹³ the frontal active prakriti and subjective experience of the ever-modified subtle mental states of its personality. This third exclusive concentration 'is conscious that the knowledge of all things is hidden within it or at least somewhere in the being, but as if veiled and forgotten, and the knowledge comes to it not as a thing acquired from outside, but always secretly there and now remembered and known at once to be true, — each thing in its own place, degree, manner and measure.' ⁴⁵ Increase of third exclusive concentration gives birth to increase of consecration, which is identified as central truth of Integral Yoga. Thus we are able to link the central truth of integral Education with the central truth of Integral Yoga. Exclusive concentration on subliminal being might throw strong light on the large inner life and extend vastly the powers of human beings and it might lead towards an independent and radical Spiritual realisation but it would not be by itself an integral valid solution of truth of individual existence or lead us successfully to the integral knowledge of Reality which is something beyond the One and the Many, containing both and aware of both. The third exclusive concentration can be utilised further for unfolding the part knowledge of the Brahman. (1) either through concentration of the One in itself to the exclusion of the Many; one can plunge by a trance of exclusive concentration into a mystic sleep²⁹ state by a subjective abolition of cosmic forces or pass abruptly in waking Mind into a state belonging to the supreme Superconscience (2) or of the Many in their own action to the exclusion of the all-awareness of the One, (3) or of the individual being absorbed in his own self to the exclusion of both of the One and the rest of the Many who are then to him separated units not included in his direct awareness, (4) or again there may intervene all the above three separative active consciousness in a separative movement; but this takes place not in the true self, but in the active Prakriti . This third exclusive concentration is utilised to find the true physical being, true vital being, true mental being and the Psychic being. For a Sadhaka of Integral Yoga, the third exclusive concentration can be utilised for a brief descent of the Highest Divine Force. d) Education through Fourth Exclusive Concentration: “Only the Immortals on their deathless heights Dwelling beyond the walls of Time and Space, Masters of living, free from the bonds of Thought, Who are overseers of Fate and Chance and Will” Savitri-53-54 “A voyager upon uncharted routes Fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown, Adventuring across enormous realms, He broke into another Space and Time.” Savitri-91 “All ocean lived within a wandering drop, A time-made body housed the Illimitable.” Savitri-101 “A little joy and knowledge satisfied This little being tied into a knot And hung on a bulge of its environment, A little curve cut off in measureless Space, A little span of life in all vast Time.” Savitri-148-149 “Almost she nears what never can be attained; She shuts eternity into an hour And fills a little soul with the Infinite; The Immobile leans to the magic of her call; She stands on a shore in the Illimitable, Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms And feels around her infinity’s embrace.” Savitri-177 “Unending Space was beaten into a curve, Indivisible Time into small minutes cut, The infinitesimal massed to keep secure The mystery of the Formless cast into form.” Savitri-266-67 “A timeless Spirit was made the slave of the hours; The Unbound was cast into a prison of birth To make a world that Mind could grasp and rule.” Savitri-268 “There consciousness was a close and single weft; The far and near were one in spirit-space, The moments there were pregnant with all time.” Savitri-301 “Self’s vast spiritual silence occupies Space; Only the Inconceivable is left, Only the Nameless without space and time:” Savitri-310 “The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed; Heavy and long are the years our labour counts” Savitri-345 “Time, life and death were passing incidents Obstructing with their transient view her sight, Her sight that must break through and liberate the god Imprisoned in the visionless mortal man. The inferior nature born into ignorance Still took too large a place, it veiled her self And must be pushed aside to find her soul.” Savitri-487 “She crossed through spaces of a secret self And trod in passages of inner Time.” Savitri-490 “He is Eternity lured from hour to hour, He is infinity in a little space:” Savitri-516 “Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand, Only when infinity weds the finite’s thought, Can man be free from himself and live with God.” Savitri-516 “In endless Time her soul reached a wide end, The spaceless Vast became her spirit’s place.” Savitri-523 " In the mystery of its selecting will, In the Divine Comedy a participant, The Spirit’s conscious representative, God’s delegate in our humanity, Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent’s ray, She had come into the mortal body’s room To play at ball with Time and Circumstance. A joy in the world her master movement here, The passion of the game lighted her eyes:" Savitri-526 “The world is but a spark-burst from its light, All moments flashes from its Timelessness, All objects glimmerings of the Bodiless That disappear from Mind when That is seen.” Savitri-548 “The infinite holds the finite in its arms, Time travels towards revealed eternity.” Savitri-623 “A mute Delight regards Time’s countless works: To house God’s joy in things Space gave wide room, To house God’s joy in self our souls were born.” Savitri-630 “Time thrills to the sapphics of her amour-song And Space fills with a white beatitude.” Savitri-632 “Is not the spirit immortal and absolved Always, delivered from the grasp of Time? Why came it down into the mortal’s Space?” Savitri-653 “He glimpses eternity, touches the infinite, He meets the gods in great and sudden hours, He feels the universe as his larger self, Makes Space and Time his opportunity To join the heights and depths of being in light, In the heart’s cave speaks secretly with God.” Savitri-659 "Without care for time, without fear for space, surging out purified from the flames of the ordeal, we shall fly without stop towards the realisation of our goal, the supramental victory."⁵⁰ The Mother “By concentration upon the Idea the mental existence which at present we are breaks open the barrier of our mentality and arrives at the state of consciousness, the state of being, the state of power of conscious-being and bliss of conscious-being to which the Idea corresponds and of which it is the symbol, movement and rhythm. Concentration by the Idea is, then, only a means, a key to open to us the superconscient planes of our existence; a certain self-gathered state of our whole existence lifted into that superconscient truth, unity and infinity of self-aware, self-blissful existence is the aim and culmination; and that is the meaning we shall give to the term Samadhi .”³⁵ Sri Aurobindo “For our concentration on the Eternal will be consummated by the mind when we see constantly the Divine in itself and the Divine in ourselves, but also the Divine in all things and beings and happenings. It will be consummated by the heart when all emotion is summed up in the love of the Divine, — of the Divine in itself and for itself, but love too of the Divine in all its beings and powers and personalities and forms in the Universe. It will be consummated by the will when we feel and receive always the divine impulsion and accept that alone as our sole motive force; but this will mean that, having slain to the last rebellious straggler the wandering impulses of the egoistic nature, we have universalised ourselves and can accept with a constant happy acceptance the one divine working in all things. This is the first fundamental siddhi of the integral Yoga.”³⁶ Sri Aurobindo This concentration is the outcome of the fusion of the above three¹⁷ exclusive concentrations. This is a concentration of separative active consciousness in a separative movement and this takes place not in true self, but in the untransformed active Prakriti. It does not prevent the full emergence and working of the whole conscious being behind the Ignorance, but a working in the conditions chosen and self-limited on nature for a special purpose. This power of self-limitation for a particular working, instead of being incompatible with the Integral Concentration, is precisely one of the powers we should expect to exist among the manifold energies of the Infinite. In this concentration, the present moment is utilised in linking the subjective Time with the objective Space or in this concentration self-concentration and self-expansion are reconciled. So, space and time are initially reconciled in the fourth exclusive concentration and finally in integral concentration. Integral Yoga proposes to use time and space as a means of the highest descent of Divine Force. e) Education through Essential Concentration: “Absorbed no more in the moment-ridden flux Where mind incessantly drifts as on a raft Hurried from phenomenon to phenomenon, He abode at rest in indivisible Time. As if a story long written but acted now, In his present he held his future and his past, Felt in the seconds the uncounted years And saw the hours like dots upon a page.” Savitri-33 “All we attempt in this imperfect world, Looks forward or looks back beyond Time's gloss To its pure idea and firm inviolate type In an absolute creation's flawless skill.” Savitri-108 “All that we seek for is prefigured there And all we have not known nor ever sought Which yet one day must be born in human hearts That the Timeless may fulfil itself in things.” Savitri-176 “A fire to call eternity into Time, Make body’s joy as vivid as the soul’s, Earth she would lift to neighbourhood with heaven, Labours life to equate with the Supreme And reconcile the Eternal and the Abyss.” Savitri-196 “In its deep lotus home her being sat As if on concentration’s marble seat, Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds To make this earthly tenement her house.” Savitri-528 “Eliminate the falsity of the thought with its imperfect mental constructions, its arrogant assertions and denials, its limited and exclusive concentrations; a greater faculty of knowledge is behind that can open to the true Truth of God and the soul and Nature and the universe.”³⁷ Sri Aurobindo " In our Yoga very often the Power descends from above and opens the Ajnachakra first, then the others in order. But it is perhaps the safest to open by concentration the heart-lotus first so as to have the psychic influence from the beginning... The psychic cannot lose its consciousness in the enjoyment of experiences; when it is in free action, it has the unfailing discrimination of which you speak. It has besides no push to outward enjoyment, though it has Ananda. It is the vital that is carried away by enjoyment and carries away with it the mind and other lower parts — and it can also cover up the psychic; but then what happens is not that the psychic loses its own.”⁴ ⁶ Sri Aurobindo The second instrument of swift Psychic⁹ Education in Ignorance is the development of Essential Concentration, which is defined as the entire self-absorption in the essence of its own being through deeper self-oblivion of outward things. There are the dynamic function and pragmatic creative values of the Essential concentration, but what concerns us in our present inquiry is to learn from its way of action the exact character and nature of this deeper and larger cognition and how it is related to true knowledge of Self. Its main character is a knowledge by the direct contact of consciousness with its object or of consciousness with other consciousness; but in the end we discover that this concentration is an outcome of an Integral Concentration, a translation of it into a separative awareness of things. The superficial or apparent man with his active self-oblivion cannot go back at will to the real man within; he can do it to some extent during exceptional or abnormal or supernormal moments of his life. This essential concentration will carry one behind the surface physical nature and one will enter vast domain of subtle physical, subtle vital and subtle mental world and consciousness will undulate between Superconscient Silence and Inconscient torpor for purification and transformation action. In essential concentration, action need not bind or limit a liberated Soul, it binds or limits only the surface constructed personality. It is only by going back from surface physical mind to the Psychic or Spiritual Consciousness that vision, knowledge and cognition of triple time and transcendence of this attachment to present moment are wholly possible. He can get out of this moment-cognition of second exclusive concentration into a status of cognition of the eternal of essential concentration proper to the true consciousness by breaking the imprisonment in moment³ with its limitations of sensation, memory, inference and conjecture. If we go deeper within to discover the essential concentration, then we can see that it is not a particular part of us but the whole man who is doing the action and this action depends on our whole character, temperament, all our past, not the past of this life only, but in other lives and not only our past but past, present and predestined future of ourselves and the world are the determinants of work. This concentration gives one the capacity⁴⁰ to move consciousness from the nether Inconscient Sheath to the highest Bliss Sheath. f) Education through Multiple Concentrations: “A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks Empowered to force the door denied and closed Smote from Death’s visage its dumb absolute And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.” Savitri-21 “Affiliated to cosmic Space and Time And paying here God’s debt to earth and man A greater sonship was his divine right.” Savitri-22 “All the deep cosmic murmur falling still, He lives in the hush before the world was born, His soul left naked to the timeless One.” Savitri-80 “Across the unfolding of the seas of self Appeared the deathless countries of the One. A many-miracled Consciousness unrolled Vast aim and process and unfettered norms, A larger Nature’s great familiar roads.” Savitri-91 “In this passage from a deaf unknowing Force To struggling consciousness and transient breath A mighty Supernature waits on Time. The world is other than we now think and see, Our lives a deeper mystery than we have dreamed; Our minds are starters in the race to God, Our souls deputed selves of the Supreme.” Savitri-169 “Almost she nears what never can be attained; She shuts eternity into an hour And fills a little soul with the Infinite; The Immobile leans to the magic of her call; She stands on a shore in the Illimitable, Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms And feels around her infinity’s embrace.” Savitri-177 “A gold supernal sun of timeless Truth Poured down the mystery of the eternal Ray Through a silence quivering with the word of Light On an endless ocean of discovery.” Savitri-264 “At the beginning of each far-spread plane Pervading with her power the cosmic suns She (Divine Mother) reigns, inspirer of its multiple works And thinker of the symbol of its scene.” Savitri-295 “Something thou (King Aswapati) cam’st to do from the Unknown, But nothing is finished and the world goes on Because only half God’s cosmic work is done.” Savitri-310 “The Spirit’s white neutrality became A playground of miracles, a rendezvous For the secret powers of a mystic Timelessness: It (Spirit) made of Space a marvel house of God, It poured through Time its works of ageless might, Unveiled seen as a luring rapturous face The wonder and beauty of its Love and Force.” Savitri-326-327 “Nameless the austere ascetics without home Abandoning speech and motion and desire Aloof from creatures sat absorbed, alone, Immaculate in tranquil heights of self On concentration’s luminous voiceless peaks , World-naked hermits with their matted hair Immobile as the passionless great hills Around them grouped like thoughts of some vast mood Awaiting the Infinite’s behest to end.” Savitri-382 “His soul must be wider than the universe And feel eternity as its very stuff, Rejecting the moment’s personality Know itself older than the birth of Time, Creation an incident in its consciousness,” Savitri-537 “Then stretches the boundless finite’s last expanse, The cosmic empire of the Overmind, Time’s buffer state bordering Eternity, Too vast for the experience of man’s soul:” Savitri-660 “The Power that from her being’s summit reigned, The Presence chambered in lotus secrecy, Came down and held the centre in her brow Where the mind’s Lord in his control-room sits; There throned on concentration’s native seat He opens that third mysterious eye in man , The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen, When Light with a golden ecstasy fills his brain And the Eternal’s wisdom drives his choice And eternal Will seizes the mortal’s will. It stirred in the lotus of her throat of song, And in her speech throbbed the immortal Word, Her life sounded with the steps of the world-soul Moving in harmony with the cosmic Thought.” Savitri-665 “We may hear clear and luminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from ancient writings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other available means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may hold firmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration; but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman , and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen.”³⁸ Sri Aurobindo “The Divine is centred in itself and when it throws out ideas and activities does not divide itself or imprison itself in them, but holds them and their movement in its infinity; undivided, its whole self is behind each Idea and each movement and at the same time behind all of them together. Held by it, each spontaneously works itself out, not through a separate act of will, but by the general force of consciousness behind it; if to us there seems to be a concentration of divine Will and Knowledge in each, it is a multiple and equal and not an exclusive concentration, and the reality of it is rather a free and spontaneous working in a self-gathered unity and infinity. The soul which has risen to the divine Samadhi participates in the measure of its attainment in this reversed condition of things, — the true condition, for that which is the reverse of our mentality is the truth. It is for this reason that, as is said in the ancient books, the man who has arrived at Self-possession attains spontaneously without the need of concentration in thought and effort the knowledge or the result which the Idea or the Will in him moves out to embrace.”³⁹ Sri Aurobindo “Brahman always reveals himself to us in three ways, within ourselves, above our plane, around us in the universe. Within us, there are two centres of the Purusha , the inner Soul through which he touches us to our awakening; there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy.”²¹ Sri Aurobindo The third instrument of swifter Spiritual Education in Knowledge is the development of Multiple¹¹ Concentration, the method of the totalising or global Overmental¹⁶ awareness, which is defined as a greater concentration or self-absorption in the universalised Self for greater world action. With the expansion of subtle physical, subtle vital and subtle mental sheath, the consciousness is universalised and one feels the whole universe is within him and enters the greater creation, action and ananda of universal proportion. This global consciousness includes the coexistence of both the static being of Purusha and dynamic action of Prakriti, the soul and its instruments, the Self and the dynamisms of the Self-Power, atmashakti: it can then embrace its manifestation with a larger Consciousness free from the previous Nature’s limitation and oblivion of the indwelling Spirit. This concentration reconciles all the planes of consciousness from the nether Inconscient Sheath to the highest Bliss Sheath. Through this opening of third mysterious eye, Arjuna of the Gita was able to see the Viswarupa , the universal vision of multiple concentration as described in the Gita , chapter 11. Through this opening of the third mysterious eye, the Death God of Savitri could see the Divine Mother Savitri in Her Viswarupa , whose Light could penetrate his body and his 'darkness muttered perishing in her blaze.'⁴¹ g) Education through All-inclusive Integral Concentration: “The Maker shall recast us and impose A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould Lifting our finite minds to his infinite, Touching the moment with eternity.” Savitri-67, “In a moment shorter than death, longer than Time, By a Power more ruthless than Love, happier than Heaven, Taken sovereignly into eternal arms, Haled and coerced by a stark absolute bliss, In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force Hurried into unimaginable depths, Upborne into immeasurable heights, It was torn out from its mortality And underwent a new and bourneless change.” Savitri-81 " At her will the inscrutable Supermind leans down To guide her force that feels but cannot know, Its breath of power controls her restless seas And life obeys the governing Idea." Savitri-121 “The moments stretched towards the eternal Now, The hours discovered immortality, But, satisfied with their sublime contents, On peaks they ceased whose tops half-way to Heaven Pointed to an apex they could never mount, To a grandeur in whose air they could not live.” Savitri-238 “August and few the sovereign Kings of Thought Have made of Space their wide all-seeing gaze Surveying the enormous work of Time: A breadth of all-containing Consciousness Supported Being in a still embrace…. A great all-ruling Consciousness is there…” Savitri-271 “Its inexhaustible acts in a timeless Time, A space that is its own infinity.” Savitri-298 “One moment fill with thy eternity, Let thy infinity in one body live, All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light, All-Love throb single in one human heart.” Savitri-345 “The Immortal bound to earth’s mortality Appearing and perishing on the roads of Time Creates God’s moment by eternity’s beats.” Savitri-447 “She passed beyond Time into eternity, Slipped out of space and became the Infinite;” Savitri-555 “She was Time and the dreams of God in Time; She was Space and the wideness of his days. From this she rose where Time and Space were not; The superconscient was her native air, Infinity was her movement’s natural space; Eternity looked out from her on Time.” Savitri-557 “The infinite holds the finite in its arms, Time travels towards revealed eternity.” Savitri-623 “All Time is one body, Space a single look: There is the Godhead’s universal gaze And there the boundaries of immortal Mind: The line that parts and joins the hemispheres Closes in on the labour of the Gods Fencing eternity from the toil of Time.” Savitri-660-61 “The Truth supreme, vast and impersonal Fits faultlessly the hour and circumstance , Its substance a pure gold ever the same But shaped into vessels for the spirit’s use, Its gold becomes the wine jar and the vase.” Savitri-662-63 “There Time dwelt with eternity as one; Immense felicity joined rapt repose.” Savitri-678 “But when the phantom flame-edge fails undone, Then never more can space or time divide The lover from the loved; Space shall draw back Her great translucent curtain, Time shall be The quivering of the spirit’s endless bliss.” Savitri-684 "There is a being beyond the being of mind, An Immeasurable cast into many forms, A miracle of the multitudinous One, There is a consciousness mind cannot touch, Its speech cannot utter nor its thought reveal. It has no home on earth, no centre in man, Yet is the source of all things thought and done, The fount of the creation and its works, It is the origin of all truth here," Savitri-705 “An exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he (a Sadhaka of integral Yoga) must labour…Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga.”² Sri Aurobindo “What we can be aware of is, first, its original self-concentration which we endeavour to realise as the indivisible One; secondly, the diffusion and apparent disintegration of all that was concentrated in its unity which is the Mind’s conception of the universe; and thirdly, its firm self-extension in the Truth-consciousness which contains and upholds the diffusion and prevents it from being a real disintegration, maintains unity in utmost diversity and stability in utmost mutability, insists on harmony in the appearance of an all-pervading strife and collision, keeps eternal cosmos where Mind would arrive only at a chaos eternally attempting to form itself. This is the Supermind, the Truth-consciousness, the Real-Idea which knows itself and all that it becomes.”²⁵ Sri Aurobindo "“Brahman is in all things, all things are in Brahman , all things are Brahman ” is the triple formula of the comprehensive Supermind, a single truth of self-manifestation in three aspects which it holds together and inseparably in its self-view as the fundamental knowledge from which it proceeds to the play of the cosmos."⁴² Sri Aurobindo Integral Concentration is a Consciousness that rests on the One, the Divine and acts in all His creation. In this concentration, a new Time and a new Space are activated and reconciled.⁴⁸ The last instrument of swiftest Supramental Education is the development of Integral Concentration, which is capable of an integral, comprehensive, multiple,²³ infinite self-concentration. It is further defined as entire absorption in the three poises⁷ of Self or a triune realisation; (1) that is Self is in all things, which is the basis of our Psychic individuality in the universal, (2) all things are within the Self, which is the basis of our Spiritual oneness in difference and (3) all things are made up of the stuff of Self, which is the basis of our Supramental oneness with all. Self-control, which begins with the purification of intellect, becomes rigorous with the emergence of Psychic Being and Spiritual Being²⁶ and becomes absolute⁴³ with the emergence of Supramental Consciousness. This integral Concentration's ' time consciousness therefore will be different from that of the mental being, not swept helplessly on the stream of the moments and clutching at each moment as a stay and a swiftly disappearing standpoint, but founded first on its eternal identity beyond the changes of time, secondly on a simultaneous eternity of Time in which past, present and future exist together for ever in the self-knowledge and self-power of the Eternal, thirdly , in a total view of the three times as one movement singly and indivisibly seen even in their succession of stages, periods, cycles, last — and that only in the instrumental consciousness — in the step by step evolution of the moments. It will therefore have the knowledge of the three times, trikaladristi , — held of old to be a supreme sign of the seer and the Rish i, —not as an abnormal power, but as its normal way of time knowledge.' ⁴⁵ In integral concentration, consciousness is universalised and space is no longer realised as separative existence in a small surrounding place, but it is extended to realise the whole earth. Or 'He (King Aswapati) broke into another Space and Time.' ⁴ ⁸ Or 'An hour began, the matrix of new Time.' ⁴ ⁸ An integral concentration is the basis of an entire harmonisation of life through the total transformation, unification, and integration of the Being and Nature and there would be no further need for a slow evolution counting many millenniums for each step, the halting and difficult evolution operated by Nature in the past in the unconscious creatures of the Ignorance. This concentration⁵ purifies, transforms, and perfects all the multiple planes of ten Sheaths on a large scale. Recapitulation: “Annulling an original nullity The Timeless took its ground in emptiness And drew the figure of a universe, That the spirit might adventure into Time And wrestle with adamant Necessity And the soul pursue a cosmic pilgrimage.” Savitri-622 “All our concentration is merely an image of the divine Tapas by which the Self dwells gathered in itself, by which it manifests within itself, by which it maintains and possesses its manifestation, by which it draws back from all manifestation into its supreme oneness.”²⁰ Sri Aurobindo “But you see, you see all the way I have come.... And I was born with a consciously prepared body – Sri Aurobindo was aware of that, he said it immediately the first time he saw me: I was born free. That is, from the spiritual standpoint: without any desire. Without any desire and attachment. And, mon petit, if there is the slightest desire and the slightest attachment, it's IMPOSSIBLE to do this work. A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control ⁴³ (the vital of this present incarnation was sexless – a warrior), an absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior – no desires, no attachments .... Since my earliest childhood, I have done things which, to the human consciousness, are "monstrous"; my mother went so far as to tell me that I was a real "monster," because I had neither attachments nor desires. If I was asked, "Would you like to do this?" I answered, "I don't care." If people were nasty to me, or if people died or went away, it left me absolutely calm – and so: "You're a monster, you have no feelings." And with that preparation ... It's eighty-six years since I came here, mon petit! For thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo consciously, without letup, night and day. We shouldn't be in a hurry.”²⁸ The Mother The supreme integrality of the Brahman holds all these seven states or powers of its concentration together as a single indivisible Being looking at all itself in manifestation with a simultaneous triple self-vision. Thus, radical transformation through Nature’s method of triple movement of (1) ascent of Consciousness to realise the Being, (2) widening of the field and base through the descent of Consciousness and (3) integration of Being and Becoming are realised. The integral emergence of total Consciousness is the ultimate goal of the evolving Nature. The old inconscient foundation of our body is made subtle, plastic, pure and conscious by the inflow of light and awareness from above and its depths annexed to the heights of the Spirit through rapid development of the Truth-consciousness. There must be achieved a new Spiritual height, wideness, depth, subtlety, and intensity of our consciousness, of its substance, its force, its sensibility, an elevation, expansion, integral capacity of our being, and an assumption of mind and all that is below mind into that larger existence. OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-530, 2: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-78, 3: “The true consciousness within is not unaware of its past; it holds it there, not necessarily in memory but in being, still active, living, ready with its fruits, and sends it up from time to time in memory or more concretely in result of past action or past causes to the superficial conscious being, —that is indeed the true rationale of what is called Karma. It is or can be aware too of the future, for there is somewhere in the inner being a field of cognition open to future knowledge, a prospective as well as a retrospective Time-sense, Time-vision, Time-perception; something in it lives indivisibly in the three times and contains all their apparent divisions, holds the future ready for manifestation within it. Here, then, in this habit of living in the present, we have a second absorption, a second exclusive concentration which complicates and farther limits the being, but simplifies the apparent course of the action by relating it not to the whole infinite course of Time, but to a definite succession of moments.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-606, 4: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-73, 5: “Sometimes, all of a sudden, I see myself as a FORMIDABLE concentration of power, pushing, pushing, pushing in an inner concentration to pass through. It happens to me anywhere, any time, at any moment – I see a whole mass of consciousness gathered into a formidable power pushing, pushing, pushing to pass to the other side. When we have passed to the other side, all will be well.” The Mother’s Agenda/27th June, 1961, "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, 6: “An integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-114, 7: “If the defect of our mentality, if its need of exclusive concentration compels it to dwell on any one of these aspects of self-knowledge to the exclusion of the others, if a realisation imperfect as well as exclusive moves us always to bring in a human element of error into the very Truth itself and of conflict and mutual negation into the all-comprehending unity, yet to a divine supramental being, by the essential character of the supermind which is a comprehending oneness and infinite totality, they must present themselves as a triple and indeed a triune realisation.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-166, 8: “To be alone with oneself or alone with the Divine, to walk apart with God and his devotees, to entrench oneself in the single self-ward endeavour of the mind or Godward passion of the heart is the trend of these Yogas. The problem is solved by the excision of all but the one central difficulty which pursues the one chosen motive-force; into the midst of the dividing calls of our nature the principle of an exclusive concentration comes sovereignly to our rescue.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-77, “In our view the Spirit, the Self is the fundamental reality of existence; but an exclusive concentration on this fundamental reality to the exclusion of all reality of Mind, Life or Matter except as an imposition on the Self or unsubstantial shadows cast by the Spirit might help to an independent and radical spiritual realisation but not to an integral and valid solution of the truth of cosmic and individual existence.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-679-80, 9: “His being is not shut into the succession of the moments, but has the full power of the past and ranges seemingly through the future: not shot in the limiting ego and personal mind, but lives in the freedom of the universal, in God and in all beings and things; not in the dull density of the physical mind, but in the light of the self and the infinity of the spirit.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-839, 10: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-744, 11: “Held by it, each spontaneously works itself out, not through a separate act of will, but by the general force of consciousness behind it; if to us there seems to be a concentration of divine Will and Knowledge in each, it is a multiple and equal and not an exclusive concentration, and the reality of it is rather a free and spontaneous working in a self-gathered unity and infinity. The soul which has risen to the divine Samadhi participates in the measure of its attainment in this reversed condition of things, — the true condition, for that which is the reverse of our mentality is the truth. It is for this reason that, as is said in the ancient books, the man who has arrived at Self-possession attains spontaneously without the need of concentration in thought and effort the knowledge or the result which the Idea or the Will in him moves out to embrace.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-322, 12: “In other words, the mental being has put away from himself by exclusive concentration the dynamic aspect of consciousness, has taken refuge in the static and built a wall of non-communication between the two; between the passive and the active Brahman a gulf has been created and they stand on either side of it, the one visible to the other but with no contact, no touch of sympathy, no sense of unity between them.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-402, 13: “The difficulty is created by the exclusive concentration of the mental being on its plane of pure existence in which consciousness is at rest in passivity and delight of existence at rest in peace of existence.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-406, 14: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-688, 15: “If it is not there in all its sides, we have the imperfections or perversions of the type, a mere intellectuality or curiosity for ideas without ethical or other elevation, a narrow concentration on some kind of intellectual activity without the greater needed openness of mind, soul and spirit, or the arrogance and exclusiveness of the intellectual shut up in his intellectuality, or an ineffective idealism without any hold on life, or any other of the characteristic incompletenesses and limitations of the intellectual, religious, scientific or philosophic mind. These are stoppings short on the way or temporary exclusive concentrations, but a fullness of the divine soul and power of truth and knowledge in man is the perfection of this Dharma or Swabhava, the accomplished Brahminhood of the complete Brahmana.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-744, 16: “Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the separateness of each independent movement created by Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-300, 17: “Or again there may be or there may intervene at a certain point some general rule of exclusive concentration, operative in all these three directions, a concentration of separative active consciousness in a separative movement; but this takes place not in the true self, but in the force of active being, in Prakriti.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-602, 18: “An exclusive concentration on or in a single subject or object or domain of being or movement is not a denial or departure from the Spirit’s awareness, it is one form of the self-gathering of the power of Tapas . But when the concentration is exclusive, it brings about a holding back behind it of the rest of self-knowledge.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-604, 19: “Here, then, in this habit of living in the present, we have a second absorption, a second exclusive concentration which complicates and farther limits the being, but simplifies the apparent course of the action by relating it not to the whole infinite course of Time, but to a definite succession of moments.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine- 606, “There is a minor pragmatic use of exclusive concentration on the surface which may also give us an indication in spite of its temporary character. The superficial man living from moment to moment plays, as it were, several parts in his present life and, while he is busy with each part, he is capable of an exclusive concentration, an absorption in it, by which he forgets the rest of himself, puts it behind him for the moment, is to that extent self-oblivious. The man is for the moment the actor, the poet, the soldier or whatever else he may have been constituted and formed into by some peculiar and characteristic action of his force of being, his Tapas, his past conscious energy and by the action which develops from it.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-607, “This power of exclusive concentration is not confined to absorption in a particular character or type of working of one’s larger self, but extends to a complete self-forgetfulness in the particular action in which we happen at the moment to be engaged.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-609, “The mental man thinks and acts in a radius determined by the smallness or largeness of his mentality and of its experience. The range of the supramental man will be all the earth and all that lies behind it on other planes of existence. And finally the mental man thinks and sees on the level of the present life , though it may be with an upward aspiration, and his view is obstructed on every side. His main basis of knowledge and action is the present with a glimpse into the past and ill-grasped influence from its pressure and a blind look towards the future. He bases himself on the actualities of the earthly existence, first on the facts of the outward world, — to which he is ordinarily in the habit of relating nine tenths if not the whole of his inner thinking and experience, — then on the changing actualities of the more superficial part of his inner being. As he increases in mind, he goes more freely beyond these to potentialities which arise out of them and pass beyond them; his mind deals with a larger field of possibilities: but these for the most part get to him a full reality only in proportion as they are related to the actual and can be made actual here, now or hereafter. The essence of things he tends to see, if at all, only as a result of his actualities, in a relation to and dependence on them, and therefore he sees them constantly in a false light or in a limited measure. In all these respects the supramental man must proceed from the opposite principle of truth vision.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-837-838, 20: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-320, 21: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-596, 22: “It is to be noted also that in order to remove the veil of the Ignorance the conscious Force of being in us uses a reverse action of its power of exclusive concentration; it quiets the frontal movement of Prakriti in the individual consciousness and concentrates exclusively on the concealed inner being, — on the Self or on the true inner, psychic or mental or vital being, the Purusha , — to disclose it. But when it has done so, it need not remain in this opposite exclusiveness; it can resume its integral consciousness or a global consciousness which includes both being of Purusha and action of Prakriti , the soul and its instruments, the Self and the dynamisms of the Self-Power, atmasakti : it can then embrace its manifestation with a larger consciousness free from the previous limitation, free from the results of Nature’s forgetfulness of the indwelling Spirit.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine- 615, "By a reverse movement of the same Yoga we must transcend the limits of phenomenal nature and recover the greater consciousness by which we can live in the Divine and the Eternal." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-311, "In the evolution of the soul back from Prakriti towards Purusha, the reverse order has to be taken to the original Nature-evolution, and that is how the Upanishads and the Gita following and almost quoting the Upanishads state the ascending order of our subjective powers. “Supreme, they say,” beyond their objects “are the senses, supreme over the senses the mind, supreme over the mind the intelligent will: that which is supreme over the intelligent will, is he,” — is the conscious self, the Purusha." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-98, "The soul which has risen to the divine Samadhi participates in the measure of its attainment in this reversed condition of things , — the true condition, for that which is the reverse of our mentality is the truth. It is for this reason that, as is said in the ancient books, the man who has arrived at Self-possession attains spontaneously without the need of concentration in thought and effort the knowledge or the result which the Idea or the Will in him moves out to embrace." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-322, "To rid the prana of desire and incidentally to reverse the ordinary poise of our nature and turn the vital being from a troublesomely dominant power into the obedient instrument of a free and unattached mind, is then the first step in purification." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-659, "But when we would rise above to a higher divine life we must loosen the force of the ego and eventually get rid of it — as for the lower life the development of ego, so for the higher life this reverse movement of elimination of the ego is indispensable. To see our actions as not our own but those of the divine Shakti working in the form of the lower Prakriti on the inferior levels of the conscious being, helps powerfully towards this change." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-762, "The supermind in its completeness reverses the whole order of the mind’s thinking. It lives not in the phenomenal, but in the essential, in the self, and sees all as being of the self and its power and form and movement, and all the thought and the process of the thought in the supermind must also be of that character." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-844, "Mind has to make room for another consciousness which will fulfil Mind by transcending it or reverse and so rectify its operations after leaping beyond it: the summit of mental knowledge is only a vaulting-board from which that leap can be taken. The utmost mission of Mind is to train our obscure consciousness which has emerged out of the dark prison of Matter, to enlighten its blind instincts, random intuitions, vague perceptions till it shall become capable of this greater light and this higher ascension. Mind is a passage, not a culmination." CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-136, 23: “This Ignorance is, as we have seen, really a power of the Knowledge to limit itself, to concentrate itself on the work in hand, an exclusive concentration i n practice which does not prevent the full existence and working of the whole conscious being behind, but a working in the conditions chosen and self-imposed on the nature. All conscious self-limitation is a power for its special purpose, not a weakness; all concentration is a force of conscious being, not a disability. It is true that while the Supermind is capable of an integral, comprehensive, multiple, infinite self-concentration, this is dividing and limited; it is true also that it creates perverse as well as partial and, in so far, false or only half- true values of things: but we have seen the object of the limitation and of this partiality of knowledge; and the object being admitted, the power to fulfil it must be admitted also in the absolute force of the absolute Being.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-616, 24: “The material interpretation of existence was the result of an exclusive concentration, a preoccupation with one movement of Existence, and such an exclusive concentration has its utility and is therefore permissible; in recent times it has justified itself by the many immense and the innumerable minute discoveries of physical Science. But a solution of the whole problem of existence cannot be based on an exclusive one-sided knowledge; we must know not only what Matter is and what are its processes, but what mind and life are and what are their processes, and one must know also spirit and soul and all that is behind the material surface: only then can we have a knowledge sufficiently integral for a solution of the problem… Such a preoccupation of exclusive concentration may lead to a fruitful scrutiny which sheds much light on Mind and Life, but cannot result in a total solution of the problem.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-679, 25: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-136-137, 26: TMCW (second edition)/Vol-10/p-15, 27: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-631, 28: The Mother’s Agenda, March 28 1964, 29: “This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pranayama , but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kundalinı, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi. ” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-36, “But if we plunge by a trance of exclusive concentration into a mystic sleep state or pass abruptly in waking Mind into a state belonging to the Superconscient, then the mind can be seized in the passage by a sense of the unreality of the cosmic Force and its creations; it passes by a subjective abolition of them into the supreme superconscience.” CWSA/21/The Life Divine/p-469, 30: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-636-37, 31: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-322, 32: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-323, 33: TMCW-12/On Education/p-133, 34: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-85, 35: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-321, 36: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-85, 37: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-292, 38: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-305, 39: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-322, 40: “Our souls can climb into the shining planes, The breadths from which they came can be our home. His privilege regained of shadowless sight The Thinker entered the immortals’ air And drank again his pure and mighty source.” Savitri-263, 41: "A pressure of intolerable force Weighed on his unbowed head and stubborn breast; Light like a burning tongue licked up his thoughts, Light was a luminous torture in his heart, Light coursed, a splendid agony, through his nerves; His darkness muttered perishing in her blaze." Savitri-667, 41: Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-392, 42: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-149, 43: "Nevertheless, there is somewhere an absolute control, a real Ishwara . He is aware of it and knows that if he can find it, he will enter into control, become not only the passive sanctioning witness and upholding soul of her will, but the free powerful user and determiner of her movements . But this control seems to belong to another poise than the mentality. Sometimes he finds himself using it, but as a channel or instrument; it comes to him from above. It is clear then that it is supramental, a power of the Spirit greater than mental being which he already knows himself to be at the summit and in the secret core of his conscious being. To enter into identity with that Spirit must then be his way to control and lordship. He can do it passively by a sort of reflection and receiving in his mental consciousness, but then he is only a mould, channel or instrument, not a possessor or participant in the power. He can arrive at identity by an absorption of his mentality in inner spiritual being, but then the conscious action ceases in a trance of identity. To be active master of the nature he must evidently rise to some higher supramental poise where there is possible not only a passive, but an active identity with the controlling spirit. To find the way of rising to this greater poise and be self-ruler, Swarat, is a condition of his perfection." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-637-638, “Integral tapasya: the whole being lives only to know and serve the Divine.... Perfect tapasya : that which will reach its goal.” The Mother/TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-45, 44: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-889, 45: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-886-887, 46: CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/350-351, 47: Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-963-964, 48: “He sees things not as one on the levels surrounded by the jungle of present facts and phenomena but from above, not from outside and judged by their surfaces, but from within and viewed from the truth of their centre; therefore he is nearer the divine omniscience… His being is not shut into the succession of the moments, but has the full power of the past and ranges seeingly through the future: not shut in the limiting ego and personal mind, but lives in the freedom of the universal, in God and in all beings and all things; not in the dull density of the physical mind, but in the light of the self and the infinity of the spirit. He sees soul and mind only as a power and a movement and matter only as a resultant form of the spirit. All his thought will be of a kind that proceeds from knowledge. He perceives and enacts the things of the phenomenal life in the light of the reality of the spiritual being and the power of the dynamic spiritual essence.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-839, “Its (Supermind’s) time consciousness too is itself infinite and maintains in itself at once in a vision of totalities and of particularities, of mobile succession or moment sight and of total stabilising vision or abiding whole sight what appears to us as the past of things, their present and their future.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-885 “Its (Supermind’s) time consciousness therefore will be different from that of the mental being, not swept helplessly on the stream of the moments and clutching at each moment as a stay and a swiftly disappearing standpoint, but founded first on its eternal identity beyond the changes of time, secondly on a simultaneous eternity of Time in which past, present and future exist together for ever in the self-knowledge and self-power of the Eternal, thirdly, in a total view of the three times as one movement singly and indivisibly seen even in their succession of stages, periods, cycles, last — and that only in the instrumental consciousness — in the step by step evolution of the moments. It will therefore have the knowledge of the three times, trikaladristi, — held of old to be a supreme sign of the seer and the Rishi , — not as an abnormal power, but as its normal way of time knowledge.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-886-887 “A voyager upon uncharted routes Fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown, Adventuring across enormous realms, He broke into another Space and Time .” Savitri-91 “They wondered at each other and rejoiced And wove affinity in a silent gaze. A moment passed that was eternity’s ray, An hour began, the matrix of new Time .” Savitri-399, 49: "We are here to give up all desires and to turn towards the Divine and to become conscious of the Divine. To realize and manifest the Divine in our life is the way, not to become animals, living like cats and dogs." The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-30.03.1972, "Man can bring an enlightened will, an enlightened thought and enlightened emotions to the difficult work of his self-development; he can more and more subject to these more conscious and reflecting guides the inferior function of desire. In proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, he is man and no longer an animal. When he can begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his own, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards the superman; he is on his upward march towards the Divine." Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-80, 50: TMCW-15/Words of the Mother-III/p-97, 184, 51: TMCW-13/Words of the Mother-I/p-24 Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: INTEGRAL PHYSICAL EDUCATION "To everyone who has lived closely with it, my body gives the impression of two things:(1) a very concentrated, very stubborn will, and.. (2) such endurance! Sri Aurobindo used to tell me he had never dreamed a body could have such endurance. And that's probably why. But I don't want to curtail this ability in any way, because it is (1) a CELLULAR will, and (2) a cellular endurance too – which is quite intriguing. It's not a central will and central endurance (that's something else altogether) – it's cellular. That's why Sri Aurobindo used to tell me this body had been specially prepared and chosen for the Work– because of its capacity for obstinate endurance and will." The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-January-1, 1962 INTEGRAL VITAL EDUCATION “But you see, you see all the way I have come...And I was born with a consciously prepared body—Sri Aurobindo was aware of that, he said it immediately the first time he saw me: I was born free. That is, from the spiritual standpoint: without any desire. Without any desire and attachment. And mon petit, if there is the slightest desire and the slightest attachment, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do this work... A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control (the vital of this present incarnation was sexless—a warrior), an absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior—no desires, no attachments...Since my earliest childhood, I have done things which, to human consciousness, are “monstrous;” my mother went so far as to tell me that I was a real “monster,” because I had neither attachments nor desires. If I was asked, “Would you like to do this?” I answered, “I don’t care.” If people were nasty to me, or if people died or went away, it left me absolutely calm—and so: “You are a monster, you have no feelings.” And with that preparation... It is eighty-six years since I came here, mon petit! For thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo consciously, without letup, night and day... We shouldn’t be in a hurry.” The Mother The Mother's Agenda-28th March-1964 INTEGRAL MENTAL EDUCATION "When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. ‘It’s strange,’ he said to me, ‘it’s an endless work! Nothing seems to get done– everything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again.’ Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: ‘It will be like that until we touch bottom.’ So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience ... how to put it? ... practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body – but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed. The Mother The Mother's Agenda/ November 7, 1961 The Practice of Self-Control in the Gita “This Yoga of self-control by intelligent will must be rigorously, resolutely and continually practised without yielding to any discouragement by difficulty or failure until the bliss of Nirvana is securely possessed.” The Gita-6.23 The Gita’s Self-control through Personal Effort: ‘On this path no effort is lost, no obstacle prevails; even a little of this dharma delivers from the great fear.’ The Gita-2.40 ‘Yoga destroys all sorrow for him in whom the sleep and waking, the food, the play, the putting forth of effort in works are all yukta .’ The Gita-6.17 ‘By one who is not self-controlled, this Yoga is difficult to attain; but by the self-controlled, it is attainable by properly directed efforts.’ The Gita-6.36 ‘Those who have resort to Me as their refuge, those who turn to Me in their spiritual effort towards release from age and death (from the mortal being and its limitations), come to know that Brahman and all the integrality of the spiritual nature and the entirety of Karma .’ The Gita-7.29 ‘Whatever thou doest, whatever thou enjoyest, whatever thou sacrificest, whatever thou givest, whatever energy of tapasya , of the soul's will or effort, thou puttest forth, make it an offering unto Me.’ The Gita-9.27 ‘That askesis which is pursued under a clouded and deluded idea, performed with effort and suffering imposed on oneself or else with a concentration of the energy in a will to do hurt to others, that is said to be tamasic. ’ The Gita-17.19 ‘These five causes, O mighty-armed, learn of Me as laid down by the Sankhya for the accomplishment of all works. These five are the body, the doer, the various instruments, the many kinds of efforts, and last, the Fate.’ The Gita-18.13,14 ‘But that action which a man undertakes under the dominion of desire, or with an egoistic sense of his own personality in the action, and which is done with inordinate effort (with a great heaving and straining of the personal will to get at the object of desire), that is declared to be rajasic . The action undertaken from delusion (in mechanical obedience to the instincts, impulsions and unseeing ideas), without regarding the strength or capacity, without regarding the consequences, the waste of effort or injury to others, that action is declared to be tamasic .’ The Gita-18.24, 25

" No victory she admits of Death or Fate. Always she drives the soul to new attempt;" Savitri-354 Moderate Spirituality "An ordinary religious teaching or philosophical doctrine is well enough satisfied to seize on certain great and vital aspects of truth and turn them into utilisable dogma and instruction, method and practice for the guidance of man in his inner life and the law and form of his action; it does not go farther, it does not open doors out of the circle of its own system, does not lead us out into some widest freedom and unimprisoned largeness. This limitation is useful and indeed for a time indispensable. Man bounded by his mind and will has need of a law and rule, a fixed system, a definite practice selective of his thought and action; he asks for the single unmistakable hewn path hedged, fixed and secure to the tread, for the limited horizons, for the enclosed resting-places. It is only the strong and few who can move through freedom to freedom.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-526-527 The Agenda of Moderate Spirituality “Nevertheless it is possible to make the material man and his life moderately progressive by imprinting on the material mind (physical mind) the custom of progress, the habit of conscious change, the fixed idea of progression as a law of life… It is possible to give the material man and his life a moderate spirituality by accustoming him to regard in a religious spirit all the institutions of life and its customary activities.”⁹ Sri Aurobindo “Nor can the ideal of human life be simply the animal repeated on a higher scale of mentality. Otherwise, a moderate mental satisfaction would have stayed our advance.”¹⁰ Sri Aurobindo “When we attain this perfection (master of the physical), then action and inaction become immaterial, since neither interferes with the freedom of the soul or draws it away from its urge towards the Self or its poise in the Self. But this state of perfection arrives later in the Yoga and till then the law of moderation laid down by the Gita is the best for us; too much mental and physical action then is not good since excess draws away too much energy and reacts unfavourably upon the spiritual condition; too little also is not good since defect leads to a habit of inaction and even to an incapacity which has afterwards to be surmounted with difficulty.”¹¹ (This line indicates that till one discovers Psychic being and Spiritual being, the law of moderation is good; but after that discovery, one should pursue rigorous self-control, ceaseless consecrated action, hard sacrifice.) Sri Aurobindo If one is comfortable and satisfied with one part of his being and Nature having contact with the Divine, excluding the rest of his being and nature, then he is identified as a Moderate. Integral Yoga promises that an ordinary earth-bound life can be transformed into Divine life, but it cannot be reconciled with Divine life. This means in order to arrive at Divine life, one has to renounce ordinary earth-bound life. We can confirm it by the Mother's following observation, "But, in the beginning (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry in 1926), the first condition for coming here was that you would have nothing more to do with your family!.... In the beginning, it was very, very strict – for a long time... The first condition was: ‘Nothing more to do with your family ...’ ...this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these cords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone?"⁶⁵ Moderate philosophy considers man as above the brute and below God and he is given the calm reason as his guide. He chooses a middle path of reason’s vigilant light which is neither that of Gods with their superhuman thought and power nor that of Titans with their furious march to conquer the kingdom of heaven and dash their life against the eternal Law and fall and break by their own violent mass, nor is he driven by an unthinking will of the bird and beast, nor is he moved senselessly by the stark necessity of Inconscient things. The Moderate Spirituality begins when there is an instreaming of exceptional light of experience into the great mass of normal unenlightened human mind, vitality and physicality which forms the outer self and engrosses the natural preoccupation of a moderate seeker. Integral Yoga recognises man’s hunger for immediate solutions of all his practical problems and does not rest content with unsolved discord, unillumined compromise, patched with failure but sets out in its mission to resolve all problems of existence through integral Evolution or existence fully aware of itself. It accepts all life as Yoga of the Mother-nature, evolving through the concentration of the individual or the secret will of Sachchidananda appearing as the individual in a world. It uses all the means of Religion, Science, Occult knowledge and Spiritual thought as a starting point and the evolutionary endeavour of Nature has experimented on all lines in order to find her true way and her whole way. It accepts the developmental urge of all Religion as ‘a sort of unconscious Yoga of devotion’, and Science as ‘a sort of unconscious Yoga of intellect’; it is the first approach of mind to the Spirit and Nature’s means of slow evolution and are relevant for the beginners. Integral Yoga accepts all Religion as part of the eternal Religion, Sanatana Dharma, and adoration of the personal God of all Religion as passage of partial realisation of the Divine, helping one towards the realisation of the Divine in its entirety. All Science is accepted as part and portion of Supreme Science and the rationalistic Materialism can safely enter the vast field of evidence and experience when the intellect has been severely trained to clear austerity. It served humanity greatly through a clean sweep at once of truth of liberated intelligence, a new departure and a surer advance of perfect experience and liberates humanity from the dualities of the sensational partial conceptions. Who is a moderate?: “So must the dim being grow in light and force And rise to his higher destiny at last, Look up to God and round at the universe, And learn by failure and progress by fall And battle with environment and doom, By suffering discover his deep soul And by possession grow to his own vasts.” Savitri-146 (by possession of Psychic being) “He is satisfied with his common average kind; Tomorrow’s hopes and his old rounds of thought, His old familiar interests and desires He has made into a thick and narrowing hedge Defending his small life from the Invisible; His being’s kinship to infinity He has shut away from him into inmost self, Fenced off the greatness of hidden God.” Savitri-165-66 “Man’s eyes could look into the inner realms; His scrutiny discovered number’s law And organised the motions of the stars, Mapped out the visible fashioning of the world, Questioned the process of his thoughts or made A theorised diagram of mind and life.” Savitri-361 A moderate’s width of life is all that he can think and act and to enjoy and to breathe is the height of his mortal hope. He meets a strange portion of his self that seeks for fragments and lives satisfied in the fragments. He lives in himself and for himself alone and with the rest joins only fleeting ties. His passion over short-lived surface joy and grief is his Shudra identity and his high thought cannot prevent him from the trap of inferior lower Nature which is ‘lower than the lowest reptile’s crawl’⁴⁵ and thus, he is unable to discover the Eternal in his secret house. He pursues the Divine Mother with life’s blind desire and claims all of Her as his lonely own and hastens to engross Her sweetness meant for all and hopes to bind Her with his longing cords. He finds Her Divine touch too strong to bear; intolerant of a Force he could not house and shrank into himself as from too bright a Sun. His mind’s light hides from him the Eternal’s thought; his heart’s hope conceals from him the Eternal’s will and earthly joy shuts from him the Eternal’s Bliss. The Spirit of a Moderate: “For swift and easy is the downward path,” Savitri-211 “Inviting to their high and exquisite sphere, To their secure and fine extremities This creature who hugs his limits to feel safe, These heights declined a greater adventure’s call. A glory and sweetness of satisfied desire Tied up the spirit to golden posts of bliss. It could not house the wideness of a soul Which needed all infinity for its home.” Savitri-238 “Man turns aside or chooses easier paths;” Savitri-449 (turns aside difficult adventure) “Only in limits can man’s strength be safe, Yet is infinity thy spirit’s goal, Its bliss is there behind the world’s face of tears.” Savitri-453 “Yet is he (intellect of man) visited by intuitive light And inspiration comes from the Unknown; But only reason and sense he feels as sure, They only are his trusted witnesses.” Savitri-517 “Our mortal vision peers with ignorant eyes; It has no gaze on the deep heart of things.” Savitri-626 Moderate Spirituality is the first preliminary form of seeking with certain kind of religiosity which is not a pure Spiritual temperament but is of the nature of mind or life finding in itself a Spiritual support. In this stage, man is mostly preoccupied with the utilisation of such contacts as he can construct with what is beyond him to help or serve his mental ideas or moral ideals or his vital and physical interests and true turn to some Spiritual change has not yet come. Through small joys and grief, he moves towards God. His consciousness forgets to be Divine and cannot bear the Divine’s tremendous touch and cannot experience radical transformation of Nature. He experiences God with His cruel indifferent bitter law and pitiless gaze, meets love with his own agony and short-lived passion and an unknown face of Fate visits with ominous terror and shadowy doom. Now he walks in Nature’s doubtful ray. If his will could be made one with the Divine will and if his thought could echo the thoughts of God, then he might be all-knowing and omnipotent. If his mind can receive God’s light and his force be driven by God’s force then he is a miracle doing miracles. Effort has been made to accommodate the moderate seekers in the main streams of integral Yoga regardless of their past trend, fixed belief and exclusive methods. They will be conversant with its many fold Spiritual practices from the very beginning of their sadhana life and make their life opulent with the fresh inflow of Spiritual experiences. Their natural recoil from the difficult road, high truth, concentrated writings, great adventure within and without and practice of large-scale Spiritual disciplines are corrected, enlarged and transcended through the practice of inner adoration, sacrifice and consecrated action. An awareness comes of an inner light, of guidance or a communion, a greater control than the mind and will to which something in him obeys but all is not yet recast in the mould of that experience. The final aim of the evolutionary Nature in mental man is Spiritual change by the influence of the inner being and higher Spiritual mind but this by itself can lead to an illumined mental idealism to the growth of a religious mind, a religious temperament and some devotion in the heart and piety in the conduct. It is a first approach of Mind to the Spirit but it cannot enter the radical transformation of life and nature. Thus, a moderate Devotee has more responsibility to live deeper within, to exceed his present consciousness and raise the Spiritual aspiration of the heart, its self-offering and its inner seeking. His faith in the Divine is indispensable; for without it he cannot pursue his path through the Unknown and this need not be imposed on him but must come as free perception and imperative direction, adesh, from the inner Spirit. The Limitation of Moderate Spirituality: "He is a smallness trying to be great, An animal with some instincts of a god, His life a story too common to be told, His deeds a number summing up to nought, His consciousness a torch lit to be quenched, His hope a star above a cradle and grave." Savitri-78 “A slowly changing order binds our will. This is our doom until our souls are free.” Savitri-154 “As long as the human animal is lord And a dense nether nature screens the soul, As long as intellect’s outward-gazing sight Serves earthy interest and creature joys, An incurable littleness pursues his days.” Savitri-163-164 “A little bliss is lent thee from above, A touch divine upon thy human days. Make of thy daily way a pilgrimage, For through small joys and griefs thou mov’st towards God.” Savitri-451 “He sees his little self as very God. His little ‘I’ has swallowed the whole world, His ego has stretched into infinity.” Savitri-453 Narad said: “Because thy strength is a part not God’s whole, Because afflicted by the little self Thy consciousness forgets to be divine As it (consciousness) walks in the vague penumbra of the flesh And cannot bear the world’s tremendous touch, Thou criest out and sayst that there is pain.” Saviti-454 “Imprisoned in his body and his brain The mortal cannot see God’s mighty whole, Or share in his vast and deep identity Who (Divine) stands unguessed within our ignorant hearts And knows all things because he (Divine) is one with all.” Savitri-517 “The doctrine “No belief without proof” applies to physical science, it would be disastrous in the field of spirituality — or for that matter in the field of human action. The saints or bhaktas have the faith in God long before they get the experience of God — the man of action has the faith in his cause long before his cause is crowned with success — otherwise they would not have been able to struggle persistently towards their end in spite of defeat, failure and deadly peril.”³⁸ Sri Aurobindo Since moderate Spirituality is Nature’s unconscious Yoga through slow evolution, so it cannot transform the impending doom or fixed destiny into a higher Spiritual destiny. A moderate gains the hard-won quietude, silence, partial Divine realisation and falls into mortal grief and Nature’s Law during transitional or critical moments of life. During the period of extreme adversity, he does not lean on the pure and tranquil Spirit for all the necessary aid and help; rather, he opens himself towards murmurs of inhuman solitudes and prefers to find a gate of escape⁴⁶ from all real problems. All Religions and all Sciences have their own countless stories of doing harm and evil to mankind and the world. “To adopt a religion because one is born in that religion or because the people one loves and trusts practise that religion or because when one goes to a particular place where others pray and worship, one feels helped in one’s own prayer and worship, is not the sign of a very strong nature; I should say it is rather the sign of a weakness or at any rate of a lack of originality.” The Mother/The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/8/246, The Law of Moderation-1: Or Practice of Moderate Spirituality through Science: “(Scientific) Genius is one attempt of the universal Energy to so quicken and intensify our intellectual powers that they shall be prepared for those more puissant, direct and rapid faculties which constitute the play of the supra-intellectual or divine mind. It is not, then, a freak, an inexplicable phenomenon, but a perfectly natural next step in the right line of her (Nature’s) evolution.”¹⁵ Sri Aurobindo “It is the Godhead who manifests himself in the great thinker, the hero, the leader of men, the great teacher, sage, prophet, religious founder, saint, lover of man, the great poet, the great artist, the great scientist, the ascetic self-tamer, the tamer of things and events and forces.”¹⁶ Sri Aurobindo “Our human knowledge is a candle burnt On a dim altar to a sun-vast Truth;” Savitri-280 “And Science tears out Nature’s occult powers,” Savitri-627 “And sciences omnipotent in vain By which men learn of what the suns are made, Transform all forms to serve their outward needs, Ride through the sky and sail beneath the sea, But learn not what they are or why they came….” Savitri-644 Science begins its journey from an obscure and ignorant perception of the hidden realities of Nature and proceeds towards more luminous and more potential vision of the Truth. It is the outcome of the development of man’s faculty of exclusive concentration and vast extension of practical physical mind. Integral Evolution considers Science as a part of occultism as it brings to light the Nature’s hidden formulas and uses its knowledge to set free the operation of her energies and place all its inventions and discoveries at the service of mankind. Science represents a vast system of physical magic through utilisation of secret truths of being and secret power and processes of Nature and it cannot rest content with the barriers of sense knowledge. Integral Evolution further provides this input that success and completion of physical knowledge of Science can be arrived at in its range of inquiry by discovery of what lies beyond, the Supraphysical knowledge because behind the process of physical Nature there is a vast inner kingdom of Supraphysical fact which can be accessed through Subliminal and Spiritual vision and entry into the Occult movement of the Force. Science dreams of physical conquest of death, discovers the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite survival of the body, has insatiable thirst for power and knowledge to capture God’s Omnipotence and Omniscience, contracting Space and Time to vanishing point and it strives in a thousand ways to make man the master of the circumstance and it is arriving at the border where material is divided from the immaterial and the highest achievement of utilitarian Science has even reduced the dependency on external aid of machinery to a vanishing point. In the wireless telegraphy and telephonic communication, the sensible physical means for the intermediate transmission of physical force is removed and it is preserved only at the point of transmission and reception. The development of Supraphysical science ensures that dependency even on these machineries will disappear and direct communication can be established between mind and mind without the aid of the physical organs and limitation they impose on our surface consciousness. If we can recognise this fact, then an enormous vista to the future will open wide through Supraphysical Science. Since the very Soul of scientific enquiry is the search for knowledge, so it cannot cry a halt at sense-dominated knowledge and reasoning from sense knowledge and shall strive to go beyond the limitation and error of sense²¹ by revealing the facts and realities not seizable by corporeal organs. Science confirms the Vedic and the Upanishadic idea ‘of the one essence with its many becomings’. The dualist appearance of Matter and Energy are reconciled in Science as matter is energy or E= mc² and are reconciled in the Vedanta as the Matter is Brahman Energy, annam brahma . It is evident that essential Matter is a thing non-existent to senses and is only a conceptual form of substance, and a point is reached where the arbitrary distinction in thought divides the form of substance from the form of energy. With the increase of scientific knowledge, man becomes capable of regulating and indefinitely prolonging life, though not capable of an entire conquest of death. Science is capable of envisaging only external or secondary causes of removing death and disease to a distance and is not capable of the root knowledge of eliminating it; it knows the process of things but not the essence; thus, it arrives at more powerful manipulation of circumstance without experiencing the essential control. But if we could go behind the surface nature and grasp the essential subtle nature and cause of error, suffering and death, we might hope to arrive at a mastery over them which should be not relative but entire. We can even hope to eliminate them altogether and justify the dominant instinct of our nature by the conquest of that absolute good, bliss, knowledge and immortality which our intuitions perceive as the true and ultimate condition of the human being. So the solution of the whole problem of existence cannot be realised by exclusive one-sided knowledge and the process of science, but we must know the process of mind, life, Soul and Spirit and all that are behind the material surface, and then only we have sufficiently integral knowledge for the total solution of the problem. Science is keen to take minute care, intelligent approach and one-pointed concentration on the smallest and largest of its works. This mighty energy is an equal and impartial mother and its intensity and force of movement is the same in the formation and upholding of a system of suns and the organisation of the life of an ant-hill. We have already seen how greatly and scrupulously Science has served the ends of the Divine and we must preserve all the truths of material Science and its real utilities in the final harmony, even if many or even if all of its existing forms have to be broken or left aside. Reason corrects the error and limitation of the sense mind and is therefore one of the most powerful faculties developed by Science and that is the chief cause of his superiority among the terrestrial beings. The reason of the enormous success of physical Science is that it works best and with a firm confidence, the truth and potentiality already contained in Nature, when it is given a substance to work or handle the cosmic force through acquired knowledge, deals objectivised actualities with sure steps of verification by positive reason and objective evidence, erects formulas and standards based on the objective and phenomenal reality and proceeds from them for new invention and new discovery and it accepts the actual, physical and objective fact as self-evident truth beyond question. Physical Science enlarged the discoveries and released the huge secret material energy into action and for it physical actuality alone is real and Mind and Life are only the departmental activities of Matter and material instrumentation and it ignores the Spiritual, considering it as one form and fragment of Mind and it accepts all other subjective beings and things on the same condition in so far as they can become objects of our external evidence or acceptable to that part of the reason which builds upon the data supplied by them that relies upon as one solid basis of objective knowledge. Certain scientific discoveries are misused and clumsily used by humanity who are mentally and morally unready and unfit to handle powers great and perilous; for it would be an artificial control without any true knowledge of the secret energy that underlies and sustains our creation. The ancient Indian Physicists had identified the hierarchies through which the pure Energy has condensed as pure Matter and the elementary state of material Force is a condition of pure material extension in space. The Material force first modified its ethereal status, akasha , and from this vibration the sense of sound is born and it further modified into a second state which is called in the old language the aerial, vayu , of which a special property of contact between force and force has emerged and from this vibration of force the sense of touch is born. The third self-modification of the primitive force is the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat. Agni, which is again manifested in earth’s atmosphere as sight. A fourth state is characterized by diffusion, is termed as water or the liquid state, jala, accompanied by the birth of the fourth element of sense, the taste and the final modification is termed as earth of the solid state, bhumi, accompanying with it the faculty of sense, the smell. This is the attitude of ordinary consciousness towards Matter that in proportion as Matter is more subtle, less densely resistant and enduringly seizable by the sense, it appears to us less material. Thus, the ancient thinking satisfied the query of the ordinary human mind, about how these forms which are so real, durable and solid to the sense can be in truth only temporary phenomena and things like pure energy are nonexistent, intangible and incredible to sense organs. The integral Vedantic affirmation of universe confirms that the delight of its existence is at (1) first self-gathered, absorbed, sub-conscious in the basis of the physical universe giving birth to the five states of Matter, akasha, vayu, agni, jala and bhumi ; (2) then evolves the five subtle sense of life that of sabda, sparsa, dristi, rasa and gandha ; this Life is Force and Force is Power and Power is Will and Will is the working of the master Consciousness; (3) then the life of sensation further emerges as growth of mind and ego in the triple vibration of pain, pleasure and indifference which is the limitation of the force of consciousness in the form and from its exposure to shocks of the universal Force which it finds alien to it and out of harmony with its own measure and standard; (4) finally, the distortion of original consciousness emerges as the full Sachchidananda consciousness in its creations by movement of ascending and descending Consciousness whose pace is regulated (a) by universality, (b) by equality, (c) by self-possession and (d) by conquest of Nature. This is the normal course, evolution and movement of the world. To realise its own power and to master and to know its world is therefore the increasing impulse of all individual life and that impulse is identified as the essential aspect of growing self-manifestation of Sachchidananda in cosmic existence or universalisation of the individual Being and Nature. His limited mental consciousness has to widen to the superconscient unity in which each embraces all; his narrow heart has to learn the infinite embrace and replace its lusts and discords by universal love; his restricted vital being has to become equal to the whole shock of the universe upon it and capable of universal delight; his recalcitrant physical being has to know itself as no separate entity but as one with and sustaining in itself the whole flow of the indivisible Force that is all things. The Divine Life is born out of the deeper and wider truth of our being which is extended as life of unity, mutuality and harmony, which will again replace the imperfect mental consciousness of artificially arranged and mechanized unity of material life into the oneness-in-all of the supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. Reason and Science bind man within the limitations of Space and Time. The Space is defined as a stable extension measured out by divisibility of substance and mind places itself at certain point in that divisible extension and regards the disposition of substance around it. Time is defined as a mobile extension measured out by succession of the past, present and future in which mind places itself at a certain point from which it can look back and ahead. This experience of space and time in our waking state is what we call as a surface mental consciousness, and is only a small selection from our entire conscious Being. Behind this surface consciousness, there is a much vaster Subliminal and Subconscient mind, which is the greater part of our identity and contains heights, depths, and profundities to which no man can measure or fathom. This knowledge gives us the starting point of the true Science and also the starting point of true Spirituality. This knowledge will deliver us from the circumscription by the material and illusion of the obvious. Modern thought is unaware of invisible forces other than those revealed or constructed by Science; it does not believe that Nature is capable of creating any physical, vital and mental beings other than those around us in the physical world, men, beasts, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, germs and animalculae. These cosmic forces whose subtler substance is invisible to us, form conscious beings or use persons to embody them in physical forms and in a physical world and can act upon Matter and through Matter. As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of Light and Truth, so there are Powers of Ignorance, tenebrous Forces of the Darkness, Falsehood and Evil whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Suffering. The transformation of these universal forces attached to present unstable creation is beyond the scope and control of Physical Science. Science is oblivious and unaware of the Being, the Self and it experiences the separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings but this limitation can be cured by the Soul in the Becoming growing into knowledge, into the awareness of the Being which in the multiplicity holds all these existences and their truth is already there in the Being’s timeless existence. The Divine Being is capable of becoming innumerable forms, though He is beyond all form, He does not lose His Divinity in these multitude of forms but pours out in them the delight of His Being and glories of His Godhead; this Earth-power, principle of all this figured material existence, does not lose her immutable divinity because she forms into habitable worlds, throws herself out in the hills and hollows and allows herself to be shaped into utensils or the hearth and the household or as hard metal into weapon, engine, electrical and electronic appliances. The material substance, either subtle like air, ether, heat, electricity and light or rather denser in water, soil, rock and hard metal, are form and body of the Spirit and would never have been created if it could not be made a basis for the self-expression of the Spirit. Science itself is a mental construction, a multitude of pragmatically correct formulas and devices, masterful in the creation of apt machinery, automatically infallible in its own field, but is entirely ignorant of the foundations of our being and of world-being and it does not throw any light on the major question of original cosmic process of how these determinates were created out of the original Indeterminate Existence. It cannot transform and perfect our nature and therefore cannot perfect our life. Rather it transforms all forms to serve their outward need. We do not gain essentially anything most needful by utmost widening of a physical objective knowledge like embracing the most distant solar systems, ride through the sky, exploring the deepest layers of earth, sail beneath the sea and tracing the most subtle powers of material energy. That is why in spite of dazzling triumphs of physical science with all its achievements of making life of humanity materially one, proves itself always in the end a vain and helpless creed by fixing everything into an artificially arranged and mechanised unity of material life and can never achieve happiness and fullness of being for humanity. Our true happiness and completeness lies in the true growth of our whole being and the transcendence of our existing Nature. So first we must grow into our full mental being which is the first transitional movement towards human perfection, mastery and freedom; it does not actually liberate the Soul from increased servitude but prepares loosening of the hold of material and vital absorption. The Integral Yogi’s distinction from other mental men is that he lives and acts in a greater vision and vaster Spiritual Consciousness that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and moulds his works. After realisation of the Integral Divine, the static highest Oneness and the Dynamic greatest Power, an Integral Yogi returns to intermediate worlds for multiple perfection, siddhis , and again returns to earth and its multitude of problems, bears the burden of the world, enjoys Divinely its Self and Universe by renouncing the egoistic sense of desire and possession, tyaktena bhunjithah and transforms humanity. For his Spiritual Consciousness, existence appears as a world of Spirit, mayi vartate, ¹⁷ not a world of Matter but a God manifested in the form, not a world of life but a God manifested in the force, not a world of mind but a God manifested in the thought. His entry in Occultism is not confined to a subordinate action of astonishingly effective use of mind power and life power by mechanisation of latent forces but mind and life forces are made plastic, subtle, variable in their action and have not the material rigidity and they have developed a subtle and plastic Intuition in the knowledge for the interpretation of all their action, process and application of established formulas. He enters Arts with the aim of a more glorious and beautiful manifestation; there the delight of the Spirit is ever new, the forms of beauty are innumerable, the godhead adored is ever young and the taste of the delight is eternal and inexhaustible and attains to something of this true capacity for variable but universal delight in the aesthetic reception of things. His aim in utilitarian Science is to enter the ways and processes of the Divine, to know the material and means of work to utilise that knowledge for the conscious and faultless expression of the Spirit’s mystery, joy and self-fulfilment. His aim in Science is to discover, understand and execute the working of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in men, creatures and in Nature’s myriad manifestations. His aim in medical Science is to discover integral healing through the intervention of the Divine Grace or Nature’s all-powerful suprarational remedy which can be subordinated by the support of medicines and doctors. Science discovers the fundamental truth of existence that the Matter resolves itself into form of Energy and studies opaque Force and Matter. This force is fundamentally the Chit-Tapas or Chit-Shakti , Consciousness-force of the Vedanta which builds up and constitutes the Matter. Traditional Spirituality discovers the greater and completer fundamental truth that the Matter exists as a substantial appearance of Consciousness and the only reality is a pure Spirit or the Conscious Being. Integral Spirituality finds a link principle of Consciousness which is veiled as subconscious form in Matter and revealed as superconscious form in Spirit. Since to Science, Matter is the beginning and end of all knowledge so it shows reluctance to accept Consciousness as the mother of intelligence and material Energy or blind Nature-Force is now ordinarily accepted as the sole cause and mode of things and the sole instrumentation of the World-Force. Science has worked marvels by organising the instrumentation of material forces and created an unlimited prospect of our existence and it does not accept the instrumentation of the powers of Consciousness and Spiritual and Occult forces exceeding and overpassing the limitation of existing Nature. When Science will be able to mend its earlier stand of recognising a subconscious mind or intelligence as creator of material universe but accepts an involved Truth Consciousness behind all material existence, then it will be able trace the hierarchies of higher Consciousness and gives way to the higher Spiritual appetite of integral Yoga and its unconscious wandering within Matter ends and it will recognise life, mind and Supermind as evolution of veiled Truth Consciousness in Matter or different grades of same energy, different organisations of the one conscious force of Existence. Purified Intelligence is an intermediate consciousness and it can trace the passage of Spiritualised Intelligence and Intuition of higher Consciousness. Science can find its full sense and justification by illuminating itself with the Light and Truth preserved in the ancient Vedantic Scripture. Thus, we cease to reason and go deep into ourselves by stilling the mind. Knowledge of luminous vastness with illimitable self-vision awaits and is seated beyond mind and intellectual reasoning. Thus, we can hope that a great progression of Science starting from the rudimentary beginnings of an awakening of the material forces, continuing with this mutual self-discovery and self-illumination by fusion of old Eastern and modern Western wisdom, might lead to another immense development and departure. The Law of Moderation-2: Or Practice of Moderate Spirituality through Religion: “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, nanyad astıti vadinah (those who are devoted to the Veda whose creed is that there is nothing else.¹³ ). 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.”¹⁴ Sri Aurobindo “All powers of Life towards their godhead tend In the wideness and the daring of that air, Each builds its temple and expands its cult, And Sin too there is a divinity.” Savitri-185 The objective of all Religion is to generalise the highest available Spiritual Truth for the largest benefit of humanity and its greatest utility is to act as an intermediary between the perfect Spirit and imperfect Nature. The objective of all Spirituality is to trace the endless unfolding of the opulence of the Spirit and preserve its highest discovered truth in some casketed secret symbolic formulas and given only to a few fit initiated Souls living within the secret Schools of Spiritual Fortress for the present and future benefit of humanity. In integral Yoga, both objectives are reconciled. But in our separative consciousness each Religion takes on the appearance of opposing forces; each exists as opposites through rituals, ceremony and sacraments; each claims to be the Truth and superior and taxes the others with error and inferior Truth-expressions; each feels impelled to destroy, clash or refuse the others in order that it alone may survive, fulfill itself and spread the message of the Truth. The religious emotions are often invaded by turmoil, obscurity, self-assertive narrowness, challenging egoism and are either crude or narrow or fanatical or mixed with movements that are not signs of the Spirit’s freedom and draw back Religion of its higher Spiritual aim and character. The necessity of mutually destructive schools of philosophy arises when human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of the Spiritual experience, affirms that as the sole eternal Truth of existence and states it in terms of all dividing mental logic. Again if we give support to this play of difference, then we assert that the Supreme and the human Soul are eternally different and reject the validity of a Spiritual experience which transcends their difference. Integral Yoga proceeds towards all-inclusive Knowledge, not by setting one truth against other truth to see which will survive and flourish, but complements one exclusive truth by another exclusive truth in the light of the vision that each are special aspect of one all-inclusive Truth. All truth idea, truth vision, truth perception and truth discernment have this character of large integrating knowledge, a whole working out of the process of self-awareness in a self-executing harmony of truth-being. The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature, thus, the primitive form of Religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship and deification of the natural forces, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us Inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious Spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. This obscurity, inferior stage and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value of the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, and it must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden Realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth and sheer contact of the Spiritual Reality which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. In India , the age of Intuitive knowledge, Intuitive seeing and Intuitive expression was represented by fathomless thought and profound language of early Vedantic thinking of the Upanishads; the Intuition was unable to give us direct knowledge because the surface nature was not trained and well organised to fully assimilate its messages. In order to organise the surface being the age of Intuitive knowledge had to give place to the age of rational knowledge, inspired Scriptures, intellectual account which made room for metaphysical philosophy and logical justification of what has been found by inner realisation as represented in The Gita and afterwards metaphysical philosophy gave birth to systematized method for realisation and experience through experimental psycho-physical Science of Hathayoga , experimental occult science of Tantra and experimental Psychic Science of Rajayoga . In the West, this synthetic and illumined tendency of consciousness was replaced by the separative and analytic, Spiritual urge parted company from intellectual reason, and philosophy took the form of purely intellectual and ratiocinative explanation for things. The dynamic thought and conduct developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being through systems like the Pythagorean, Stoic and Epicurean; this reached a higher Spiritual plane of knowledge through the later Christian and Neo-pagan thought structures where the Eastern and Western experiences were reconciled. In the age of rationalistic speculation, the Indian philosophers were respectful of a double attitude, that of (1) inspired revelation through Intuition, an authority superior to reason and (2) testing the result of Intuition through Reason. In this way they avoided the metaphysical sin and the tendency to battle in the cloud. Their speculations proceeded towards the highest Spiritual experience by united consent of two great authorities, the Intuition and the Reason. Subsequently, in the passage of time the trend of the reason to assert its own supremacy prevailed in effect over the theory of its subordination. So the old catholicity and unity of intuitive Knowledge which sees things in the whole, suffered through the intervention of reason’s analysis and division and natural tendency of the reason to affirm some and negate others which conflict with its own chosen conclusion and hence each school of thought founded on Vedic or Vedantic theory use its texts as weapons of opposition against others. In the West the later Religion was not supported by philosophy but by credal theology. There Spiritual philosophy emerged by the sheer force of the individual genius and it was observed that the critical control of the intellect over Spiritual experience was hampered and was unreliable due to an inferior light of reason turned upon a field of higher Spiritual illumination. The real business of Religion is to prepare man’s mind, life and bodily existence for a Spiritual evolution and gives each one a mould of Spiritual discipline, a way of intense aspiration, a discernment and possession of Truth and has to lead him to that point where the inner Spiritual light begins to fully emerge. The Religions in India accepted a vast number of difficult formulations and all the elements that have grown in the course of the evolution of Religion and refused to ban or excise any. It developed occult Science to its utmost limit, accepted Spiritual philosophies of all kinds, every possible line of highest, deepest and largest Spiritual realisation, Spiritual experience and Spiritual self-discipline; followed all ways of communication between man and the Supreme Divine and every possible way of advance to the goal. Thus, a larger psychic and emotional relation, more deep and plastic in its essence and all embracing relation with God became imperative. It is by such plasticity and catholicity that the wider aim of the evolution of Religion can work with an unexampled multitudinous richness, impregnable durability, generality, universality, height, subtlety and all possible fullness. All the post-Buddhistic era lived in the shadow of the great Refusal and the final end of life for all is the garb of the ascetic. It disturbed two thousand years of old Vedic Aryan balance between Matter and Spirit and has increasingly dominated Indian minds of the ascetics and the religionists for many centuries with the idea that (1) renunciation and condemnation of earthly life is the sole path of knowledge, (2) acceptance of life as the act of ignorant Maya , (3) the cessation of birth and withdrawal to happier worlds is the right use of human birth, the call of the Spirit to recoil from Matter. It was in the integral Yoga, the three great formulas of negations of interim solution, (1) the chain of karma , (2) escape from wheel of rebirth and (3) cosmic illusion, Maya, which had permeated and predominated the general conception of the mind of the race through most of the Religious and Spiritual disciplines of India, were transcended and it was felt necessary to find a true solution and to look afresh at the Idea or Truth behind the Hindu negation of this cosmic existence. In the new orientation, in its ultimate objective, the limitations of Universal Illusionism behind these theories were traced and they were transformed to their full significance of a universal Realism, a real universe reposing on a Reality at once Universal, Transcendent and Absolute. The law or the chain of karma is Divine Will acting through the limitation of mind, producing mechanised living and bondage. Each being reaps what he sows. Karma is further projected as the outcome of past good or evil thoughts, feelings and actions which determine and construct his fixed physical fate. They are the chief or the most forceful determinants of his being and his future. This idea of Karma is a construction of the narrow but practical human physical mind and vital mind concerned with its petty rules of life and its desires and joys and sorrows and erecting their puny standards into the law and aim of the cosmos. These ignorant notions cannot be acceptable to the human intellect and still less to the law of Divine living. The true liberating karma as proposed in integral Yoga is the action of direct Divine will received through the Psychic or Spiritual being whose outcome is intense creative joy of Spirit, the harmony of the eternal musician and the play of the Divine Playmate. The higher law of karma is ultimately the law of Spiritual evolution and with the emergence of our Soul, the primary plan of fixed destiny is partly modified by the intervention of the mind and wholly changed to Psychic and Spiritual destiny and the binding law of karma is replaced with the Spiritual freedom or the law of the Self. The past mechanized action of man gives birth to the present man of fixed fate and the present mental action of man gives birth to a future Spiritual man with an unimaginable Spiritual destiny. Those who are bound to the chain of karma are bound to the principle of rebirth and in all traditional schools, the freedom from rebirth is projected as the highest and ultimate objective. The methods by which they can escape into the Purushottama State and rest there permanently, for that they must satisfy three conditions; firstly, they must mould themselves towards this ideal their whole inner life in their earthly living; secondly, they must have the capacity to go to the highest state of Purushottama either in trance or waking state while continuing in this earthly body and thirdly, they must be faithful to this aspiration during the hour of departure of the earthly body. In integral Yoga, rebirth is not considered as the Soul’s circling in the net of desire, but an opportunity of Spiritual evolution and through it the mind, life and body repeat the lesson of manifesting their involved Divinity till the recovery of their complete and undivided Divine life. It is for ever-increasing upward experience of the individual being from life to life; the growth of the Soul is a growth out of darkness into Light, out of falsehood into Truth, out of suffering into its own supreme and universal Ananda. It is through joy and grief, pain and suffering, fortune and misfortune that the Soul enters into rebirth. The theory of Maya, the Illusionist theory, as proposed by Shankara is the sense of illusion or unreality of cosmic existence as formulated by the mind; it really cuts the knot of the world problem; it is an escape, a separation from Nature. This sense of unreality powerfully seizes the consciousness of a Spiritual seeker with great force when the mind withdraws from its constructions; one passes into pure Selfhood void of all sense of individuality and Consciousness is plunged into a trance of pure Superconscient existence. Buddha took one step farther to declare the unreality of the Self and God; for they too are constructions of the mind. Any error, division and confusion of mind between the activities of Saguna Brahman and quiescence of Nirguna Brahman would not be a creative cosmic Illusion, Maya, but only a wrong understanding of realities of Existence and a wrong relation created by Ignorance. A real solution of existence and world-existence can only stand upon the truth that accounts for their validity, integralises, harmonises and gathers together all their experience in the supreme all-reconciling Oneness. Still there are other decisive Spiritual experiences, that of greater Divine union with the double Spiritual experience of Cosmic Consciousness and Nirvana of world-consciousness, which can undo the whole theory of (mental) Maya , which can remove Ignorance and Falsehood from material life and this world is experienced as real as Brahman . The illusionist word Maya , of the later Vedantist , which means cunning, fraud and illusion, has declined from its original meaning of knowledge, skill and intelligence of the Ancient Vedantist. Integral Yoga retains the ancient original Vedantic sense of Maya, which is all-comprehending, all-containing and all-embracing Consciousness of the Supreme, that affirms and includes the truth of all Spiritual experience, integralises all Knowledge, and experiences That which being known all is known. (Supramental) Maya is the supreme and universal Consciousness and Force of the Eternal and Infinite and it is at once transcendental, universal and individual and it can put forth many states of Consciousness at a time. The world appears to be an Illusion (mental) Maya by virtue of the presence of lower Nature and apparent denial of Ignorance which seeks to become affirmation and this Illusion-Power which creates appearances can be removed by ascending into the higher Consciousness and Matter can be the solid ground for manifestation of the highest Divine. The shadow of the great Refusal or principle of negation prevailing over principle of affirmation of post Buddhistic era of the East was reincarnated in the West as Christian negation⁴¹ which was born out of fear of hell and long subconscient memory of suppression, anguish, oppression, aggression, intolerance, use of violence, atrocity, paid the price of blood and suffering and death of Christian martyrs in thousands of its religious history. The accumulated Soul forces¹² of these martyrs conquered against the empire-force so that the oppression of Christianity prevailed but not the compassionate Christ. The victorious religion became a militant and dominant Church and Christianity organise themselves into mutual strife and they battled together fiercely to live, grow and possess the world as much as possible to their utmost capacity. They limit the Infinite as one and only Incarnation.⁴⁰ This monotheistic doctrine was again further aggravated as religious obscurantism of opposing the enquiry and extension of endless scientific discovery. The latter limitation was overcome with the advent of modern Science and the former can be transcended by the advent of Spiritual Science and the entry of a caravan of Light into the body of an individual Spiritual seeker and his greatest difficulty is that he still seeks happiness and fulfilment in Heaven beyond and not on earth. In order to overcome this exclusive Spirituality where this creation is identified as reprehensible;³⁹ he will have to fight strongly in order to establish himself here in the external life the Supreme Bliss from which all creation is born. He will weld strongly the central truth, central dynamic principle, central secret of his Religion with the all truth of Eternal Religion, Sanatana Dharma , from which all religions have evolved. He will realise the gospel of Divine love, service, benevolence and action that dominates his outer Christian living, which has its Transcendent source in Sachchidananda , the triple Divine principle of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss, and he will further realise that elevating himself to the Transcendent Source of all is a more important and relevant issue than the minor factor of serving the individual or the race. The division of Catholic and Protestant Christianity is identified in integral Yoga as the former is the original plasticity in nature with many-sided catholicity extended towards the growth of whole Nature of human being and the latter is disruptive of this wide-reaching tendency and insists on pure dependency on belief, monotheistic adoration of God, who lives as Immanent Being within and simplified law of good so as to make quick appeal to common intellect, heart and ethical will. The specialty of Catholicism is that they worship virgin Mother, Para-prakriti, and have the occult knowledge of the Subliminal plane and Protestants have something of the inner Divine Presence. . Integral Yoga accepts and adores the compassionate Christ as Divine Incarnation. The Cross,¹⁹ which symbolises purification and suffering, is transformed in integral Yoga²² into a symbol of strong and perfect union between the Soul and Nature and all that purified humanity is culminated by its fulfillment. The Mother force in Virgin Mary is extended in integral Yoga as Virgin Savitri, the descent of Supreme nature, Para-prakriti, into human form, who promises that Earth life can be made an equal and peer of Heaven and Heaven’s joy can natively grow on mortal soil if Earth can be made pure and virgin. Savitri further promises to transform the seven-fold sorrows of the Subconscient world (this can be linked with Mother Mary’s seven sorrows) into seven-fold Bliss and ‘Misery shall pass abolished from the earth.’²⁰ Integral Yoga accepts Shankar’s theory of ‘Brahman is Real and World is an Illusion’ as the initial Spiritual experience and rejects it in the final journey with the realisation of World is as real as Brahman and Brahman Force can penetrate into material life and Divinise it. It accepts the Buddhistic doctrine of Nirvana and the eightfold path⁵⁵ as the initial Spiritual realisation and rejects its negation that the world, the Self and the Divine are the construction of Mind and hence are unreal. It accepts the Gita’s self-discipline of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga and rejects its objective of escape into the Supreme abode of Param Dham . It accepts the inner renunciation of desire and ego of ascetic living and rejects saintly inactivity and renunciation of outer life. It accepts the exclusive Spiritual quests of later Vedantists as the starting point of Yoga and rejects their dependency on Psycho-physical means of self-discipline. It accepts Patanjali's eight limbs of Yoga⁵⁶ and its highest objective of Samadhi 'tends to withdraw into a subliminal plane at the back of our normal experiences instead of descending and possessing our whole existence.'⁶³ It accepts Chris t as the Divine Incarnation, its gospel of universal Love, brotherhood, equality and charity and rejects the Christian doctrine of limiting the infinite to one and only Divine Incarnation, solution of all problems of existence in the Heaven beyond, long Subconscient memory of oppression, miseries and acceptance of creation as the error of God. Integral Yoga accepts the ancient Vedantic doctrine of searching for the truth of existence in both Matter and Spirit and finds a reconciling equation in which Brahman consciousness penetrates material life. The above Eastern and Western negations are further fragmented through the apparent negations and divisions between mind, life and body. The three negations of mind are identified as limitation of Consciousness (which gave birth to Pleasure, Pain and Indifference), Ignorance and Dualities transformed in integral Yoga into Infinite Consciousness, integral Knowledge and Oneness; of life are identified as Death, Desire or Hunger and Incapacity transformed in integral Yoga into Immortality, satisfied Delight and Omnipotence and of physical are Ignorance, Inertia and Division transformed in integral Yoga into Omniscience, Divine peace and tranquility and Unity. Conscious unity and perfect harmony of mind, life and body can be arrived at by discovering the triple Soul of Manomaya, Pranamaya and Annamaya Purusha , and further pushing to discover the Psychic Being in the heart and Spiritual and Supramental Being above the head. Spiritual experience born out of World Negation as developed by Buddha and later further extended by the Indian Saint Shankara is the Nirvana and Brahma Nirvana, respectively. For the Buddha , the world, Self and God are constructions of the mind and by withdrawing from such constructions, one arrives at the ineffable Delight of the Nirvana . If this experience is further extended one realises the featureless, immutable, silent and absolute state of One and indivisible Brahma Nirvana . And the Ananda becomes so intense and pure that to the mind this phenomenal world seems to be an illusion. The Spiritual experience born out of Positive Affirmation of World or considering world as the body of the Divine, Vasudev Sarvamiti, is the Cosmic Consciousness which is possible by raising and widening the mind to the state of Truth Thought, Truth Vision, Truth Hearing, Truth Discernment and Truth Touch or developing the faculty of Higher Mind, illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and finally Mind is universalized to experience Overmind state of Consciousness. In this cosmic Consciousness of Overmind the Matter is real to the Spirit and the Spirit is real to the Matter and their reconciliation is practicable. In this Cosmic consciousness Mind, Life and Body are no longer considered as agents of separation and formenters of an artificial quarrel but as conscious Intermediary and Instruments of evolving Consciousness, where Mind is self fulfilled when it becomes a pure mirror of the Truth of Being; Life is self fulfilled when it consciously lends its energies to the perfect self-figuration of the Divine in ever-new forms and activities of the universal existence and body is self fulfilled when its substance is plastic and malleable enough to the pure Divine touch and its Light. In integral Yoga, the negative Spiritual experience of Nirvana and the positive or affirmative Spiritual experience of Cosmic Consciousness are accepted as expressions of Self and are reconciled and transcended, where the former asks the pacification of the mind and the latter asks the activation and illumination of Mind. These two Spiritual experiences are the basis of static and dynamic Brahman , beyond which the greater Divine union and integral Divine realisation stand. In conclusion, Integral Yoga has nothing to do with Hindu religions or any other Religions. It recognises two things. (1) It accepts the 'Truth of the Divine which is the spiritual reality behind all religions'⁵² and (2) dynamic Divine union and its highest form identified as Supramental truth, which is not known to any Religion. These two things are identified as the foundation of all future action of integral Yoga and by their help all problems of existence can be resolved, all impurity can be purified, all untransformed Nature can be Divinised and all imperfections of existence can be perfected. The Law of Moderation-3: Or Eightfold Concentration for the beginners of Integral Yoga: “Detect first what is false (countless rajasic imperfections) or obscure (countless tamasic imperfections) in you and persistently reject it, then alone can you rightly call for the divine Power to transform you.....But whatever his (Sadhak's ) aim, however exalted his aspiration, he has to begin from the law of his present imperfection, to take full account of it and see how it can be converted to the law of a possible perfection.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-4 CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-631 Those whose Psychic being in the heart and Spiritual being above the head have partly opened are identified as beginners of Integral Yoga. Before this opening, they can pursue this Yoga with the aid of purified intellect. These seekers are issued with injunctions in Savitri to renounce 'rest and earthly ease' (Savitri-339) till they find their Psychic and Spiritual being. Those who have found the Psychic being and Spiritual being are issued with injunctions in Savitri to renounce 'the glory and felicity.' (Savitri-136) Because during the transformation of Nature, pain and suffering are treated not as a curse, but as a transitional mechanism and a privilege ("It keeps for her her privilege of pain...But must cross on stones of suffering to its goal." (Savitri-457)) used by the universalized consciousness to shock the inert matter into waking up and evolving. Apprentice Sadhakas will begin this Yoga with the triple wheels of Vedantic method of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga with limited will, intellect and emotion, integral in its aim and process and many-sided in progress, but starting from works and proceeding by works aided at each step with more and more illumined Divine knowledge and vivifying Divine love. At the beginning and for a long period on the way, limitations and exclusiveness will be there, but the integral Yoga will wear them more loosely than the more exclusive ways of seeking and will soon emerge from the limitations of exclusive concentration. And lastly, they will keep this in mind that integral Yoga can be further pursued through integral method by activation of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental self-discipline through dynamisation of an essential, multiple and Integral concentration and they can gradually withdraw dependency from the following eight disciplines of exclusive concentration as soon as higher concentrations intervene; for in higher concentrations these disciplines retain their spontaneous absolute state. Here, in this paper, a passing reference is given to these absolute states. These eight self-disciplines can be compared with the Buddha's Āryāṣṭāṅgamārga, the Noble Eightfold Path⁵⁵ and Patanjali's system of Aṣṭāṅgayoga, the Eight Limbs of Yoga.⁵⁶ Here the Buddha's Path is Ethical/Mental, Patanjali's Path is in Ascending Limbs, and the Integral Yoga Path is Spiritual and Supramental Integration. i) All Renunciation, Sarva Aparigraham, Sarva-Tyāga, Sarva-Sannyāsa : "Therefore attachment and desire must be utterly cast out; there is nothing in the world to which we must be attached, not wealth nor poverty, nor joy nor suffering, nor life nor death, nor greatness nor littleness, nor vice nor virtue, nor friend, nor wife, nor children, nor country, nor our work and mission, nor heaven nor earth, nor all that is within them or beyond them."³⁴ Sri Aurobindo Renunciation is a self-discipline of negative practice in order to arrive at the positive aim of integral Yoga. All renunciation includes external and inner renunciation necessary during the formative stage of integral Yoga and its utility is no longer felt when the Soul no longer seeks pleasure but possesses the delight of the Divine in all things and obeys consciously the will of one Self in all beings. In integral Yoga, complete external renunciation of life is a provisional stage through which the Soul must pass at some period of its progress. And inner renunciation is experienced in the three stages, that of renunciation of triple attachment in the senses, the heart, the intellect; ‘for attachment is the egoism in love and not love itself;’³⁴ secondly renunciation of triple self-will or desire in the thought, emotion and action; for ‘desire is limitation and insecurity in a hunger for pleasure and satisfaction and not the seeking after the divine delight in things;’³⁴ and thirdly, renunciation of triple egoism in the intellect, heart and volition; for ‘ego must either disappear in impersonality or fuse into a larger I.’³⁵ So from the very beginning of this Yoga one has to teach oneself to renounce desire in three stages; first, renounce all lower forms of desire and concentrate on the higher desire of passion for the Divine manifested as Purity, Peace, Ananda , Love, Beauty etc.; secondly, one has to be taught not to desire anything for one’s own separate sake, not to desire even personal salvation, but for the manifestation of God in the world and for the Divine in ourselves and lastly, one must learn to desire, not in its own egoistic way, but in the way of the Divine, it must yearn to fulfill a larger and greater Will. Thus, through this training, the desire, which is a great harasser of man and cause of every kind of stumbling, can be fit to be transformed into its Divine counterpart of Delight in things. This desire has its root in the Inconscient Sheath and can be removed from its root by Supramental Invasion. It is identified in Savitri as 'A last and mightiest transformation."⁵⁴ The will in us takes various forms of will of life, will of intellect, and a will of emotion, covering every part of nature that reacts with incapacity, limitations, wrong or perverted will. These are to be renounced in order to tune oneself with the Divine will. Purification of egoism through renunciation is indispensable for inner purity, peace and joy. When one realises that the one Divine power works in his mind, life and body and the same works in all other men, animals, plants and things animate and inanimate, then one is liberated from egoism, - ‘When the human ego realises that its will is a tool, its wisdom ignorance and childishness, its power an infant’s groping, its virtue a pretentious impurity, and learns to trust itself to that which transcends it, that is its salvation.’³³ Through the practice of renunciation, falsehood is rooted out and one arrives at a desireless state, which is the essential condition for arriving at equality and complete surrender. As long as falsehood is there penetrated within the Matter, things will end badly. To remove it is the direct task of Supramental action.⁵³ ii) All Equality, Sarva-Samatā : “Attaining to a perfect equality in the soul, mind and heart, we realise our true self of oneness, one with all beings, one too with That which expresses itself in them and in all that we see and experience. This equality and this oneness are the indispensable twin foundation we must lay down for a divine being, a divine consciousness, a divine action. Not one with all, we are not spiritual, not divine. Not equal-souled to all things, happenings and creatures, we cannot see spiritually, cannot know divinely, cannot feel divinely towards others.”²³ Sri Aurobindo “It has been best formulated in the already expressed doctrine of the Gita by which a complete renouncement of desire for the fruits as the motive of action, a complete annulment of desire itself, the complete achievement of a perfect equality are put forward as the normal status of a spiritual being. A perfect spiritual equality is the one true and infallible sign of the cessation of desire, — to be equal-souled to all things, unmoved by joy and sorrow, the pleasant and the unpleasant, success or failure, to look with an equal eye on high and low, friend and enemy, the virtuous and the sinner, to see in all beings the manifold manifestation of the One and in all things the multitudinous play or the slow masked evolution of the embodied Spirit.”²⁴ Sri Aurobindo “The first business of the sadhaka is to see whether he has the perfect equality , how far he has gone in this direction or else where is the flaw, and to exercise steadily his will on his nature or invite the will of the Purusha to get rid of the defect and its causes.”²⁵ Sri Aurobindo “A perfect equality not only of the self, but in the nature is a condition of the Yoga of self-perfection. The first obvious step to it will be the conquest of our emotional and vital being, for here are the sources of greatest trouble , the most rampant forces of inequality and subjection, the most insistent claim of our imperfection. The equality of these parts of our nature comes by purification and freedom.”²⁶ Sri Aurobindo “A perfect equality of our spirit and nature is a means by which we can move back from the troubled and ignorant outer consciousness into this inner kingdom of heaven and possess the spirit’s eternal kingdoms, rajyam samruddham , of greatness, joy and peace. That self-elevation to the divine nature is the complete fruit and the whole occasion of the discipline of equality demanded from us by the self-perfecting aim in Yoga.”²⁷ Sri Aurobindo “A perfect equality and peace of the soul is indispensable to change the whole substance of our being into substance of the self out of its present stuff of troubled mentality. It is equally indispensable if we aspire to replace our present confused and ignorant action by the self-possessed and luminous works of a free spirit governing its nature and in tune with universal being. A divine action or even a perfect human action is impossible if we have not equality of spirit and an equality in the motive-forces of our nature.”²⁸ Sri Aurobindo Integral Yoga demands complete equality not only of Nature, which constitutes our mind, heart and body but also of the Self, as a first necessity of Spiritual perfection, which can be attained by entire renunciation of desire, attachment and ego. The first obvious step to equality will be purification of the vital and emotional being as they are the sources of greatest trouble, the most rampant forces of inequality, subjection and imperfection. The last and most difficult step is the equality of thinking mind, buddhi, the entire purification of it is an indispensable condition for rising to Spiritual and Supramental heights. All things move towards Divine fulfillment, each experience of suffering and joy, creation and destruction, ignorance and knowledge, hatred and love, is a necessary link in carrying out the universal movement and it is our business here to understand and support it and see all things as the manifestation of the Divine without anger, impatience and trouble; any least revolt or reaction is a violence against the Master of the world and ‘this little pebble of imperfection may throw down the whole achievement of the Yoga.’⁶⁴ Equality in Integral Yoga is a Spiritual way of replying to life and compelling it to become perfect through use of three passive methods and three active methods. The passive equality of Karma Yoga is titiksha , endurance, which is a teaching of the system to bear steadily and calmly of all contacts of pleasant and unpleasant, heat and cold, health and disease etc. The active equality of Karma Yoga is sama bhoga , which is an equal enjoyment of all things, happenings, experiences, objects, etc. The passive equality of Jnana Yoga is udasinata , indifference, which is a teaching of the system to remain indifferent to all touches of joy and grief, pleasure and pain or to seat above, superior to all physical and mental touches. The active equality of Jnana Yoga is sama rasa, which is a flow of equal Spiritual, Supramental rasa to all things, happenings, experiences and objects. The passive equality of Bhakti Yoga is nati , which is a joyful submission of the Soul to the will of God; it experiences all touches as His ecstatic touch and all experiences as His play. The active equality of Bhakti Yoga is sama ananda , which is a joy of Unity in everything and with everything. After equality is established the other three siddhis of Integral Yoga to which one may pursue are: - shanti, peace, sukha , spiritual ease in all circumstances and hasya , joy and laughter of the Soul. iii) All Consecration, Complete Surrender, Sarva-Yajña, Sarva-Samarpaṇa : “A long, difficult stage of constant effort, energism, austerity of the personal will, tapasya , has ordinarily to be traversed before a more decisive stage can be reached in which a state of self-giving of all the being to the Supreme Being (Vedantic Sacrifice) and the Supreme Nature (Vedic Sacrifice) can become total and absolute.”⁶¹ Sri Aurobindo “Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.”⁶² Sri Aurobindo Integral Yoga insists on the buddhi, will and emotion to dwell constantly on the master idea of surrender and must discourage all other lesser preferences of personal will, desire in the prana and separative ego and teach the whole being that any kind of grief, revolt, fear, impatience and trouble is a violence against the Master of existence.³⁶ The act of triple sacrifice has to be practiced every moment and every movement of our action, intellect and emotion, from the smallest, most ordinary, trifling to the greatest and most uncommon and noble acts, and it can begin by offering a flower, a leaf, our food, action, sleep and askesis to the Lord of sacrifice and if there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within with the Soul’s awakening, then these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for Divine purpose. ‘Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man’s avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice.’⁵¹ With the growth of surrender, one becomes more powerful and all other opposing hostile forces lose their strength and two important inner changes are experienced. The secret inmost Soul in the heart comes to the front which was veiled by the restless activity of mind, the turbulent impulse of vital being and the obscurity of physical consciousness. Secondly, the Spiritual being above the head liberates the Divine Presence and Light and permeates them to our conscious and subconscious nature. The unveiling of the Psychic and Spiritual being paves the path open in the long run for more intense and comprehensive action of Universal Self and Supramental Self. Then, Integral Yoga is pursued by the direct interference and guidance of these four Selves and the integral method is evolved. iv) All Purification, Sarva-Śuddhi : "Purity is perfect sincerity and one cannot have it unless the being is entirely consecrated to the Divine." ⁴⁷ The Mother "Power of integral purity: the power to accept nothing but the divine influence." ⁴⁷ The Mother "Integral purity: the whole being is purified of the ego." ⁴⁷ The Mother "If one lives only for the Divine and by the Divine, there follows a perfect purity." The Mother The object of purification is to make the whole mental being a clear mirror in which the Divine reality can be reflected, a clear vessel and an unobstructing channel into which the Divine presence and through which the Divine influence can be poured, a subtilised stuff which the Divine nature can take possession of, shape anew and use for Divine issues. All impurity is a wrong discrimination, a departure from the law of nature, dharma , and an ignorant confusion of the disordered being. We have to primarily root out all impurity after a deeper diagnosis and secondarily treat its symptoms. There are two forms of impurity; (1) one is a defect born of the nature of our past evolution; this defect is a radically wrong and ignorant form given to all the four instrumental beings that of physical, vital, sensory and intellectual mind; (2) the second impurity is born of the successive emergence of evolving faculties like physical, vital, mental, Soul and Supermind and the defect is created by dependence of higher instruments on the lower which add the imperfection of embarrassment, wrong direction and confusion. We have to deal with all these four instruments and set about their purification. The complete purification of one instrument depends on the complete purification of other instruments and that is the source of great difficulty. The Integral Yoga proposes to begin with the purification and perfection of Buddhi, which will bring about the most easily and effectively or can add with a most powerful rapidity the purification of the rest. All purification is a release, a delivery, a throwing away of limiting, binding, obscuring imperfections and confusions of the four instrumental nature that (1) of purification from impatience, fear and doubt brings freedom of physical mind, (2) of purification from desire brings the freedom of the psychic prana , of purification from wrong emotions and troubling reactions the freedom of the heart, (3) of purification from the obscuring limited thought brings freedom of the sense mind and (4) of the purification from thought power and will power subjected to lower mind brings the freedom of the intelligence, freedom from mere intellectuality. The root source of impurity is in the physical mind in the form of incoherent desire, doubt, narrowness and fear. It is irresponsible and careless of all rules, properties, and harmonies. This tamasic mind adores small earth-gods, aspires for greater comfort, order, and pleasure, but is skeptical about the direct Spiritual experience and Spiritual deliverance and to enlighten it by higher Spiritual and Supramental planes is one of the difficult objectives of the Integral Yoga. Purification of the physical mind is possible either by silencing the mind and by becoming a witness or by developing concentration through single-minded thought. Purification of the physical mind can also be pursued either by the method of constant concentration of psycho-spiritual Mantra, constant repetition of psycho-physical, Japa ; as the Words have a direct harmonious effect on the vibration of the physical substance, or the method of changing the centre of living from below the naval to the centre above the head and directing the inverted Spiritual force to possess the physical mind and vital mind. In addition to it, Psychic influence can also purify the physical mind. It trains the body to become a passive field and instrument of greater light and force, responds and supports every demand of the Spirit’s force and every variety of new Divine experience. The second cause of impurity, ‘the sources of greatest trouble,’⁴ ² is the inter-penetration and mixture of sensational hungering of vital and emotional reaction in the heart in the thinking process, is unable to mirror the real Soul, which creates in man a false soul of desire, the deformed Divine will in dominant bodily life and the physical mind. All indulgence of the emotions of the soul of desire is an impurity and it distorts both knowledge and action. It becomes a hurtling field of joy and grief, love and hatred, likes and dislikes, content and discontent, hopes and disappointments, and all the stupendous play of passion which is the drama of life in the world. Desire is the impurity of prana, the root of all sorrow, disappointment, affliction, a rapid subjection to fatigue, dissatisfaction and early disappointment of all its gains, a ceaseless morbid stimulation, trouble, disquiet, asanti. To get rid of the desire soul or emotional mind is one of the firm, indispensable negative methods of purification of psychical prana . The vital being must be trained of the positive method of enjoying life out of a right functioning in obedience to the working of Divine Will in order to get rid of its impurity in the form of attachment and craving; heart must be purified from false emotions of fear, wrath, hatred and lust by the touch of Divine love and joy in depth and intensity and the luminous reaching out to fusion and unity with God and our fellow creatures. The tranquillization, sama, equality, samata and mastery, dama , of these members are the essential conditions of the purification of buddhi from error, ignorance and perversion. This purification spells an entire equality in the nervous being and heart. The Gita’s rule of purification of the vital being is attained not by mental control but by the strong immobility of an immortal Spirit. The third cause of impurity is the inter-penetration of pain and pleasure of sense mind into the thinking process in the form of attractions and repulsions, the acceptances and refusals, the satisfactions and dissatisfaction, the capacities and incapacities of the life-energy in the body. Sense mind is a constant blind, purposeless repetition in a circle, disorder, restless, unintelligent subjection to habit. With the development of Science, Philosophy and Spiritual knowledge, the limitation of sense mind and its discord of the life in matter are overcome and they can be purified when buddhi stands back from the action of sense mind, sakhi, then withdraws support, then reducing it to stillness or by concentration on this thought, the alien and confusing elements are rejected. "A pure celestial joy is the" (Savitri-663) right use of sense. The true function of the sense mind or the right relation of the sense mind with the Psychic being is to lie upon passively, luminously to the contacts of Super Life and transmit their right taste, rasa , and principle of delight in them to the higher function. Or “Heaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure. There could have reached our Divinised sense and heart Some natural felicity’s bright extreme, Some thrill of Supernature’s absolutes:” Savitri-123 The fourth cause of impurity has its source in the intellect, buddhi, due to (1) inrush of desire into the thinking function, (2) illusion of senses and inrush of the sense mind into thinking functions, (3) improper action of will to know or the disparity between knowledge and will is one of the principal defects of the human buddhi. Buddhi has the tendency to cling to fragments of truth and knowledge to the exclusion of the whole truth and comprehensive knowledge and hence is deprived of the fullness and perfection of life. Its purification is achieved by the habit of right thought free from sense error, desire, old association and intellectual prejudgment and cultivation of an entire intellectual rectitude and in the perfection of mental disinterestedness. Purified Buddhi does not involve in lower movements of Nature, but stands back from the object, observes disinterestedly, puts itself in the right place by force of comparison, contrast, analogy, reason from its rightly observed data by deduction, induction, interference and holding all its gains in memory and supplementing them by a chastened and rightly-guided imagination to view all in the light of a trained and disciplined judgment. Such is the pure intellectual understanding of which disinterested observation, judgment and reasoning are the law and characterising action. But in order to acquire real knowledge, buddhi has to cultivate two different kinds of passivity. Firstly, the intellect has to train to discriminate the true intuition from all other false vibrations and open itself upward towards the former true state; secondly, to develop complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, na kinchit api chintayet . (The Gita-6.25) The stilling of this repeating, circling thought mind is one of the most effective disciplines of Yoga. The complete detachment with the aid of (1) an entire self-government, sama , (2) equality, samata , (3) calm, shanti, is the surest step of purification of buddhi . Buddhi is one important instrument, if sufficiently purified, and then it will most easily and effectively purify other instruments. Once our buddhi and will are well purified, then it can open up to perfect illumined discernment, intuitions and revelations of the Supermind. To arrive at the whole truth of Integral Yoga must be the object of purification of the buddhi. All other methods of purification are as follows: (1) All pursuit of knowledge, if not vitiated by a too earthward tendency, tends to refine, to subtilise, and to purify the being. (2) In proportion as we become more mental, we attain to a subtler action of our whole nature which becomes more apt to reflect and receive higher thoughts, a purer will, a less physical truth and more inward influences. (3) The power of ethical knowledge and the ethical habit of thought and will to purify is obvious. (4) Philosophy not only purifies the reason and predisposes it to the contact of the universal and the Infinite, but tends to stabilize the nature and create the tranquility of the sage; and tranquility is a sign of increasing self-mastery and purity. (5) The preoccupation with universal beauty even in its aesthetic forms has an intense power for refining and subtilising the nature, and at its highest it is a great force of purification. (6) Even the scientific habit of mind and the disinterested preoccupation with the cosmic law and truth not only refine the reasoning and observing faculty, but have, when not counteracted by other tendencies, a steadying, elevating and purifying influence on the mind and moral nature which has not been sufficiently noticed. (7) The systematic purification of the whole being for an integral reflection and taking in of the Divine reality can only be done by the special methods of Yoga. v) All Concentration, Sarva-Saṃyama: "The effective fullness of our concentration on the one thing needful to the exclusion of all else will be the measure of our self-consecration to the One who is alone desirable. But this exclusiveness will in the end exclude nothing except the falsehood of our way of seeing the world and our will’s ignorance."⁵⁸ Sri Aurobindo "This power, says Patanjali, comes by “samyama” on an object. That is for the mentality, in the gnosis there is no need of samyama . For this kind of perception (absolute self-control) is the natural action of the Vijnana ."⁵⁹ Sri Aurobindo "This process is the basis of what Patanjali calls samyama , a concentration, directing or dwelling of the consciousness, by which, he says, one can become aware of all that is in the object. But the necessity of concentration becomes slight or nil when the active oneness grows (or development of Integral Concentration); the luminous consciousness of the object and its contents becomes more spontaneous, normal, facile."⁶⁰ Sri Aurobindo The concentration of an enlightened will, thought and heart turned towards one luminous and infinite source of action, knowledge and delight is the starting point of the Yoga. There must be a strong and immovable concentration of will on attainment, fulfillment and manifestation of the Divine, a large, many-sided yet single concentration of the thought on the idea, the perception, the vision, the awakening touch, the soul’s realisation to the one Divine, a flaming concentration of the heart on the seeking of the All and Eternal and the possession and ecstasy of the All-Beautiful. In integral Yoga, purity and concentration are complementary to each other, feminine and masculine, passive and active sides and the two must proceed together till we arrive at Integral concentration, where the essential, multiple, absolute, all-inclusive state will replace the concentration in thought and effort. Mind is unable to hold at once the unity and multiplicity, but the same is the normal state of integral concentration. Mind has the capacity to dwell on one thing at a time to the exclusion of others, so within this limitation, we have to depend on exclusive concentration for the development of other higher faculties. Exclusive concentration has three powers by which the aim of Integral Yoga can be affected. Firstly , with the help of concentration we can know the secret behind anything or all things, but here we must use this power to know the one Thing-in itself, the Divine ; secondly , by concentration the whole will can be gathered up for the acquisition of all that are still beyond us, this power in us can be sufficiently trained, single-minded, sufficiently sincere and faithful towards the acquisition of the One object worthy of pursuit; thirdly, by concentration the mass of weakness, fear, perversion can become strength, courage, a great purity or a single universal soul of Love; we can use this power to transcend above all things, above all attributes, and become the pure and absolute Being. By this exclusive concentration, we can arrive through uncompromising renunciation of the lower nature at an entire self-consecration to the One. The ultimate objective of concentration culminates in Samadhi , a settled Divine status. This can be arrived at by (i) strenuous method of concentrated meditation on the one subject of Integral Divine either in the mystic syllable AUM with representation of the Brahman in waking, dream, sleep and Turiya state or triple formula of the Brahman, “Brahman is in all things, all things are in Brahman and all things are Brahman ;”⁴³ (ii) the more strenuous method is the concentrated contemplation, which is the fixing the whole mind in concentration on the essence of the idea of Integral Divine only; in this process thought ceases and one enters in an inner Samadhi , then subsequently samadhi experience is dynamised in our lower being to shed its power, light and bliss on our ordinary consciousness; (iii) the most strenuous method is the silencing of the mind altogether, either by standing back from mental action or by rejecting the thought-suggestions, by this a great peace is unveiled and one experiences the all-pervading Brahman . For integral Yoga, these three methods are the most direct and powerful disciplines. vi) All Scripture, Sarva-Śāstra : “The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past, but I do not see why we should merely repeat them and not go farther. In the spiritual development of the consciousness upon earth the great past ought to be followed by a greater future…” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-480, All Shastra is the outcome and record of past Spiritual exercises on the secrets of Nature and Soul or it is ‘An occult document of the All-Wonderful’s art’⁷ and is helpful for all future exploration. All the lines of the traditional Yoga ‘are supposed to be fixed and the Teacher who has received the Shastra by tradition and realised it in practice guides the disciple along the immemorial tracks.’⁵ ‘The written or traditional teaching expresses the knowledge and experiences of many centuries systematised, organised, made attainable to the beginner.’⁵ Integral Shastra differs from traditional Shastra in the sense that its method is not an imperative formula, fixed routine and mechanising process, but ‘each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.’³⁷ The seeker of integral Yoga will accept ancient disciplines, for they rest upon eternal truths and their practice will reinforce the practice of integral Shastra . The aims arrived at by the ancient teachings like Sankhya, Tantra, Karma, Jnana, Bhakti, Hatha and Raja Yoga are included in integral Yoga or the seeker will give ‘them an orientation in conformity with his aim.’⁸ All Yoga schools of India proposes the psycho-physical methods for practice whereas the method of Integral Yoga will be mainly Spiritual and for this he can depend on the Gita, the four main Upanishads that of the Isha, Kena, Taitariaya and Aiteriya Upanishads and the portion of the Vedas where hymns were offered to mystic Fire, Agni . First, we can do a systematic study of different Spiritual experiences and find an interrelation with each other and how these experiences drive towards the Supramental realm; thus, their various aspects are explored in The Synthesis of Yoga. Then the extension of these experiences explored in The Life Divine will be worked out. The hierarchies between Ignorance to Integral Knowledge, exclusive concentration to Integral concentration, mind to Supermind, Matter to Spirit, Life as it is to Divine Life that are hinted in The Synthesis of Yoga , are sufficiently explored in The Life Divine . And also the issues that Sri Aurobindo left unfinished in the unrevised chapters of ‘Yoga of Self-perfection’ can be further traced and developed from The Life Divine . Then, finally, we will study Savitri in search of all missing links and connect them strongly to the point where we can open to the new vistas. The Supramental principles are shadowed out by the Gita, the Upanishads and the Vedas in figures, hints and symbols. The envisaging mind can enter into relation with the Supramental in three successive stages. Firstly, with the activation of mental self or manomaya Purusha , the mental sheath or the manomaya kosha is able to receive into it from above infinite existence, consciousness, bliss of the Supramental plane or Vijnanamaya Purusha. The mental perception, ideation, will, pleasure are transformed into radiances of the Divine knowledge, pulsation of Divine will, waves and floods of Divine delight; secondly, the manomaya kosha is transformed into dense self-luminous consciousness, chaitanyaghana or chidghana. This Divine Consciousness contains all the immutable and inviolable truths of the Divine being and Divine nature. Thirdly, this luminous manomaya kosha is further illumined in the image of the Supramental sheath or Vijnanamaya kosha. It brings authentic identities of Divine wisdom, movement of Divine will and vibration of the Divine delight intensities. Our objective in concentrating the Veda, the Upanishad and the Gita is to repeat the Spiritual experience of the great past. Our objective in concentrating on The Synthesis of Yoga, The Life Divine, The Mother, and Savitri is, initially, to repeat brief Spiritual experiences and, finally, to be established in the multitude of Spiritual experiences developed in those integral Shastra, which will lead us towards a greater unknown future. One 'must pass beyond the written Truth, — sabdabrahmativartate — beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, — srotavyasya srutasya ca .'³ vii) Divine All Teacher, Sarva-Guru-Śakti: “A strict obedience to the wise and intuitive leading of a Guide is also normal and necessary for all but a few specially gifted seekers.”¹ Sri Aurobindo "Teaching, example, influence, -- these are three instruments of the Guru ... The example is more powerful than the instruction... Influence is more important than example. Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses..."² Sri Aurobindo “I do not see anybody in the world more qualified than Sri Aurobindo to lead you to the feet of the Mahashakti .”¹⁸ The Mother “For the disciple of an integral Yoga there can be no hesitation; as a seeker of knowledge it is the integral knowledge and not anything either half-way and attractive or high-pinnacled and exclusive he must seek. He must soar to the utmost height, but also circle and spread to the most all-embracing wideness, not binding himself to any rigid structure of metaphysical thought, but free to admit and combine all the soul’s highest and greatest and fullest and most numerous experiences.”³⁰ Sri Aurobindo “This can be done by a spiritual meaning and use in our psychical interchange with others, and it is largely by a psycho-spiritual interchange of this kind that a master in Yoga helps his disciple.”²⁹ Sri Aurobindo The Guru of a traditional school of Yoga is a representative of the Divine with the combination of part Divine realisation and ego born of exclusive knowledge and individual liberation of Soul and he reinforces and illumines the truth of traditional Shastra . The Guru of Integral Yoga combines in Him the realisation of the Divine in its entirety, followed by the annihilation of ego through constant sense of discipleship to the Supreme Master as everything pours in constantly from above without any personal effort and the sense of becoming a slave of God in all humanity through universalisation of Consciousness. For the beginners the aid of the Guru, Ista Devata or past Avataras in the form of Buddha, Christ or Sri Krishna or living influence, a living example and a present instruction is needed and with the development of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental faculties, the dependency on external aid is reduced and one receives everything directly from the inner Divine, inner Chaitya Guru , the Psychic Being in the heart and subsequently from the Universal Divine, Jagad Guru, Spiritual Being, pervading this whole existence and Transcendent Supreme Divine, Param Guru, Supramental Being beyond this existence. A living Teacher of Integral Yoga does not arrogate himself to the pride of Guruhood with his partial realisation and in a humanly futile and self-exalting spirit. He will stimulate the aspiration of his disciples through the central Supramental Influence of Integral Divine realisation within him reconciling their Nature, Self and God which will be subordinated by less powerful Spiritual influence of awakening the exclusive power of the Spirit by losing the splendours of life and least powerful means of direct examples, suggestions and psycho-physical instructions and help at the growth of faculties and experiences by a natural process and free expansion. His whole business is to awaken the Divine light and set working the Divine force of which he himself is a living channel and representative. In the preliminary stage as a Sadhaka of integral Yoga cannot reject the practice of traditional Shastra, like the Gita, the Upanishad , and the Veda as they contain the basic truth and experiences of many centuries leading one towards systematic development of the comprehensive truth of Integral Yoga; similarly ‘a representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the sadhaka .’³ This representative living of Spiritual Influence ‘is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well beaten track to a long familiar goal.’⁴ ‘In India a great authority, a high reverence even is ordinarily attached to the written or traditional teaching.’⁵ So it is an exceedingly good fortune for a Sadhaka⁵⁷ to accept the dominant Influence of a Shastra or living Teacher to repeat the truth of his Spiritual experience and can utilise that as an opportunity to strengthen and intensify his already possessed experiences of a similar kind. A privileged Sadhak of integral Yoga⁵⁷ finds Psychic being in the heart as the true Guru within and a very pure vital and very strong character as true Guru without who can hammer the disciple to remove his falsehood and Ignorance. A Sadhaka can enter relation with the Guru or the Ista Devata or living Influence in three successive stages; firstly He is conceived with a particular Divine form or particular Divine qualities of which He is a true and dynamic representative, towards which our nature or personality has affinity; secondly He is considered as one real Person, yet multiple personality, nirguno guni, the All Personality capable of infinite quality, the Ananta-guna , the qualitiless, Impersonal, nirguna, the Akshara Purusha, not divisible by any sect, schools of Yoga or nationality etc; thirdly we go back to the ultimate source of all idea and fact that goes beyond all Personality and all Impersonality, in which the Upanishad and the Veda describe by single word He or That, Tat . A Sadhaka of integral Yoga cannot be satisfied with the one or many Divine qualities of the Guru or the personal Deity, but he shall realise Him integrally in all His names and forms and Divine qualities; sees and realises his Guru in all other Deities, Avataras and ancient Shastras and not mistake the front of Him which is prominent in his attitude to the world for all the infinite Godhead. He will shun all sectarian and fanatic attitudes of crying, “My God, my Incarnation, my Prophet, my Guru ,”⁶ and leave behind the one-sided and limited tendency of mind in recognising that exclusive aspect of the Divine. For him the experience of Divine Oneness is carried to its extreme, amply fathomed and more deeply embraced to the full experience of the Divine Multiplicity. He can realise the Divine entirely by approaching Him with His endless variety, never-ending form and infinite manifestation. viii) All Mother Force, Sarva-Parā-Śakti: - “It is not as a Guru that I love and bless, it is as the Mother who asks nothing in return for what she gives.”¹ ⁸ The Mother “I am not eager to be the Guru of anyone. It is more spontaneously natural for me to feel the Mother of all and to carry them forward silently through the power of love.”¹ ⁸ The Mother “But in the later transitional stage of this movement our personal and necessarily ignorant effort more and more dwindles and a higher Nature acts; the eternal Shakti descends into this limited form of mortality and progressively possesses and transmutes it.”³¹ Sri Aurobindo “If a spiritual transformation, not a mere illumining modification of our nature, is to be done at all, we must call in the Divine Shakti to effect that miraculous work in the individual; for she alone has the needed force, decisive, all-wise and illimitable. But the entire substitution of the divine for the human personal action is not at once entirely possible.”³¹ Sri Aurobindo “For the Ishwari Shakti , divine Conscious-Force and World-Mother, becomes a mediatrix between the eternal One and the manifested Many.”³² Sri Aurobindo (Supreme said) " O Savitri, thou art my spirit’s Power, The revealing voice of my immortal Word, The face of Truth upon the roads of Time Pointing to the souls of men the routes to God." Savitri-703 The adoration of the exclusive Mother can begin with exclusive concentration and shall culminate in identity with the all-inclusive Mother or All Mother in integral Concentration. The Mother as the nether Executrix Power works in the Ignorance and Inconscience as the four-fold Soul-force of Brahma-Shakti, Kshetra-Shakti, Vaisya-Shakti and Shudra-Shakti in the form of Wisdom, Courage, Opulence and Service respectively. As the intermediate Mediatrix Power, She works as four-fold Spiritual Powers of Maheswari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati, working in Knowledge, Power, Harmony and Perfection respectively, linking the Sachchidananda Consciousness with the manifested Many and returns towards Her Supreme Creatrix Power of Truth Supreme, Power Supreme, Supreme Delight and Will Supreme respectively through evolving endless appearances out of Her revealing substances. Her Executrix Power in Ignorance of the Purusha-Prakriti play ascends to Mediatrix Power in Knowledge of the Ishwara-Shakti play, culminates in the Creatrix Power in Vijnana of the Brahman-Maya play for the complete Divine action in all the planes. The Divine Mother is the manifesting Power of Purushottama, appearing in the Play, Lila as the dual Power of Ishwara and Shakti, containing each other in the higher Divine nature, revealed in the lower nature of Ignorance as dual power of Purusha and Prakriti , separate from each other. The relation between the Purusha and Prakriti emerges as one advances in the Yoga. The Sankhya liberation proposes that, when Purusha learns not to identify himself, the Prakriti begins to fall away from its impulse of movement and returns towards equilibrium and rest. Tantra confirms that worship to Para-Prakriti or Shakti is the sole effective force for all Spiritual attainment. In the Vedantic teaching, Prakriti is considered as the power of illusion, maya , and hence the search after the silent inactive Purusha is the means towards liberation. In Karma Yoga, Prakriti is the doer of all work and Purusha is the Lord, witness, knower, enjoyer and the source of sanction of her work. Purusha-Prakriti realisation in ignorance is the first siddhi of Karma Yoga , where Purusha is liberated and is capable of Spiritual control over the lower nature. The next siddhi of Karma Yoga is the Ishwara-Shakti realisation, which can participate in higher dynamism of Divine work and total unity and harmony of the being in a Spiritual nature. In Integral Yoga, Purusha is the Lord and is of the nature of Sat, the being of conscious self-existence; Prakriti is his executive energy and is of the nature of Chit. The relation between Purusha and Prakriti exists in two states of rest and action. When Prakriti is absorbed in the bliss of the Purusha, there is rest; when the Purusha pours itself out into the Prakriti , there is action, creation, enjoyment and Ananda of becoming. And in the Supramental plane, the supreme and universal Purusha and the supreme and universal Prakriti arrive at their perfect relation. The Supreme Spirit is one as Purusha or as Prakriti . Jiva in the essence of self is one with the Supreme Purusha , mamaibansa jivabhuta (The Gita-15.7), so on the side of Nature, in the power of self, Jiva is one with Shakti, para prakritir jivabhuta (The Gita-7.5). The realisation of this double oneness confirms that Jiva is the meeting place of Supreme Purusha and Supreme Prakriti and is the condition of integral self-perfection. All the above methods can be utilised in integral Yoga. There are three successive stages through which the action of the Mother’s force is intensified. First, Jiva receives the power of the Mother , and the sadhaka feels that the Divine Shakti is driving behind and shaping all his thoughts, will, feelings and actions. He may feel the Master of the Shakti, Ishwara , sometimes or continually in three ways to his consciousness; (i) himself as servant to the Ishwara , (ii) a great Shakti is supplying the energy, shaping the action, formulating the results, (iii) the Ishwara above determining by his will the whole action. In the second stage, the individual doer disappears. The Shakti possesses his thought, will, feeling, and action. The Master of existence appears in three ways, (i) the Shakti carrying on all knowledge, thought, will, feeling and action for the Ishwara in an instrumental form; (ii) the Master of existence, Ishwara , compelling all Her action and our Soul enjoys all relation with Him which are created by Her workings, (iii) There is the intensest form of realisation of Jiva disappearing into the Shakti and there is the play of the Shakti with the Ishwara, Mahadeva with Kali, Krishna with Radha. In the last stage, there is an increasing manifestation of Ishwara in all things and beings, in all thought, will and action. The distinction between Ishwara and Shakti begins to disappear, the maya of the ego is removed and complete joy and presence of the Divine is manifested in the being. This is the highest realisation of perfection and delight of active Oneness. Recapitulation: “Abandoning the dubious middle Way, (of Moderate Spirituality) A few shall glimpse the miraculous Origin (Few are Bliss Souls) And some shall feel in you (Savitri) the secret Force (Some are Gnostic Souls) And they shall turn to meet a nameless tread, Adventurers into a mightier Day.” Savitri-704 (1) Rejection is defined as the withdrawal of support of the deformed lower nature, apara Prakriti , by the indwelling Purusha. The rejection is the condition of arriving at the state of equality and surrender. (2) The equilibrium status of Purusha and Prakriti is defined as equality. (3) Surrender is defined as Prakriti’s submission to Purusha . (4) Concentration is born when this submission causes Prakriti to merge with Purusha. Concentration is defined as gathering back of the thought into the Self. Concentration is the active status of Purusha . (5) Purity is the passive status of Purusha which witnesses the action of Prakriti. (6) Shastra defines the right relation of the Purusha and Prakriti i n Ignorance and their play in the higher planes of Consciousness. (7) The Guru is the static state of Purusha in Ignorance, Ishwara in the Knowledge and Brahman in the Supramental State. (8) The Mother is the dynamic state of Purusha , revealed as the Psychic executrix Mother power in Prakriti and doer of all action in Ignorance, Shakti or Mediatrix Spiritual Mother Power in Knowledge and Maya or Creatrix Mother Power in the Supramental and Bliss plane. The Spiritual Future of a Moderate: “Uplifted towards luminous secrecies Or conscious of some splendour hidden above They leaped to find her in a moment’s flash, Glimpsing a light in a celestial vast, But could not keep the vision and the power And fell back to life’s dull ordinary tone.” Savitri-362 “They slide back to the mud from which they climbed; In the mud of which they are made, whose law they know They joy in safe return to a friendly base, … To be the common man they think the best, To live as others live is their delight. For most are built on Nature’s early plan And owe small debt to a superior plane The human average is their level pitch, The thinking animal’s material range.” Savitri-689 The Mother observed that the attitude of the most developed class, the most intellectual elite, towards immense transformation work, "Ah, no! I don’t want to bother about that, I just want to live peacefully, as well as I can. We’ll see once the world has been transformed, then we can start bothering about it."⁴⁴ Moderate Spirituality with its partial self-giving, is prone to Soul-slaying truth.⁴⁸ It cannot confront extreme adversity and Death, cannot reconcile Spirit with Matter and hence submits and surrenders before negative energies like Ignorance, Falsehood, Suffering and Death. It must learn the lesson to accumulate Spiritual energies or Soul Saving Truth⁴⁹ and ascend to the state of ancient Vedantic Seers of Brahma Satya Jagat Satya, through later Vedantic Spiritual Seekers, with the realization of Brahma Satya Jagat Mithya . It is only through moderate Spirituality, Spiritual life can be generalised in humanity. 'The generalisation of Yoga in humanity must be the last victory of Nature over her own delays and concealments. Even as now by the progressive mind in Science she seeks to make all mankind fit for the full development of the mental life, ("Our minds are starters in the race to God," Savitri-169) so by Yoga must she inevitably seek to make all mankind fit for the higher evolution, the second birth , the spiritual existence.'⁵ ⁰ OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-941, 2: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-66, 3: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-55, 4: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-55, 5: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-56, 6: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-66, 7: Savitri-623, 8: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-342, 9: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-23, 10: CWSA-21/The Life Divine-51, 11: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-348, 12: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-44, 13: "This flowery word which they declare who have not clear discernment, devoted to the creed of the Veda, whose creed is that there is nothing else, souls of desire, seekers of Paradise, – it gives the fruits of the works of birth, it is multifarious with specialities ofrites, it is directed to enjoyment and lordship as its goal." The Gita-2.42-43, 14: CWSA-19 /Essays on the Gita/p-92-93, 15: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-13, 16: CWSA-19 /Essays on the Gita/p-374, 17: The Gita-6.31, 18: The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-16/p-207, The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-82, 19: “The cross is the symbol of transformation, you know: Matter (transversal gesture) penetrated by the Spirit; and the junction is the transformation. A tremendous Force came, like that, for this cross to become truly … the flower of transformation.” The Mother’s Agenda/10/498, “The cross is the sign of the triple being, transcendent, universal and individual.” CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-183, 20: Savitri-507, 21: “It admits philosophy in a still more remote fashion; and if nowadays it eagerly seeks after science, that is because science helps prodigiously the satisfaction of its vital desires, needs and interests: but it does not turn to seek after an entirely scientific life any more than after an entirely ethical life. A more complete effort in any one of these directions it leaves to the individual, to the few, and to individuals of a special type, the saint, the ethical man, the artist, the thinker, the man of religion; it gives them a place, does some homage to them, assigns some room to the things they represent, but for itself it is content to follow mainly after its own inherent principle of vital satisfaction, vital necessity and utility, vital efficiency.” CWSA-25/The Human Cycle/p-156, 22: "All true Truth of love and of the works of love the psychic being accepts in their place: but its flame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to higher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest Truth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the cross and placed upon the throne; for the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-157, 23: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-96, 24: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-177, 25: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-722, 26: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-702, 27: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-699, 28: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-699-700, 29: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-879, 30: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-361, 31: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-86, 32: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-124, 33: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-59, 34: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-329-330, 35: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-358, 36: “The buddhi dwelling always in this master idea must discourage all its own lesser insistences and preferences and teach the whole being that the ego whether it puts forth its claim through the reason, the personal will, the heart or the desire-soul in the prana, has no just claim of any kind and all grief, revolt, impatience, trouble is a violence against the Master of the being.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-723, “A drive for fulfilment of falsehood or wrong will would be felt by him, not as a movement towards freedom, but as a violence done to the liberty of the spirit, an invasion and imposition, an inroad upon his supernature, a tyranny of some alien Nature.” CWSA/22/The Life Divine/p-1039, 37: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-46-47, 38: CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-94-95, 39: “This is precisely how the modern Western attitude has become twisted compared to the ancient attitude, the attitude – it isn’t exactly ancient – of the Gita. It’s extremely difficult for the Western mind to comprehend vividly and concretely that ALL is the Divine. It is so impregnated with the Christian spirit, with the idea of a ‘Creator’ – the creation on one side and God on the other! Upon reflection, one rejects this, but ... it has entered into our sensations and feelings, and so – spontaneously, instinctively, almost subconsciously – one credits God with all one considers to be the best, the most beautiful, and especially with what one wishes to attain, to realize. (Each individual, of course, changes the content of his God according to his own consciousness, but it’s always what he considers to be the best.) And just as instinctively, spontaneously and subconsciously, one is shocked by the idea that things one doesn’t like or doesn’t approve of or which don’t seem to be the best, could also be God…I am putting this purposely into rather childish terms so that it will be clearly understood. But this is the way it is. I am sure of it because I have observed it in myself for a VERY long time, and I had to.... Due to the whole subconscious formation of childhood – environment, education, and so forth – we have to DRUM into this (Mother touches her body) the consciousness of Unity : the absolute, EXCLUSIVE unity of the Divine – exclusive in the sense that nothing exists apart from this Unity, even the things which seem most repulsive…Sri Aurobindo also had to struggle against this because he too received a Christian education. And these Aphorisms are the result – the flowering – of the necessity to struggle against the subconscious formation which has produced such questions (Mother takes on a scandalized tone): ‘How can God be weak? How can God be foolish? How....’ But there is nothing but God! He alone exists, there is nothing outside of Him. And whatever seems repugnant to us is something He no longer wishes to exist – He is preparing the world so that this no longer manifests, so that the manifestation can pass beyond this state to something else. So of course we violently reject everything in us that is destined to leave the active manifestation. There is a movement of rejection…Yet it is He. There is nothing other than He! This should be repeated from morning to night, from night to morning, because we forget it every minute. There is only He, there is nothing other than He. He alone exists, there is no existence without Him. There is only He!” The Mother’s Agenda-07.07.1961, “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-20.12.1961, “The only way to make life perfect (I mean here life on earth, of course) is to look at it from a sufficient height to see it in its totality, not only its present totality, but over the whole past, present and future: what it has been, what it is, what it must be – you must be able to see it all at once. Because that's the only way to put everything in its place. Nothing can be done away with, nothing SHOULD be done away with, but each thing must find its own place in total harmony with the rest. Then all those things that appear so "evil," so "reprehensible" and "unacceptable" to the puritan mind would become movements of joy and freedom in a totally divine life. And then nothing would stop us from knowing, understanding, feeling and living this wonderful Laughter of the Supreme who takes infinite delight in watching Himself live infinitely. This delight, this wonderful Laughter which dissolves all shadows, all pain, all suffering ... We only have to go deep enough into ourselves to find the inner Sun and let ourselves be bathed in it. Then everything is but a cascade of harmonious, luminous, sun-filled laughter which leaves no room for shadow and pain. In fact, even the greatest difficulty, even the greatest grief, even the greatest physical pain, if you can look at them from THERE, take your stand THERE, you see the unreality of the difficulty, the unreality of the grief, the unreality of the pain – and all becomes a joyful and luminous vibration. It is ultimately the most powerful means of dissolving difficulties, overcoming grief and getting rid of pain. The first two [difficulties and grief] are relatively easy (relatively), the last [pain] is more difficult because of our habit of regarding the body and its sensations as extremely concrete and positive – but actually it is the same thing, it's just that we haven't been taught and accustomed to seeing our body as something fluid, plastic, uncertain, malleable. We haven't learned to permeate it with this luminous Laughter which dissolves all shadows and difficulties, all discords, all disharmony, all that grates, cries and weeps.” The Mother’s Agenda-14.01.1963, 40: “Oh, if you mean the puritans, the Protestants ... dreadful! They're the worst. Catholicism still retains something of the occult sense, and after all, they have a certain adoration for the Virgin, which keeps them in contact with something that's not asuric. The last Pope, who's dead now [Pius XII], had broadened both his own mind and Church doctrine a lot: he was a devotee of the Virgin. But the Protestants turned back to the Father, and so their worship became exactly the worship of a one and only, personal God, an asuric God. And they have fabricated and distorted everything: like asceticism, for instance, and all that sort of thing – everything they touched was twisted and spoiled.” The Mother’s Agenda-15.12.1962, 41: “The entire West is convinced, of course, that the earth has to be taken as it is and that it's a preparation for a life in another world, which according to your "faults" or "qualities" will be a heaven or a hell. But anyway, doing away with hell, all those who have goodwill will go to a beatific heaven.” The Mother’s Agenda/November 30, 1965, 42: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-702, 43: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-149, 44: The Mother’s Agenda-7/p-294-295, “In human beings, along with the growth of the mental activities grows the subtlety of self-deception. The more they are intellectual the more they are, in their self-deception, completely candid and insincere at the same time.” The Mother/TMCW-14/p-341 45: Savitri-215 46: "That’s very important. Because all those who begin by being disgusted with life, their first movement is to get away – all of them. I receive truckloads of letters: as soon as they are disgusted with life, as soon as it stops being something marvelous, "Oh, enough! I want to get away, I want to get away." That’s indeed the first movement: you climb up above, but it will be to come back down and change things HERE – it’s not to abolish them, but to change them." The Mother's Agenda/November 9, 1966, 47: TMCW/Vol-14(Words of the Mother-II/p-149-150, 48: “Awaits him armed with soul-slaying word:” Savitri-336, “Or lie with the harlot Power that slays the soul.” Savitri-185, “A strong and fallen goddess without hope, Obscured, deformed by some dire Gorgon spell, As might a harlot empress in a bouge, Nude, unashamed, exulting she upraised Her evil face of perilous beauty and charm And, drawing panic to a shuddering kiss Twixt the magnificence of her fatal breasts, Allured to their abyss the spirit’s fall.” CWSA-33/Savitri-212, “Threefold are the doors of Hell, destructive of the soul – desire, wrath and greed: therefore let man renounce these three.” The Gita-16.21, “The Asuric Prakriti is the rajasic at its height; it leads to the slavery of the soul in Nature, to desire, wrath and greed, the three powers of the rajasic ego, and these are the three-fold doors of Hell, the Hell into which the natural being falls when it indulges the impurity and evil and error of its lower or perverted instincts.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-474, 49: “O Death, thou speakest truth but truth that slays, I answer to thee with the Truth that saves.” Savitri-621, "Whensoever there is the fading of the Dharma and the uprising of unrighteousness, then I loose myself forth into birth as Soul Saving Truth, atmanam srijamyaham." The Gita-4.7 "Therefore the Yogins do works with the body, mind, understanding, or even merely with the organs of action, abandoning attachment, for self-purification, atma suddhaye. " The Gita-5.11 (self-purification is here Soul saving Truth.) 50: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-30, 51: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-82, 52: “The Asram has nothing to do with Hindu religion or culture or any religion or nationality. The Truth of the Divine which is the spiritual reality behind all religions and the descent of the supramental which is not known to any religion are the sole things which will be the foundation of the work of the future.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram-701, 53: "The supermind uses the physical organs and confirms their way of action, but it develops behind them the inner and deeper senses which see what are hidden from the physical organs and farther transforms the new sight, hearing, etc. thus created by casting it into its own mould and way of sensing. The change is one that takes nothing from the physical truth of the object, but adds to it its supraphysical truth and takes away by the removal of the physical limitation the element of falsehood in the material way of experience." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-868, 54: "Then lest a human cry should spoil the Truth He tore desire up from its bleeding roots And offered to the gods the vacant place. Thus could he bear the touch immaculate. A last and mightiest transformation came." Savitri-318, 55: Buddha’s Eightfold Path (Āryāṣṭāṅgamārga) In the Buddhist tradition, each step of the path is prefaced with the term Samyak (meaning "Right," "Correct," or "Wholesome"). They are grouped into three divisions: Wisdom (Prajñā), Ethical Conduct (Śīla), and Mental Discipline (Samādhi). [1 , 2 , 3 ] Samyag-dṛṣṭi — Right View / Understanding Samyak-saṅkalpa — Right Resolve / Intention Samyag-vāc — Right Speech Samyak-karmānta — Right Action / Conduct Samyag-ājīva — Right Livelihood Samyag-vyāyāma — Right Effort Samyak-smṛti — Right Mindfulness Samyag-samādhi — Right Concentration / Absorption. 56: Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga (Aṣṭāṅgayoga) Outlined in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, these steps provide a structural framework that moves from external ethical disciplines to internal spiritual absorption. [1 , 2 ] Yama — Restraints / Moral Codes Niyama — Observances / Self-Disciplines Āsana — Posture Prāṇāyāma — Breath Control / Expansion of Life-force Pratyāhāra — Withdrawal of Senses Dhāraṇā — Concentration Dhyāna — Meditation Samādhi — Absorption / Total Integration The 5 Yamas (Social Ethics & Restraints) The Yamas are universal ethical vows that apply regardless of time, place, or circumstance. They regulate your external behavior to prevent the fragmentation of personal energy. [1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ] Ahimsa (Non-violence): Practicing harmlessness in thought, speech, and action toward all living beings. Satya (Truthfulness): Committing to absolute honesty and sincerity; avoiding falsehoods that lead to internal disintegration. Asteya (Non-stealing): Desisting from taking what is not freely given, whether it is physical items, time, or credit. Brahmacharya (Right Use of Energy): Directing vital life-force and creative energy toward spiritual growth, often interpreted as moderation or continence. Aparigraha (Non-possessiveness): Practicing non-greed, non-attachment, and avoiding the unnecessary accumulation of physical things. The 5 Niyamas (Personal Practices & Observances) The Niyamas build internal discipline and structure a healthy, harmonious inner life. The final three components collectively establish the foundation of Kriya Yoga (the yoga of action). [1 , 2 , 3 ] Saucha (Purity): Maintaining both external cleanliness of the body and environment, and internal purity of the mind. Santosha (Contentment): Cultivating stable, unconditional happiness and gratitude for what is present in the moment. Tapas (Disciplined Austerity): Igniting a "burning enthusiasm" and self-discipline to purify your habits and withstand life's friction. Svadhyaya (Self-Study): Observing your own behavior patterns and studying sacred texts to deepen self-awareness. Ishvara Pranidhana (Surrender): Dedicating your actions to a higher power, cosmic intelligence, or the absolute divinity. 57: “This will be to him (a Sadhaka of Integral Yoga) 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. (1) 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. (2) 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, "The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings would not matter; for the divine Guide within is not offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of faith or repelled by our weakness; he has the entire love of the mother and the entire patience of the teacher." Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-64, 58: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-85, 59: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-493, 60: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-858, 61: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-963-64, 62: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-109, 63: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-37, 64: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-103, 65: "(Q) Mother, previously things were very strict in the Ashram, but not now. Why? Yes, I have always said that it changed when we had to take the very little children. How can you envision an ascetic life with little sprouts no bigger than that? It’s impossible! But that’s the little surprise package the war left on our doorstep. When it was found that Pondicherry was the safest place on earth, naturally people came wheeling in here with all their baby carriages filled and asked us if we could shelter them, so we couldn’t very well turn them away, could we?! That’s how it happened, and in no other way ... But, in the beginning, the first condition for coming here was that you would have nothing more to do with your family! If a man was married, then he had to completely overlook the fact that he had a wife and children – completely sever all ties, have nothing further to do with them. And if ever a wife asked to come just because her husband happened to be here, we told her, ‘You have no business coming here!’ In the beginning, it was very, very strict – for a long time. The first condition was: ‘Nothing more to do with your family ...’ Well, we are a long way from that! But I repeat that it only happened because of the war and not because we stopped seeing the need to cut all family ties; on the contrary, this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these cords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone? What childishness! It is simply not possible. If you have ever taken the trouble to read over the early ashram rules, you would find that even friendships were considered dangerous and undesirable ... We made every effort to create an atmosphere in which only ONE thing counted: the Life Divine." The Mother's Agenda/August 25, 1954, "Only, the whole thing is that the time must have come, there must be only That left – all the rest spoils, whatever it is, even the highest, purest, noblest, most beautiful and marvelous things: all that spoils. Only That.” (The Mother's Agenda/ March 26, 1966) Download this WEB PAGE as PDF file: “It is binding on the developing (Soul) but not yet perfectly developed individual in the shape of social duty, family obligation, communal or national demand, so long as it is not in conflict with his growing sense of the higher Right. But the sadhaka of the Karmayoga will abandon this also to the Lord of works. After he has made this surrender, his social impulses and judgments will, like his desires, only be used for their exhaustion or, it may be, so far as they are still necessary for a time to enable him to identify his lower mental nature with mankind in general or with any grouping of mankind in its works and hopes and aspirations. But after that brief time is over, they will be withdrawn and a divine government will alone abide. He will be identified with the Divine and with others only through the divine consciousness and not through the mental nature.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-210-211 “(1) Hatred and (2) disliking and (3) scorn and (4) repulsion, (5) clinging and (6) attachment and (7) preference are (seven deformations, vicaras, of integral Yoga) natural, necessary, inevitable at a certain stage: they attend upon or they help to make and maintain Nature’s choice in us. But to the Karmayogin they are a survival, a stumbling-block, a process of the Ignorance and, as he progresses, they fall away from his nature. The child-soul needs them for its growth ; but they drop from an adult (Soul) in the divine culture.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-223 “The first condition was: ‘Nothing more to do with your family ...’ Well, we are a long way from that! But I repeat that it only happened because of the war and not because we stopped seeing the need to cut all family ties; on the contrary, this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these cords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone? What childishness! It is simply not possible. If you have ever taken the trouble to read over the early ashram rules, you would find that even friendships were considered dangerous and undesirable ... We made every effort to create an atmosphere in which only ONE thing counted: the Life Divine.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/ August 25, 1954,

The Mother's Virgin Forest " Inviolate , guarding Truth’s diamond throne." Savitri-358 “But you see, you see all the way I have come...And I was born with a consciously prepared body—Sri Aurobindo was aware of that, he said it immediately the first time he saw me: I was born free. That is, from the spiritual standpoint: without any desire. Without any desire and attachment. And mon petit, if there is the slightest desire and the slightest attachment, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do this work. A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control (the vital of this present incarnation was sexless—a warrior), an absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior—no desires, no attachments... Since my earliest childhood,... I had neither attachments nor desires.... If people were nasty to me, or if people died or went away, it left me absolutely calm—... And with that preparation... It is eighty-six years since I came here, mon petit! For thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo consciously, without letup, night and day... We shouldn’t be in a hurry.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/28.03.1964 "If the spirit could from the first dwell securely on the superior heights and deal with a blank and virgin stuff of mind and matter, a complete spiritual transformation might be rapid, even facile: but the actual process of Nature is more difficult, the logic of her movement more manifold, contorted, winding, comprehensive; she recognises all the data of the task she has set to herself and is not satisfied with a summary triumph over her own complexities. Every part of our being has to be taken in its own nature and character, with all the moulds and writings of the past still there in it: each minutest portion and movement must either be destroyed and replaced if it is unfit, or, if it is capable, transmuted into the truth of the higher being. If the psychic change is complete, this can be done by a painless process, though still the programme must be long and scrupulous and the progress deliberate; but otherwise one has to be satisfied with a partial result or, if one’s own scrupulousness of perfection or hunger of the spirit is insatiable, consent to a difficult, often painful and seemingly interminable action. For ordinarily the consciousness does not rise to the summits except in the highest moments; it remains on the mental level and receives descents from above, sometimes a single descent of some spiritual power that stays and moulds the being into something predominatingly spiritual, or a succession of descents bringing into it more and more of the spiritual status and dynamis: but unless one can live on the highest height reached, there cannot be the com- plete or more integral change. If the psychic mutation has not taken place, if there has been a premature pulling down of the higher Forces, their contact may be too strong for the flawed and impure material of Nature and its immediate fate may be that of the unbaked jar of the Veda which could not hold the divine Soma Wine; or the descending influence may withdraw or be spilt because the nature cannot contain or keep it. Again, if it is Power that descends, the egoistic mind or vital may try to seize on it for its own use and a magnified ego or a hunting after powers and self-aggrandising masteries may be the untoward result. The Ananda descending cannot be held if there is too much sexual impurity creating an intoxicant or degrading mixture; the Power recedes, if there is ambition, vanity or other aggressive form of lower self, the Light if there is an attachment to obscurity or to any form of the Ignorance, the Presence if the chamber of the heart has not been made pure. Or some undivine Force may try to seize hold, not of the Power itself, for that withdraws, but of the result of force it leaves behind in the instrument and use it for the purposes of the Adversary. Even if none of these more disastrous faults or errors should take place, still the numerous mistakes of reception or the imperfections of the vessel may impede the transformation. The Power has to come at intervals and work meanwhile behind the veil or hold itself back through long periods of obscure assimilation or preparation of the recalcitrant parts of Nature; the Light has to work in darkness or semi-darkness on the regions in us that are still in the Night. At any moment the work may be stayed, personally for this life, because the nature is able to receive or assimilate no more, — for it has reached the present limits of its capacity, — or because the mind may be ready but the vital, when faced with a choice between the old life and the new, refuses, or if the vital accepts, the body may prove too weak, unfit or flawed for the necessary change of its consciousness and its dynamic transformation." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-948-949 The Agenda of The Mother’s Virgin Fortress “Assailed, surprised in the fortress of her self, Conquered by her own unexpected king (the Divine),” Savitri-87 "Apotheosised, transfigured by wisdom’s touch, Her days became a luminous sacrifice; An immortal moth in happy and endless fire, She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze. A captive Life wedded her conqueror (Supreme Lord)." Savitri-125 “As a fortress for his (man of ignorance) undefended heart,” Savitri-145 “Within we have found the kingdom here of God, His fortress built in a loud ignorant world.” Savitri-531 If an individual seeker of Truth lives in the secluded chamber of his Psychic being for a long period, then that fortress is attacked and conquered by the Supreme Lord from above and possesses his whole being and Nature. This wedding with the Lord is crucial in Spiritual life and the birth of this inner fortress gives a clear passage for building of an outer Virgin's Fortress. The principal teachings of integral Yoga, The Synthsis of Yoga, have projected⁶⁶ the Psychic being as the virgin Mother power and the epic Savitri projected⁶⁷ Savitri as Para-prakriti, the virgin Mother. Hence, The Mother's Virgin Fortress is born whose triple objective is union of (1) Jivatma with Paraprakriti, (2) union of Paramatma with Paraprakriti and (3) union of Paraprakriti with Aparaprakriti . It is believed in the collective dream vision of Savitri that only 'the virgin bridals of the dawn' (Savitri-401) can confront the world's falsehood and world miseries. All that is sacred in the earth’s atmosphere drew near to Savitri’s Divine passivity. Her Soul’s power was too great for earth, the bliss that lived in her heart was too large for heaven, her love was too boundless and Light was too intense for the thought. Her being rose into unreachable heights and plunged into unfathomable depths and saw there was no end in the Soul’s journey and found no end to the silent occult Mystery. Earth’s each grain needs the sap of pleasures and tears and rejects the undying rapture’s boon. Savitri permitted earth’s children to lend herself and all she was and hoped to implant her greater being in their bodies’ life so that through her pure virgin touch, Heaven might grow native on the mortal soil. The Mother’s Fortress evolves through Savitri’s sacrifice who toiled to perfect her creation since the earth was made by pointing to the Souls of men the routes to God. And it accommodates four hieratic institutions harmoniously to synthesize its objective world action and subjective movement in the ranges of Consciousness. The God-ward movement begins with the activation of moderate Spirituality to include the whole of humanity within its scope who begin to serve the Divine in spite of many lapses in their outer living. Thus, earth struggles through a million roads to find the Deity. Then, through her Divine call, some developed moderate seekers will enter entire renunciation of lower nature by entire consecration of outer life which forms the basis of sane ascetic living. Then, out of them, a few can hold her Divine call to elevate the ascetic living to the gradation of the entire consecration of inner and outer life to the Divine. Then fewer can integrate her Divine Call in isolation and prepare themselves to be a fit channel of large Divine descent. Then it is the fewest to whom she reveals herself in her entirety, samagram mam . The Synthesis of Earth's Spiritual History & The Four Fortresses: Moderate Spirituality: A moderate is an earth-bound soul who is built on Nature’s early plan and owes a small debt to a superior plane. It is safe for man to begin his conscious God-ward journey through a moderate path, the middle way which is neither too extreme, dangerous, or too strenuous an effort. Those moderate seekers who have come closer to Savitri by attraction of her pure physical form, a reflection of her Divinity, were lit by her touch but were extinguished too soon as their vessels were not so pure to illumine the light and fire constantly; her force was too pure and her demand was too great for them to bear and when they looked upon the world and missed the self; she leans down with her strong passionate hands to their littleness, knew by sympathy their needs and wants and bent to heal their sorrow and pride. Spirituality of Renunciation: The limitation of animal grossness, self-imprisoned narrowness and downward movement of mind of moderate humanity is corrected in the Spirituality of renunciation as practiced in Ascetics’ Fortress where world shunning and heaven seeking Souls dream shut in sainthood’s brilliant cell, finds the shadow of God or brief Spiritual illumination and Spirit’s immobile liberty by losing the world and life; his experience of world and matter is void of its Lord; the Divine Mother chooses this state for her hard ground of preparation, brief felicitous hour in world’s play of joy and strife and discloses some of her mystic secrets. Spirituality of Consecration: The limitation of ascetic inaction in solitude, belittling of the individual and universe, the Soul’s hunger for individual salvation by escape into farthest height of unalloyed bliss, its unwillingness to return from the ecstasy of the divine embrace into the lower field of work, struggle and service are corrected in the Spirituality of consecration as practiced in a Divine Centre, where inmates are fit to live constantly in her ray but are unable to face and bear the Power of her high Sunlight, they have the habit of seeing the Highest in a limiting form and refuse to admit that Truth is wider and greater than her single form and man adores her with thousand icons since the beginning of the creation; Her greater self lived alone, unclaimed and within severing a distance from all those who were most close and thus, she transcends all but denies none. Virgins' Fortress: The deficiency of becoming a forced satellite of her Sun or illumining the world’s darkness by becoming a moonlight of consecrated Spirituality is mended, widened, corrected and fulfilled in a more concentrated Divine Centre or an extreme Spirituality of Virgins’ Fortress, where the consecration and renunciation of virgin Souls reach their absolute state to link the finite and the Infinite and she acknowledges that her highest and widest seeing are only a partial half-search; her mighty world action is only a half finished work and to exceed herself is her Transcendent task. Immaculate in white virginity, the nude God children, in self-knowledge and self-power, repose on the eternal Will and live in His inalienable Bliss. They are her sun-eyed children of God’s everlasting Day and Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers who count Supreme’s law only and obey only His command and they find a passage to meet the Lord (Inconscient Self) in Matter’s night. So, in The Mother’s Fortress all the above four types of collective aspirations that of serving and seeking the Divine by reason’s lamp ("And Mind in a half-light moves amid half-truths" Savitri-703); entire renunciation of desire, ego, dualities, three gunas, initiation of work and old association and one enters static union with the Divine ("He who has met the Self, renounces self." Savitri-635); triple entire consecration through Psychic and Spiritual movement of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga lading to universalised Consciousness ("A wide self-giving was her native act;" Savitri-15); and purification and transformation of lower Nature by Yoga of Self-perfection where a simultaneous, triple, swift God-ward Soul movement of will, intellect, and emotion is accommodated, harmonised, reconciled, dynamised, and integrated. In this ultimate state of spiritual readiness, the seeker's entire being becomes 'Missalled in aureate virginity,' (Savitri-374) waiting for the entire possession of the Transcendent Lord. (1) Ambition, the deformation of the Divine’s Infinite capacity through interference of mind’s ego and impatience, the deformation of Time’s eternity through subjection of the hasty mind’s desire, seems to be the main motive force behind Moderate Spirituality and when it takes an ascetic turn, the impatience does not leave the earthly scene. (2) When the scope and outcome of Yoga is extended from this whole life to all life of successive unnumbered past and future births, or shifting of centre of living from surface to inner life, then a Sadhaka is liberated from the limitation of Ascetic impatience. (3) When one rises in consciousness uninterruptedly through the Spirituality of consecration, the mind’s ambition leaves the mortal scene to substitute the Soul’s ambition which can lift up the individual and the race. (4) A universalised Consciousness, entirely free from desire and ego, is the normal state of extreme integral Spirituality, here identified as Virgins' Fortress. The evolution of The Mother’s Fortress is inextricably linked to Earth's Spiritual History . The historical journey of consciousness has scaled the ladder of evolution through successive concentrations. Moderate Spirituality is the outcome of first exclusive concentration related with the concentration on the objective world. This concentration will take a subjective turn to enter partial union with the Divine. Where historical paths like Buddhistic Nirvana or Shankara's illusionism relied on the third exclusive concentration of finding the subjective Self and escaping earthly suffering. The essential Psychic concentration and multiple Spiritual concentration are related with consecrated Spirituality. Their movement in ascending and descending planes can remove the gulf of different planes of Consciousness. Ultimately, High Spirituality flowers into the Supramental and Integral Concentration, fulfilling the ancient Vedic quest for physical transformation. It is this dynamic, final synthesis of earth’s entire Spiritual heritage that safely guards the diamond throne of the Virgins' Fortress or "Inviolate, guarding Truth’s diamond throne." (Savitri-358) The Divine’s Call: “Only a few responded to her call: Still fewer felt the screened divinity,” Savitri-362 “Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice, Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere, We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,” Savitri-171 Savitri’s Soul wanders in the lone, tremendous woods in this strange, dangerous, sorrowful and beautiful world to find an aim of greater destiny. Immaculate grandeur broods upon her days and Almighty powers are shut in Nature’s cells. Somewhere in the longing breast of earth her unknown Lover waits for her, the Unknown. Now the destined spot and hour were close and all things happen in the cosmic play at its time and in its foreseen place. On life’s road, the conscious Soul can recognise its answering Soul of a 'predestined face' across the dividing time. The Lovers met upon their different paths by travelling across limitless plains of Time. Savitri , after the first discovery of her Lord, Satyavan on earth, the comrade of her Soul’s high task, in whom Nature and Self equal Presence felt, received the Soul’s Call and declared that ‘Now of wandering it has no need’²⁵ and now she must hasten back to her father’s house for final preparation to begin a life with new Divinity which began in the sylvan forest land and often her conscious Spirit walked with him and knew her vast inner action. A boundless isolation made them one in Spirit and one human moment was Eternal made. Satyavan (the symbol of Divine Love), ‘the Godhead by which all can change,’³⁶ is incarnated here to tempt the God’s light for earth and man, his love is meant to fill the hollow in men’s hearts and his bliss is directed to heal the unhappiness of the world. And Savitri is the sun-gold Godhead of mighty force, she can lift man’s Soul to God, her will is greater than Death’s law and her Love is stronger than the bonds of Fate. She shines as a single lamp lit in perfection’s house. Their love is a heavenly seal of the Supreme and Savitri guards that seal against Death’s rending hands. The Mother , during the first meeting with Sri Aurobindo , recognised Him as the One for whom Her life has waited long unfulfilled, Her Soul flung wide its inner door to this new Sun and received Her Soul’s Divine Call. Her instrumental nature needed six years of inner preparation to dynamise that Call of final arrival of Her future home at Pondicherry . They were the Mother Soul and the Master Soul from the beginning of the creation, born from one undying Fire. In the self-closed solitude of Their past, They were drawn towards a swift rapturous dream of future vision, an intense hour began, which was the matrix of new triple Time and new Space. It is only in the Supermind that the outer wandering can be dispensed with and an individual can act as Sun Light, still, motionless and becomes the cause of all movement and all action. Sri Aurobindo was able to transcend the habit of wandering of His Spiritual predecessors because the triple experiences of the integral Divine that possessed him at Alipore jail were from the Supramental plane, where the reconciliation of World, Self and God are automatic and self-existent. The gospel of ‘Universal (Divine) Incarnation’²⁶ through Supramental action was a remote possibility prior to Sri Aurobindo because the doctrine of Individual Divine Incarnation was prevalent through Overmental interference. We also observe that Sri Aurobindo’s Supramental vision has foreseen the emergence of ‘nude God-children’²⁷ or ‘garbless deity’²⁸ who will unfold the multiple inner suns, whose ‘radiance like the suns’²⁷ can alight the heaven and earth around and the dark Subconscient cave. The emergence of the Supramental Sun in earth’s atmosphere is a collective phenomenon, though this exercise may begin with an individual incarnating Soul, which can be clear from the following lines: “The guardian of the fire that lights the suns,” Savitri-179 “Equalled with the godheads of the living Suns,” Savitri-216 “Around him was a light of conscious suns” Savitri-234 “On an earth which looked towards thousand suns,” Savitri-268 “Ablaze the triple heavens revealed their suns,” Savitri-300 “The Sun from which we kindle all our suns.” Savitri-314 “A wanderer from the occult invisible suns” Savitri-348 “Above them blazed eternity’s mystic suns.” Savitri-381 “Below him circling burned the myriad suns:” Savitri-415 During Savitri’s outer wandering in search of her own Self, she came across a crowded place where people were gathered together for Spiritual yearning and Savitri felt the impatient longing to ‘hasten like them’²⁹ to save God’s world. But she ‘reined back the high passion in her heart’²⁹ as she knew that those who have found their Soul can only save themselves and save others and those who have found the desire soul but not the true Self can guide the world but they cannot guide themselves; so, she took the firm resolution that she must first find her Soul or the Psychic Being. She also observed that age-long grey restraints of earth cannot be broken by the man’s slow impatient evolutionary life, which is hurried towards a ‘sudden splendid path’³⁴ by the revelation, sermon and profound words of ‘human gods.’³⁴ She was further informed that man’s ‘mind is closed between two firmaments’³⁵ of seeking truth through (1) images and words, and (2) surface and brute out sides, and is unwilling to plunge into the depth. So, an aspirant Soul of Divine Life must pass through a difficult preparatory period of ‘wandering seekers’ on the Eternal’s path or a traditional Ascetic ‘wandered in some lone tremendous wood.’⁴ ⁰ Outer wandering for the tireless search of truth becomes inevitable till the emerging Consciousness has arrived at its self-existent, self-fulfilling and reconciling oneness of Self and Nature. The Light his Soul has brought, his mind has lost and all he has learned soon becomes a doubt by the pressure of the Inconscient pull and the Sunlight seems to him as the shadow of his own thought and then all becomes shadow and nothing becomes true. Mind is considered impotent to reconcile the Earth and Heaven and its outer wandering for apparent reconciliation and apparent harmony always precedes the Soul’s self-existent oneness and harmony, which seems clear from the following lines: - “Mind the thought-driven chariot of the soul Carrying the luminous wanderer in the night To vistas of a far unending dawn To the end of the Spirit’s fathomless desire, To its dream of absolute truth and utter bliss.” Savitri-704 “Across which mind can step towards the sun.” Savitri-245 “Shrank into themselves as from too bright a sun” Savitri-365 “The people of the gulfs despised the sun.” Savitri-216 “Our mind’s unquiet search asks always light,” Savitri-153 “Ill-lit from clouds by the pale moon of Mind, Or in devious byways wandering alone, Or lost in deserts where no path is seen,” Savitri-224 “Where mind like a moon illumines the world’s dark.” Savitri-71 Savitri provides us a patient lesson about how outer wandering and the wandering of mind for the search of truth can be shifted to an integration of Divine call of uninterrupted inner wandering in Consciousness for Spirit and Nature’s expansion and how mind’s faint and pale borrowed moon light status and fragmentary ray can be shifted to an activation of the higher Selves or multiple Sun lights. An earth-bound Soul can wander away from higher Light forfeiting the grace of the great Mother and the Souls, who have not received the Divine’s Call are the ‘spirits entrapped’² ² or ‘lost souls’²³ and they ‘might wander through all time, yet never find the truth by which they live’²² or they are ‘blind wanderers mid the perils of Time’²⁴ and through human fall of consciousness they are forced ‘back to the beast.’³ ⁸ All can serve the Divine but some are able to listen to the Savitri’s Divine Call; few can climb to her un-perishing Sun and channel to earth mind the wizard Ray and still it is fewer who can dare to dynamise her call and trace the path of Immortality uninterruptedly through Matter’s Night of abysmal hell and it is still the fewest who can hope to arrest the Wheels of earth’s Doom and universalise her action of Divinising the clay. A Soul is prepared and made ready through thousands of years of Soul birth to receive the initiation of Savitri’s Yoga . It is a rare vessel fit to hold the Divine Love, which is as rare as holding God’s birth. His yearning towards All meets two solitudes (1) that of an outcast from the empire of the outer light and (2) lost to the comradeship of sound, touch, sight, taste and smell and to live in the high peopled loneliness of the Spirit. Savitri’s Yoga of Sunlit path, Golden path and a passage in Abysmal night asks for ‘mind’s solitude,’¹ ‘heart’s secluded shrine,’² ‘sweet honey of solitude,’³ ‘the inner ear that listens to solitude,’⁴ ‘a mind remembering ancient silences,’⁵ ‘great solitary tracts,’⁶ ‘gleaming borders solitary as sleep,’⁷ ‘solitude far from the world,’⁸ ‘forest’s bosom of loneliness,’⁹ ‘pierced its enormous dream of solitude,’¹⁰ ‘foster child of beauty and solitude,’¹¹ ‘corner of happy solitude,’¹ ² ‘lost in the depths of its own solitude,’¹³ ‘infinite solitude and sleep,’¹ ⁴ ‘the sylvan solitude,’¹⁵ ‘the night’s solitude,’¹⁶ ‘apart in self, alone,’¹⁷ ‘seeking loneliness,’¹⁸ ‘Burn in the solitude of the thoughts of God,’³⁷ ‘in some deep internal solitude,’² ¹ environmental isolation that ‘greatened her human hour,’¹⁹ prohibition from ‘public way,’²⁰ movement restricted in ‘close secluded chamber,’²⁰ which culminates in calling down of the Divine Mother into the mortal tenement, God union and His strong embrace. Inner Wandering of the Soul: “As so he (King Aswapati) grew into his larger self, (Universal Self) Humanity framed his movements less and less (outer wandering reduces with the realization of cosmic Self) A greater being saw a greater world.” Savitri-26 “His being lay down in bright immobile peace And bathed in wells of pure spiritual light; It wandered in the wide fields of wisdom-self Lit by the rays of an everlasting sun.” Savitri-43 “No wandering ray of Heaven can enter there (Inconscient Sheath).” Savitri-226 “Love passes through his heart, a wandering guest.” Savitri-340 “A wanderer from the occult invisible suns” Savitri-348 “A wanderer communing with depth and marge.” Savitri-393 “Now of more wandering it has no need.” Savitri-412 “I (Satyavan) wandered in far-off eternities, Yet still, a captive in her (Savitri’s) golden hands,” Savitri-723 Savitri in her Spiritual quest, was able to overcome the habit of outer wandering to enter the inner world and took a resolution that she must first discover her Self, because by that alone she can save herself and save the world. Savitri systematically unravels the Divine stationed in the heart by breaking the barrier of multiple layers of desire Soul which ‘Surround the beautiful temple of the soul’⁴⁹ and she transcended the attraction of the fine and subtle lure of multiple inner worlds which could enrich our life with intermediate opulence, glory and fame. The preliminary training to open the Psychic being is to remember first why our Soul came to earth; in silence seek the God’s meaning in our depth; open God’s door and enter into trance through meditation; in God’s tremendous hush still our brain to wake the vast truth within that can know and see; cast from our life the sense enjoyments that veils the Spirit’s vision; in the enormous emptiness of mind we shall see the Eternal’s subtle body and hear His subtle voice and in world’s contact meet the Divine’s single touch. Man’s house of life unfolds subtle worlds. There are occult shadows, tenebrous powers, dangerous forces , Titans, Fury, Goblins and Djinns who are inhabitants of life’s nether rooms of the Subconscient pit. They touch all with perverting breath, discolour the walls of the upper mind and invite instincts of forbidden joy. The doors of God they have shut with keys of creed, intercept the caravans of light and block the fine entries of celestial fire. His lower nature hides these awful guests. Into earth-ways they break out from all doors to slay, massacre, torture, invade with blood-lust and fill with horror and carnage God’s fair world. Old rejected nature, slain thoughts, old longings and acts, dead passions live again to recur in sleep, dream and waking. Night is their refuge and strategic base and no wandering ray of Heaven can enter there. All who would raise this fallen world must come under the dangerous arches of giant sons of Darkness. None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell. She strove with difficulty and pain to find the inner vital Self concealed behind the world of sense during her forced journey from body to the Soul through passages of inner Time. Here, life deeps into the Subconscient dusk or struggles from matter to chaos of mind and cries of life, in which no light, no joy and no peace can come. In that vital world, she met lower vital entities known as troll, gnome and goblin ‘that most disturb human life.’⁴⁶ Out of the dreadful press she dragged her will and fixed her thought on the repetition of the Divine Name. Her vital Godhead, pranamaya Purusha, wakes within to lift the life with Divine touch. Then, all grew still, empty and free; a large deliverance and vast calm of vital Self emerged and she moved awhile through a blank tranquillity of naked Light that descended from the invisible sun. Then, after silencing the vital mind and realisation of her vital Self, she drew closer to ‘mightier danger’s front’⁴⁷ identified as the physical mind or the material mind. It is an aimless thought and will, a deaf force, a torrent that carries life’s hope and fear, a forbidden delight of honey-sweet poison-wine of lust and death, the bottomless danger-pits and swallowing gulfs. It could mingle poison with the wine of God, all contraries meet in the life’s nether room and Ignorance is Wisdom’s patron here. The souls trapped in the physical mind can never escape. By silencing the physical mind, she met her true physical Being, annamaya Purusha . By its influence, thousands of dark voices fell mute. Then, journeying forward beyond the physical and vital mind, Savitri reached a brilliant ordered space of Sattwic mind, which is divided into three parts of schoolman mind, the fixed mind and the outer mind . The narrow ideal of schoolman mind has occupied life’s large domain. It has the fear of getting lost in the vastness of the Soul. The Spirit’s limited freedom was there in reason’s small limiting ideals and it is too far from Psychic fire and it has no power to ‘set the world ablaze.’⁴⁸ The reason’s diplomatic balanced reign kept limited order and limited peace, disciplined beauty and a harmonic smooth life and she lived closed in the adamant walls of law, ethic’s rule and fixed pillars of thought. Its rational religion dries the heart, meditation muses on a narrow seat, limits his worship to an exclusive God, worships the God in a chapel whose doors are shut against the universe, the Spiritual wisdom of Shastra is a sealed book and this schoolman mind can offer a cold and flameless sacrifice. Then she arrived at firm and settled space, the quiet country of fixed mind , where the doubt of arriving at the source of existence has taken the appearance of fixed limiting faith and ordered knowledge of apparent things. It has the capacity to make the sun invisible. This fixed mind claims to be the Spirit, sole creator of the apparent world and the Soul and Spirit sees itself as a form of fixed mind and loses itself in the glory of its thought and reaches the brilliant air, flaming with thought’s supreme finality. The few intellectuals, artists, musicians and players are admitted in the home of cosmic certainty, stand on their limited faith as on a rock, attain the best achievement of an exclusive kind, and register their name in the book of the elite. It claims the safety of the ultimate wall, the clarity of the sword of Light, victory of a single Truth, burns the diamond of flawless bliss, bright contented world and lives as favourite of Heaven and Nature. For fixed mind , Divine is identified as ‘A splendid shadow of the name of God’⁵⁰ and none has touched His limbs or seen His face. The Souls, who are satisfied with this achievement of fixed mind, do not turn to the adventure of the Beyond, do not go ahead to discover their Psychic being. Savitri did not want to stay in this petrified wisdom of intellect with small grain of Spiritual certitude for long time and came to a road thronged with an ardent crowd of hurrying outer mind where no mystic voice and Light can come. This surface mind is a ceaseless dynamic machine which draws its raw material from the outside world and all its products are perishable and wear out in the passage of time. This mind is impatient to gather together devotees to commence a Spiritual movement. With the hope of finding her Soul, Savitri mingled with the crowd of devotees and her mind hastens like them to save God’s world and yearns for the Spiritual light they bear. She reined back the high passion of her heart as she knew that she must discover her Soul or Psychic Being first and only those who have found their Psychic beings can only save themselves and subsequently can save others. So, by realising the hurrying time of the outer world/surface mind she turns her eyes towards the Timeless eternal Source to find the birthplace of occult Psychic Fire. Then Savitri came to a narrow path to tread the rare wounded pilgrim feet of first ascent in the inner mind and met the Mother of seven sorrows who projected herself as Savitri’s Soul. A patient prayer has risen from her breast to change this great, hard world of pain. She came to share the suffering of this world, drawing the children’s pangs into her breast. God gave her love and power to solace but not His force and power to save; she has seen the slashed corpse of the slaughtered child, heard the woman’s cry ravished and stripped, shared the toil of the yoked animal drudge; she shared the daily life of common man, the unwanted tedious labour without joy, the burden of misery and the strokes of fate and lived with the prisoner in the dungeon cell. On her shoulders she weighs the yoke of Time, watches the nature’s cruelty to suffering things without God’s help. She hoped to look towards her God, who never came to her. When the mother of seven sorrows is transformed into the mother of seven Anandas , then misery shall be abolished from earth, and everywhere there will be peace and joy and all-embracing Divine love and compassion. The seven sorrows of a Sadhaka are (1) memory of ‘beauty of sadness,’ (2) ancient strain of tears, (3) world’s agony, (4) sorrow and struggle in all Time, (5) anguished music, (6) deep sorrowful compassion towards bereaved souls, (7) patient gaze and patient prayer that does not reach heaven. In order to transform these seven-fold Subconscient sorrows into seven-fold Ananda, a Sadhaka has to travel backwards with his Spiritual energy towards past births and bodies in the subtle world. Then Savitri recognised the Mother of seven sorrows, an incarnation of pity as first subliminal desire soul of surface tamasic force and passed ahead in her Spirit’s upward route. Next, she met the second subliminal desire Soul, the Mother of Might, an incarnation of some intermediate egoistic Power, behind the ambitious surface rajasic force, who sat in a gold and purple sheen, her feet on a couchant lion’s back. A formidable smile curled round her lips, heaven-fire laughed in the corners of her eyes, her body a mass of courage and heavenly strength her speech is like a war cry and her word is of luminous command. She came down into the human world with a faculty which seems to be Almighty to help the unfortunate and save the doomed. She smites the Titan who bestrides the world, slays the ogre in his blood-stained den and tramples the corpses of the demon hordes and guards man from the red wolf and snake. She has the power to guide, save and help the few and the masses fall back unsaved. Savitri still ascended to find her Soul’s upward route and arrived into a high and happy space of inner mind, a wide tower of vision to see all, a clear and crystal light; there she met her third subliminal desire soul, the Mother of Light , an incarnation of some intermediate surface sattwic wisdom, whose mission is to lift the human Soul slowly towards the light through error and sin. She represents charity, silence, knowledge, peace, courage and a Power that labours towards the best. With her help, man’s mind will admit the sovereignty of Truth; heart will at last hold the Divine Love and the body can bear the immense Divine descent. The three subliminal Mother Powers,⁵¹ (1) the Mother of seven sorrows, (2) the Mother of (limited) Might and (3) the Mother of (limited) Light are the three Mother powers of inner mind having their root in the negative inconscient energies of tamas, rajas and sattwa and these three subliminal desire Selves surrounding the Psychic Being obstruct the free working of the Psychic being. They also wait for their hour of Divine transformation when they will emerge as (1) the Mother of seven Delights, (2) the Mother of limitless Might and (3) the Mother of limitless Light. Onward she moved, seeking the mystic cave of the Soul. The mind abolished all its thoughts, and in a simple purity of emptiness, she knelt down before the Unknowable. At first, she stepped into a night of God and crossed the fathomless impersonal Night in silence. A last change and the Truth’s last retreat came with the breaking of the mental emptiness and the blissful inner self became her space. Then she came across the land of marvellous twilight and holy stillness of voiceless space. The two golden serpents curled round the lintel of her body and enveloped it with pure dreadful strength and wisdom. Across the threshold of the sleep state, she entered the land with great figures of Gods who are conscious in stone and live without breath. In climbing the planes of consciousness, she met numberless worlds and faces of beings representing that world. She reached a point, the meeting place of all the worlds where there was no trace of breathing men, no sound and living nearness of Soul and unimaginable bliss. She met a light which is not born of sun or moon or fire, a light that dwelt within and saw within and made secrecy more revealing than the word and there Spirit’s vision is wholly true. Thus, she passed in that mysterious place through rooms and rock-hewn doors. A sealed identity in her woke to give the experience of utter Oneness of God and Goddess, the Master and the Mother, Krishna and Radha, and Adorer and Adored. Then she came to the last chamber of golden seat where one sat whose shape no vision can define, formless, pure, bare, only one feels the world’s unattainable fount and Power of which she is a straying Force. Then she dug the tunnel of the last rock and came out where there shone a deathless sun. A house was there and all was made of flame and light. And crossing the wall of doorless living fire where she suddenly met her Soul, the Psychic being. The Psychic and Spiritual being opens generally through the practice of Self-control. Through King Aswapati’s Yoga Spiritual being opens first and by its descent Psychic being opens. Through Savitri’s Yoga, the Psychic being opens first and by its ascent, the Spiritual being opens. The long movement of Consciousness between the Psychic and Spiritual being opens the Supramental being. Evolution of the Virgins’ Fortress: “Incarnate the white passion of thy force, Mission to earth some living form of thee.” Savitri-345 "A single lamp lit in perfection’s house, A bright pure image in a priestless shrine,” Savitri-368 The Mother’s bare and absolute Power is represented through Savitri’s Virgin Force, which burns in the solitudes of the thoughts of God and the whole world lives in the lonely ray of her sun. She questioned changeless destiny and strove against the immutable Will from the inception of this creation. Her high nude Soul tramples fixed destiny and the groves of mortal law with her living feet. A virgin is she or he whose mind, life, body and Soul seek only the Divine and the collectivity gathered around her are identified as apprentices of the Virgins’ Fortress. When this seeking is culminated in Divine union then a true Virgins’ Fortress emerges and it can guard Truth’s diamond throne and if the gained Divine Consciousness is inverted earthward then the Integrated Virgins’ Fortress is dynamised and it can call down fragments of Truth Supreme or fragments of highest Truth. Savitri lifts the literal meaning of virginity from its narrow sense to its widest and profoundest significance. In the Spiritual sense virginity means the purity, the feminine or passive status of the Self. Its masculine or active status is concentration. Purity is the condition in which concentration becomes entire, rightly effective and omnipotent. Without concentration, purity can become a state of peaceful quiescence of eternal repose. The opposite of purity is identified as impurity which is defined as the confusion of the law of the Soul or a mixed and mutually entangled action of the different parts of the being. This confusion leads to the absence of the right concentration. Concentration is defined as gathering back the thought into the Self. It has three powers (1) by concentration one can know anything but this power must be utilised to know the Self, the Being, the One; (2) by concentration again the whole will can be gathered up for the knowledge of Self that is not yet grasped and (3) by concentration we can become the Self. Integration of virginity is related with integration of concentration and it is in integral concentration that the Supramental energy is dynamised. The Law of Virginity: “Heaven's tranquil shield guarded the missioned child.” Savitri-16 “She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze. A captive Life wedded her conqueror.” Savitri-125 “Heaven’s fixed regard beholds him (man) from above,” Savitri-336 “And guards intact unchanged by death and Time” Savitri-351 “Lived guarded in her spirit’s luminous cell,” Savitri-355 “Self-guarded in the silence of her strength” Savitri-357 “A mighty Presence still defends thy frame. Perhaps heavens guard thee for some great soul,” Savitri-374 Virgin’s Fortress has existed on earth since the advent of Savitri as a priest-less Shrine, which is entirely sealed from the attack of world influence and it can be invaded and conquered by the Supreme Lord from above and possesses it. This paper identifies twenty-one distinct characters of Savitri which build the basis of the Law of Virginity or integral purity of Integral Yoga. Adherence to this law integrates the personality, prevents one from any Spiritual fall and ruin and gives strength to fight against Death and Suffering. Savitri searched her integral purity through the first door of entry of physical virginity, which is reflected in her outward nature. She awoke among these common tribes like a parable of dawn and lived like a mighty stranger in the human field. Heaven guarded her physical purity till the arrival of some great Soul, her second Self, and the Godhead in the form of Satyavan, leading her towards comprehensive virginity. Physical Virginity: “No part she took in this small happiness;” Savitri-6 “Then life beat pure in the corporeal frame” Savitri-232 “Immaculate with white virginity” Savitri-274 “His transience trembles with the Eternal’s touch,” Savitri-339 “No transient earthly love assailed her calm,” Savitri-367 “Missalled in aureate (golden) virginity” Savitri-374 "Even as her body, such is she within." Savitri-422 “Her body quivered with eternity’s touch” Savitri-671 “Virgin motions of bacchant innocences” Savitri-677 The physical substance can open itself towards the pure Divine touch. Her single glance can make his whole day wonderful. The first sign of Savitri’s physical virginity⁵⁴ is that she took no interest in small earth-bound enjoyments, life’s fragile littleness, heaven’s brief light. She came to love, help and save all, spoke no word, strong, calm like a hill and a dark foreknowledge separated herself even from those she loved. Savitri gives us this message that she was absolutely not interested in any small happiness and enjoyments because that cannot help her to resolve her single issue, which she concentrates on each birth, “This was the day when Satyavan must die.”⁴³ Rather, these small earthly enjoyments are a door of escape from the problems of existence. The second sign is that she had been disrupted and dislodged by her Soul’s force, her past that stood as a block in the immortal's path; in her inner adventure of Consciousness, with each new height she explored, she would completely lay bare and break the system she had reached earlier; or ‘A giant dance of Shiva tore the past.’³⁰ A fire that seemed the body of the God consumed the limiting figures of the past and made a large room for the new Self to live; thirdly , she was never interested in any solitary bliss, her task was to raise the world to God and deathless Light and called down a fire of Eternity to make the body’s joy as vivid as the Soul’s, earth she would lift to the neighbourhood of Heaven, reconcile the Eternal and the Abyss and her greatness rose to ‘stay the wheels’⁴⁴ of earth’s Doom. Vital Virginity: “A purity of sense we never feel” Savitri-104 “A purer, fierier sense had there its home, A burning urge no earthly limbs can hold;” Savitri-123 “Then life beat pure in the corporeal frame;” Savitri-232 “Flitting through thickets of thy pure desires In the unwounded beauty of thy soul.” Savitri-420 “Her immortality her chastisement,” Savitri-600 “A pure celestial joy is the use of sense.” Savitri-663 Savitri’s fulfilled vital was flower-sweet, adamant, passionate and calm. The vital substance and sensory organs can open themselves towards pure Divine Delight, which is an inlet of the ocean’s force and can retain their vital virginity. The first sign of Savitri’s vital virginity is that an inner law of beauty shaped her whole life; by the pressure of the Soul force ‘the proud ambition and its master lust’³¹ were transformed into instruments of great calm sway; ‘daily dwarf desire’³¹ was changed into a sweet and boisterous play; the second sign is that all her sense instincts or organs are in search of beyond sense pure delight; a power within and above shaped and moulded her sense; the body’s sense renounced its earthly look and Eternity’s contact broke the moulds of sense and kindled a Divine identity; by the pressure of true vital being, 'Age never came, care never lined the face;'⁶⁸ thirdly she gives no interest in human association which generally takes a vitalistic turn. The common earthbound Souls who generally draw irresistibly towards the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve, the Souls tempted by Nature have eaten, which is again mind and body’s faltering search through Prakriti’s possession of Purusha in Ignorance. A puritan God made pleasure a poisonous fruit or red drug in the marketplace of Death . Savitri symbolises all gross enjoyment of life as wine and projects the lord of Death as the ‘çupbearer of the wine;’³⁹ so in order to fight and conquer against Death one must give up all desire and earthly enjoyment and must turn inward. Right human relation becomes Godward, pure and virgin when the Prakriti , the Nature is possessed by the Purusha, the Soul. Savitri’s Supreme relation with Satyavan is still in higher Spiritual planes of Ishwara-Shakti oneness, Brahman-Maya oneness in the Supramental plane and Sat-Chit oneness in the Absolute plane, resulting in universal Action, Creation and descent of Ananda . This Ananda will not cancel but fulfils the human love and life will house God’s Love in Self and Nature. If a Sadhak's vital being is pure,⁶⁹ then he may be considered as an emanation of the Divine Mother and in his frontal Nature Kshetra Shakti of Psychic Soul force and Mahakali of the dynamic Spiritual Force will be active and he is considered fit to become the true leader of men. Mental Virginity: “Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,” Savitri-15 "Above mind’s twilight and life’s star-led night There gleamed the dawn of a spiritual day." Savitri-26 “Apart he lived in his mind’s solitude, A demigod shaping the lives of men: One soul’s ambition lifted up the race; A Power worked, but none knew whence it came. ” Savitri-44 “The Spirit’s bare and absolute potencies Burn in the solitude of the thoughts of God.” Savitri-57 “His wakened mind became an empty slate” Savitri-81 “A pure Thought-Mind surveyed the cosmic act” Savitri-259 “Or like a high-bred maiden with chaste eyes Forbidden to walk unveiled the public ways, She must in close secluded chambers move, Her feeling in cloisters live or gardened paths.” Savitri-496 “Banish all thought from thee and be God’s void.” Savitri-537 “Her mind now seemed like a vast empty room” Savitri-543 “A blank pure consciousness had replaced mind.” Savitri-545 “A mind delivered from all twilight thoughts,” Savitri-638 “My mind is a torch lit from the eternal sun,” Savitri-648 "The twilight realm passed fading from their souls, And Satyavan and Savitri were alone." Savitri-668 "Twilight and mist were exiles from that air, Night was impossible to such radiant heavens." Savitri-671 The surface mind of the common man is closed between two firmaments of (1) sight and sound or images and words, and (2) surface appearances and brute externals and is unwilling to plunge into the inner depth of Truth. This mind generally lives far from the authentic light and it has to learn the difficult lesson of opening towards the Divine wisdom. The first sign of Savitri’s mental virginity is that she loves mind’s solitude, which remains untouched in the battlefield, marts and crowded places; her mind was an enormously empty 'sea of white sincerity' resulting in the simple purity which knelt down before the seat of the Eternal. She is ‘forbidden to walk unveiled in public ways’²⁰ because the mental purity always insists on seclusion as the highest and best opportunity to multiply the value of Time, use time as a bank to accumulate Spiritual energy and economise the limited and passing moments towards God union. In the still mind or passive mind, a Timeless Ray descends into our heart and we are rapt into her eternity. Secondly, her thoughts either gleamed up from subliminal depths or leaped down from a Superconscient field and thus, the Unseen grew visible, audible, touchable and discernible and her mind became a vast empty slate to hold the Divine Wisdom or as King Aswapati experienced, “His (King Aswapati’s) mind was like a fire assailing heaven,” (Savitri-23); the third sign is that all the mind’s twilight thoughts were abolished and delivered to save her naked Self and transformed Nature. ‘A mind delivered from all twilight thoughts,’⁵² is the symbol of Savitri’s mental virginity and above the clear twilight of sattwic mind, ‘there gleamed the dawn of a spiritual day.’⁵³ Thus, the obscure physical mind, the impure vital mind and limiting intellect can be transformed into plenary Supramental illumination or “His (Satyavan’s) mind was open to her (Savitri’s) infinite mind.” (Savitri-394) If a Sadhak's mind or intellect is pure, then he may be considered as an emanation of the Divine Mother and in his frontal Nature Brahma Shakti of Psychic Soul force and Maheswari of the dynamic Spiritual Force will be active and he is considered fit to become a pioneer of evolution or lead humanity to a new height of Consciousness. Psychic Virginity: “An ocean of untrembling virgin fire” Savitri-16 “He dwelt in his self’s colourless purity” Savitri-297 “On the white purity of the Witness Soul.” Savitri-326 “In her young spirit yet untouched with tears. All beautiful things eternal seem and new To virgin wonder in her crystal soul.” Savitri-422 “But now the half-opened lotus bud of her heart Had bloomed and stood disclosed to the earthly ray; In an image shone revealed her secret soul.” Savitri-527 The Psychic being is the perennial virgin stationed in a mutable form, by whose influence the surrounding desire soul can regain its purity and retain the virginity of the Psychic sheath. Savitri, in her inner journey on the highway leading to the Soul, met at least ten signposts or ten traps, whose lure she must overcome in order to arrive at her Psychic being. They are identified as world of titans and asuras , the world of lower nature of forbidden joy, the world of vital mind surrounding the vital self, the world of physical mind, the world of schoolman mind, the world of fixed mind, the world of outer mind, the mother of seven Sorrows, the mother of (limited) Might and the mother of (limited) Light respectively. All these domains questioned Savitri’s Psychic virginity. They are all fire tests which the greatness of her Soul must overcome. The last three desire Souls surrounding the Psychic being are transformed into the mother of seven Delight or Vaisya Shakti , the mother of supreme Power, Kshetra Shakti and the Mother of supreme Light, Brahma Shakti . The first sign of Savitri’s Psychic virginity is that her Psychic being was that half opened lotus bud of the heart which bloomed and stood disclosed to the earthly ray and she called the mighty Mother of the worlds to make this earthly tenement her house; the waking witness Soul looks at the Truths unseen and scans the Unknown and all assumes a new marvelous face; secondly , after the Psychic being is opened, a mighty movement rocked the inner space and out of inconscient’s mindless and soulless night a flaming serpent rose and climbed mightily and stormily on its way and touched her six occult centres with its flaming mouth. Those centres, lotus of the head, lotus of the throat, the lotus of the heart, the navel lotus and two nether lotus centres bloomed and laughed surcharged with light and bliss and then at the crown of the head they joined the Eternal’s space. Thus, a firm ground was made for Heaven’s descending Might and the third sign is that she surrendered herself entirely into the great World-Mother’s hands and she obeyed her sole supreme command in the enigma of the inconscient’s world. She accepted the earth, the woods, the thatched house, never spared the labour of the broom, the jar and the well and heap the fire and no slight task she allowed to others; thus, in the simplest movement of Psychic action she could bring strange Divinity and Oneness with earth’s growing robe of Light and her commonest, smallest and meanest doing welled from an inner Light. The kingdom of this new and marvelous change within and its magic charm was felt by all those who live around her. Beasts and birds forgot their strife and lived at ease, flowers and trees felt unknown joy and mild ascetics of the wood received a sudden greatening of their lonely muse. Spiritual Virginity: “So now his spirit shone out wide, blank, pure: His wakened mind became an empty slate On which the Universal and Sole could write.” Savitri-81 “Immaculate in the Spirit’s deathless air,” Savitri-109 “And objects are its pure spiritual shapes;” Savitri-298 “On sorrowless heights no winging cry disturbs, Pure and untouched above this mortal play Is spread the spirit’s hushed immobile air.” Savitri-320 “A golden virgin in her cavern car” Savitri-384 “But truest truth of that which in thee sleeps. For such is thy spirit, a sister of the gods,” Savitri-420 “But the spirit’s consent is needed for each act” Savitri-457 “A calm slow sun looked down from tranquil heavens.” Savitri-532 “Virgin conception of a bodiless god” Savitri-609 The Spiritual Being is the eternal virgin whose release can dim the moon and it is stationed in an immutable form, by whose influence Fate’s dark and lethal orb over Satyavan’s cherished head was transformed into a golden circle of mystic Sun. She received protection from the luminous cell of the Spiritual sheath. The first sign of Savitri’s Spiritual virginity is the grace and beauty of Spiritual light which is a blank pure Consciousness of celestial fire that replaced the mind and ascends to the emptiness of the Supreme so that all in her may reach the absolute; the second sign is that Spiritual virginity opens the doors of sheer truth discernment, sheer truth vision, sheer truth hearing and sheer truth touch, it understood without the aid of thought, uttered what is needed to be said, did what is needed to be done, a pure perception was the only power; she has come down to this suffering world to help a blind and suffering mortal race, to open to Light the eyes that could not see and to bring down bliss into heart of grief; thirdly , development of Spiritual Sheath ensures a secured and enlightened earthly life without any danger of Spiritual fall and possession of a Bliss that none can ever hope to taste and experience of a Love without the Lover and the Beloved. So Savitri recommends that ‘we must search our nature with spiritual fire’³² and ‘must break’³ ² all earth’s smallness. It further asks not to remain content with one exclusive conquered realm and adventure all to include all and make the whole world under her possession. Supramental Virginity: “And high dependencies of her virgin sun” Savitri-124 “O sunlight moulded like a golden maid?” Savitri-400 “Still rigid in her golden motionless pose, A statue of the fire of the inner sun.” Savitri-477 “All that thou doest, all our minds conceive, Like the strong sun that serves earth from above.” Savitri-562 “A virgin unity, a luminous spouse” Savitri-695 “With violent breaking of its virgin sleep.” Savitri-721 The Supramental Being is the virgin Source of all existence, by whose movement this whole existence can retain the integral virginity, including the virginity of the Inconscient Sheath. It is this integral virginity that gives birth to the status of eternal Bride and eternal Bridegroom for which Savitri and Satyavan were destined for the earthly play. When two Souls are united Divinely, then their union is virgin unity and Supramental light is radiated from their bodies. Here, Savitri and Satyavan were luminous Spouses through their dual Divinity and virgin unity. The first sign of Supramental virginity is that in its Truth there is no place of negation and she stands firmly on earth with her status of ‘the Lover’s everlasting Yes;’⁴⁵ an invisible sunlight ran within her veins, flooded her brain with overwhelming light and woke a wider sight than earth could know; a lightning from the height entered the hell of the abyss; it is a flame that cancels death in mortal things and radiates the human limbs that knows not birth and death; her kindly care is a sweet temperate sun which has the capacity to embrace all human contacts without any disturbance, discord and disharmony; the second sign is that she wishes to make all one immense embrace and she might house in it all living things; there are regions where her absolute powers meet and made circle of bliss with married hands, light stood embraced by light and fire wedded fire to find all the world within her lonely breast; thoughts rose in her that no earthly mind can hold; Savitri had developed in her lonely days the inner capacity in Consciousness of serving the earth from above like the strong splendid Sun and lighting around her, she kindles all other suns and the whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun; thirdly, a mighty transformation came on her as heaven’s light consented to descent; her forehead’s span vaulted the Omniscient’s gaze, the Presence came down and held the lotus centre of her brow and the Divine Force opens the third mysterious eye; when the golden ecstatic light seized the brain then eternal Wisdom and Will captures the mortal being; it stirred in the lotus of the throat the song and in her speech throbbed the immortal Word; the God’s sun glided into the lotus of her heart and woke in it the Force that alters the Fate and when it came to the navel lotus centre made desire a pure celestial flame and when it broke into the nether centre where coiled World-Energy sleeps, smote the thousand hooded serpent Force and clasped the World-Self above. Bliss Virginity: “Virgin who comest perfected by joy” Savitri-424 “A priestess of immaculate ecstasies” Savitri-15 “One-pointed to the immaculate Delight,” Savitri-79 “Some passion of the inviolate purity Broke through, a ray of the original Bliss.” Savitri-123 “He is saved by her silence from his rack of self; In her tranquil beauty is his purest bliss.” Savitri-165 “Her body of beauty mooned the seas of bliss.” Savitri-314 “Bliss was the pure undying truth of things” Savitri-324 “O Bliss who ever dwellst deep-hid within While men seek thee outside and never find,” Savitri-345 “And from her (Savitri’s) eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.” Savitri-346 “In the soul’s unprofaned star-white recess They sojourned with an everliving Bliss;” Savitri-381 “Moon-bright thou livest in thy inner bliss.” Savitri-420 “His (Satyavan's) eyes keep a memory from a world of bliss.” Savitri-430 “The bliss that made the world in his body lived” Savitri-682 Savitri had brought with her human form the calm delight that weds one Soul to all and that is the key to the flaming door of ecstasy and the All Blissful smites with rapture the heart’s throb. Bliss Self is the ultimate virgin Power of existence, the Creatrix, the artist Bride of the Supreme, by whose intervention the whole existence retains its oneness with the Supreme and seeks for forms to manifest the Truth Supreme and sustains all other intermediate worlds for the dynamisation of multiple perfections. The first sign of all-creating unmanifest Bliss virginity is the manifestation of utter gladness in the trinity of the Enjoyer, the Enjoyed and the Delight that unites them; a giant drop of Bliss unknowable shatters the mortal flesh and with immortal pleasure cleansed and purified the whole Nature and the Soul became a fiery ocean of felicity; His bliss laughs to us or its call concealed like a far-heard unseen entrancing flute from the moonlit branches of the throbbing wood tempting our angry search and passionate cry; the second sign is that it manifested as trinity of the Lover, the Beloved and the Love, where Love has the capacity to heal all disorder and bitter cruelties of earth, turns worst into the best and sustains this creation; her love was not the hunger of the heart, nor was it the craving of a flesh and it came to her from All Bliss and to All Bliss it returns, and the third sign of Bliss virginity is that it is manifested as trinity of possessor of Beauty, the Beauty possessed and the Beauty. In beauty, she treasures the sunlight of her smile. The All Beautiful’s ray is a miracle in each shape and it is caught and flowered in Art and Life. The First Object of Virgins’ Fortress or the Time’s Virginity: “Creating in a young and virgin Time .” Savitri-38 “She has lured the Eternal into the arms of Time.” Savitri-178 “No silent peak is found where Time can rest.” Savitri-197 “A timeless Spirit was made the slave of the hours;” Savitri-268 “A marriage with eternity divinized Time.” Savitri-327 “Time was Eternity’s transparent robe.” Savitri-329 “His day is a moment in perpetual Time;” Savitri-336 “Linger not long with thy transmuting hand Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time, As if Time dare not open its heart to God.” Savitri-345 “The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed; Heavy and long are the years our labour counts” Savitri-345 “One human moment was eternal made.” Savitri-411 “Earth keeps for man some short and perfect hours” Savitri-421 “She crossed through spaces of a secret self And trod in passages of inner Time.” Savitri-490 “She passed beyond Time into eternity,” Savitri-555 “Eternity looked out from her on Time.” Savitri-557 “A Force descended trailing endless lights; Linking Time’s seconds to infinity,” Savitri-573 “Time travels towards revealed eternity.” Savitri-623 “The Eternal’s face was seen through drifts of Time.” Savitri-625 Time’s virginity can be retained by building a protective fence or shield in the subtle body, permitting only the Divine vibrations to enter in. Savitri during her inner journey and sadhana remembered one issue constantly that is Narad’s date. This memory helped her not to allow the time to run barren or preoccupied in transient enjoyments, rather she maintained her effort to retain Time’s virginity, where the marriage with the Eternity could be possible. This marriage is a constant accumulation of the Spiritual strength of the eternal Bride to make her eternal tie strong with her eternal Bridegroom. If Death can break this link or strong bond, then Satyavan must die; otherwise, they will enter some tremendous dawn of God and never may part again in Time. Savitri was anxious to compress time so as to experience centuries in one day or shuts eternity into an hour and she was interested in building a little room for timelessness and by deep union shut God as her cherished prisoner. A Divine Supramental force descended in her trailing endless light to link Time’s seconds to eternity. The Timeless has stationed Himself in emptiness so that the Soul might adventure in Time to reveal the mysteries of Eternity. Savitri claimed from Time, her will’s eternity and God, from His slipping moments. An inspired Knowledge lit the thought that glowed through centuries and sat enthroned within whose seconds illumined more than reason’s years. One can attract into time the Timeless Light and imprison eternity in the hours. One moment can fill God’s eternity and the might of the Eternal can fill in one human hour and with one gesture change all future time. Such is the promise of Savitri whose great act can unlock the doors of Fate and whose pressure on the golden bar of Time dares to open the Time’s heart to God. Man is a patient trustee of the slow eternal Time and waits for the Eternal’s hour of mighty transformation. "Slowly the light grows greater in the East, Slowly the world progresses on God’s road." (Savitri-510) The Time’s traveler of endless pilgrimage must explore a greater world of Self and Nature and fills his days with her celestial clasp. The world quivers with a God-light at its core and in Time’s deep heart high purposes move and life crumbles at its border and joins the infinity. The breath of Godhead in solitude greatens her human hour. The first objective of a more concentrated Divine Centre or Virgins’ Fortress is to safeguard Time’s virginity from the invasion of various world forces and universal subconscient and open wide its door for marriage with Eternity or a captive life wedded her conqueror, the Supreme; thus, Time is divinised to become Eternity’s transparent robe and climbs back into undying Self through a golden ladder. The Second Object of the Virgins’ Fortress or Virgin Fire: “An ocean of untrembling virgin fire ” Savitri-16 “A fire that seemed the body of a god Consumed the limiting figures of the past And made large room for a new self to live.” Savitri-81 “A Nature lifted by a larger breath Plastic and passive to all-shaping Fire, Answers the flaming Godhead’s casual touch:” Savitri-112 “In us too the intuitive Fire can burn; An agent Light, it is coiled in our folded hearts, On the celestial levels is its home: Descending, it can bring those heavens here.” Savitri-112 “He served the sessions of the triple Fire.” Savitri-299 “Then meet a greater god, thy self beyond Time.” Savitri-375 “Then Savitri by her doomed husband sat, Still rigid in her golden motionless pose, A statue of the fire of the inner sun.” Savitri-477 “The Woman answered not. Her high nude soul, Stripped of the girdle of mortality, Against fixed destiny and the grooves of law Stood up in its sheer will a primal force. Still like a statue on its pedestal, Lone in the silence and to vastness bared, Against midnight’s dumb abysses piled in front A columned shaft of fire and light she rose.” Savitri-581 “My soul can meet them (Law and Fate) with its living fire.” Savitri-589 Its second objective is to bridge the gulf between the dream truth and earth fact through annulment of manifold void and oblivion and sharp self-seeking tears the Consciousness that can keep the passage open for the virgin Fire. The Spirit in an ignorant world must rescue its prisoned Consciousness. During the auspicious period when the inner fires are lit and the life’s cherished guests are kept outside, our Spirit sits alone and bridges its gulfs; a wider Consciousness then opens its doors and leaves a huge white stamp upon our subtle and bright sheaths. Thus, Nature is lifted to a wider breath and becomes plastic and passive to an all-shaping fire and always Heaven’s truth brood in life’s nether deep and even in her obscurest members burns that fire. If our Souls could see, love and clasp God’s Truth, if His infinite radiance would seize our hearts then earthly life becomes the Life Divine. The Psychic being enjoys more power than the Gods and the living Guru . When Savitri’s mother asked Narad to change the destiny of her daughter, he refused as that was beyond his capacity. Only Savitri’s Psychic being has the power to change Satyavan’s destiny. The discovery of the Soul or the virgin Fire is identified as ‘one man’s perfection’⁴¹ or ‘one soul’s ambition’⁴² that can still save the world and lift up the Consciousness of the whole race. Out of the wood and stone of our nature’s stuff a temple is built where the Psychic God can dwell safely with deep agreement between Truth and Life and one needs no outer guidance. He felt the unending future and lived with the unbeginning past and the Soul’s experience of time and space changes as one moves in the multiple inner worlds. The Third Object of the Virgins’ Fortress or the Virgin Sun: “And high dependencies of her virgin sun ” Savitri-124 “Climbed through white rays to meet an unseen Sun.” Savitri-23 “His soul, mind, heart became a single sun;” Savitri-37 “We cannot free our gaze to reach wisdom’s sun.” Savitri-53 “And lived in the rays of an intuitive Sun.” Savitri-299 “And in the ray reveal the parent sun:” Savitri-312 “O Truth defended in thy secret sun,” Savitri-345 “And the inner sight adored an unseen sun.” Savitri-351 “Thus lighting earth around her like a sun,” Savitri-366 “The sunlight’s radiant blessing clasped my brow,” Savitri-404 “And sunlight grows a shadow of thy hue” Savitri-408 “But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet And His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.” Savitri-408 “And lives in a great light of inner suns.” Savitri-421 “Aspiring to live near the deathless sun.” Savitri-452 “A ray has touched him from the eternal sun;” Savitri-622 “Heaven’s sun forces its way through death and night; Its light is seen upon our being’s verge.” Savitri-648 There is a Consciousness to which the mind cannot touch, speech cannot utter and thought cannot reveal. It is the source of all conscious existence, thought and idea. At Savitri’s will the inscrutable Supermind leans down inverting the Spirit’s apex towards life to control its restless seas; our human ignorance moves towards the Truth to make Nescience the field of Omniscience and Nature climbs towards God’s identity and canalises the seas of Omnipotence. A Divine force flows through tissue, vein and body’s cell, all the thought, breath, speech and act shall be the glow of the suns, every feeling, tissue and cell takes part in beatitude. Often a lustrous inner and greater dawn shall come; common nature and common acts feel a wide uplift and the body’s cells must hold the Immortal’s flame. The Truth Light strikes by surprise the Nature’s massive roots of trance and wake the dumb Self in the Inconscient depths and raise the lost power of Inconscient Self from the python sleep. A golden fire invaded and burned the night’s heart, Inconscient grew conscious, Night felt the living touch and transformed till a few black remnants stained that Ray. The third objective of the Virgins’ Fortress is to build a similar bridge between the subtle physical and the highest experience of Truth Supreme through the movement of Consciousness that seems to recoil from reaching its Source, the Virgin Sun. How can one cross the gulf between her dream world and the Truth Supreme whose fragment can light the Soul? When Savitri was able to cross this gulf, the Supramental Light invaded all the occult centres and finally captured and possessed Death , the Godhead of the Inconscient world. A Light like a burning tongue licked up his thought, heart, veins and his darkness perished in her blaze. Her mastering word commanded every limb and left no room for his enormous dark will to activate. His body was eaten by light and the Spirit devoured. In the dream twilight of that symbol world, the Death vanished into the Void of Inconscient abandoning the hope to make man’s Soul his prey. So it is through activation of Supramental Force that the Death’s reign can be annulled from the earthly scene. The Fourth Object of the Virgins’ Fortress or the Virgin Earth: "A crown of the architecture of the worlds, A mystery of married Earth and Heaven Annexed divinity to the mortal scheme." Savitri-25 “And earth grow unexpectedly divine.” Savitri-55 “There are brighter earths and wider heavens than ours.” Savitri-111 “Heaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure ” Savitri-123 “She conquers earth, her field, then claims the heavens.” Savitri-134 “The world quivers with a God-light at its core,” Savitri-168 “On every plane, this Greatness must create. On earth, in heaven, in hell she is the same; Of every fate she takes her mighty part.” Savitri-179 “Earth she would lift to neighbourhood with heaven,” Savitri-196 “Curing the antithesis twixt heaven and hell” Savitri-235 “Earth-nature stood reborn, comrade of heaven.” Savitri-236 “Earth’s consciousness may marry with the Sun,” Savitri-256 “She made earth her home, for whom heaven was too small.” Savitri-275 “Earth was the comrade of a happy sun.” Savitri-351 “Earth couched alone with her great lover Heaven,” Savitri-390 “Earth shall be made a home of Heaven’s light," Savitri-451 “Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven Or Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state.” Savitri-486 “Her Spirit saw the world as living God;” Savitri-556 “Heaven ever young and earth too firm and old” Savitri-603 “Too far thy heavens for me from suffering men. Imperfect is the joy not shared by all.” Savitri-686 “Make earth almost the mate and peer of heaven,” Savitri-706 The earth could have been made equal and peer of heaven and heaven’s joy could have stabilised here, had the earth been pure and virgin. If the dream of the Virgins’ Fortress can extend towards the realisation of a Virgin Earth, then through the earth’s virgin form the Formless will shine with all resplendence and glory and establish the empire of the Soul and lift the earth to the neighbourhood with Heaven. Thus, all discords are healed that Time’s torn heart has made and immortality captures Time and carries ahead the Life. Her Spirit saw this apparent world as the living God and all was He. This wide world was her Spirit’s circumference and her Being was a circle without circumference and she surpassed all cosmic bound and more and more spread into infinity. She was the subconscient life of tree and flower who climbed in man to God. The cosmos flowered in her and she was its bed. This apparent surrounding world and the vast darkness of the Inconscient world have always questioned Savitri’s virgin Power and mocked her mighty mortal birth and death. It is easy for the God to build Heaven, Earth is His difficult field. Earth can retain her virginity through the tapasya of her fit and high Souls, who can incarnate the white passion of the Divine Mother’s force and call down to earth some living form of her, or Heaven shall lean down from all sides of earth to transform earth life to equal heaven. Supermind shall be his nature’s fount and a mightier race shall inhabit the mortal’s world. The Eternal Truth shall bring a magic change moulding his thoughts and acts, the Divine harmony, beauty and joy shall mould his life and even the body shall remember the God. The Superman shall be born as Nature’s King and make Earth almost a mate and peer of heaven. His presence shall transfigure Matter’s world and light up Truth’s fire in Nature’s night. Even the multitude shall hear the Divine voice, turn to commune with the Spirit within, enter into light and strive to obey the higher Spiritual law. Mere men into Spiritual being grow; Truth will dictate their life, thought, speech and act; common natures feel the wide uplift, common acts are illumined by the Spirit’s ray and Deity will be revealed in common things. Earth can be made a stepping stone to Heaven. The Soul saw Heaven’s limiting boundaries and a joy exceeding Earth’s and Heaven’s poured down. Earth will be a field and camp of God pitched in human time. Seven immortal sublime subtle Earths were seen behind this gross earth and they arose beneath the triple mystic Heaven of Sat, Chit and Ananda. Thus, all Earth becomes the Spirit’s manifest home or we realise a Supramentalised earth which becomes equal and peer of heaven. Recapitulation: “Iconoclast and shatterer of Time’s forts , Overleaping limit and exceeding norm, It lit the thoughts that glow through the centuries And moved to acts of superhuman force.” Savitri-259 “The string of forts t hat make the frail defence Safeguarding us against the enormous world,” Savitri-528 Savitri book has issued an injunction on the ‘too great’³³ Souls to walk alone in ‘mighty solitude’³ ³ and discourages them to waste time in their effort to create a Soul of their own kind or lokasangraha ; for an earth-nature-bound Soul cannot bear the Spirit’s absolute power and he cannot bear a million wounds of time. These great Souls' own strength is their most faithful and precious companion to tread the difficult and dateless path in the world journey, inner exploration, world transformation and to help inwardly humanity’s blind and suffering life. Savitri book also proposes developed Soul Sadhak to accept the Psychic being as the only and one and the best friend of his whole life and all life or "His only comrade is the Strength within."³ ³ The above injunction can be a little modified and extended to seeking Souls, Sadhaka Souls, child Souls and integrated Souls. A moderate seeker of the Virgins’ Fortress must first seek the protection of his (her) virginity through Savitri’s touch and then he must be preoccupied entirely in integrating and strengthening this purity, thus, ascending himself to the status of a true virgin Sadhaka . He will adore Savitri as the Protector and Lord of Virginity and shall aspire for her Touch, Influence and Presence wholly. A virgin Sadhaka of the Virgins’ Fortress will open himself only towards her Law of Virginity and obey her command alone. He will identify that all the problems of existence can be resolved by restoring the virgin Consciousness. Thus, he will ascend to the status of consecrated virgin Child and will have two realisations simultaneously that of (1) The Mother as the manifestation of Savitri in this life and (2) Savitri as the manifestation of The Mother in all life. Alternatively, he will realise that the exclusive Mother has extended herself as the All-Mother of All Life and the All-Mother has chosen a mortal birth for diffusion of Her Divinity in this life. He will accept this world as God fulfilled in outwardness and foresees in this half-built and half-finished world its large virgin future. Thus, he can ascend to the status of an Integrated virgin Yogi and will be preoccupied in his entire effort to reveal Savitri, the All-Mother in humanity. The True Virgins’ Fortress will stand as a substitute of The Mother’s Fortress of extreme Spirituality and will survive as the highest hope of an evolutionary accelerator for the whole of humanity. This world itself is now a fortress of moderate Spirituality where men pursue growth, progress and change through the universalisation of Religion and Science. The pace of this growth can take a decisive change when humanity turns towards Spirituality which is a leap of action from the unconscious Yoga of Nature to the conscious Yoga of the Soul. Savitri draws heaven-seeking and world-shunning liberated Souls earthward to reconcile Spirit and Nature and fills in them with the equal Divine Presence and builds in the abysm of hell a road for Heaven’s descent. Thus, Earth retains her virginity and becomes a temple ground of the self-existent Virgins’ Fortress of a great golden dawn. If an individual is having direct contact with the Divine and if he utilises this Dynamic Divine union initially for individual transformation of Nature and finally for world transformation,⁵⁵ then a Divine Centre or Ashram is born. Integral Yoga foresees a hierarchy of a collective body with one liberated Soul at its centre, known as the ‘Divine Centre,’ or collective group with more than one liberated Gnostic Soul or ‘spread beyond the individual’⁵ ⁶ known as the ‘Gnostic Centre’ or a Centre without Soul Centre/Central Representative, known as ‘priestless shrine’⁵⁷ where all are liberated souls, identified as ‘virgin bridals of the dawn’⁵⁸ symbolising the purity of collective living or ‘citizens of that mother State’⁵⁹ symbolising selfless Spiritual fosterers or ‘nude god-children’⁶⁰ who ‘steeped existence in their youth of soul.’⁶¹ The action of the Divine Mother in a rare ‘priestless shrine’ beyond the Divine Centre will be the pursuit of the Divine in isolation, alone, without the aid of collectivity, without the law of collective living, without the help of fixed Shastra and the flow of the Transcendent and Universal Divine Love will be further reinforced through realisation of ‘seven-fold Personal Divine Love.’⁶⁵ Before meeting Paramatma Satyavan, Paraprakriti Savitri came across twelve types of liberated Souls,⁶² who were having Divine realisations in twelve specialised fields. They were satisfied with their partial Spiritual achievements and were considered unfit to hold Savitri’s comprehensive Divine Love, and hence, Virgins’ Fortress could not be dreamed with these liberated Souls. These Master Souls were fit to build Ascetics’ Fortress, the Divine Centre and the Gnostic Centre. To hold Savitri’s comprehensive Divine Love or ‘hold God’s birth,’ a Soul is ‘made ready through a thousand years.’⁶³ Before discovering a Virgins’ Fortress without, one has to discover the Virgin’s fortress within, of meeting ground of Paramatma Satyavan and Paraprakriti Savitri in the heart centre or ‘The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s’⁶⁴ Supreme door. OM TAT SAT References: 1: Savitri-44, 2: Savitri-170, 3: Savitri-479, 4: Savitri-380, 5: Savitri-384, 6: Savitri-385, 7: Savitri-389, 8: Savitri-391, 9: Savitri-392, 10: Savitri-392, 11: Savitri-393, 12: Savitri-411, 13: Savitri-411, 14: Savitri-435, 15: Savitri-468, 16: Savitri-724, 17: Savitri-187, 18: Savitri-81, 19: Savitri-14, 20: Savitri-496, 21: Savitri-48, 22: Savitri-175, 23: Savitri-211, 24: Savitri-428, 25: Savitri-412, 26: “We have the emergence of that Conscious Being in an involved and inevitably evolving Life, Mind and Supermind as the condition of our activities; for it is this evolution which has enabled man to appear in Matter and it is this evolution which will enable him progressively to manifest God in the body, — the universal Incarnation.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-64, 27: Savitri-126, 28: Savitri-430, 29: Savitri-501, 30: Savitri-343, 31: Savitri-530, 32: Savitri-240, 33: "Whoever is too great must lonely live. Adored he walks in mighty solitude; Vain is his labour to create his kind, His only comrade is the Strength within."Savitri-368, "As a star, uncompanioned, moves in heaven Unastonished by the immensities of Space, Travelling infinity by its own light, The great are strongest when they stand alone ." Savitri-460, “Moreover, he who wants to do “intensive sadhana” must be able to isolate himself from his surroundings and, if necessary, to sit in deep meditation even on a battlefield in the midst of the roaring guns.” TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-47 “It seems to me that humanity has made some progress and the true victory must be won in life itself…You must know how to live alone with the Eternal and Infinite in the midst of all circumstances. You must know how to be free, with the Supreme as your companion, in the midst of all occupations. That is indeed the true victory.” The Mother/TMCW-3/Questions and Answers-1929/p-276 “Then there were the few—the rare individuals— who are ready to make the necessary effort to prepare themselves for the transformation and to attract the new forces, try to adapt matter, seek the means of expression and so forth. Those are ready for Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga. They are very few. There are even those who have the sense of sacrifice and are ready have a hard and difficult life, as long as it leads them or helps them towards this future transformation. But they should not, they should in no way try to influence others and make them share their own effort: that would be quite unjust – not only unjust, but extremely clumsy because it would alter the universal – or at least terrestrial – rhythm and movement, and instead of helping, it would cause conflicts and result in chaos.” The Mother Agenda/27th November, 1965, 34: Savitri-652, 35: Savitri-690, 36: Savitri-397, 37: Savitri-57, 38: Savitri-224, 39: Savitri-431, 40: Savitri-385, 41: Savitri-531, 42: Savitri-44, 43: Savitri-10, 44: Savitri-19, 45: Savitri-310, 46: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-812, 47: Savitri-491, 48: Savitri-497, 49: Savitri-163, 50: Savitri-500, 51: “She (Mother of seven sorrows) looked out far and saw from inner mind” Savitri-503 “August on her seat in the inner world of Mind, The Mother of Might looked down on passing things,” Savitri-508 “She (Mother of Light) came into a high and happy space (of inner mind), A wide tower of vision whence all could be seen” Svitri-514 52: Savitri-638, 53: Savitri-26, 54: “Since you feel that you are weak in regard to women, never touch a woman. Never allow a woman to touch you.” TMCW-17/More Answers from the Mother/p-13, 55: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-58, 56: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-90, 57: Savitri-368, 58: Savitri-401, 59: Savitri-262, 60: Savitri-126, 61: Savitri-127, 62: Savitri-382, 63: Savitri-398, 64: Savitri-705, 65: “Discipleship to God the Teacher, sonship to God the Father, tenderness of God the Mother, clasp of the hand of the divine Friend, laughter and sport with our comrade and boy-Play-fellow, blissful servitude to God the Master, rapturous love of our divine Paramour, these are seven beatitudes of life in the human body. Canst thou unite all these in a single supreme and rainbow-hued relation? Then hast thou no need of any heaven and thou exceedest the emancipation of the Adwaitin.” SABCL/17/The Hour of God-137 (Above Aphorism hints that seven-fold personal relation with the Divine in Psychic and Supramental plane of an integral Yogi is more precious than the realisation of impersonal Divine in Spiritual plane of the Adwaitin.), “(The Divine is) the perfect Personality capable of all relations even to the most human, concrete and intimate; for he is friend, comrade, lover, playmate, guide, teacher, master, ministrant of knowledge or ministrant of joy, yet in all relations unbound, free and absolute. This too the divinised man becomes in the measure of his attainment...” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita-141, “But behind all these and in them he (a Sadhaka) has felt a Divinity who is all these things, a Bringer of Light, a Guide and All-Knower, a Master of Force, a Giver of Bliss, Friend, Helper, Father, Mother, Playmate in the world-game, an absolute Master of his being, his soul’s Beloved and Lover. All (the seven-fold personal) relations known to human personality are there in the soul’s contact with the Divine; but they rise towards super human levels and compel him (a Sadhaka) towards a divine nature.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-129, 66: "The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings would not matter; for the divine Guide within is not offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of faith or repelled by our weakness; he has the entire love of the mother and the entire patience of the teacher. " Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-64, 67: (King Aswapati said Savitri) "Virgin who comest perfected by joy , Reveal the name thy sudden heart-beats learned. Whom hast thou chosen, kingliest among men?” Savitri-424, "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 Jiva stand together revealed as of one essence of being, the Father and the Son of certain symbolisms, the Divine Being and the divine Man who comes forth from Him born of the higher divine Nature, the virgin Mother , para prakriti, para maya , into the lower or human nature." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-162-163, 68: Savitri-126, 69: "Maheshwari’s natural place is in the higher consciousness above mind, for she is the wideness and largeness and wisdom of the Divine. Mahakali acts most naturally through the higher vital which is the instrument of force and power. Mahalakshmi acts through the heart — in your case at present she is acting through the mind also, though that is less usual — ordinarily it is Mahasaraswati." CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-66 Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: “An incarnation is always through a human mother, though there have been one or two cases in which a virgin birth has been proclaimed (Christ, Buddha ). The only other meaning — unless we suppose an unprecedented miracle — might be a descent such as sometimes happens, the Godhead manifesting in somebody who at birth was a Vibhuti, not at once the full incarnation.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-400 , “Whatever is significant in the outward life is so because it is a symbol of what has been realised within himself and one may go on and say that the inner life also is only significant as an expression, a living representation of the movement of the Divinity behind it. That is why we need not enquire whether the stories about Krishna were transcripts, however loose, of his acts on earth or are symbol-representations of what Krishna was and is for men, of the Divinity expressing itself in the figure of Krishna. Buddha’s r enunciation, his temptation by Mara , his enlightenment under the Bo-Tree are such symbols, so too the virgin birth , the temptation in the desert, the crucifixion of Christ are such symbols true by what they signify, even if they are not scrupulously recorded historical events.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-479

"And with my nameless influence fill men’s lives." Savitri-703 The True Leader of Men "Yes, there are happy ways near to God’s sun; But few are they who tread the sunlit path; Only the pure in soul can walk in light. An exit is shown, a road of hard escape From the sorrow and the darkness and the chain; But how shall a few escaped release the world? The human mass lingers beneath the yoke. Escape, however high, redeems not life, Life that is left behind on a fallen earth. Escape cannot uplift the abandoned race Or bring to it victory and the reign of God. A greater power must come, a larger light. Although Light grows on earth and Night recedes, Yet till the evil is slain in its own home (The Task of last Avatar .) And Light invades the world’s inconscient base And perished has the adversary Force He (Avatar ) still must labour on, his work half done." Savitri-448-449 "When superman is born as Nature’s king His presence shall transfigure Matter’s world:" Savitri-708 The True Leader of Men “After I knew that God was a woman, I learned something from far-off about love; but it was only when I became a woman and served my Master and Paramour that I knew love utterly.”¹ Sri Aurobindo “There are two who are unfit for greatness and freedom, the man who has never been a slave to another and the nation that has never been under the yoke of foreigners.”² Sri Aurobindo “As the servant and disciple of the Master he (a Sadhaka ) has no business with pride and egoism because all is done for him from above, so also he has no right to despond because of his personal deficiencies or stumblings of his nature. For the Force that works in him is impersonal –or superpersonal- and infinite.”⁸ Sri Aurobindo The Mother observed in a letter to the disciple in 1939, “I do not see anybody in the world more qualified than Sri Aurobindo to lead you to the feet of the Mahashakti .” ²⁰ The Mother Sri Aurobindo confirms in The Synthesis of Yoga that a 'strong (man) but crude vital natures’¹⁷ cannot become the true leader of men. The Divine demands from him ‘subordination and service’¹⁸ for annulment of his ego and 'service and obedience'¹⁹ for taming the lower Nature. He must be 'truthful, pure, sincere, straightforward.'²⁷ His leadership of adventure of Consciousness depends on the development of pure womanhood ("I witnessed the virgin bridals of the dawn" Savitri-401), pure motherhood ("Ourselves are citizens of that mother State" Savitri-264), slavehood ("She (Savitri) made herself the diligent serf of all," Savitri-470), and discipleship (“And how shall the end be vain when God is guide?” Savitri-339) to the Divine Master. Now Integral Yoga needs true leadership from within and without. The False Leader of Men “Alarmed for her rule and full of fear and rage She prowls around each light that gleams through the dark Casting its ray from the spirit’s lonely tent, Hoping to enter with fierce stealthy tread And in the cradle slay the divine Child. ” Savitri-224 "Always the dark Adventurers seem to win; Nature they fill with evil’s institutes, Turn into defeats the victories of Truth, Proclaim as falsehoods the eternal laws, And load the dice of Doom with wizard lies; The world’s shrines they have occupied, usurped its thrones. " (Thus the Spiritual shrine acts as a cradle to slay the Divine Children, dvija .) Savitri-225-226 “Inconscient traders in bundles of contraries, They did what in others they would persecute; When their eyes looked upon their fellow’s vice, An indignation flamed, a virtuous wrath; Oblivious of their own deep-hid offence, Moblike they stoned a neighbour caught in sin .” Savitri-209 "The corruption of the best (the best Souls of earth) produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil….Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge (Psychic and Spiritual knowledge) is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences (of arts, of literature, of religion and of modern science) and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind’s horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment."³⁰ Sri Aurobindo "There are too many guides, founders of sects, heads of temples or monasteries, sadhus or saints who intervene between humanity and the supreme Lord under the pretext that they are intermediaries, and who keep for their glorified little persons the waves of gratitude that should go straight, straight to their true goal: the supreme Lord. I always refrain from having anything to do with those people, whether they are on earth or in the subtle world. Whatever the Lord wills for us He will always give us, and I prefer to receive it directly rather than through intermediaries, however great they may be."³¹ The Mother “As for the disciple, I would tell him: “In all cases, be faithful to your guru whoever he is; he will lead you as far as you can go. But if you have the good fortune to have the Divine as your guru , there will be no limit to your realisation.””³² The Mother Sri Aurobindo has not given much importance to external Guruhood, because throughout earth's history false Gurus have dominated earth's atmosphere. It is a privilege to find the true Guru within, as a Psychic being³³ subordinated by the true Guru without, with 'an unmixed vital and mental purity.'¹⁰ The leader of men who has not realised and seen ‘the One and Eternal’³ in all things, may be eminent in a larger and lesser circle and feels himself full of power, extraordinary increase of mentality and vitality which drives his thought and action and builds his life as a phenomenon of creative genius. He can act as a scourge, bringer of light, healer, a creator of beauty or the messenger of knowledge, a prolific writer, a server of humanity and the cosmic force which seeks to move him, seems often to surpass the measures of ordinary human limitation and relativity. When he speaks of God, he erects an image of Him which is a huge shadow of his nature, will, thought, quality and force. He serves the Master as his glorified ego and in Spiritual life this leadership turns towards ambition, pride, desire of greatness and a magnified individual personality. Although he has a larger sight and greater knowledge than ordinary men and advances a step beyond the limited physical and vital intelligence, a divided individualised life and force prevent him from really becoming master of the world. A light of superior consciousness acts within his narrow mental limits, but his being is not opened towards the plenary Light, Vision and Power and direct Divine realisation and neither ‘comes face to face with the Master’³ and the Lord, or capable of vast, comprehensive self-existent joy and multitudinous field of mystic Spiritual experience, or ascend into the original luminosity of overhead Consciousness, or descent of immense ranges of powers, influences and phenomena, or aware of a sea-like downpour of masses of spontaneous Knowledge. The Divine force acts in his imperfect nature more intensely than in others with flashes of inspiration and revelation and still an exalted ego stands between him and the Integral Truth and his fragmentary personality imposes and dominates the surroundings. So, a leader who has less purity and absence of a complete Spiritual emergence can use too often the Divine’s Name and may become His instrument but serves unconsciously His black masks and the powers of dark demons and titans or introduce dangerous falsity or he assumes a Divine Name ¹⁰ or proclaims to be Divine Messenger or believes himself to be a spokesperson of God to guide and rule others. The ceaseless murmur of the untransformed physical mind or tamasic mind and untransformed vital mind or rajasic mind are identified as inner enemy and false teacher and those who have sincerity and true outer guide can alone overcome their false dominance. Savitri book proposes how to overcome their influence: "A whisper lures to evil the human heart, It seals up wisdom’s eyes, the soul’s regard, It is the origin of our suffering here, It binds earth to calamity and pain. This all must conquer who would bring down God’s peace. This hidden foe lodged in the human breast Man must overcome or miss his higher fate. This is the inner war without escape." Savitri-448 Those who are slaves to the physical mind, tamasic mind, and vital mind, rajasic mind, or slaves to the lower instinct-driven nature can easily become servants to others. They cannot become the slave of an external human form and still more difficult to become slave of inner Psychic being and the Spiritual being. Most of the human beings live in their physical and vital mind and are obedient to their dominating murmurs, whispers and promptings which circumscribe life within the narrow walls of apparent possibility. Obedience, subordination and service to immediate authorised human recipients is an intermediate house of training which is felt indispensable in order to discipline the inertia of the physical and perversion of vital mind which later culminates in the obedience and consecration to the supreme Will and do whatever It dictates. The experience of slavehood is identified as two steps ahead of God's conscious servant and instrument. Those who have gone through the experience of utter obedience to immediate human authority or it is an exceedingly good fortune to obey an individual who has realised Divine, can easily go through the experience of manhood, soulhood, slavehood and childhood and become God’s instrument, slave and child and can obey the Spirit’s wide and Omnipotent urge. A servant serves and works for his Master, but he is categorised firstly, that he is having his own emotion, will and thought process of separate identity; in the second category he nurtures secretly hostility, perverted ill will, narrow carping and wrong thought, bivranti, and these influence make him crooked, dry, hard hearted, hollow and cruel; lastly, he cannot tolerate and destroys what is higher than him; so he even grows the impatient desire to become the successor, quarrels and conspires to end the life of his Master. So, the servants of the latter two types have little Spiritual future and of the former type can go through long training of experience of motiveless love, obedience, honesty, nobility of character, sincerity, straightforwardness, unselfishness, disinterested consecration to work. Thus, depending on the collaboration of untransformed Nature, he either arrives at the higher stage of instrument and slave or recoils into old life of brute inhumanity. A slave identifies himself with the will of the Master, does excessive and arduous labour and his separate identity is lost in the utter oneness. The attitude of his mind must not be, “This is my strength” or “Behold the God’s power in me,” but rather, “A Divine Power works in this mind and body and this is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in all conscious and living things and things apparently inconscient and inanimate.”⁴ If this large view of the One working in all becomes the entire experience, then the ego-sense will begin to be eliminated. Experience shows that, in proportion as one delivers oneself from the limiting mental and vital ego, he commands a wider life, a larger existence, a higher consciousness, a happier Soul state, even a greater knowledge, power and ceaseless consecrated action. Women are hated by mediaeval ascetics as a creation of God for the temptation of monks, and to shun all women is considered its panacea. If a woman has tempted him then the sense declares ‘he loves her.’ But a liberated Soul loves all beings equally and the Soul experiences unity with God. That is the all-embracing and all-exceeding formula of existence. So, to know God’s love utterly, one has to treat God and Woman nobly and adore, love and regard them equally. By becoming a virgin bridal, representing the purity of a woman, the softness, tenderness, sweetness and plasticity to change become predominant; the distance between Soul and Divine or Lover and Beloved is annulled and the ego vanishes to realise His Oneness. The Liberated Soul Centre There are two types of liberated Souls. The first type of liberated Soul or a Sadhaka of traditional Yoga, ‘may be content with a subtle and limited action within the old human surroundings which will in no way seek to change their outward appearance.’¹³ The second type of liberated Soul or a Sadhaka of integral Yoga, who ‘will not only alter the forms and sphere of its own external life but, leaving nothing around it unchanged or unaffected, create a new world or a new order.’¹³ Sri Aurobindo insists that the second type of liberated Souls remain accountable for their Sadhana through large Divine action, record the descending overhead Divine Wisdom and enrich Earth's atmosphere through the descent of Divine Love, Delight and Beauty. The aim of the liberated Soul⁹ Centre is not to become great, luminous, strong and powerful, an aggrandisement of the personal force and motives of self-assertion but he must be self-fulfilled by Yoga and is capable of accepting and transforming all negation and infirmity in his extended universalised Consciousness. His sole aim is a pure Spiritual perfection, a shadowless Bliss, a finding of the true Self and union with the Divine by putting on the Divine Consciousness and Divine Nature and a life governed and formed from within outwards in which the source of all thought, will and action shall be the Spirit working through the Truth and the Divine law which are self-existent and spontaneous in their self-fulfilment. Discovery of the truth of one's own Being, followed by All-Being, must be the master motive. He must be capable of the eternal unity between the Self and all existences. In the Spiritual order of things, the greater he projects his views, ideas and aspirations, the greater the Truth that seeks to descend upon his life and he has the responsibility to manifest much more of that which he secretly is. With the increase of purity, an overhead luminous Consciousness begins to penetrate and the gate lies wide open to the possibility of extending his Consciousness beyond the present limit. He realises himself as an embodied Soul through whose sacrificial action the cosmic Nature seeks to fulfil itself, and he emerges from the darkness of Ignorance towards a light of Knowledge that is growing upward towards an unforeseen culmination. The Universalised Liberated Soul Centre “...If thou canst not be the slave of all mankind, thou art not fit to be its master, and if thou canst not make thy nature as Vasishtha’s cow of plenty with all mankind to draw its wish from her udders, what avails thy leonine supermanhood?”⁵ Sri Aurobindo “To be the master of the world would indeed be supreme felicity, if one were universally loved; but for that one would have to be at the same time the slave of all humanity.”⁶ Sri Aurobindo "She (Savitri) made herself the diligent serf of all," Savitri-470 The Spiritual man is equal Souled to all things and he lives with the sense of oneness with all creatures. Through above message, integral Yoga issues injunction on developed Soul to serve mankind arduously by becoming its slave or does good of all creature by movement of universal Consciousness. The personality of a mere man is only a formation of superficial mental consciousness with limited, restricted formations of powers, qualities and habits. To lose surface personality is necessary if we are to gain our true Soul personality, still more necessary if we are to gain universality and rise into transcendence. The Psychic personality of a man flowers as the Saint, the Sage and the Seer and when it reaches its full strength, it turns the being towards Supreme Truth, Beauty, Love, Bliss and Largeness and opens towards Spiritual Compassion, Universality and Oneness. If the Individual can become one with the All-Will then he can be the master of All-Force and the evolution of all the faculties of the Spirit, immense ranges of Powers, Influences, phenomena begin to descend covertly upon him and some of them can realise immediately in the order of the physical world and the rest await their time and proper circumstance for revelation in physical term and form. An integral Yogi’s experience of slavehood and womanhood will be extended towards all humanity with the Impersonalisation and Universalisation of the Consciousness. He will simultaneously live himself as the follower, seeker of integral truth, disciple, instrument and child of the Supreme as everything descends constantly to him from above as divine Will, divine Wisdom and divine Love. The above seven-fold self-concentration of the Spiritual man is subordinated by seven-fold self-expansion as discussed below. A liberated Soul can extend his relation with the brother Souls by rising in Consciousness and developing a fragment of the Divine’s self-expansive sevenfold personality of Master, Teacher, Father, Mother, Friend, Lover and the Playmate. As he ascends in Yoga or in Consciousness, he moves towards the complete perfection of the above-mentioned personalities. Then for him there is no need of escape into Heaven and he exceeds the emancipation of the Adwaitin , extinction of Buddhist Nirvana, siddhis, perfection of intermediate planes of Consciousness of the Tantric, Sadharmya Mukti , liberation of Nature of Karma Yoga, Sajujya Mukti, experience of Oneness with the Divine of Jnana Yoga and Samipya Mukti, dwelling of the Soul in the Divine of Bhakti Yoga. The universal Man, the cosmic Purusha in humanity, is developing in the human race the power that shall grow to Supermind and Spirit and become the Godhead in man who is aware of his true and integral Self and the Divine universality of his nature. The transformation of the whole race from Mental into Spiritual being is possible by general admission of the self-law of supreme Truth which is above all standards, a supreme and universal self-existent Good, a widespread endeavour, a pure plasticity of luminous Consciousness, conscious concentration and constant upward effort and can be extraordinarily effective if it can find a powerful individual to embody, express, lead and organise it. Recapitulation “For the seeker of the integral Yoga… will meet him (the Divine) in the faces of the Gods, his cosmic personalities supporting the World-Play, detect him behind the mask of the Vibhutis, embodied World-Forces or human Leaders, reverence and obey him in the Guru, worship him in the Avatar .”⁷ Sri Aurobindo “Help men, but do not pauperise them of their energy; lead and instruct men, but see that their initiative and originality remain intact; take others into thyself, but give them in return the full godhead of their nature. He who can do this is the leader and the guru. ”¹⁵ Sri Aurobindo “It has always been said that to take disciples means to take upon yourself the difficulties of the disciples as well as your own. Of course, if the Guru does not identify himself with the disciple, does not take him into his own consciousness, keeps him outside and only gives him upadesa , leaving him to do the rest himself, then the chance of these effects is much diminished, made practically nil.”¹⁶ Sri Aurobindo If thou hast become an ‘ardent slave’¹² of thy ‘sensuous will,’¹² then thou art fit to be an instrument of desire and lead an ordinary worldly life. If thou hast become a slave of any intermediate living human Consciousness,² then thou art fit to be an instrument of the highest Divine Consciousness and lead a Spiritual life. If thou hast become the slave of the Divine or the Spirit, then thou art fit to serve and become the slave of humanity. If thou hast become a slave of the whole of mankind, then thou art fit to become its Master. If thou hast gone beyond all pride and egoism then thou art fit to become the disciple of the Divine. If instead of loving woman thou canst become a virgin woman, then thou art fit to hold the Divine’s Love. The true leader of men must radiate the double perfection of (1) union with the Supreme and (2) its universalised individuality that must radiate from him Oneness with the Universe and its Beings. This experience culminates in his Spiritual experience of Oneness with all creatures and his Oneness with the Eternal. He will lead the human race forward Spiritually through his Influence and large world action. He becomes a light and a power of the Truth to which he has climbed and a means of others’ ascension. The pathfinder or the path-leader is one who has realised the Truth and is able to communicate the light and the experience. He is a strong guide and instructor who takes by the hand and carries over difficult passages and points out the way. According to his place, he would take 'equal delight'²⁸ to rule and lead all those who are behind him in Consciousness and subordinating himself to all those who are ahead of him in cognition or ‘Of mastery’s joy and the joy of servitude.’'²⁹ Thus, the triple status of womanhood extended as virgin Mother to become God’s love utterly, slavehood extended as Divine Worker to become one with the Divine Master and Lord concealed in all humanity and discipleship to the Supreme from whom he receives all immaterial and material things constantly, becomes the secret of true life and is extended as true leadership. Avataras are also individual strong brother¹¹ Soul power on the surface, Yantra , and manifestation of special Divine Force from behind the veil, Vibhuti. Similarly, in Yantra and Vibhuti, the strong Avatara force can be active intermittently. King Aswapati, Satyavan and Savitri are symbolically identified here as the developed Souls of egoless, consecrated, faithfully pure leaders, instruments, emanations, and incarnations, destined to drag ahead the whole of humanity by the sheer Power of Their slavehood, discipleship and womanhood through the accumulation of Yoga Shakti, Chetana Shakti and Matri Shakti. Thus, Savitri as leader¹⁴ of Men, Gods and Asuras walked behind them and they, as obedient followers of her Will walked in front and onward they travelled in this Spiritual journey through drifting time and glimmering mists. When she stumbled as Divine Guide, all her disciples too stumbled behind her steps and each and every Spiritual fall was a Spiritual necessity on the unknown path leading towards an unknowable Goal. As Master of the world, she serves earth from below like a slave and from above like a strong Sun-Light and the whole world is held within her supreme Consciousness. Thus, in integral Yoga, the gathering together of devotees, the lokasamgraham of the Gita is further modified into three parts. The first part confirms that a Sadhaka of integral Yoga must adhere to ‘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.’²² He should not ‘be too eager to help others’²⁵ that ‘draws away from the inner work’²⁵ and he should not be surrounded with any human admirers, which will lead him towards the Spiritual fall.²³ In order to open towards the ingress of new Spiritual material and new realisation,‘It is necessary to stand apart from the rest of the world so as to separate ourselves from the ordinary consciousness.’²⁴ The second part confirms that he ‘should in no way try to influence others and make them share’²² his ‘own effort: that would be quite unjust – not only unjust, but extremely clumsy because it would alter the universal – or at least terrestrial – rhythm and movement, and instead of helping, it would cause conflicts and result in chaos.’²² The third part confirms that if he is surrounded with few instruments of Truth, dvija ,²⁶ that will help him towards Spiritual upliftment and fulfilment. The ‘perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others,’²¹ not by the aid of any external machinery but by the movement of invisible universalised Consciousness. OM TAT SAT The Post Thesis "All stumbled on behind a stumbling Guide, Yet every stumble is a needed pace On unknown routes to an unknowable goal." Savitri-625 After the first birth from the Mother’s womb, there is a second birth of the Soul, known as twice-born, dvija . A dvija is in need of a Spiritual Father, Spiritual Mother, Spiritual Master and Spiritual Guru for his survival and is in need of a Playmate, Friend and Lover for Soul flowering; otherwise, his Soul will suffer decay and death. Then he leads an ordinary earthbound life. Divine Centre is the cradle of Superman. At its centre there must be an individual Soul Centre who has direct contact with the Divine and his brotherhood status must be fulfilled by development of sevenfold Divine personality. Without this condition, the Divine Centre can deform as a soul-slaying cradle where the newborn dvijas are killed ("And in the cradle slay the divine Child.” Savitri-224) and they are forced to lead an ordinary earth-bound life. Ashram is an ancient Indian terminology used for collective Divine living and if one individual at its centre is having direct contact with the Divine, then this collective living around this Soul Centre is identified as the Divine Centre. Sri Aurobindo pointed out (CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1096) that Divine Centres through religious movements in the past did not succeed due to the want of complete Spiritual experience and evolved collectivity. This gives birth to a vision 'Beyond the Divine Centre' where the change will be neither dependent on the man of Spiritual attainment nor on the truthfulness, honesty and integrity of collectivity but on the direct pressure of the Time Spirit (Savitri-509-510) that is active now on earth's atmosphere and its crushing circumstances.(The Mother's Agenda-5/46) We will be in direct contact with the sole triple identity of the Divine (Time-Spirit or Supreme Lord) revealed to us through the concentration, contemplation and meditation of the strong subtle-physical Presence of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo , who reside very close to earth's atmosphere and are the symbol of the comprehensive movement of Divine Consciousness. The Scope of helping humanity: “Patriotism, cosmopolitanism, service of society, collectivism, humanitarianism, the ideal or religion of humanity are admirable aids towards our escape from our primary condition of individual, family, social, national egoism into a secondary stage in which the individual realises, as far as it can be done on the intellectual, moral and emotional level, —on that level he cannot do it entirely in the right and perfect way, the way of the integral truth of his being, — the oneness of his existence with the existence of other beings. But the thought of the Gita reaches beyond to a tertiary condition of our developing self-consciousness towards which the secondary is only a partial stage of advance.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-136 The Necessity of Leadership: “The best, the individuals who are in advance of the general line and above the general level of the collectivity, are the natural leaders of mankind, for it is they who can point to the race both the way they must follow and the standard or ideal they have to keep to or to attain. But the divinised man is the Best in no ordinary sense of the word and his influence, his example must have a power which that of no ordinarily superior man can exercise.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-138 The Necessity of Spiritual Leadership: “This too the divinised man becomes in the measure of his attainment, impersonal in his personality, unbound by quality or action even when maintaining the most personal and intimate relations with men, unbound by any dharma even when following in appearance this or that dharma. Neither the dynamism of the kinetic man nor the actionless light of the ascetic or quietist, neither the vehement personality of the man of action nor the indifferent impersonality of the philosophic sage is the complete divine ideal. These are the two conflicting standards of the man of this world and the ascetic or the quietist philosopher, one immersed in the action of the Kshara, the other striving to dwell entirely in the peace of the Akshara ; but the complete divine ideal proceeds from the nature of the Purushottama which transcends this conflict and reconciles all divine possibilities.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-141 The Necessity of Supramental Leadership: “The supramental man on the contrary will think more with the universal mind or even may rise above it, and his individuality will rather be a vessel of radiation and communication to which the universal thought and knowledge of the Spirit will converge than a centre. The mental man thinks and acts in a radius determined by the smallness or largeness of his mentality and of its experience. The range of the supramental man will be all the earth and all that lies behind it on other planes of existence...Ordinarily the supramental knowledge will be organised first and with the most ease in the processes of pure thought and knowledge, jnana , because here the human mind has already the upward tendency and is the most free. Next and with less ease it will be organised in the processes of applied thought and knowledge because there the mind of man is at once most active and most bound and wedded to its inferior methods. The last and most difficult conquest, because this is now to his mind a field of conjecture or a blank, will be the knowledge of the three times, trikaladrsti. ” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-837, 839 The Permanent Help: “Someone had written to (the) Mother, “I want my money to be used exclusively to conquer the causes of our sufferings and misery.” (The) Mother had replied, “That is what we are working towards here, but not in the artificial way of the philanthropists, who only deal with the outward effects. We want to eliminate forever the CAUSE of suffering, by divinizing matter through integral transformation.” The Mother's Agenda/10th April-1968. The permanent help and panacea of all problems of existence is possible through a triple reversal of Consciousness and inner change of Nature. All of the issues of humanity can be resolved by the permanent elevation of individual and collective Consciousness through Integral Evolution and Supramental Influence, initially dynamised through a few individuals ("A few can climb to an unperishing sun," Savitri-689) and finally spreading to elevate the general Consciousness of the race ("His gates to the world were swept with seas of light." Savitri-236). OM TAT SAT References 1: SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-129, 2: “There are two who are unfit for greatness and freedom, the man who has never been a slave to another and the nation that has never been under the yoke of foreigners.” SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-115, 3: "This perception, this sense of a greater Power in us or above and moving us, is not a hallucination or a megalomania. Those who thus feel and see have a larger sight than ordinary men and have advanced a step beyond the limited physical intelligence, but theirs is not the plenary vision or the direct experience. For, because they are not clear in mind and aware in the soul, because their awakening is more in the vital parts than into the spiritual substance of Self, they cannot be the conscious instruments of the Divine or come face to face with the Master, but are used through their fallible and imperfect nature. The most they see of the Divinity is a Fate or a cosmic Force or else they give his name to a limited Godhead or, worse, to a Titanic or demoniac Power that veils him. Even certain religious founders have erected the image of the God of a sect or a national God or a Power of terror and punishment or a Numen of sattwic love and mercy and virtue and seem not to have seen the One and Eternal. The Divine accepts the image they make of him and does his work in them through that medium, but, since the one Force is felt and acts in their imperfect nature but more intensely than in others, the motive principle of egoism too can be more intense in them than in others. An exalted rajasic or sattwic ego still holds them and stands between them and the integral Truth." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-249, 4: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-250, 5: SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-95, 6: SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-142, 7: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-130, 8: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-62, 9: “Hard is it to be in the world, free, yet living the life of ordinary men; but because it is hard, therefore it must be attempted and accomplished.” SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-91, 10: “The kings of evil and the kings of good,… And all believed themselves spokesmen of God:” Savitri-30 “Assuming names divine they guide and rule.” Savitri-226, “An ignorant Power took charge and seemed his Will And Death’s deep falsity has mastered Life.” Savitri-629 “I, Death, am He; there is no other God.” Savitri-553, “In me all take refuge, for I, Death, am God.” Savitri-635, (Savitri said to Death) “Surely thy boons are great since thou art He!” Savitri-647 "Even this is something, a beginning, although far from the true and perfect experience. A much worse thing may befall those who break something of the human bonds but have not purity and have not the knowledge, for they may become instruments, but not of the Divine; too often, using his name, they serve unconsciously his Masks and black Contraries, the Powers of Darkness." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-250, “Equally a man who sets out to be a Yogi or Guru and has no spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness — a Yoga force or spiritual force — is making a false claim and is either a charlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no spiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-179, “Distrust a man who has never failed and suffered; follow not his fortune, fight not under his banner.” Sri Aurobindo/SABCL/17/The Hour of God/115, “One can have a guru inferior in spiritual capacity (to oneself or to other gurus) carrying in him many human imperfections, and yet, if you have the faith, the bhakti , the right spiritual stuff, contact the Divine through him, attain to spiritual experiences, to spiritual realisation, even before the guru himself. Mark the “if”, — for that proviso is necessary; it isn’t every disciple who can do that with every guru. From a humbug you can acquire nothing but humbuggery. The guru must have something in him which makes the contact with the Divine possible, something which works even if he is not himself in his outer mind quite conscious of its action. If there is nothing at all spiritual in him he is not a guru — only a pseudo. Undoubtedly, there can be considerable differences of spiritual realisation between one guru and the other; but much depends on the inner relation between guru and shishya . One can go to a very great spiritual man and get nothing or only a little from him; one can go to a man of less spiritual capacity and get all he has to give — and more. The causes of this disparity are various and subtle; I need not expand on them here. It differs with each man. I believe the guru is always ready to give what can be given, if the disciple can receive, or it may be when he is ready to receive. If he refuses to receive or behaves inwardly or outwardly in such a way as to make reception impossible or if he is not sincere or takes up the wrong attitude, then things become difficult. But if one is sincere and faithful and has the right attitude and if the guru is a true guru, then, after whatever time, it will come.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-199, “I do not know if his Guru falls far short in any respect, but with the attitude he has taken, her deficiencies, if any, do not matter. It is not the human defects of the Guru that can stand in the way when there is the psychic opening, confidence and surrender. The Guru is the channel or the representative or the manifestation of the Divine, according to the measure of his personality or his attainment; but whatever he is, it is to the Divine that one opens in opening to him, and if something is determined by the power of the channel, more is determined by the inherent and intrinsic attitude of the receiving consciousness, an element that comes out in the surface mind as simple trust or direct unconditional self-giving, and once that is there, the essential things can be gained even from one who seems to others than the disciple an inferior spiritual source and the rest will grow up in the sadhak of itself by the Grace of the Divine, even if the human being in the Guru cannot give it.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-201, “A great sincerity is asked for and has to be imposed not only on the conscious mind but still more in the subliminal part of us which is full of hidden movements. For there is there, especially in our subliminal vital nature, an incorrigible charlatan and actor. The sadhaka must first have advanced far in the elimination of desire and in the firm equality of his soul towards all workings and all happenings before he can utterly lay down the burden of his works on the Divine. At every moment he must proceed with a vigilant eye upon the deceits of the ego and the ambushes of the misleading Powers of Darkness who ever represent themselves as the one Source of Light and Truth and take on them a simulacrum of divine forms in order to capture the soul of the seeker.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-230, "Only it's perfectly true that to deal with those realms one must either be fully protected by a guru, a real guru , a man with knowledge, or else have purity (not saintliness), an unmixed vital and mental purity . Very, very often, bhaktas [devotees] of Sri Aurobindo or me – when they are sincere, truly sincere, that is, people of great spiritual purity – have dozens of beings appear to them, saying, "I am Sri Aurobindo." It happens all the time, with all the right external appearances – it's very easy for such beings to put on a disguise. It takes the inner psychic purity not to be deceived – you invariably FEEL something that makes it impossible for you to be duped. But otherwise, many, many people are taken in." The Mother's Agenda/March 11, 1962, 11: “Reared with my (Satyavan’s) natural brothers in her house.” Savitri-404 (Savitri became the Mother of Satyavan’s natural brothers in the forest land.) “Thou (Savitri) shalt not shrink from any brother soul.” Savitri-701, (The Creator, Supreme Lord, asks Savitri to become one with creation, her brother Souls.) "He comes unseen into our darker parts And, curtained by the darkness, does his work, A subtle and all-knowing guest and guide, Till they too feel the need and will to change." Savitri-35 “He (Teacher of integral Yoga) is a man helping his brothers, a child leading children, a light kindling other lights, an awakened Soul awakening souls,…” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-67, 12: Savitri-615, 13: Ref: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-268 14: “The mortal (Savitri) led, the god (Death) and spirit (Satyavan) obeyed And she behind was leader of their march And they in front were followers of her will.” Savitri-639, “She (Savitri) walked in their (disciples) front towards a greater light, Their leader and queen over their hearts and souls,” Savitri-363, 15: CWSA-13/Essays in Philosophy and Yoga-p-208, 16: CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-197, 17: “This magnified image of their ego is the Master whom they serve. This happens only too often in Yoga to strong but crude vital natures or minds too easily exalted when they allow ambition, pride or the desire of greatness to enter into their spiritual seeking and vitiate its purity of motive; a magnified ego stands between them and their true being and grasps for its own personal purpose the strength from a greater unseen Power, divine or undivine, acting through them of which they become vaguely or intensely aware. An intellectual perception or vital sense of a Force greater than ours and of ourselves as moved by it is not sufficient to liberate from the ego” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-249, 18: "The acceptance of the law of sacrifice is a practical recognition by the ego that it is neither alone in the world nor chief in the world. It is its admission that, even in this much fragmented existence, there is beyond itself and behind that which is not its own egoistic person, something greater and completer, a diviner All which demands from it subordination and service .” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-106, 19: "Through four soul-stages a man must pass before he can be perfect; first, as a Sudra, by service and obedience to tame the brute in his being; then, as a Vaishya to satisfy within the law of morality the lower man in him and evolve the higher man by getting the first taste of delight in well-doing to others than himself and his ; then, as the Kshatriya, to be trained in those first qualities without which the pursuit of the Eternal is impossible, courage, strength, unconquerable tenacity and self-devotion to a great task ; last, as the Brahmin, so to purify body & mind and nature that he may see the Eternal reflected in himself as in an unsoiled mirror. Having once seen God, man can have no farther object in life than to reach and possess Him." CWSA-17/Isha Upanishad/p-195, 20: The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-16/p-207, 21: “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...” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-45, “We have to recognise once more that the individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual perfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God’s intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the liberation of others and of mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-29, 22: “In all contacts what you have to do is to remain within, keep a detached attitude and not allow yourself to be troubled by the difficulties that arise in work or the movements of people, but keep yourself the true movement. Do not be caught by the desire to “help” others — do and speak yourself the right thing from the inner poise and leave the help to come to them from the Divine. Nobody can really help — only the Divine Grace.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-325, “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- 08.02.1969, “Then there were the few—the rare individuals— who are ready to make the necessary effort to prepare themselves for the transformation and to attract the new forces, try to adapt matter, seek the means of expression and so forth. Those are ready for Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga. They are very few. There are even those who have the sense of sacrifice and are ready have a hard and difficult life, as long as it leads them or helps them towards this future transformation. But they should not, they should in no way try to influence others and make them share their own effort: that would be quite unjust – not only unjust, but extremely clumsy because it would alter the universal – or at least terrestrial – rhythm and movement, and instead of helping, it would cause conflicts and result in chaos.” The Mother/The Mother Agenda/27th November, 1965, 23: “I suppose I myself am accused of rude and arrogant behaviour because I refuse to see people, do not answer letters, and a host of other misdemeanours. I have heard of a famous recluse who threw stones at anybody coming to his retreat because he did not want disciples and found no other way of warding off the flood of candidates. I at least would hesitate to pronounce that such people had no spiritual life or experience. Certainly, I prefer that sadhaks should be reasonably considerate towards each other, but that is for the sake of collective life and harmony, not as a siddhi of the Yoga or an indispensable sign of inner experience.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-656, “You must not hunger after any relations with anyone. The relations of the sadhaka with others must be created for him from within, when he has the true consciousness and lives in the Light. They will be determined within him by the power and will of the Divine Mother according to the supramental Truth for the divine life and the divine work; they must not be determined by his mind and his vital desires. This is the thing you have to remember. Your psychic being is capable of giving itself to the Mother and living and growing in the Truth; but your lower vital being has been full of attachments and sanskaras and an impure movement of desire and your external physical mind was not able to shake off its ignorant ideas and habits and open to the Truth. That was the reason why you were unable to progress, because you were keeping up an element and movements which could not be allowed to remain; for they were the exact opposite of what has to be established in a divine life.” CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-142, “It is not safe to listen to or be influenced by the mental of other sadhaks. The Yoga aims at union with the Divine which will bring a spiritual oneness with other sadhaks, but a oneness in the Divine, in the Truth, not in the ignorance of the mind and the vital.” CWSA-23/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-11, Death said to Para-prakriti Savitri: “If Satyavan had lived, love would have died; But Satyavan is dead and love shall live A little while in thy sad breast, until His face and body fade on memory’s wall Where other bodies, other faces come.” Savitri-610, (human admirers will replace Paramatma) (Death said) “What knowst thou of earth’s rich and changing life Who thinkst that one man dead all joy must cease? Hope not to be unhappy till the end: For grief dies soon in the tired human heart; Soon other guests the empty chambers fill.” Savitri-637, (human admirers will replace Paramatma) Death said to Para-prakriti Savitri: “Return and try thy soul! Soon shalt thou find appeased that other men (human admirers) On lavish earth have beauty, strength and truth, And when thou hast half forgotten, one of these Shall wind himself around thy heart that needs Some human answering heart against thy breast; For who, being mortal, can dwell glad alone? Then Satyavan shall glide into the past, (Satyavan is the symbol of Paramatma) A gentle memory pushed away from thee By new love and thy children’s tender hands, Till thou shalt wonder if thou lov’dst at all. Such is the life earth’s travail has conceived, A constant stream that never is the same.” Savitri-637-638, “In moments when the inner lamps are lit And the life’s cherished guests are left outside, Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.” Savitri-47 24: “That is all right in the ordinary karmayoga which aims at union with the cosmic Spirit and stops short at the Overmind — but here a special work has to be done and a new realisation achieved for the earth and not for ourselves alone. It is necessary to stand apart from the rest of the world so as to separate ourselves from the ordinary consciousness in order to bring down a new one… It is not that love for all is not part of the sadhana, but it has not to translate itself at once into a mixing with all — it can only express itself in a general and when need be dynamic universal goodwill, but for the rest it must find vent in this labour of bringing down the higher consciousness with all its effect for the earth. As for accepting the working of the Divine in all things that is necessary here too in the sense of seeing it even behind our struggles and difficulties, but not accepting the nature of man and the world as it is — our aim is to move towards a more divine working which will replace what now is by a greater and happier manifestation. That too is a labour of divine Love.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-812-813, 25: “To concentrate most on one’s own spiritual growth and experience is the first necessity of the sadhak — to be too eager to help others draws away from the inner work. There is also likely to be an overzeal and haste which clouds the discrimination and makes what help is given less effective than it should be. To grow in the spirit is the greatest help one can give to others, for then something flows out naturally to those around that helps them.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV-317, "This “helping others” is a perilous business — it brings the “guru” ego or else you very uncertainly rid others of their difficulties and very certainly get them yourself. “Why do you have all these disciples?” said a sage to some Maratha saint (I have forgotten the names); “to have disciples means to add all their difficulties to your own.” “Helping others” has the same disadvantage." CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-318, "In “helping” one often gets part of the other’s inconvenience and many Yogis refuse to take disciples because they will have to assume others’ burdens as well as their own. There are also other dangers — growth of ego etc." CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-319, "It [trying to help someone through words] is a relative and partial help, of course, but it is sometimes useful. A radical help can only come from within through the action of the Divine Force and the assent of the being." CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-317 “This, no doubt, is the root of the injunction imposed in the Gita (The Gita-3.29) on the man who has the knowledge not to disturb the life basis and thought basis of the ignorant; for impelled by his example but unable to comprehend the principle of his action, they would lose their own system of values without arriving at a higher foundation.” CWSA/21/The Life Divine/p-58, “Those who are bewildered by the modes, get attached to the modes and their works; dull minds, not knowers of the whole, let not the knower of the whole disturb them in their mental standpoint.” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita-214, “In the long ever-mounting hierarchy, In the stark economy of cosmic life Each creature to its appointed task and place Is bound by his nature’s form, his spirit’s force. If this were easily disturbed, it would break The settled balance of created things The perpetual order of the universe Would tremble, and a gap yawn in woven Fate.” Savitri-689-90, “And the slow evolution’s sluggard steps, Lead not the spirit in an ignorant world To dare too soon the adventure of the Light,” Savitri-693 26: “An Influx presses from the closed Beyond Forbidding to him rest and earthly ease, Till he has found himself he cannot pause.” Savitri-339, “But still evoutionary Nature keeps alive her ulterior intentions in the minds of a few and uses man’s greater mental evolution to raise them to a higher plane and deeper issues.” CWSA/22/The Life Divine-900, “What the evolutionary Power has done is to make a few individuals aware of their souls, conscious of their selves, aware of the eternal being that they are, to put them into communion with the Divinity or the Reality which is concealed by her appearances: a certain change of nature prepares, accompanies or follows upon this illumination, but it is not the complete and radical change which establishes a secure and settled new principle, a new creation, a permanent new order of being in the field of terrestrial Nature. The spiritual man has evolved, but not the supramental being who shall thenceforward be the leader of that Nature.” CWSA/22/The Life Divine-923, “The Psychic transformation and the first stages of the spiritual transformation are well within our conception; their perfection would be the perfection, wholeness, consummated unity of a knowledge and experience which is already part of things realised, though only by a small number of human beings . But the supramental change in its process carries us into less explored regions; it initiates a vision of heights of consciousness which have indeed been glimpsed and visited, but have yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness. The highest of these peaks or elevated plateaus of consciousness, the supramental, lies far beyond the possibility of any satisfying mental scheme or map of it or any grasp of mental seeing and description.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-953-54, 27: “(Q:) I have been here for one and a half years but I know nothing of the sadhana. I meditate, but nothing happens in the meditation. I feel there is no love in me towards the Mother. What shall I do to feel this love? (Ans.) Become truthful, pure, sincere, straightforward.” Sri Aurobindo/1 July 1935/ CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-462, “Brahmacharya (celibacy) is not binding in bhaktimarga or karmayoga, but it is necessary for ascetic jnanayoga as well as for Raja and Hatha yogas. It is also not demanded from Grihastha yogis. In this (integral) Yoga the position is that one must overcome sex, otherwise there can be no transformation of the lower vital and physical nature; all physical sexual connection should cease, otherwise one exposes oneself to serious dangers. The sex-push must also be overcome but it is not a fact that there can be no sadhana or no experience before it is entirely overcome, only without that conquest one cannot go to the end and it must be clearly recognised as one of the more serious obstacles and indulgence of it as a cause of considerable disturbance.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-542, "I have tried many things, a great many, I have looked a great deal, and I see only one that’s absolute – only one that’s absolute and can bring the absolute result, it’s this (gesture turned Upward): the complete annulment of all that, leaving it all, "To You, Lord – You, You, to You." And it isn’t a being with a form, that’s not it; it isn’t a formless force, it’s ... It has nothing to do with thought, only with this: the contact. And the contact, an unmistakable contact, which nothing can imitate – nothing, nothing at all has the power to imitate it. And for every difficulty, every time, whatever it is, simply this: "Everything to You, Lord. Everything for You, to You. You alone can do it, You, You alone, You alone. You alone are the Truth; You alone are the Power." And those words are nothing, they are only the very clumsy expression of something ... a stupendous Power....It’s only the incapacity, the clumsiness, the lack of faith we mix into it that takes away His power. The minute we are truly pure, that is, under His influence alone, there are no limits, no limits – nothing, nothing, there is nothing, no law of Nature that can resist, nothing, nothing.... Only, the whole thing is that the time must have come, there must be only That left – all the rest spoils, whatever it is, even the highest, purest, noblest, most beautiful and marvelous things: all that spoils. Only That.” The Mother's Agenda/ March 26, 1966, 28: “A spiritual or gnostic being would feel his harmony with the whole gnostic life around him, whatever his position in the whole. According to his place in it he would know how to lead or to rule, but also how to subordinate himself; both would be to him an equal delight: for the spirit’s freedom, because it is eternal, self-existent and inalienable, can be felt as much in service and willing subordination and adjustment with other selves as in power and rule.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1069, 29: Savitri-125, 30: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-140-141, 31: The Mother's Agenda/July 31, 1964, 32: TMCW-12/On Education/p-63, 33: "In her bosom bearing the eternal Will, No guide she needed but her luminous heart: No fall debased the godhead of her steps, No alien Night had come to blind her eyes." Savitri-128 "The unfelt Self within who is the guide, The unknown Self above who is the goal." Savitri-168 "Always he builds, but finds no constant ground, Always he journeys, but nowhere arrives; He would guide the world, himself he cannot guide; He would save his soul, his life he cannot save." Savitri-337 "Thy soul has strength and needs no other guide Than One who burns within thy bosom’s powers. There shall draw near to meet thy approaching steps The second self for whom thy nature asks, He who shall walk until thy body’s end A close-bound traveller pacing with thy pace, The lyrist of thy soul’s most intimate chords Who shall give voice to what in thee is mute." Savitri-374 "One force shall be your mover and your guide, One light shall be around you and within; Hand in strong hand confront Heaven’s question, life:" Savitri-374-375 "Ascend from Nature to divinity’s heights; Face the high gods, crowned with felicity, Then meet a greater god, thy self beyond Time.” Savitri-375 "If there is a yet happier greater god, Let him first wear the face of Satyavan (Satyavan is there in the Psychic heart centre.) And let his soul be one with him I love; So let him seek me that I may desire." Savitri-614 (Savitri is there in the Psychic heart centre.) India’s True Destiny as the Leader of Men “India's true destiny is to be the Guru of the world.”⁷² The Mother “The future of India is very clear. India is the Guru of the world. The future structure of the world depends on India. India is the living soul. India is incarnating the spiritual knowledge in the world. The Government of India ought to recognise the significance of India in this sphere and plan their action accordingly.”⁷³ The Mother “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. I have no faith in the customary trade of the guru. I do not wish to be a guru. If anybody wakes and manifests from within his slumbering godhead and gets the divine life – be it at my touch or at another's – this is what I want. It is such men that will raise the country.”⁷⁴ Sri Aurobindo “I am not eager to be the Guru of anyone. It is more spontaneously natural for me to be the universal Mother and to act in silence through love.”¹⁰⁴ The Mother “And this time it is the full light and not a noble part, unlike Buddhism which, expressing Vedantic morality, yet ignored a fundamental reality of Vedanta and was therefore expelled from its prime seat and cradle. The material result was then what it will be now, a great political, moral and social revolution which made India the Guru of the nations and carried the light she had to give all over the civilised world, moulding ideas and creating forms which are still extant and a living force. Already the Vedanta and the Yoga have exceeded their Asiatic limit and are beginning to influence the life and practice of America and Europe; and they have long been filtering into Western thought by a hundred indirect channels. But these are small rivers and underground streams. The world waits for the rising of India to receive the divine flood in its fullness.”⁹⁹ Sri Aurobindo India is a land of ancient rich Spiritual heritage. Its air, water and land are full of the Divine Presence and as per The Mother’s personal experience⁷⁷ Indians are ‘heaven-blessed, these people, because it takes very little for them to be oriented in the right way.’⁹¹ No other Nations can compete with them. India is a land where, from Sinner to Saint, from the most foolish to the wisest, the people of all faith and religion, atheists, people with modern education and modern Science, Women and Children are permitted to live with equal opportunity, without oppression, with love, dignity and respect. A Nation will always be surrounded by the animal brutality, division, quarrel and narrowness of the primitive, uncultured man and Divine compassion, equality, oneness, and love for all beings of the spiritual man. India will be Guru of the World through its select individuals through whom incalculable quantum of overhead Divine Love, Wisdom, Peace, Force, Silence, Delight can rush into the world and enrich earth’s atmosphere. Who are these select individuals? Can the Spiritual man of different religions be the Guru of the world? Can the few select proletariat⁸⁶ who are dedicated, hard-working nation builders, leaders of men and pioneers in different fields be the Guru of the world? Can the women who have renounced the sense enjoyment of the short-lived kind be the Guru of the world? Can the few select rich people and landlords who want to serve the Divine and Humanity be the Guru of the world? Can the Sannyasin, later Vedantist , Nirvanists of India be the Guru of the World? Yes, they are leader in the making. The Four Theories in Support of India becoming the Guru of the World First Support: Guru is a Force and a personality of the Divine. It is one of the seven attributes of the Divine. If India wishes to be the Guru of the world, then this also includes of becoming the seven-fold personality of the Divine of the Creator Father, Creatrix Mother, all-embracing Lover, hidden Master of all works, evolving as child God, the inner Guide and compassionate Friend of all creatures. Second Support: A Spiritual man lives in direct contact and union with the Divine. He sees all creatures of existences with equality and is having sense of oneness with all existence. In his growing union with the Transcendence, the Divine’s seven-fold personality manifests in him.⁸⁷ If in India such a type of individual will emerge in each religion⁷⁶ and community, then it will help to unite the Nation. Thus, he emerges as a religious Teacher spreading the Spirituality of brotherhood and universal Love. Third Support: The Guru of traditional schools of Yoga initially moves his consciousness between Kshara Purusha (sarvabhutani chatmani) and Akshara Purusha (sarvabhutastha chatmanam ) and he can gather together the race, lokasamgraha , by all possible external aids or by Psycho-physical means. Finally, his consciousness moves to Purushottama Consciousness and from there he finds an exit⁹³ to the supreme Abode of Paramdham . Thus, he emerges as a precious, distinguished World Teacher. Fourth Support: A Sadhak of integral Yoga initially moves his consciousness between the Psychic being in the heart and the Spiritual being above the head, superseding his earlier movement of Consciousness between the three Gunas. After being established in the waking trance of the Psychic plane and the non-waking trance of the Spiritual plane, he universalises the two Selves and does the good of all creatures by inner movement of universal Consciousness. For the perfection of two Selves and perfection of untransformed Nature, he finally, after long years of preparation, ascends to the Supramental plane and Supramentalises and Spiritualises the Psychic Self. Thus, he emerges as a precious Nameless World Teacher .⁹² His inner wandering of Consciousness from Inconscient Self to supreme Bliss Self can be pursued in secrecy and silence¹⁰⁶ and he can drag the human race ahead in its destined upward journey. The Four Theories in Opposition of India becoming the Guru of the World First Obstacle: India’s Soul is one but her body is mutilated.⁸³ So, she must multiply her collective Soul Force and by the accumulation of the Spiritual energy of her few children, she can learn the lesson of becoming one with the Divine and all existence. A boundless overhead Divine Love must dynamise and must capture the mind, life and body of the Indian subcontinent and its citizens must realise the falsity of division, long hatred, narrowness and enmity towards the brother souls and thus the Spirit will work out to retain the unity of her divided lands. Then India can teach the world the lesson of oneness and unity, thus leading the creation towards one and a united earth.⁸⁸ Second Obstacle: The Government machinery⁸⁴ has an important role in expediting Indian Spirituality to the world. One part of it has entered corruption and another part watches helplessly. Its root is in education. The education Sri Aurobindo received in England is not the same as the education the Britishers introduced in India . Their motive for education in India was to create a large number of clerks/employees with the purpose of ruling a big nation. After independence, these representative symbols of narrow Consciousness multiplied their numbers in every field, right from the highest administrative service to the lowest rung of the ladder. Now, the general mind of an average Indian is corrupt⁷⁵ and impure because he does not discover the Psychic Being in the heart or find a path to widen his Consciousness. Without finding the Psychic Being, life becomes corrupt¹⁰ ⁷ and hazy. The Mother rightly noticed this deficiency and observed, “I know the conditions of the country (India). Even if one person could put himself faithfully at the disposal of the Truth, he could change the country and the world.”⁷⁹ From the above message, it appears that it is difficult to find a single truthful person in the country with possession of that Supramental Truth which is ‘supremely destructive of falsehood.’⁷⁸ The purpose of integral Education is to follow the best standard of the race, create employers, leaders of men, pioneers and inventors in different fields and finally the evolution of Spiritual men. To open constantly towards overhead descending Truth and to reject constantly the falsehood that is invading the human vessel from the surrounding world and from the Subconscient world below are the signs of true, uncorrupted and pure life. The emergence of an uncorrupted India can work towards the emergence of an uncorrupted Earth. Third Obstacle: The state of consciousness of Indian women will influence this movement. Sri Aurobindo kept great hope¹⁰³ on women in building the future. Their main objective of life is not procreation, enjoyment of life with men but to accumulate Spiritual energy. The ‘virgin bridals of the dawn’⁸⁰ are identified as the future of the Nation and they can keep their mind, life and body untouched and pure to enter union with the Supreme Lord in all the ten planes of Consciousness and realise the full delight and perfection of all those planes or ‘virgin who comest perfected by joy.’⁸¹ These pure Souls are also a representative symbol of ‘citizens of that mother state.’⁸² Thus, Para-prakriti dominated Indian women can dream of the emergence of a virgin earth.⁹⁰ Fourth Obstacle: Money⁸⁵ is not meant to make more money. Money is a power of the Divine necessary for the perfection of material and vital life. Few affluent men are willing to collaborate and serve the Divine. They must be aware that apart of outer opulence of the outer world, there are nine inner worlds and in those inner worlds, inner opulence⁹⁴ has to be multiplied through the movement of Consciousness. By true ceaseless Sattwic sacrifice, the inner opulent perfected life and action of a Spiritual man 'receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.”¹⁰⁹ His life 'will be even such a constant divine giving of itself and its powers, an outflowing of the knowledge, light, strength, love, joy, helpful shakti which it possesses in the Divine and by his influence and effluence on all around it according to their capacity of reception or on all this world and its creatures.'⁹⁴ His universal Nature is like Vasishtha’s cow of plenty,⁹⁴ Kamadhenu , from whose udder all mankind can draw its need and fulfil its deficiency. Thus, India can dream of an opulent earth.⁸⁹ “It is not therefore important that the mission should be widespread. What is important is that the thing (Supramental principle) should be done at all in however small a number; that is the only difficulty…It would therefore be a waste of time and energy which should be devoted to the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible.”¹⁰ ⁸ Now this is a period of earth’s Spiritual history, in which the movement of Consciousness through Yoga is identified as the crucial and outstanding unfinished task before the whole of humanity. Whoever learns the lesson to move the Consciousness in ten planes from Bliss Self to Inconscient Self, discharges his responsibility of helping humanity in perfecting and Divinising life. OM TAT SAT References: 72: The Mother’s Agenda-August-7, 1965 (Addendum), 73: The Mother’s Centenary Works/13/353/February 1954, 74: The Mother’s Agenda/July 21, 1962/Addendum, 75: “Even in India …And I am beginning to believe....That's what I observe when I am put in contact with the outside world, Europe…... But anyway, the Old World is an OLD world in the true sense of the word. India is much, much older, but more alive. Yet now it strikes me as so very rotten! They went rotten. You know what happens when a rotten apple is put next to a good one: England came and stayed much too long. It made things go quite rotten. Very, very rotten; it's difficult to heal. Otherwise, what's not rotten is truly good.” The Mother’s Agenda/July 14, 1962, “And here, there's TOTAL corruption – total, to such a point that I'll give you an example. The government meddles in everything, you can't move a finger without its permission: you can't leave the country, you can't enter the country, you can't send money out, you can't open a shop, you can't ... nothing, nothing, nothing, not even plow your field without its permission. They meddle in everything, which in itself is pretty stupid. And then they make regulations – the more regulations you make, the more disobedience it creates, naturally… People no longer grow crops because it's too complicated and with all those taxes (they've scores of taxes to pay), it costs them much more than they can earn. And as there isn't enough food, there are naturally individuals who try and hoard as much as they can to sell it for as high a price as possible.” The Mother’s Agenda-August 14, 1964, “They're mad. No, the English made them thoroughly rotten. Those two hundred years of British rule left them completely rotten. Naturally, another effect is that some people have awakened, but they don't know anything; they know nothing either of administration or of government or anything – they've lost everything, and whatever they know is what they were taught by Britain, which means an absolutely corrupt business. So they don't know anything, they don't even know how to make a decision.” The Mother’s Agenda-August 12, 1967, “And the government is rotten. People whose very tactics and principle of action are falsehood: to deceive and deceive and deceive. And naturally, to deceive themselves.” The Mother’s Agenda-October 19, 1967, 76: “Islam was a return towards sensation, beauty, harmony in the form, and the legitimization of sensations and joy in beauty. From a higher viewpoint, it wasn't quite of a superior quality, but from a vital viewpoint, it was extremely powerful, and that's what gave them so much power to spread, to appropriate, seize, dominate. But what they did is very beautiful – all their art is magnificent, magnificent! It was a flowering of beauty Then there were others – it all comes one after another. And every religion came as a stage in the development and the relationship with the Divine, to lead the consciousness towards a oneness which is a totality and not a removal from a whole reality so as to obtain another. The need for totality, completeness, is what caused those religions to come like that, one after another.” The Mother’s Agenda- August 12, 1967, “To adopt a religion because one is born in that religion or because the people one loves and trusts practise that religion or because when one goes to a particular place where others pray and worship, one feels helped in one’s own prayer and worship, is not the sign of a very strong nature; I should say it is rather the sign of a weakness or at any rate of a lack of originality. ” The Mother/The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/8/p-246, 77: “I had this experience very, very strongly. When I left here [Pondicherry in 1915], as I got farther away, I felt as if emptied of something, and once in the Mediterranean, I wasn't able to bear it any longer: I fell ill. And even in Japan, which outwardly is a marvelous country – marvelously beautiful and harmonious (it WAS, I don't know what it is nowadays), and outwardly it was a joy every minute, a breathtaking joy, so strong was the expression of beauty – yet I felt empty, empty, empty, I absolutely lacked ... (Mother opens her mouth as though suffocating) ... I lacked the important Thing. And I found it again only when I came back here (Pondicherry).” The Mother’s Agenda-6/p-265, 78: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-7/p-265, 79: The Mother’s Agenda/vol-10/p-148, 80: Savitri-401, 81: Savitri-424, “Since you feel that you are weak in regard to women, never touch a woman. Never allow a woman to touch you.” TMCW-17/More Answers from the Mother/p-13, 82: Savitri-262, 83: “But only if India is ONE can she fulfill this role (of becoming the Guru of the World), for how can one who is herself divided lead others? Thus the division of India i s the first Falsehood that must disappear, for it is the symbol of the earth’s division. As long as India is not one, the world cannot be one. India’s striving for unity is the symbolic drama of the world’s striving for unity.” Satprem/The Mother’s Agenda/May-15, 1971 Addendum, 84: “I (The Mother) tell those who govern (the country): “You leave free hands to the bandits and take insulting measures against the honest people. It will be like that so long as the country is not governed by the wisest people . The wisest people are those who can freely and correctly read the hearts and the minds of men.” It was in the form of a conversation. I (the Mother) tell those who govern (the country): "You leave free hands to the bandits and take insulting measures against the honest people.” So the reply (from the Government of India): "But how can we tell the bandits from the honest people until we see them at work?” I (The Mother) said: “Yes, it will always be like that, you will always commit the same sort of blunder ... until the country is governed by the wisest people." (The Government of India asked): "Ah, but how can one know if they are the wisest people?” (The Mother replied): “The wisest people are those who can freely and correctly read the hearts and the minds of men. ”” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda/23rd June 1965, 85: “But no one has yet dared to say: money is a force and belongs to nobody, but it must be used by the most disinterested and clear sighted person (or persons) in the country.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda/January 31, 1970, “Money is not meant to generate money; money should generate an increase in production, an improvement in the conditions of life and a progress in human consciousness. This is its true use. What I call an improvement in consciousness, a progress in consciousness, is everything that education in all its forms can provide – not as it’s generally understood, but as we understand it here: education in art, education in ... from the education of the body, from the most material progress, to the spiritual education and progress through yoga; the whole spectrum, everything that leads humanity towards its future realization. Money should serve to augment that and to augment the material base for the earth’s progress, the best use of what the earth can give – its intelligent utilization, not the utilization that wastes and loses energies. The use that allows energies to be replenished.” The Mother’s Agenda-04.10.1958, “For in this ideal place, money would no longer be the sovereign lord; individual worth would have a far greater importance than that of material wealth and social position. There, work would not be for earning one's living, but the means to express oneself and develop one's capacities and possibilities, while at the same time being of service to the group as a whole, which would in turn provide for everyone's subsistence and field of action. In short, it would be a place where human relationships, ordinarily based almost exclusively on competition and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in trying to do one's best, of collaboration and real brotherhood.” The Mother’s Agenda-18.01.1964, 86: “And in any society we should have all four types (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shudra), — even, for an example, if we create a purely productive and commercial society such as modern times have attempted, or for that matter a Shudra society of labour, of the proletariate such as attracts the most modern mind and is now being attempted in one part of Europe and advocated in others. ” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita-523, “In street and house, in councils and in courts Beings he (King Aswapati) met who looked like living men And climbed in speech upon high wings of thought But harboured all that is subhuman, vile And lower than the lowest reptile’s crawl.” Savitri-215 “I (Mother of Might) break the ignorant pride of human mind And lead the thought to the wideness of the Truth; I rend man’s narrow and successful life And force his sorrowful eyes to gaze at the sun That he may die to earth and live in his soul.” Savitri-510, “The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man’s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-48, 87: “(The Divine is) the perfect Personality capable of all relations even to the most human, concrete and intimate; for he is friend, comrade, lover, playmate, guide, teacher, master, ministrant of knowledge or ministrant of joy, yet in all relations unbound, free and absolute. This too the divinised man becomes in the measure of his attainment...” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita-141, 88: “August 15, 1947 is the birthday of free India… the old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. India’s internal development and prosperity may be impeded, her position among the nations weakened, her destiny impaired or even frustrated. This must not be; the partition must go… But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of India’s future…” Sri Aurobindo/SABCL-26/On Himself/404, “I had the vision that India is the place where the fate of the earth will be decided.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda/10/145-19.04.1969, 89: “Our earth is a fragment and a residue; Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds” Savitri-99, “A bliss is felt that never can wholly cease, A sudden mystery of secret Grace Flowers goldening our earth of red desire.” Savitri-278, “Arisen beneath a triple mystic heaven The seven immortal earths were seen, sublime:” Savitri-672, “In the collective gnostic life the integrating truth-sense, the concording unity of gnostic nature would carry all divergences in itself as its own opulence and turn a multitudinous thought, action, feeling into the unity of a luminous life-whole. This would be the evident principle, the inevitable result of the very character of the Truth-Consciousness and its dynamic realisation of the spiritual unity of all being.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-1047, “The one rule of the gnostic life would be the self-expression of the Spirit, the will of the Divine Being; that will, that self-expression could manifest through extreme simplicity or through extreme complexity and opulence or in their natural balance, — for beauty and plenitude, a hidden sweetness and laughter in things, a sunshine and gladness of life are also powers and expressions of the Spirit. In all directions the Spirit within determining the law of the nature would determine the frame of the life and its detail and circumstance.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-1104, 90: “Heaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure.” Savitri-123, “The virgin forms through which the Formless shines,” Savitri-327, 91: “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 Mother’s Agenda- January 25, 1964, 92: “A dual Power at being’s occult poles Still acted, nameless and invisible: Her divine emptiness was their instrument.” Savitri-553 “He (Divine) dwells in me (Savitri), the mover of my acts, Turning the great wheel of his cosmic work. I am the living body of his light, I am the thinking instrument of his power, I incarnate Wisdom in an earthly breast, I am his conquering and unslayable will. The formless Spirit drew in me its shape; In me are the Nameless and the secret Name.” Savitri-634, “One man who earnestly pursues the Yoga is of more value than a thousand well-known men.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-35/Letters on Himself And The Ashram/p-691, "Therefore, besides the great solitaries who have sought and attained their self-liberation, we have the great spiritual teachers who have also liberated others and, supreme of all, the great dynamic souls who, feeling themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the forces of the material life banded together, have thrown themselves upon the world, grappled with it in a loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its own transfiguration." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-27 93: “The psychic and the spiritual opening with their experiences and consequences can lead away from life or to a Nirvana ; but they are here being considered solely as steps in a transformation of the nature.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-943, 94: “Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-109, “If mankind only caught a glimpse of what infinite enjoyments, what perfect forces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting for us in the tracts which our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all and never rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the doors are hard to force, and fear, distrust and scepticism are there, sentinels of Nature, to forbid the turning away of our feet from her ordinary pastures.” Sri Aurobindo/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms/p-10-11, "All the action of the perfected soul will be even such a constant divine giving of itself and its powers, an outflowing of the knowledge, light, strength, love, joy, helpful shakti which it possesses in the Divine and by his influence and effluence on all around it according to their capacity of reception or on all this world and its creatures. That will be the complete result of the complete self-giving of the soul to the Master of our existence." Sri Aurobindo/CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-490-491, "If thou canst not be the slave of all mankind, thou art not fit to be its master and if thou canst not make thy nature as Vasishtha’s cow of plenty with all mankind to draw its wish from her udders, what avails thy leonine supermanhood?" Sri Aurobindo/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms/p-247, “Amid the welcome-hum of many bees Invade our honied kingdom of the woods; There let me lead thee into an opulent life.” Savitri-402, 95: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-115, 96: “The lower, present and deluding mental Maya has first to be embraced, then to be overcome; for it (Maya) is God’s play with division and darkness and limitation, desire and strife and suffering in which He subjects Himself to the Force that has come out of Himself and by her obscure suffers Himself to be obscured... Its literal meaning is cunning, fraud or illusion… an undivine Maya , that which creates false mental forms and appearances, -- and hence the later significance of this word which seems to have meant originally a formative power of knowledge, the true magic of the supreme Mage, the divine Magician, but was also for adverse formative power of a lower knowledge, the deceit, illusion and deluding magic of the Rakshasa .” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-126, 109, 507, 97: CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-676, 98: Kena Upanishada-1.4, CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-72, CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-403, 99: CWSA-13/Essays in Philosophy and Yoga/p-10-11, 100: “As for spiritual knowledge, it consists of two elements, experience and a direct knowledge which is not mental but is of the nature of a light showing the deeper truth of things, a direct vision and perception of the Truth…The ordinary consciousness is not capable of receiving it as knowledge except in a fragmentary way because it belongs to a deeper consciousness within or a higher consciousness above the mind. The ordinary consciousness has therefore to open to the deeper and the higher consciousness. It has to receive the knowledge from within and above. It cannot do this if it does not open. There must, therefore, first necessarily be an opening, however small, before any direct knowledge can come. As the knowledge comes the opening also can widen and so admit a greater and greater direct knowledge and experience. In some, however, the opening comes first very wide and then the knowledge comes afterwards in a great stream, some light of the Truth and many experiences…If one has merely a mental idea about the Divine, that is not knowledge. It is with the experiences and the inner light of knowledge that the realisation of the Divine begins. As for example, one may have the mental idea of the Divine Peace but that is nothing, only a mental conception. It is only when one has the feeling of the Divine Peace descending from above or in oneself or surrounding one that one begins to know what it is. That is what is called experience. Afterwards one begins to have a direct vision in knowledge of what the Peace is and what is its place in regard to the Divine Realisation; that is direct knowledge.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-198-199, 101: ‘not merely a state withdrawn from the all consciousness of the outward, withdrawn even from all consciousness of the inward’ CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-321, “Mind, being an action of the Infinite, depieces as well as aggregates ad infinitum. It cuts up being into wholes, into ever smaller wholes, into atoms and those atoms into primal atoms, until it would, if it could, dissolve the primal atom into nothingness. But it cannot, because behind this dividing action is the saving knowledge of the supramental which knows every whole, every atom to be only a concentration of all-force, of all-consciousness, of all-being into phenomenal forms of itself. The dissolution of the aggregate into an infinite nothingness at which Mind seems to arrive, is to the Supermind only the return of the self-concentrating conscious-being out of its phenomenon into its infinite existence.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-178, 102: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-734, 103: “I am beginning to understand why Sri Aurobindo always said it was woman (Mother caresses Sujata’s cheek with her finger) that could build a bridge between the two. I am beginning to understand. One day, I’ll explain. I am beginning to understand. Sri Aurobindo used to say: it is woman that can build a bridge between the old world and the supramental world. Now I understand.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-26.04.1972, 104: TMCW-13/Words of the Mother-I/p-82-83, 105: “All Yoga is in its nature an attempt and an arriving at unity with the Supreme, --unity with the being of the Supreme, unity with the consciousness of the Supreme, unity with the bliss of the Supreme,-- or, if we repudiate the idea of absolute unity, at least at some kind of union, even if it be only for the soul to live in one status and periphery of being with the Divine, salokya, or in a sort of indivisible proximity, samipya. This can only be gained by rising to a higher level and intensity of consciousness than our ordinary mentality possesses.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-528, “All Yoga proceeds in its method by three principles of practice; first, purification, that is to say, the removal of all aberrations, disorders, obstructions brought about by the mixed and irregular action of the energy of being in our physical, moral and mental system; secondly, concentration, that is to say, the bringing to its full intensity and the mastered and self-directed employment of that energy of being in us for a definite end; thirdly, liberation, that is to say, the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualized energy in a false and limited play, which at present are the law of our nature.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-530, “All Yoga is a turning of the human mind and human soul, not yet divine in realization, but feeling the divine impulse and attraction in it, towards that by which it finds its greater being.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-571, 106: “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 .” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-267, “A still deep sea, he laughs in rolling waves; Universal, he is all, — transcendent, none. To man’s righteousness this is his cosmic crime, Almighty beyond good and evil to dwell Leaving the good to their fate in a wicked world And evil to reign in this enormous scene.” Savitri-657, “All person perished in its namelessness.” Savitri-308, “Sri Aurobindo once said (jokingly, as it were), while talking with those around him (I was there and we were talking about Christianity and the "new Christ"), he told them, "Oh, if the new Christ comes, the Church will crucify him!"” The Mother’s Agenda-October-7, 1967, “Hard is the world-redeemer’s heavy task; The world itself becomes his adversary, Those he would save are his antagonists: This world is in love with its own ignorance, Its darkness turns away from the saviour light, It gives the cross in payment for the crown.” Savitri-448, “Inconscient traders in bundles of contraries, They did what in others they would persecute; When their eyes looked upon their fellow’s vice, An indignation flamed, a virtuous wrath; Oblivious of their own deep-hid offence, Moblike they stoned a neighbour caught in sin.” Savitri-209 “There is no necessity to reveal one’s plans and movements to those who have no business to know it, who are incapable of understanding or who would act as enemies or spoil all as a result of their knowledge. Secrecy is perfectly admissible and usual in spiritual matters except in special relations like that of the Shishya to the Guru . We do not let people outside know what is going on in the Ashram but we do not tell any lies about it either. Most Yogis say nothing about their spiritual experiences to others or not until long afterwards and secrecy was a general rule among the ancient Mystics. No moral or spiritual law commands us to make ourselves naked to the world or open up our hearts and minds for public inspection. Gandhi talked about secrecy being a sin but that is one of his many extravagances.” SABCL-26/On Himself/p-380, 107: "The corruption of the best (the best Souls of earth) produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil….Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge (Psychic and Spiritual knowledge) is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences (of arts, of literature, of religion and of modern science) and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind’s horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-141, 108: CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-288-290, 109: “Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-109 Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: Acknowledgements Header banner animation adapted from https://pngtree.com/freebackground/the-golden-gates-of-heaven-in-sky-with-stairs-leading-up-to-them-surrounded-by-clouds-and-light-shining-through-archway_16246948.html "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 ." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-187 ,

"Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light," Savitri 531 The Savitri Handbook "Q: Savitri represents the Mother’s Consciousness, doesn’t she? Ans: Yes. Q: What does Satyavan represent? Ans: Well, he is the Avatar . He is the incarnation of the Supreme.” The Mother The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-5/p-390 "In Savitri, the King (Aswapati ) represents the human aspiration to discover the Earth's secret beyond all already explored spiritual knowledge." The Mother's Agenda/Volume-4/1963 Savitri book proposes a Sadhaka to utilise Time and Space exclusively for fourfold Divine union and by this an increase and accumulation of Soul force is witnessed which must be utilised towards preparation of meeting the worst adversity in life or immobile in herself, Savitri gathered Soul force to meet the hour "This was the day when Satyavan must die." (Savitri-10) Fourfold Divine Union: Jivatma's union with Paramatma Jivatma's union with Para-prakriti Paramatma's union with Para-prakriti in the heart centre Para-prakriti's union with Apara-prakriti. For this, the Savitri book proposes a Sadhaka to develop single-minded devotion, ekabhakti, through complete union of Psychic being with the Supreme Self or "Her consciousness grew aware of him (Satyavan) alone...Her aim, joy, origin, Satyavan alone....Give me back Satyavan , my only lord." (Savitri-410, 579, 637) The book emphasies Psychic Being in the heart as the virgin Mother and to live under its sole Influence which is elevated further as Spiritualised Psychic Being and Supramentalised Psychic Being or we have to be aware of the Maha Mantra of Savitri, "Virgin who comest perfected by joy...." (Savitri-424) and recognise it as "His only comrade is the Strength within." (Savitri-368) Sri Aurobindo proposes that 'even the most highly developed psychical consciousness cannot be absolutely safe unless the psychical is illumined and uplifted by a higher force...' (CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-896) The single Protection ("Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:" Savitri-211) promised by the Psychic being has to be secured and strengthened by the discovery of double and multiple protection by realisation of the verse, "‘Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light.... Heaven’s leaning down to embrace from all sides earth....It (dynamic Spirit) is within, below, without, above." (Savitri-531, 716, 98) We have to be aware of the Maha Vakya, Supreme Word of Savitri, which proposes to call down the Supreme Self, Paramatma and the Supreme Mother, Para-prakriti, to the heart Centre and through Their union open God's Supramental door. Or "If there is a yet happier greater god, Let him first wear the face of Satyavan And let his soul be one with him I love; So let him seek me that I may desire." Savitri- 614 This, Savitri handbook partly satisfies Sri Aurobindo’s directives issued in The Synthesis of Yoga, that ‘all truth and practice… must be constantly renovated by fresh streams of the spirit’¹ and ‘thus constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth constantly reshaped and developed… continue to be of living importance’² and by this exercise alone a Sadhaka will trace a path of his own Sadhana and prevent the written truths from becoming ‘monuments of the past’² without any ‘actual force or vital impulse for the future.’² (Reference: 1: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-5, 2: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-5,) The Mother had issued guidelines to her biographers, “If anyone ever wanted to write about me, the first thing I would say is: NOT ONE WORD about my personal life – not a word.” (The Mother’s Agenda- September 23, 1961) The Mother also insisted on the same rule for Sri Aurobindo’s biographers. She observed, "My book, of course, would be: What I have known of Sri Aurobindo – and on his supreme level. What I have known of Sri Aurobindo is ... what I have been able to perceive of the Avatar. What he represents. That’s how I see him. So, what I have known of Sri Aurobindo, expressed ‘spontaneously,’ with a minimum of external events, the very minimum, but with all the experiences of our meetings..." (The Mother's Agenda/ December 20, 1961) This Savitri Handbook partly restates the history of Their inner life, which is a comprehensive movement on Consciousness extending over multiple ten planes or ten subtle bodies of our existence. This is not Their story of this birth (This life is a small fragment of all life.) but All Life extending from the beginning of creation to the end when the life of humanity will be divinised. Our objective in preparing the Savitri Handbook is not to propagate Their Teachings (Soul-slaying truth) but to live Their Teachings (Soul-saving truth), to learn the lesson of ascent of the Soul and the descent of the Shakti; first intermittently, then continuously. Truth revealed through partial Divine union is identified here as Soul Slaying Truth and the Truth revealed through complete Divine union is identified as Soul Saving Truth. Here in this epic, Savitri's birth Mother and Death God are symbolically represented as symbols of soul-slaying Truth and King Aswapati, Narad, Savitri and Satyavan are symbols of soul-saving truth. OM TAT SAT Savitri, the representative Symbol of The Mother's Consciousness: Sri Aurobindo was able to accommodate His (and also The Mother’s ) all life’s comprehensive high Spiritual Visions and experiences in symbolic characters of incarnations, emanations and instruments, depicted from the legendary epic Mahabharata where Savitri, the descending Godhead, Avatara , the all Mother, the Mother of all Time, Paraprakriti , knew her fiery Self and her Being’s aim of pursuing the Soul of earth, symbolised as Satyavan in his earthly form in each birth and in all life. She glimpsed the glory for which she had chosen earth and its atmosphere for gradual and subsequently constant, intense, comprehensive and instantaneous total descent of Divine attributes of Truth-Light, Power, Wisdom and Delight. She keeps her will alive to drive human Souls and fills in their brute elements, the endless hope to Divinise clay and confronts the riddle of Birth, inevitable Death, grooves of iron Law and stone eyes of fixed Fate in them with the sheer power of her unchanging Soul force manifested as living fire of Divine Love. She has chosen the Souls who have long suffered on this harsh globe, for the field of her sacrifice and action and she is even ready to walk and waste all infinity with wounded feet to accomplish her seemingly impossible task of transforming earth’s shadow, fixed destiny, grooves of iron Law, meaningless suffering, splendid failure, twilight and grey inhibitions. She leans with pity over earth-bound men in order to share the burden of ‘earth’s struggle and fate.’ (Savitri-698) Satyavan, the incarnation of the Supreme: Satyavan, a mere man of action, a woodsman, Nara, Jivatma, raised his consciousness to the status of the ascending integral Godhead, Avatara, Narayana, by the Power of consecration and loss of ego and was destined to fulfil Savitri’s mighty Mission of bridging the gulf between Heaven, Earth and Hell. He was also the Eternal Consciousness, a unique rare treasure loaned by Gods, who accompanied Savitri from the beginning of the creation as first ‘man and woman’ (Savitri-614) or first dual Incarnation and the Supreme had promised to grant physical immortality in all life when the first Avatara’s ‘heart dared death and suffered life.’ (Savitri-59) He continued his life in many successive births and bodies as ‘twin souls born from one undying fire’ (Savitri-614) of this mortal existence to endure in his human heart a million wounds representing the delegate Soul of earth. Through his long suffering in human form the God’s debt is paid. His Godhead status does not prevent him from living ‘in one house with the primal beast’ (Savitri-541) in the forest, colloquies with the Djinn and Asuras of the Subconscient world; thus in the Divine’s single plan he reveals solidarity with antagonist powers; ‘high meets the low’ (Savitri-541) or ‘God’s summits look back on the mute Abyss.’(Savitri-541) He accepts the small and human personality of woodsman on earth and his small beginning witnesses immense ascent of Soul and immense descent of Shakti, leading the creation towards a mighty end. While tracing the path of immortality he signed salvation’s testament with his blood and broke into the dangerous and dark Inconscient’s depth and if he were to meet the Spiritual fall in the form of death while attempting to break the wheel of earth’s doom and before bridging the gulf between Heaven and Earth in order to balance the dark account of mortal Ignorance then this would be a great loss for humanity. Or an Avatara , as a delegate Soul of Heaven lent to earth must live a brief period in human history in order to trace and build a passage in intermediate ranges of consciousness so that a large section of humanity will be able to bridge the gulf between Heaven and Earth and reconcile Spirit with Matter with less effort. This work is further accelerated if Divine Love becomes active in earth’s atmosphere through action and interfusion of dual Avatara. His Divine work on earth of invasion of the series of Light and Love is treated unfinished and half done till all the evils are slain or transformed in their Inconscient home. King Aswapati, Symbol of Concentrated Tapasya: Aswapati, King of Madra, the son of God, Vibhuti, destined to do some special Divine work, represents the human aspiration, hard Tapasya , askesis, and concentrated endeavour to explore all the multiple planes of Consciousness through vast and multiple identities. As Divine father, he fostered, nourished and served his Divine daughter selflessly without attachment and wanted his daughter to ‘set earth alight’ (Savitri-423) with her ‘flame of radiant happiness.’ (Savitri-423) Like all human fathers, he aspires that her mortal life be unwounded and to serve humanity with ‘glad and griefless days.’ (Savitri-423) His capacity to unite with new bliss and flame-white Love came by annulling all ‘the contact formed with time-born things.’ (Savitri-322) He was able to retrieve the earth’s lost Spiritual energies, discovered earth’s secret beyond all previously attained Spiritual wisdom, nurtured Almighty’s Power in silence and solitude, sought the Divine strength that was not yet manifested on earth and called down the Divine Mother in the form of his daughter, Savitri. As Spiritual Teacher, the Guru ; firstly, he made her aware that her world Mission of awakening ‘Almighty powers’ that ‘are shut in Nature’s cells,’ (Savitri-370) ‘meet the Omnipotent in this house of flesh,’ (Savitri-370) ‘Out of Immortal’s substance you were made’ (Savitri-370) and hewing the path of immortality would be accomplished not by her own effort alone but by venturing to find her second Self, future Lord, unknown Lover, personal Godhead of the race and lyricist of her ‘soul’s most intimate chords’ (Savitri-374) in distant lands, who alone can match the measure of her waiting Soul, can walk with him like Gods in Heaven and can stand up as her equal comrade and peer; secondly, ‘must fire always test’ (Savitri-423) the purity and greatness of her Soul, who must wrestle with supernatural Darkness and must leave behind Death’s night to raise the fallen world. None can possess the kingdom of heaven and supreme Delight that has not passed through the ‘stones of suffering’ (Savitri-457) and tragic torture of giant sons of Falsehood; thirdly, she must continue her father’s unfinished Yoga and unfinished mission of ‘pure perfection and a shadowless bliss’ (Savitri-340) for the whole of suffering humanity and of changing all future time by unlocking the doors of human Fate. Narad’s pronouncement of Satyavan’s death did not perturb him because he could foresee double destiny above Satyavan’s head, one that of a ‘heavy shadow’ and the other that of chasing by a ‘sudden and stupendous (Divine) light.’ (Savitri-424) King Aswapati proposes that seekers of Immortality should understand the double destiny of men. One is that of fixed destiny born out of ‘blindness of our will,’ our Karma or bounded action of past and present birth and the other is our changeable Spiritual destiny which is born out of union and oneness with Divine Will, Divine Wisdom and Divine Love. So, one can escape untimely death and can live a long, secure life if one's Psychic being opens. For these Psychic and Spiritual Self opened Souls, Death is not a curse but a passage and choice (iccha mrityu ) for higher life. King had seen in Savitri the manifestation of the Divine Mother who could fight against fate to change it and he had a strong conviction that the Supreme Will could work only for the good, independent of whatever it seems good or bad to man’s mind. King Aswapati’s Palace and Kingdom of Madra, stands as a symbol of the Supreme Self and Savitri left this highest Heaven permanently and had chosen the darkest forest of Shalwa as the symbol of the Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths for illumination and Divine transformation. Narad: The symbol of Overmental God: Narad, the heavenly sage, the God, the instrument having the experience of oneness and complete union with the Divine. (The Gita identifies him as Vibhuti and the best among Divine sages. (The Gita-10.26)) He is a mediator between Heaven and Earth, who was aware of the source and mystery of human fate and was having the power to foresee the future of man and knowledge of Soul saving Truth behind this creation, came down to earth to make Savitri aware that Soul’s greatness is measured through the capacity to bear pains of hell. She must cross on the stones of supreme universal suffering to arrive at her high mission of manifeting Divine Love and Delight in the Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths. However, he had no power at his disposal to change her destiny and hence incapable of changing human destiny. Savitri’s Psychic being has the ability to give shelter where all the ‘high Gods could live.’ (Savitri-531) This Divine stationed in the heart centre is also projected as ‘greater than the God,’ (Savitri-375) the Guru and personal Godhead and has the capacity to change her own destiny and the destiny of the race or ‘She only can save herself and save the world.’ (Savitri-461) To bring all the ten worlds under her loving control and to uplift her body’s destiny or destiny of the race, her Soul entered a series of world adventure in different planes of Consciousness to become one with Divine Will and with the growth of Consciousness, a sort of mastery, a harmony and peace preoccupied the cells of the body and further extended to her multiple Selves of Sun-vast Truth. Ordinary man 'rejects Divine Grace' (Savitri-431) and wastes time and space in earthly enjoyments. The Divine Grace will act when either of the four conditions below is satisfied. The Supreme Divine Grace will intensify only when the four conditions are simultaneously satisfied in Integral Concentration of (1) total and sincere surrender, (2) exclusive self-opening to the Divine Power, (3) constant and integral choice of descending Truth and (4) constant and integral rejection of the falsehood of mind, vital, body, surrounding world and Subconscient plane. Narad made Savitri aware of Supreme's Grace in the form of Satyavan which 'was too great to stay' (Savitri-431) and 'earth could not keep too long' this unique treasure loaned by God. King Dyumatsena, the symbol of Spiritual fall Dyumatsena, the self-exiled King of Shalwa , father of Satyavan , is the Divine’s Conscious instrument, Yantra , here fallen blind, limiting his capacity to three gunas and walks lamely on this dangerous world with slow evolutionary mental footsteps. Through this Spiritual fall he has lost the celestial inner kingdom of seven immortal Selves and through that loss its kingdom of outer glory and opulence. Due to this adverse fate, he now sojourns a wiser life in the solemn rustle of the wood and his yearning towards All meets two solitudes (1) that of outcast from the empire of the outer light symbolically represented as crutch upon which his faltering-limb supports and he helplessly stumbles in the rushing speed of hasty Time and (2) lost to the comradeship of five galloping hooves of sense that of sound, touch, sight, taste and smell symbolically represented as his sightless blind identity. This double doom of his father compelled Satyavan to live in the high peopled loneliness of the Spirit which called the Divine Mother to enter his earthly life in human form and finally helped his long pure childhood’s lonely dream to restore King Dyumatsena’s steady royal walk in high dynamic outer Kingdom and a deeper visionary eye of Divine Wisdom. Restoration of the outer Kingdom was also the outcome of his revival of the inner kingdom through sadhana in double seclusion. Savitri and Satyavan accepted double seclusion as the field of their ceaseless Tapasya and consecration and the forest of Shalwa stands as symbol of dark Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths and the field of their Divine transformation. Queen, symbol of Moderate Spirituality: The Queen , the beautiful, passionate and the wise human mother of Savitri , the Divine’s unconscious instrument in Ignorance, child Soul, bala, represents mankind satisfied and preoccupied with earthly life of surface consciousness with having partial static Divine realisation through ‘sacrificial flame of aspiration,’ (Savitri-417) illumination of intellect, sattwic mind, limited light in Ignorance, and in her understanding of the mystery of creation and the Creator, the truth distorted and the Immortal’s meaning in the world was veiled. Thus, the limitation of her sattwic mind is here identified as soul slaying truth. As a human mother, she fostered, nourished and served her Divine daughter with self-interest and attachment. She understands perfectly the limitations of human love of ordinary life and static Divine Love of ascetics, which cannot illuminate material life and not aware of the dynamic aspect of Divine Love which can transform life and human love. She was unaware of the secret of abundant dynamic Divine’s Grace and Bliss that hunts behind all effort to accept danger and pain to resolve the fundamental problem of existence and hence to decline all greater adventure by rejecting the doomed Satyavan was identified by her as the best solution. She, like a common man, was oblivious of past births and was unable to recognise the greatness, nobility and action of world redemption of an Avatara and hence nourished no regard and gratitude towards him. She was also not aware that all unforeseen events are part of God’s secret plan and that He can overrule the Iron Law of Nature by conscious human effort and by dynamisation of His Super nature. So Narad asks the Queen not to interfere in matters that are beyond her understanding and power and to stand back from the stupendous scene and tremendous strife of her daughter’s heaven-sent task. The Queen was a representative Soul of moderate Spirituality or a beginner of integral Yoga and during the critical hour of her daughter’s choice of Satyavan, she experienced a spiritual fall as her Soul was not sufficiently trained to lean on the pure and tranquil Spirit for all necessary aid and help during the hour of extreme adversity. This suggests that to oppose Divine’s Will in carrying out her daughter’s ‘heaven-sent task’ (Savitri-461) of rescuing men is the cause of her Spiritual decline. Her only daughter and husband’s mighty Spiritual Presence did not help her to overcome this Spiritual fall of Consciousness and she lost the ‘empire of her hard-won quietude.’ (Savitri-437) Savitri and Satyavan, The symbol of Incarnating dual Godhead: In Savitri and Satyavan , Soul and Nature had realised equal Divine Presences and merged themselves in oneness of wide harmony and balance. They have descended to narrow bound of earth life with too large Nature, Para-prakriti, overleaping the existing time. Their Spirit and body were glad, fulfilled through their union, which drove them towards the discovery of ‘Love’s deathless moment,’ beings’ aim and richness extending over all Time. Their first meeting gives the most thrill by witnessing the dual Avatara in a secluded shrine of earth and in the secluded chamber of their heart, who carry all the memories of their past births and their unfulfilled world task. From time to time or from the beginning of the creation, the earth waits patiently for this destined meeting. Each meeting after the passing of many ages brings a new promise of Divine manifestation and the new hope becomes again visible in earth’s creatures. They had treasured the rich relation of their brief human birth through a subtle link of union or clasp of two eternities through many successive births and bodies of un-beginning past and felt the call of Spirit’s unending future joy; even they knew their Selves ‘older than the birth of Time.’ (Savitri-537) A vast intention of love’s unseen Presence has drawn these dual incarnating Powers closer in this life and their love asks to wait endlessly as if they have all eternity ahead for their self-fulfilment. Together they have disdained from the God’s everlasting Night of Inconscient world and turned away from His everlasting Day of Sachchidananda plane and returned to earth to wage a million war against the universal dark rebel forces attached to present unstable existence, to bear the earth Mother’s ancient adversary, to bear ‘world’s intolerable wrongs’ (Savitri-701) and to accomplish their double task of raising the world to God’s deathless Light, a permanent ascent of Divine Consciousness and bringing down Divine Shakti to earth and men, a permanent descent of Divine Consciousness. Death God, temporary Guardian of this mutable World: Death God, the dire universal impersonal dark Force, here personified as godhead of the Inconscient world, Yama, who as the intolerant dark instrument of the Divine, Yantra, having realisation of partial union with the Divine, and in his personality the escapist doctrine of mundane perfection, moderate Spirituality and later Vedantic Spirituality are reconciled. He guards and obeys the Divine’s fixed immutable law of Nature which is a part and derivation of Divine's dynamic Super nature and his hunger through world spreading death-net-trap can devour all, slay the infant Souls, those who are unable to open towards the Spirit’s changeable Supernature and endless truth. He was oblivious of his temporary instrumental action in Ignorance and considered himself as Omnipotent Supreme Power without the Spiritual experience of Divine Identity and Oneness. He was aware that the static Divine union of Saints and Avataras and the Ananda and Freedom gained through this union was not enough to dismantle death from outer existence. For him man’s identity was diminished as ‘the naked two-legged worm’ (Savitri-634) and he was not aware of the seven-fold personality of the Divine Lover, Divine’s mighty whole, total vision and swift evolutionary change in Knowledge through dynamic Divine union for His unfinished world existence and was aware only of that impersonal Divine where ‘there is no room for’ (Savitri-608) personal love and the incomplete task given to him during the passage of man’s tardy evolution in Ignorance within the boundary of three gunas . He was against the ancient Vedantic solution of life of reconciliation of Spirit with Matter as proposed by Savitri for whom Satyavan’s physical form is as important and real as his Soul and one need not die in order to find the Spirit. Death proposes Savitri to leave the dead husband Satyavan either through escapist moderate solution of life through procreation of children and multiple earthly enjoyments with ‘other men’ (Savitri-637) or later Vedantic/Nirvanist solution of life by escaping through Death’s door to supreme abode of Param dham and live a celestial life with Satyavan there and by forgetting the responsibility of emancipating the race here on earth. This Moderate and Ascetic solution of the problem of life proposed by Death was not acceptable to Savitri. Savitri’s Soul’s clarity and mind’s clarity made Death powerless. Death , like other cosmic Gods, has the immeasurable heart of silence, knowledge of past, present and future, trikaladristi and limited power of offering boons to the wounded mortals and in his understanding of existence, the Soul saving truth is thoroughly distorted and his Soul slaying words have denied contact with the dynamic Spirit and Divine Shakti. Savitri’s Mind and Soul’s clarity delivered Death partly from limitation of gospel of human love and twilight thought in which falsehood is ‘mingled with sad strains of truth’ (Savitri-612) and he became powerless before her greater God status of Psychic Being, universal Soul saving Power, Supramentalised Psychic Being and a superior incarnating Divine Mother Force. Those who can open themselves towards Savitri’s universal Soul saving Impersonal energy can confront Time and Fate. The future vision of Savitri promises that when she will enter the Spiritual experience of everlasting Day, this dreadful majesty of Death’s face and his pessimistic harsh philosophy will not be slain in his own inconscient home but will be changed into the beauty of suns and a sum of all sweetness will gather into his limbs. His grand fort of darkness, huge Inconscient’s grasp and sad destroying might will be abolished forever, his vague infinity filling the universe with dangerous breath will be transformed and he will emerge as a wonderful God. Now the Spiritual significance and utility of Death is identified as a passage in the Soul’s unending journey of all life in order to ‘force the soul of man to struggle for Light’ (Savitri-666) and a ‘whip to his yearning for eternal bliss.’ (Savitri-666) The Divine instrumentation of untransformed Death and its nobility is still hidden from humanity as he abruptly ends the parable of the charm of life through the ‘last gift of death.’ (Savitri-204) This greatness will be revealed to man when he will be aware of the Divine’s comprehensive plan extending over all life, confirming that death is a Spirit’s opportunity to begin a greater life. The Gita identifies Death as Vibhuti, the lord of the Law and insists ‘to see that Nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures.’ (CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-382) Death God’s existence on earth is provisional or as identified in Savitri ‘a failing star.’ (Savitri-640) As long as Ignorance is there, Death is a Spiritual necessity. His business on earth will fail with more and more working of universalised Divine Love; his safe and secured throne in the Inconscient sheath will be questioned when more and more Sadhak of integral Yoga will hold Paramatma Satyavan in the heart centre and enter that dark Inconscient world with Supramental sword to confront that dark universal world force. Here, Sri Aurobindo projected Death as a ‘dark-browed sophist’ (Saviti-621) with experience of partial transformation of nature and Spiritual fall through return to his Inconscient home and left the issue of his complete transformation till the arrival of the last Avatar. Since Death is not a Divine’s instrument of Soul saving Truth, he proposes a Sadhak (or Savitri within) to live in the world with triple limitation/deficiency of human love. Firstly, human love cannot leave life pure and untouched and hence one is deprived of vast descent of Truth-Light. Secondly, Death God forces a Sadhaka to experience the sorrow of widowhood by forgetting Paramatma Satyavan in the heart centre or 'leave this fated head' (Savitri-431) or 'Leave then thy dead, O Savitri , and live.' (Savitri-656). Lastly, human love is identified as a weak bond and it cannot 'break earth’s seal of ignorance and death.' (Savitri-315) If a Sadhak receives the crushing embrace of the Savitri within (or descent of vast Divine Shakti ) then her arm will be far sweeter than the courts of God and that bond will be far stronger than any human love imaginable. The triple efficiency of Divine Love is that, firstly, Death is intolerant towards Divine Love, which leaves life pure and untouched, calling down vast Divine Grace. Secondly, Divine Love is a strong bond between Jivatma and Paraprakriti, and Savitri within guards that seal against Death's 'rending hands.' (Savitri-633). And lastly, with the strong, ceaseless fourfold Divine union, Soul force accumulates, which can confront death and destiny. Savitri book reminds a Sadhaka to be aware of the triple Divine Love. They are identified as individual Psychic Love, universal Divine Love and Transcendent Divine Love. They are: “Assailed, surprised in the fortress of her self, Conquered by her own unexpected king (the Divine),” Savitri-87 (Psychic Love.) "A captive Life wedded her conqueror (Supreme Lord)." Savitri-125 (Psychic Love) "The calm delight that weds one soul to all," Savitri-6 (Activation of Universal Divine Love.) "The wedding of the eternal Lord and Spouse Took place again on earth in human forms:" Savitri-411 (Transcendent Supramental Love in the heart centre.) Satyavan's birth Mother, symbol of developing Soul: Satyavan’s birth mother is identified in this epic as the smallest character, the symbolic representation of child Soul and through her Sri Aurobindo gives the strongest message of true consecrated service to all earth-bound aspiring child Souls and their right relation with the Mother Soul; here symbolically represented as Savitri . Mother Soul serves earth from below as a slave and from above and beyond like strong sunlight and she trespasses the bound life of child Souls as strong Goddess and liberates them from their barren days. Like all other parents, Satyavan’s birth mother was not aware of the doom nearing her only child and aspired for him ‘All joy of earth, all heaven’s beatitude.’ (Savitri-467) A similar observation is marked in King Aswapati who aspired to pass the mortal life of his only child Savitri unwounded and further aspired for this young spirit untouched with tears, and be possessed by all new and ‘beautiful things.’ (Savitri-700) Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: Savitri Handbook I (in making) The Handbook II of Savitri (in making) The Central Truth of Savitri “I am not doing it (Savitri translation) to show it to people or to have anyone read it, but to remain in Savitri's atmosphere, for I love that atmosphere. It will give me an hour of concentration, and I'll see if by chance. I have no gift for poetry, but I'll see if it comes! (It surely won't come from a mentality developed in this present existence there's no poetic gift!) So it's interesting, I'll see if anything comes. I am going to give it a try. I know that light. I am immediately plunged into it each time I read Savitri . It is a very, very beautiful light… So now I don't mind finishing The Synthesis (of Yoga) . I was a little bothered because I have no other books by Sri Aurobindo to translate that can help me in my sadhana: there was only The Synthesis (of Yoga). As I said, it always came right on time, just when it was needed for a particular experience… All his other books that could help me are already translated. And with Savitri , the idea isn't to make a translation, but to SEE. To try something. To give me the daily experience of that contact. I had some magnificent experiences when I read it the first time (two years ago, I believe). Wonderful, wonderful experiences! And since then, each time I read those lines, the same thing happens – not the same experience, but I come in contact with the same realm.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-18.09.1962 “The importance of Savitri is immense. Its subject is universal. Its revelation is prophetic. The time spent in its atmosphere is not wasted. Take all the time necessary to see this exhibition. It will be a happy compensation for the feverish haste men put now in all they do.” The Mother TMCW-13/Words of the Mother-I/p-26

"One force shall be your mover and your guide, One light shall be around you and within; Hand in strong hand confront Heaven’s question, life:" Savitri-374-375 The Main Frame of Integral Yoga “All Yoga proceeds in its method by three principles of practice ; first, purification , that is to say, the removal of all aberrations, disorders, obstructions brought about by the mixed and irregular action of the energy of being in our physical, moral and mental system; secondly, concentration, that is to say, the bringing to its full intensity and the mastered and self-directed employment of that energy of being in us for a definite end; thirdly, liberation , that is to say, the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy in a false and limited play, which at present are the law of our nature. The enjoyment of our liberated being which brings us into unity or union with the Supreme, is the consummation ; it is that for which Yoga is done. Three indispensable steps and the high, open and infinite levels to which they mount …”¹³ Sri Aurobindo “(1) The human soul’s individual liberation and enjoyment of union with the Divine in spiritual being, consciousness and delight must always be the first object of the Yoga; (2) its free enjoyment of the cosmic unity of the Divine becomes a second object; (3) but out of that a third appears, the effectuation of the meaning of the divine unity with all beings by a sympathy and participation in the spiritual purpose of the Divine in humanity. The individual Yoga then turns from its separateness and becomes a part of the collective Yoga of the divine Nature in the human race. The liberated individual being, united with the Divine in self (Psychic being) and spirit (Spiritual being), becomes in his natural being a self-perfecting instrument for the perfect outflowering of the Divine in humanity.”⁵ Sri Aurobindo The Main Frame of Integral Yoga Integral Yoga consistently follows the Vedic and the Vedantic arrangements of Divinisation of Becoming and Being, consisting of certain broad facts and principles which define its main framework. These are identified as simplest and most philosophical for the beginners from the point of view of the utility of its various planes of Consciousness. It consists of the triune ordinary principles of mind, life and matter and triune Spiritual principles of Sachchidananda (Sat - Existence, Chit-Tapas -Consciousness, Ananda -Bliss) and the link principle of Vijnana , the Supermind, through these septuple stairs the developing Being can enter the Vedantic sacrifice and developing Nature can enter the Vedic sacrifice and rise to the perfection of Soul and Nature. The Main Frame provides the architecture and structure of Integral Yoga. So, one can be aware of 11x3=33 faculties which require our prior attention. 1) The Three Basic Requisites¹¹ of integral Yoga: In the long and difficult path there must be unshakable patience, whose importance is felt in the three successive stages of integral development; firstly the ardours of the heart and the violence of the eager will that seeks to take the kingdom of heaven by storm can have miserable consequences; the sadhaka should not be in haste to acquire peace, purity, liberation, perfection and Supramental consciousness, need not feel discouraged over the failure in arriving at the immediate aim; need not feel discontent and impatience which will attract all kinds of misfortune and depression. Any search for shortcut or escape from our impediments may draw away the seeker towards the lure of practice of strenuous methods on large scale that are declared glittering substitutes in integral Yoga; secondly, the sadhaka has to go through a prolonged, often tedious and painful period of preparation and purification and wait with full faith till it is ready for the birth and growth of Spiritual faculties, enlarge its understanding of Spiritual experience in order to admit instrumental change. Humanity has first to understand this apparent phenomena of existence through the intellect; for until its mentality is sufficiently developed, purified, silenced and illumined, Spiritual knowledge is not really possible, and in proportion as these attributes are developed, the possibilities of Spiritual knowledge become richer and fuller and the hope of generalisation of Spiritual and Supramental force as the sole transformative force of humanity gets nearer; thirdly even after the Spiritual faculties are gained, it will still be long before all the movements of our conflicting members and elements of our personality consent to bear the difficult and exacting process of transformation; the transformation of the egoistic will in our vital being, desire soul and desire nature are far more difficult than other. Physical mind lives in moments, so is the creator of impatience because it cannot wait for the God’s eternity who works out the distorting Maya through wisdom which went forth since the beginning of creation. The hardest work is to force conversion of the inferior dark universal forces attached to present unstable creation and the most difficult transformation of all is to get rid of the central egoism and even the ego sense of the worker, which can eradicate the very origin of desire. So in this path of sadhana, those who aspire intensely and know how to wait patiently put time at their side. So if one were blissfully content within then things follow their harmonious course. To call down Timeless eternity into succession of moments is the right use of Time and development of endless patience. Secondly, absolute courage as opposed to fear, is indispensable in the three successive stages of sadhana ; firstly the Sadhaka will have to discover the Divine in varying intensities either by courageous adventure of his own consciousness by tearing the constant movement in a circle of routine or like a pilgrim Soul he will follow and reach the highway of his known destination; secondly, having found the Transcendent, he can return upon the universe like a pathfinder hewing his way through a virgin forest; in this search he must even accompany many miles of mind, life and body’s unregenerate activities and expose them towards the transforming light; it is a dreadful and gigantic fight against all the laws of nature, collective suggestions and earthly habits; thirdly it is further a journey into the Inconscient pit which is the home of dark forces, without glorious results, without experiences filling with ecstasy or joy; it is like a desert strewn with every conceivable trap and obstacle. Absolute fearlessness is required, because at every step, at every second one has to wage a war against everything that is established in the physical and vital mind. This exercise is essential for the root solution of the problems of existence. Thirdly, integral Yoga demands a fivefold faith which has to be developed from the very beginning of this Yoga; they are:-- (i) ‘Faith in the God and his Shakti , (ii) faith in the presence and power of the Divine in us and the world, (iii) a faith that all in the world is the working of one divine Shakti, (iv) that all the steps of the Yoga, its strivings and sufferings and failures as well as its successes and satisfactions and victories are utilities and necessities of her workings and (v) that by firm and strong dependence on and a total self-surrender to the Divine and to his Shakti in us we can attain to oneness and freedom and victory and perfection.’¹ If the inward Soul has received the Divine’s call and one has walked long and steadily in the path then the sraddha will remain firm under fiercest adverse pressure and carry one ahead in spite of worst stumbling and through the most prolonged failure. 2) The Three Basic Inward Concentrations¹² of integral Yoga: Firstly, in this concentration the discursive mind must be accustomed to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single connected thought of one thing in itself, grasp Spiritually that one object worthy of seeking and one subject worthy of knowledge and that is identified as to become the pure and absolute Being. This concentration must be practised undistracted of all lures and alien calls and become That which is above all things and all Divine attributes. Secondly, in this process thought ceases and one climbs into an absorbed contemplation , ecstatic meditation, inner Samadhi and in meditation’s deep room the Spirit’s firm truth can be called down into the lower untransformed nature to cast the light, power and bliss of the higher planes on the ordinary consciousness. ‘On meditation’s mounting edge of trance,’²⁶ great stairs of thought leaped up to unattainable heights and there Time stretches to Eternity and Nature unites with Spirit’s Absolute. Thirdly, in this process the mind is stilled either by standing back from all mental action, witness, sakhi, or by rejecting the thought suggestions and holding firmly to the peace of the being. When the absolute quiet, great calm and peace are settled, one experiences the all-pervading silent Brahman and the knowledge of the Divine take possession on all the planes of Consciousness. 3) The Three Central Secrets¹⁰ of integral Yoga: The highest mystery of absolute surrender to the Divine and His Shakti is the first central secret of Vedantic teachings and Integral Yoga. The Gita indicated that the All-Father created these people with sacrifice as their companion and acceptance of this law of sacrifice, this sacrifice of the Purusha submitting itself to the Force and Matter is a practical recognition of ego towards the descent of a saving Divine power to gradually correct and eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation and illuminate them. Even if the practice of this consecration is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible, the completest adoration imaginable and the most profound God-love. There are three stages through which this self consecration will be effective; firstly, it is the period of self-preparation, personal effort of entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do and its turn must culminate in an integral self-giving to the Highest by constant rejection of all that is not the true truth; secondly, during this transition there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working of Divine Force from above, but not any other; and lastly all effort, method and fixed sadhana are transcended by simple, natural, spontaneous, powerful and happy disclosing of the Divine. The second central secret of integral Yoga is the demand of constant inward and outward remembrance of the one central liberating knowledge that (a) the Divine is in all things and beings, (b) all are in the Divine and (c) all are made up of the stuff of the Divine and there is nothing else in the universe. This thought, faith, memory and a self-dynamising meditation become the whole substance of the Consciousness of a Sadhaka and it will turn into a profound and uninterrupted vision and a vivid and all-embracing Consciousness. In these three terms the highest relation of the Soul to existence through the Purusha’s possession of Prakriti is established substituting the false relation created by the limiting ego through Purusha’s subjection to Prakriti. This is the new vision, sense of infinite being and foundation of unity that we have to acquire and establish. The third central secret of integral Yoga will be that the Sadhaka will renounce all the inner supports of egoism along with its seed and influence. Ego sense is active in the world-play and falsifies the truth of things. He has first to seize on the egoistic energies and turn them towards the light and the right; once turned he has to educate them to recognise, accept and follow that. His ego will be annulled by realising three things simultaneously that when inwardly the individualised consciousness of the Jiva rises to live in the truth and possess the One and outwardly he becomes a slave of Divine revealed in all mankind and disciple of the Master who is the source, energy and dynamism of all his action. To rise beyond the desire of personal salvation is necessary for the complete rejection of this basis of ego. ‘If we seek the Divine, it should be for the sake of the Divine and for nothing else, because that is the supreme call of our being, the deepest truth of the Spirit.’²³ All must be directed towards the Divine. Nothing must be attempted for our family, friends, country and mankind because they are connected with our personal life, thought and sentiment ‘or ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare.’²⁴ Thus all life and works becomes an adoration, service and daily dynamic worship to the Divine who dwells in all. A divine Force substitutes the ego and will choose at each moment what has to be done and what has not to be done, what has to be momentarily or permanently taken up and abandoned, that Force is alone sufficient and competent to lead us towards the ultimate goal through the arduous, difficult and dangerous path of integral Yoga. 4) The Three Central Dynamic Processes⁹ of integral Yoga: The first central dynamic process is the emergence of true Psychic being as the leader of the sacrifice brings with it the full power of the Spirit in the action. At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted, clear, passive and pure by renunciation of mental activities, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being, long hidden within and felt only in its rare influences, is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the Sadhana. Its character is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic in action and movement; it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the Divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. It alone can assure the perennial freshness and sincerity and beauty of the symbol, catches, exposes, repels the mind’s and the life’s falsehoods, seizes, hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind’s ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life force. The second central dynamic process is the sublimation of exclusive enjoyment of human love into an all-inclusive Divine Love. The widest love is fulfilled in knowledge that sees the world and all creatures as the being of the Beloved. And since love is the effective power and Soul-symbol of bliss-oneness, one will approach and enter into this oneness by the gate of universal Love, a heightening of human love at first, afterwards a Spirit of Divine Love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. It is this Divine Love, the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces, poured out into acts that could alone create a harmony in the world and a true unity between all its creatures; all else strives in vain towards that end so long as Divine Love has not disclosed itself as the heart of the delivered manifestation in terrestrial Nature. He will be one in Bliss-consciousness with all the world-play and its powers and happenings and there will be banished forever the sorrow and fear, the hunger and pain of our poor and darkened mental and vital and physical existence. He will get the power of the Bliss-freedom in which all the conflicting principles of our being shall be unified in their absolute values. All evil shall perforce change itself into good; the universal beauty of the All-Beautiful will take possession of its fallen kingdoms; every darkness will be converted into a pregnant glory of Light and discords which the mind creates between Truth and Good and Beauty, Power and Love and Knowledge will disappear on the Eternal summit, in the Infinite extensions where they are always one. Human nature has been unable to bear the pressure of Divine Love in its purity for the very reason that it is the most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all the Divine energies that could rebuild the world with its tongues of sacrifice. A little of it seized in an impure vessel has been corrupted at once into a vital pietistic ardour, a defenceless religious or ethical sentimentalism, a sensuous or even sensual erotic mysticism. For this reason Divine Love has been the least frontally present in earthly life, the least successfully redemptive and the least creative. The third central dynamic process is to Spiritualise his being by the power of the Soul in mind opening itself directly to a Spiritual force and being above the head and to invert that higher force so possessed and brought into action the whole of his nature. All Psychic experience gets its stability through repetition of its corresponding experiences in the Spiritual plane and receives completeness and absoluteness by similar repetition of experience in the Supramental plane. We have to Spiritualise the Psychic being in its entirety by a descent of a Divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, Freedom and Wideness. It is necessary to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality, dissolve the ego, enter into the Cosmic Consciousness, realise the Self, and acquire a Spiritualised and Universalised mind and heart, life-force, physical consciousness. Then only the passage into Supramental Consciousness begins to become possible, and even then, there is a difficult ascent to make each stage of which is a separate arduous achievement. 5) The Three Central Methods⁸ of integral Yoga: The methods of integral Yoga are dynamised after the dynamisation of its processes. The first central method of higher Divine force working in the lower nature does not act according to a fixed routine system but a sort of free, scattered and gradually intensive, purposeful, scientific and synthetic Yoga with some broad lines of working common to all, determined by the temperament of the individual Sadhaka and the helpful materials his nature offers and the obstacle it presents to purification and perfection. Therefore each Sadhaka in this path has his own method of Yoga. The second central method is the integral process which accepts our nature as organised by our past evolution without rejecting any untransformed nature and compels all to undergo Divine transformation. In this ever-progressive experience the Sadhaka will know how this lower manifestation is constituted and how they are deformed or more or less distorted from the element of action in the harmony of the Divine Nature. He will understand how the Divine force will change individual human nature like a smith who forges the crude material in his smithy. The third central method is that the Divine power will use all life as means of world transformation in cosmic Consciousness . Every experience of outer contact with the world-environment, the most trifling and repellent suffering or most humiliating Spiritual fall are accepted as a step on the path of perfection. The God’s method in the world is the same in the lower and higher Nature; only it works tardily and obscurely in the former and works swiftly and consciously in the latter. All life is a Yoga of Nature capable of self-awareness, seeking to manifest God within and without. 6) The Three Central Vedantic Principles of integral Yoga: Firstly, an individual is considered fit to pursue Integral Karma Yoga if he has no distinction of work in terms of high and low and loves all work equally. The success of Integral Karma Yoga can come when each karmi is able to discover in the smallest work, the God’s vast intention and is able to turn all work as means of God union and all work is initiated not by desire but by the Divine Will through intense experience of Divine union and he can arrive at the highest perfection, siddhi, of Karmayoga, which is Sadharmya mukti, complete and final liberation and transformation of whole nature. Secondly, an individual seeker can be considered fit to pursue Integral Jnana Yoga if he has developed the capacity to live in isolation or seclusion for an indefinite period without attachment to action and thought. The success of Integral Jnana Yoga can come when each Jnani , will be able to turn and transform all mundane knowledge into God Knowledge and discover his utter Oneness with the existence and he can arrive at the highest perfection, siddhi, of Jnanayoga, which is Sayujya Mukti , the identification of the individual being in all its parts with the Supreme. Thirdly, an individual seeker can be considered fit to pursue Integral Bhakti Yoga if his adoration of the Creator does not exclude His creation or if his love, adoration and seeking of the Divine becomes equal and all-embracing in all deities, creatures and objects. The success of Integral Bhakti Yoga can come when each Bhakta is able to turn all human emotions God-ward and is able to see, identify and realise the one Divine integrally in all godheads, men, creatures and objects and in all His names and forms and qualities. He can attain the highest perfection, siddhi, of Bhaktiyoga, which is Salokya-Mukti; the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine. 7) The Three Central Vedic Principles of integral Yoga: The first Vedic principle is identified as Hathayoga. The aim of Hathayoga is ‘to give to the soul in the physical body (Annamaya Purusha) the power, the light, the purity, the freedom, the ascending scales of spiritual experience…’¹⁴ in order to develop subtle and causal body. Integral Yoga can partially utilise the Hathayoga for the initial perfection of the body through simple Asana and final perfection of body through simple Pranayama . ‘The ordinary method is the opening up of the cakras by the physical processes of Hathayoga (of which something is also included in the Rajayoga) or by the methods of the Tantric discipline. But while these may be optionally used at certain stages by the integral Yoga, they are not indispensable; for here (in integral Yoga) the reliance is on the power of the higher being to change the lower existence, a working is chosen mainly from above downward and not the opposite way, and therefore the development of the superior power of the gnosis will be awaited as the instrumentative change in this part of the Yoga.’¹⁵ The disadvantage of Hathayoga is that it arrives at the Supreme by 'long, difficult and meticulous movement,'¹³ and the body demands a 'great and absorbing... attention.'¹³ The Second Vedic principle is identified as Rajayoga . The Rajayoga ‘aims at the liberation and perfection not of the bodily, but of the mental being, the control of the emotional and sensational life, the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness.”¹⁶ “The preliminary movement of Rajayoga is a careful self-discipline by which good habits of mind are substituted for the lawless movements that indulge the lower nervous being. By the practice of truth, by renunciation of all forms of egoistic seeking, by abstention from injury to others, by purity, by constant meditation and inclination to the divine Purusha who is the true lord of the mental kingdom, a pure, glad, clear state of mind and heart is established. This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery.’¹⁶ Thus a Rajayogi attains the state of Samadhi . ‘For the ancient system of Rajayoga aimed not only at Swarajya , self-rule or subjective empire, the entire control by the subjective consciousness of all the states and activities proper to its own domain, but included Samrajya as well, outward empire, the control by the subjective consciousness of its outer activities and environment.’¹⁶ The deficiency of Rajayoga is ‘its excessive reliance on abnormal states of trance,’¹⁶ whereas in integral Yoga spiritual life and its experiences are ‘fully active and fully utilisable in the waking state.’¹⁶ The third Vedic principle is identified as Tantra . The fourfold aim of Tantra is purification, Suddhi, liberation, Mukti, perfection, Siddhi , and enjoyment, Bhukti . ‘Instead of drawing back from manifested Nature and its difficulties, he (Tantric Sadhak ) confronted them, seized and conquered. But in the end, as is the general tendency of Prakriti, Tantric Yoga largely lost its principle in its machinery and became a thing of formulae and occult mechanism still powerful when rightly used but fallen from the clarity of their original intention.’¹⁷ ‘There is yet another, the Tantric, which though less subtle and spiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the Gita, — for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole of Life in our divine scope as the Lila of the Divine; and in some directions it is more immediately rich and fruitful, for it brings forward into the foreground along with divine knowledge, divine works and an enriched devotion of divine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use of the body and of mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all its planes, to which the Gita gives only a passing and perfunctory attention.’¹⁸ Integral Yoga begins with methods of Vedanta in order to arrive at the aims of Tantra. For a Sadhak of integral Yoga, Soul is the static Lord and Nature is the dynamic executive Energy. ‘The relation of the two exists between the poles of rest and action. When the Energy is absorbed in the bliss of conscious self-existence, there is rest; when the Purusha pours itself out in the action of its Energy, there is action, creation and the enjoyment or Ananda of becoming.’¹⁹ The disadvantage of Tantra is that it 'has fallen into discredit with those who are not Tantrics ; and especially owing to the developments of its left-hand path, the Vama Marga , which not content with exceeding the duality of virtue and sin and instead of replacing them by spontaneous rightness of action seemed, sometimes, to make a method of self-indulgence, a method of unrestrained social immorality.'²⁹ 8) The Three Central Inner Revolutions⁷ of integral Yoga: The first central inner revolution is that annulment from life all movement of brief desire, which is an insecure limitation, an ambiguous fire, a dwarf lust, hunger for pleasure and satisfaction. It has built in us at its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own lower note of troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer celestial joy, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, endless charm, seeking after Divine Delight in things and happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. The second central inner revolution is that life as it is, is driven or led partly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a Divine Life the mind and life-impulse must cease to be anything but docile instruments and the inmost Psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a Divine guidance. It is only when we open ourselves to the Divine Shakti transcending the lower untransformed Nature, then we will be a perfect instrument of her Will, Power and Knowledge. The third central inner revolution is that not the ego but ‘Truth of Being must govern truth of life.’² The life as it is, is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; the small ego sense must be starved by renouncing the impulse to act, sarbarambha parityagi ,³ or rooted away from our nature by rejecting all motive forces other than the Divine Will or to kill it by cutting away from us all movement of personality and be replaced by the true Spiritual person, the central Spiritual being; it must feel a Divine Force awakens within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose. The extinction of egoism eliminates the very origin of desire followed by the establishment of the Soul’s nature of equality. 9) The Three Basic or Fundamental Realisations⁶ of integral Yoga: The first basic realisation, is the experience of fundamental impersonality awakening to an ineffable high transcendent Unknowable above the Self and above this world in which he seems to move, a timeless and spaceless condition or entity which is at once, in some way compelling and convincing to an essential Consciousness in him, the one thing that is to it overwhelmingly real and an immense liberating force. It releases his knowledge from the narrowness of personal mind, his will from the clutch of personal desire, his heart from the bondage of petty mutable emotions, his life from its petty personal groove, his soul from ego, and it allows them to embrace calm, equality, wideness, universality and infinity. There will still remain on this foundation of the first basic realisation of immeasurable silence and quietude, the infinitely proceeding self-fulfilment of the Brahman , its dynamic divine manifestation in the individual and its extension by his presence, example and action in others and in the universe at large. The second basic realisation is usually accompanied by an equally compelling sense either of the dreamlike or shadowy illusoriness of all things here or else of their temporary, derivative and only half-real character. For a time at least all around him may seem to be a movement of cinematographic shadow forms or surface figures and his own action may appear as a fluid formulation from some Source ungrasped as yet and perhaps unseizable above or outside him. To remain in this consciousness, to carry out this initiation or follow out this first suggestion of the character of things would be to proceed towards the goal of dissolution of the Self and the World in the Unknowable, this is the Laya, Moksha , and Nirvana. This may extend itself to the dissolution of mind, life and body itself into the silent Self or absolute Existence; but the essence of the liberation is that the individual has lost the sense of division in the boundlessness of an infinite Consciousness. The third basic realisation is that it is possible, on the contrary, for him to wait till through the silence of this timeless unfilled liberation he begins to enter into relations with that yet ungrasped Source of himself and his actions; then the void begins to fill, there emerges out of it or there rushes into it all the manifold Truth of the Divine, all the aspects and manifestations and many levels of a dynamic Infinite. At first this experience imposes on the mind and then on all his being an absolute, a fathomless, almost an abysmal peace and silence. If there were not that Source of all things, there could be no universe; all powers, all works and activities would be an illusion, all creation and manifestation would be impossible. 10) The Three inner and Central Intuition: As witness, sakhi, a Spiritual man observes the action of Nature without attachment, as approver, anumanta, he rejects the action of falsehood and ignorance of lower Nature and accepts overhead wisdom and Truth, as master of Nature , Ishwara, he perfectly controls the action of lower Nature and acts from the dictation of higher Nature ‘His way to perfection is not to involve himself in the outward or superficial existence, nor is it to place himself in the soul of life or the soul of body, but to insist on the three mental intuitions by which he can lift himself eventually above the physical, vital and mental levels. (1) This insistence may take two quite different forms, each with its own object and way of proceeding. It is quite possible for him to accentuate it in a direction away from existence in Nature, a detachment, a withdrawal from mind, life and body. He may try to live more and more as the witness Purusha , regarding the action of Nature, without interest in it, without sanction to it, detached, rejecting the whole action, withdrawing into pure conscious existence. This is the Sankhya liberation. (2) He may go inward into that larger existence of which he has the intuition and away from the superficial mentality into a dream-state or sleep-state which admits him into wider or higher ranges of consciousness. (3) By passing away into these ranges he may put away from him the terrestrial being. There is even, it was supposed in ancient times, a transition to supramental worlds from which a return to earthly consciousness was either not possible or not obligatory. But the definite and sure finality of this kind of liberation depends on the elevation of the mental being into that spiritual self of which he becomes aware when he looks away and upward from all mentality. That is given as the key to entire cessation from terrestrial existence whether by immergence in pure being or a participation in supracosmic being.’²² 11) The Three Central Object⁴ of integral Yoga: The first central object of Integral Yoga is the discovery of the Divinity in oneself; realise the Divine in its essential Self, truth unaltered by form, phenomena and appearance and true relation of this Self with its own created existences. This is necessary for an individual to arrive at the highest truth of his own being, to set right its disorders, confusions, false identifications, to arrive at its right concentration and purity and to know and mount to its Source. He finds the right basis for all the members to live in the highest Self and obey no other law than that which proceeds from his highest Self and is given to his purified being without any falsification in the transmitting mentality and without shutting up in a mental formula of limited personal experience. The second central object is the total discovery of the Divinity in the world behind the apparent denial offered by its schemes and figures. An individual salvation is not sufficient for him; for he must break through all separative boundaries and narrower intensity of a limited individual fulfilment and open to a cosmic Consciousness by universalistation of Psychic and Spiritual Being and spread himself in the world-Nature. Without universalisation of Consciousness, 'it is impossible to change the human nature into the divine'²⁷ and 'an isolated individual transformation is not enough and may not be wholly feasible.'²⁸ The third central object is the total discovery of the dynamism of the Transcendent Force by whose descent this World and Self will be empowered to break their disguising envelopes and become Divine in revealing form. The cosmic Consciousness is not integral for him; for above it, there is urgent upon him a dynamic realisation of the Transcendent pressing from the Supreme upon this world of beings, and only some encompassing and exceeding of the cosmic Consciousness can release into manifestation here that yet unlavished splendour of embodied Transcendence. An ascent into the Supramental Truth raises our Spiritual and Psychic Consciousness to a height that brings about a descent of this Light and Truth into all our being and all our parts of nature. All this Existence then becomes part of the Divine Truth, an element and means of the supreme union and oneness, dynamises Divine in every possible way of our being, its highest intensities and largest widenesses and in every range and turn and nook and recess of our Nature, is the ultimate aim of this Yoga. Recapitulation: Mind is exclusive. It will not permit to undergo manyfold pursuit, multiple concentration and hence incapable of any integral purification, integral concentration, integral transformation and integral perfection. It is only by opening of Psychic Being and Spiritual Being, a movement in all the planes of Consciousness is practicable. This movement is not required by Sadhakas of traditional Yoga, because they are satisfied with their partial union with the Divine and wait through the ascent into Purushottama consciousness, which is treated as a passage to supreme abode of Param Dham . But, in integral Yoga, openings of Psychic, Spiritual, Universal and Supramental Beings are utilised exclusively for purification, transformation and perfection of untransformed Nature. So, it is felt to understand the main Frame of Integral Yoga, and our acceptance of its many branching pursuits and awareness and the wholehearted acceptance of the objective of Integral Yoga. It is necessary from the beginning for those who attempt this Yoga must develop firstly , three basic requisites of unflinching patience, absolute courage and colossal faith; secondly , three basic inward concentrations that of exclusive concentration of the one object worthy of pursuit, contemplation and silencing of mind; thirdly , three central secrets of entire consecration, constant inward remembrance of one central liberating knowledge and renounce all the inner support of central egoism; fourthly , integral Yoga refuses to rely on the fragile stuff of mental and moral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in the field of the three central dynamic processes that of development of true Psychic being, sublimation of human into Divine Love and elevation of Mental consciousness into Spiritual and Supramental plane; fifthly, the three central methods of Integral Yoga are that (1) of gradually intensive and purposeful working of Divine force, (2) which subsequently compels all individual Nature to undergo a Divine change and (3) the universalised Divine Power uses all life as means of world transformation; sixthly, the three central Vedantic principles of integral Yoga are derived from the three Vedantic methods of knowledge; it is either a knowledge in the will working out through action or knowledge in the intellect through discernment or knowledge of the heart expressed through love and faith. Integral Yoga proposes ceaseless practice of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga which are identified as Spiritual Science. Seventhly, the three central Vedic principles of integral Yoga are perfection of body by Psycho-physical method of Hathayoga; perfection of mind and psychic being by disciplining of mind through Rajayoga and transformation of Nature by synthetic Yoga of Tantra . Integral Yoga does not propose ceaseless practice of Psycho-physical Sciences of Hathayoga and Tantra and ceaseless practice of Psychic Science of Rajayoga, ‘but their methods can either altogether be dispensed with or used only for a preliminary or else a casual assistance.’¹⁴ In integral Yoga the utility²⁰ of Psycho-physical Science is felt after Spiritual foundation is established through Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga. Eighthly , the integral Yoga proposes to change life from troubled and ignorant into a luminous and harmonious movement of Nature through three central inner revolutions, that of abolition of desire, to make life an instrument by opening of Psychic being²⁵ and disappearance of ego by opening of the Spiritual being;²⁵ ninthly, one will arrive at three basic or fundamental realisations that of (1) experience of Timeless, Spaceless and Silent Brahman , (2) of dissolution of the Self and the world in the Unknowable, --Moksha, Nirvana and (3) the Source of Being and its relation with Becoming through penetration of dynamic Brahman Consciousness, which build a strong foundation of integral Yoga. Tenthly, there will develop three inner or central Intuitions²¹ which are indispensable for perfection of Spiritual being acting directly on earth Nature; they are awareness of witness Purusha, sakhi, who watches the action of Nature, to give them new directions, refinement and extension related with subtle and flexible creation, and an inner awareness of his Spiritual and Supramental being who are master of his Nature. Here Intuition is at once witness, sakhi, source of consent, anumanta, and almighty Lord of the Nature, Maheswara . Finally, the three central objects⁴ of integral Yoga must be accepted wholly by those who follow it and they are the Divinity in one-Self, total discovery of the Divinity in the world and total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal. OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-771, 2: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-693, 3: The Gita-12.16, 4: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-170, 5: CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-613-614, 6: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-117, 7: “There are three conditions which are indispensable for the achievement of this central inner revolution and new formation; none of them is altogether sufficient in itself, but by their united threefold power the uplifting can be done, the conversion made and completely made. For, first, life as it is is a movement of desire and it has built in us as its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive- power, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as it is is driven or led partly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. Last, life as it is is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; ego must disappear and be replaced by the true spiritual person, the central being, and life itself must be turned towards the fulfilment of the Divine in terrestrial existence; it must feel a Divine Force awaking within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-176-177, 8: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-46-47, 9: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-153, 10: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-111-113, 11: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-46, 12: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-323-325, 13: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-530, 14: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-528-29, 15: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-695, 16: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-35 to37, 17: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-43, 18: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-9-10 19: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-44, 20: “In other words we must arrive at and use a psycho-physical knowledge with a spiritual foundation.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-624, 21: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-633-634, 22: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-635, 23: “The desire of personal salvation, however high its form, is an outcome of ego; it rests on the idea of our own individuality and its desire for its personal good or welfare, its longing for a release from suffering or its cry for the extinction of the trouble of becoming and makes that the supreme aim of our existence. To rise beyond the desire of personal salvation is necessary for the complete rejection of this basis of ego. If we seek the Divine, it should be for the sake of the Divine and for nothing else, because that is the supreme call of our being, the deepest truth of the spirit. The pursuit of liberation, of the soul’s freedom, of the realisation of our true and highest self, of union with the Divine, is justified only because it is the highest law of our nature, because it is the attraction of that which is lower in us to that which is highest, because it is the Divine Will in us. That is its sufficient justification and its one truest reason; all other motives are excrescences, minor or incidental truths or useful lures which the soul must abandon, the moment their utility has passed and the state of oneness with the Supreme and with all beings has become our normal consciousness and the bliss of that state our spiritual atmosphere.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-269, 24: “Nothing must be attempted for ourselves as a separate existence; nothing done for others, whether neighbours, friends, family, country or mankind or other creatures merely because they are connected with our personal life and thought and sentiment or because the ego takes a preferential interest in their welfare. In this way of doing and seeing all works and all life become only a daily dynamic worship and service of the Divine in the unbounded temple of his own vast cosmic existence.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-113, 25: “The first step on this long path is to consecrate all our works as a sacrifice to the Divine in us and in the world; this is an attitude of the mind and heart, not too difficult to initiate, but very difficult to make absolutely sincere and all-pervasive. The second step is to renounce attachment to the fruit of our works; for the only true, inevitable and utterly desirable fruit of sacrifice— the one thing needful — is the Divine Presence and the Divine Consciousness and Power in us, and if that is gained, all else will be added. This is a transformation of the egoistic will in our vital being, our desire-soul and desire-nature, and it is far more difficult than the other. The third step is to get rid of the central egoism and even the ego-sense of the worker. That is the most difficult transformation of all and it cannot be perfectly done if the first two steps have not been taken; but these first steps too cannot be completed unless the third comes in to crown the movement and, by the extinction of egoism, eradicates the very origin of desire. Only when the small ego sense is rooted out from the nature can the seeker know his true person that stands above as a portion and power of the Divine and renounce all motive-force other than the will of the Divine Shakti.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-247-48, “The Divine Life-Power too will be a will for growth, a force of self-affirmation, but affirmation of the Divine within us, not of the little temporary personality on the surface, — growth into the true divine Individual, the central being, the secret imperishable Person who can emerge only by the subordination and disappearance of the ego. This is life’s true object: growth, but a growth of the spirit in Nature, affirming and developing itself in mind, life and body; possession, but a possession by the Divine of the Divine in all things, and not of things for their own sake by the desire of the ego; enjoyment, but an enjoyment of the divine Ananda in the universe; battle and conquest and empire in the shape of a victorious conflict with the Powers of Darkness, an entire spiritual self-rule and mastery over inward and outward Nature, a conquest by Knowledge, Love and Divine Will over the domains of the Ignorance.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-175-176 “If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be (1) totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. (2) All your life must be an offering and a sacrifice to the Supreme; your only object in action shall be (3) to serve, (4) to receive, (5) to fulfil, (6) to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works. You must grow in the divine consciousness till (7) there is no difference between your will and hers, (8) no motive except her impulsion in you, (9) no action that is not her conscious action in you and through you.” The Mother-20 (The above nine characteristic in active nature is sign of complete dynamic union with the Divine.) ‘Until you are capable of this complete dynamic identification, you have to regard yourself as a soul and body created for her service, one who does all for her sake. Even if the idea of the separate worker is strong in you and you feel that it is you who do the act, yet it must be done for her. All stress of egoistic choice, all hankering after personal profit, all stipulation of self-regarding desire must be extirpated from the nature.’ The Mother/p-20-21, 26: Savitri-264, 27: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-622, 28: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-997-998, 29: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-42, Sri Matriniketan Ashram, Managed by The Mother’s International Centre Trust, Regd.No-146/24.11.97. Vill: Ramachandrapur, PO: Kukudakhandi-761100, Via: Brahmapur, Dist: Ganjam, State: Odisha, India https://www.srimatriniketanashram.com/new-research Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: "WILL, KNOWLEDGE and LOVE are the three divine powers in human nature and the life of man, and they point to the three paths by which the human soul rises to the divine. The integrality of them, the union of man with God in all the three , must therefore, as we have seen, be the foundation of an integral Yoga ." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-545

"A rushing of two spirits to be one, A burning of two bodies in one flame. Opened were gates of unforgettable bliss:" Savitri-468 Integral Yoga in Detail "Sri Aurobindo had made it clear to me when I was still in France that this yoga in matter is the most difficult of all . For the other yogas , the paths have been well laid, you know where to tread, how to proceed, what to do in such and-such a case. But for the yoga of matter, nothing has ever been done, never, so at each moment everything has to be invented. " The Mother The Mother's Agenda/January 28, 1960, “To retrace the path in all innocence as though one had never before travelled it, is the true purity, the perfect sincerity — the sincerity that brings an uninterrupted progress, growth, an integral perfectioning.” The Mother TMCW-1/Prayers And Meditations/20th August, 1914 “Seeking to embrace all life in itself, it is in the position not of a pilgrim following the highroad to his destination, but, to that extent at least, of a path-finder hewing his way through a virgin forest.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis Of Yoga/p-57 “To walk on the path you must have a dauntless intrepidity, you must never turn back upon yourself with this mean, petty, weak, ugly movement that fear is…An indomitable courage, a perfect sincerity, a total self-giving to the extent that you do not calculate or bargain, you do not give with the idea of receiving, you do not offer yourself with the intention of being protected, you do not have a faith that needs proofs, — this is indispensable for advancing on the path , — this alone can shelter you against all dangers.” The Mother Words Of The Mother/Volume-15/P-190 “In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga . Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis Of Yoga/p-46-47 “So also one may say that the perfection of the integral Yoga will come when each man is able to follow his own path of Yoga, pursuing the development of his own nature in its upsurging towards that which transcends the nature. For freedom is the final law and the last consummation.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis Of Yoga/p-57 “The ways have been built, the capacity to follow them has been developed,the goal or last height of the creation is manifest; all that is left is for each soul to reach individually the right stage and turn of its development, enter into the spiritual ways and pass by its own chosen path out of this inferior existence. But we have supposed that there is a farther intention, — not only a revelation of the Spirit, but a radical and integral transformation of Nature.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-922-923 “It is very easy to be a saint! Oh, even to be a sage is very easy. I feel I was born with it—it is spontaneous and natural for me… but Supramental transformation is another thing altogether, oh!… No one has ever followed that path; Sri Aurobindo was the first, and He left before telling us what He was doing, I am literally carving out a trail through the virgin forest—worse than a virgin forest…I am given the awareness of how huge this thing is one drop at a time…so I won’t be crushed . It has reached a point where all Spiritual life, all those people and races that have tried since the beginning of the earth, all that seems like nothing, like child’s play in comparison. And it is a work without glory: you have no results, no experiences filling you with ecstasy or joy—none of that, it is a hideous labour.” The Mother The Mother's Agenda/July 15, 1961 "There's no path, the path has to be blazed out!” The Mother The Mother's Agenda/August 26, 1964 "Ever disguised she awaits the seeking spirit; Watcher on the supreme unreachable peaks, Guide of the traveller of the unseen paths, She guards the austere approach to the Alone." Savitri-295 Integral Yoga in Detail "Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man’s avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice" Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-82 “As soon as I found out – and no one told me, I found out through an experience – as soon as I found out that there was a discovery to be made within myself, well, it became THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in the world. It took precedence over everything else!...And when, as I told you, I chanced upon a book or an individual that could give me just a little clue and tell me, ‘Here. If you do such and such, you will find your path’ – well I charged into it like a cyclone ... and nothing could have stopped me.” The Mother The Mother's Agenda/August 25, 1954 The central common principle of all Vedantic Schools of Yoga is the self-fulfilment of the Purusha t hrough his Prakriti or play of Prakriti to satisfy her Purusha . Its central secret is the search after the silent inactive Purusha as a means of liberation by withdrawal from the deception created by the active Prakriti and becomes the key to finding of the Shakti. The central common principle of all Vedic schools of Yoga which was later followed by the Tantric schools is the self-fulfilment of Prakriti through her Purusha or play of the Purusha to satisfy his Prakriti and its central secret is the worship, adoration and consecration of the Prakriti to the Divine Shakti as the all important and sole effective force for all attainment and becomes the key to the finding of the Spirit. In integral Yoga the central common principle is that the relation between Purusha and Prakriti exists between two poles of Vedantic rest and Vedic movement; when Prakriti is absorbed in the conscious existence of Purusha, there is rest, freedom and liberation of Soul; when the Purusha pours itself out in action of its Prakriti, there is action, transformation of Nature, new creation and ananda and the complete union of Purusha and Prakriti in Ignorance is raised to the higher planes of Ishwara-Shakti in Knowledge and Brahman-Maya in Vijnana. The central secret of integral Yoga begins with Vedantic teaching of the Spirit as the all important means for finding of the Shakti till the attainment of sufficient Spiritual foundation followed by Spiritual integration which is complemented by the Vedic teaching of Shakti as the all important means of finding the Spirit and their respective sacrifices are ‘the Brahman is offered to the Brhaman by the Brhaman’ ⁷ and ‘the Shakti is offered to the Shakti by the Shakti’ . And the aim of this Yoga is defined as attainment of fullness of Being, fullness of Consciousness and fullness of Life through movement of static and dynamic Consciousness. This object makes the Spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully usable in the normal waking state or waking trance, possessing our whole existence of several (ten) subtle bodies. The central process of integral Yoga is a turning of human Soul from the egoistic state of consciousness absorbed in the outward surface mental appearances and attractions of things and catching at knowledge in a most scanty, superficial, narrow, ordinary and fragmentary fashion of human thinking, feeling, acting and seeing to a higher state of deep and wide Spiritual Consciousness in which the Transcendent and the Universal Divine can pour itself into the individual mould in order to enlarge and transform it. The practice of this Yoga proceeds through two alternative periods, initially of (1) unillumined Soul season of groping, seeking, endeavour and preparation through the mind’s methods of abstraction or reason’s methods of surface manipulation to get rid of all in him that belongs to the working of lower Nature, in which the Soul and its instruments must become fit through a lower means of approaching God indirectly or the attempt of the egoistic mind to identify itself in a wrong and imperfect way with the workings of the divine Force through movement of divagated purification, dispersed concentration and ineffective identity and arrive at a certain degree of opening to Spiritual truth, and it is at this point he gives up all his three modes of action to greater Power and finally (2) the Soul’s method of clarity takes up the growth of illumined Soul season of progress through prepared and fit Souls by uncovering the swift and concentrated Sunlit or Psychic and Golden or Spiritual path which approaches God directly by systematic purification of the whole being, absolute concentration on the object and compete and intimate identity of union and finds a means to reach the end of the goal. In the former intellect develops into mind of the sage or high mental thinker where all preparatory Yoga is pursued or integral Yoga begins with the entire rejection of lower human nature which is a means to escape into higher Divine Nature whereas in the latter the Spiritual sage has gone beyond the abstractions of thought and the integral Yoga insists on the transformation of entire lower human Nature by the pressure of higher Divine Nature, Shakti. In the former, the mind has the capacity to observe, invent, discover the actual possibilities of creation and to turn all his action to free means of self-expression and the latter is a seer of the occult imperatives, a greater perfection that necessitates the substitution of Spiritual Influence and is fully aware of the original Determinant of all determinants. Our egoistic dwelling in Ignorance, approach everything by a broken, partial and personal standard of knowledge and limited consciousness and are unable to give a Divine response or set the true value upon any part of the cosmic experience. The unripe Soul or the developing Soul is bound to social duty and family obligation, like his unpurified desire and they can be used for their exhaustion for a brief time, after that they will be withdrawn and a Divine government will alone abide. The child Soul or infant Soul or its raw adolescence cries, condemns, revolts against suffering, failure and incapacity and exhibits its violence against the Master of the Being and marches ahead stumblingly in the decreed Divine development by turning its door of consciousness outward into appearances of things and it is not surprising that mind can also claim to be the leader of the journey and the only available guide or at least lead towards the direct and innermost door of the temple through its faculty of exclusive concentration. The Mind has two possibility; the first possibility is that the mind can ascend into Divine planes in waking state and derive from them a stream of influences and experiences which can transform his nature; secondly, the mind can call down Divine through its power of pure, clear and passive reflection, so that its mentality is changed in to the image of the Divine. Spiritual experiences born out of World Negation as developed by Buddha and later further extended by the Indian Saint Shankara are the Nirvana and Brahma Nirvana respectively are identified as the first siddhi of integral Yoga. For the Buddha, the world, Self and God are constructions of mind and by withdrawing from such constructions, one arrives at the ineffable Delight of Nirvana. If this experience is further extended one realises the featureless, immutable, silent and absolute state of One and indivisible Brahma Nirvana and also realises the second siddhi of integral Yoga that this world which appears as illusion, is created from the Brahman. And the Ananda becomes so intense and pure that to the mind this phenomenal world seems to be an illusion. The third siddhi of integral Yoga finds a relation between Spirit and Matter and the Brahman energy can penetrate inside Matter. This dynamic Spiritual experience born out of Positive Affirmation of World or considering world as the body of the Divine, Vasudev Sarvamiti ,⁸ is the Cosmic Consciousness which is possible by raising and widening the mind to the state of Truth Thought, Truth Vision, Truth Hearing, Truth Discernment and Truth Touch or developing the faculty of Higher Mind, illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and finally Mind is universalized to experience Overmind state of Consciousness. In this cosmic Consciousness of Overmind, the Matter is real to the Spirit and Spirit is real to the Matter and their reconciliation is practicable. In this Cosmic consciousness Mind, Life and Body are no longer considered as agents of separation and formenters of an artificial quarrel but as conscious Intermediary and Instruments of evolving Consciousness, where Mind is self fulfilled when it becomes a pure mirror of the Truth of Being; Life is self fulfilled when it consciously lends its energies to the perfect self-figuration of the Divine in ever-new forms and activities of the universal existence and body is self fulfilled when its substance is plastic and malleable enough to the pure Divine touch and its Light. In integral Yoga the negative Spiritual experience of Nirvana and the positive or affirmative Spiritual experience of Cosmic Consciousness are accepted as expressions of Self and are reconciled and transcended, where the former asks the pacification of the mind and the latter asks the activation and illumination of Mind. These two Spiritual experiences are the basis of static and dynamic Brahman , beyond which the greater Divine union and integral Divine realisation of the Supramental plane stands. In cosmic Consciousness, we begin to participate in the all-vision and understand and recognise that all things, events, happenings are the becoming of the one Self and necessary links in carrying out universal movement leading towards a Divine victory and even the most diverse or contradictory things point at some truth in this infinity. The rare ripened Soul is supremely balanced, seeks to understand and master all things with an equal calm, accepts or toils to improve and perfect, labours to obey, fulfil and transfigure, turns its Consciousness inward, sees the Self and attains to Immortality. He is not angry, troubled, impatient, excited, over-eager with the way of thing, sees and guards that the norms of Yoga must be obeyed and the pace of time respected, remains unshaken by acutest sorrow, suffering and pain and can still open himself towards intensest Delight, Love and Beauty. He is a King-child, through his Soul’s eternal Childhood, he plays and enjoys untiringly his world-toy in the miraculous eternal gardens of Consciousness. A developed Soul is not bound by social duty, religious activity, family obligation, service to the Nation and humanity and he will be identified with his Self and with fellow creatures only through the ascending and descending Divine Consciousness. The revolving of the great Wheel of Doom can bring to him no sense of fear and terror and he rises above it in his Soul and knows from above their Divine Law and their Divine purpose. This is the normal nature of an integral Yogi who accomplishes his action as a boundless infinite Consciousness beyond the division and limitation of mind and body and he has no mansion, aniketa , of his own or has all things for its many mansions; all other Selves are its own Selves in action, essence and delight of being. To live in the atmosphere of the supreme Consciousness of integral Yoga can turn the frequent disorder, concentration on one aspect of the Unknowable, exclusive and one sided enormous development of personality of man of genius, poet, artist, thinker, Saint and Mystic into concord, elimination of ugliness, error and distortions, all-vision of the Divine, the largest, widest, most flexible, catholic and universal approach towards all things, happenings and events and a leap into future where all the comprehensive and many-sided perfection are fully realised. The basic foundation of a Sadhaka is surrender, union with the Divine and transcendence of ego pursued through all life and it can be experienced through the synthesis of the central truth of all traditional Yoga. The three central principle of integral Yoga are derived from the three Vedantic method of knowledge: (1) it is either a knowledge in the will working out through action (2) or knowledge in the intellect through discernment (3) or knowledge of the heart expressed in love and faith which form the basis of Integral Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga , respectively. Entire rejection of desire, ego and attachment makes one fit to pursue all Yoga which is a plunge into all the multiple profundities of the Soul. Or one is considered fit to pursue traditional Yoga as indicated in the Gita, if he has controlled his mind and senses, basyatmana,¹⁰ and he who has fallen from Yoga in the past births, yogavrastah.¹¹ In integral Yoga this fitness is further ensured if he has nurtured sufficient equality in mind, heart and body by silencing their random movement or ‘the most important indication is a perfect equality of soul in all circumstances.’¹⁴ Or one is considered fit to pursue integral Yoga (of Self-perfection) after he has exhausted¹⁷ the objective perfection, siddhi, of traditional Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga or Tantra Yoga or Hatha and Raja Yoga. The secret of success in integral Yoga can come when each Sadhaka is able to respond adequately to the Divine Call and nurture, grow and expand this Supreme Call through the central faith, which preoccupies him in the vision that ‘see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine.’¹ Or one will succeed in integral Yoga if he satisfies the condition as indicated in the Gita , “the exceedingly dear, atiba priya devotee is he who makes Divine his one and only supreme aim of life and with full of faith, follows the written truth of reconciling karma, jnana and bhakti Yoga in every detail or obeys the immortalising Dharma uttered by the Lord entirely.”⁹ An individual is considered fit¹⁵ to pursue Integral Karma Yoga if he has no distinction of work in terms of high and low and loves all work equally and aims at the dedication of every smallest human activity to the supreme Will. The success of Integral Karma Yoga can come when each Divine Worker, divya karmi is able to discover in the smallest work, the God’s vast intention and can turn all work as means of purification, liberation, delight and perfection and all work is initiated not by desire but by the Divine Will through intense experience of Divine union and he can arrive at the highest liberation of Karmayoga, which is Sadharmya mukti, complete and final liberation and transformation of whole nature and a free and unegoistic participation of the Soul in the cosmic action. An individual Seeker can be considered fit¹⁶ to pursue Integral Jnana Yoga if he has developed the capacity to live in isolation or seclusion for an indefinite period without attachment to action and thought, and aims at an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine and realisation of the unique and supreme Self in the transcendence. The success of Integral Jnana Yoga can come when each man of Knowledge, Jnani , will be able to turn and transform all mundane knowledge into God Knowledge and the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the Divine level, to its Spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity and he can arrive at the highest liberation of Jnanayoga, which is Sayujya Mukti, the identification of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine. An individual seeker can be considered fit to pursue Integral Bhakti Yoga if his adoration of the Creator does not exclude His creation or if his love, adoration and seeking of the Divine becomes equal and all embracing in all deities, creatures and object and aims at the enjoyment of the supreme Love and Bliss through the different phases of self-concealment and self-revelation of the divine Lover of the universe. The success of Integral Bhakti Yoga can come when each Devotee, Bhakta, is able to elevate the whole range of human emotion, sensation and aesthetic perception to the Divine level and is able to see, identify and realise the one Divine integrally in all godheads, men, creatures and objects and in all His names and forms and qualities. He can attain the highest liberation of Bhaktiyoga, which is Salokya-Mukti , the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine. An individual is considered fit to pursue Integral Yoga of Self-perfection , which is its fourth central principle, if he has attained considerable Divine identity through triple wheel of Soul force that of Divine Will, Knowledge and Love. The prerequisite of all perfection is purification, suddhi, liberation, mukti, delight of being, bhukti. The success of Integral Yoga of Self-perfection can come when each perfect individual, siddha, becomes a fit Soul-channel to live with the transcendent and universal Divine and the Supermind is individualised in him for universal action and his four-fold highest perfection, siddhi, is Sarvam-brahma, Brahman that is All, Anantam-brahma, Brahman is infinite in being and infinite in quality, Jnanam-brahma, Brahman as self-existent Consciousness and universal Knowledge and Anandam-brahma, Brahman as the self-existent Bliss and its universal Delight of Being. The success of the vision of the book ‘The Synthesis of Yog a’ can be possible when each sadhaka is able to turn all one sided developments, limitation imposed on Brahman out of partial Divine union, one sided view point into catholicity of the all vision and integral union with the Divine and he will be able to wait, learn, grow, integrate, synthesise and universalise all Deities, Teachers, Shastras , Religions, developmental urges invented by Nature and weld them strongly to the One, the Ineffable and the Infinite and unifies many states of Consciousness at a time. The success of the vision of the book ‘The Life Divine ’ is possible if one possesses ‘the infinite and divine in every way of his being, sarva bhavena; ’¹⁸ if his immediate instrument of mind is trained through reverse movement of exclusive concentration to discover inner Soul and higher degrees of concentration and in his passage towards the Divine Life, he will rightly utilise Time and Space only for the ascent of the Soul and the descent of the Shakti. Thus a hierarchy of Consciousness is developed extending over multiple sheaths and selves whose perfections are indispensable to bridge the gulf between Matter and Spirit or ordinary life and Divine Life. The success of The Mother’s Yoga or the vision of the book ‘The Mother ’ can be realised when all of Her children concentrate preliminarily on persistent rejection of falsehood, obscurity and lower Nature and foster aspiration, surrender, sincerity and faith and finally call down Her four-fold Divine Shakti for the full possession of Her power and perfection in our individual life. Savitri’s Yoga or the vision of the book ‘Savitri ’ can succeed if each perfect Soul of man on earth, siddha or each Yogi veiled behind a man, will be able elevate his fixed death-bound destiny to a higher Spiritual destiny and extend this capacity towards the change, elevation and reversal of collective and earth’s destiny. Integral Yoga further insists to go beyond all written truth, intermediary Spiritual Influence, mutable time, personal effort of utsaha, vyakulata and tapasya and to become the Sadhaka of the Eternal and Infinite and enters the kingdom of integral Knowledge of the Soul, spontaneous guidance from within and above, immutable Timeless state and the inexhaustible spontaneous action and riches of the Spirit and the Nature. Of all the Yogins the greatest Yogi, yoginam api sarvesam² …yogi paramo,³ as indicated in the Gita, is a state in which he lives, acts in perfect union with the Divine, mayi nivasisyasi ,⁶ in all possible human condition, in all possible world action his Consciousness does not fall from the oneness and constant communion with the Divine. The largest formulation of this Spiritual change is a total liberation of Soul, mind, heart and action, a casting of them all into the sense of the cosmic Self and the Divine Reality. A certain change of Nature is experienced by this Spiritual illumination but this is not a complete and integral transformation of Nature which establishes a secured and established new principles and a permanent new order of being in the field of terrestrial Nature. A Sadhaka becomes consecrated Child when this constant union with the Divine is dynamised to become one with the Divine Mother. A traditional Karma Yogi is considered great if in him Kshara Purusha is dynamised and all initiation of works are activated from within. In a greater Karma Yogi, Kshara and Akshara are both dynamised and his consciousness undulates between Kshara and Akshara or waking trance and non-waking trance and preoccupies himself in both objective manifesting action and subjective subtle and superconscient action by a pressure and direction from within and above, respectively. In the greatest Karma Yogi, Uttama Purusha is dynamised along with Kshara and Akshara Purusha . This Purushottama Consciousness is settled in the body where the Jiva holds together the triple Purusha . In this state of consciousness, waking trance is stabilised and one moves freely in his multiple subtle bodies without losing waking consciousness. In integral Yoga he will direct the Supramental energy dynamised due to his relatively stronger part of Divine Will towards relatively weaker parts of his untransformed emotional and intellectual Nature. A traditional Jnana Yogi is considered great if in him Akshara Purusha or Spiritual Being is first dynamised through renunciation, tyaga, vairagya, effort and practice of Yoga, abhyasa , concentration, samyama , and askesis, tapasya. In a greater Jnana Yogi, by the pressure of this Spiritual being or descent of Divine Force from above the head, Kshara Purusha or Psychic being in the heart is dynamised. His Yoga becomes easier as he actively participates in the world action through the activation of Kshara Purusha. In the greatest Jnana Yogi, Uttama Purusha is dynamised along with Kshara and Akshara Purusha. This Purushottama Consciousness is settled in the body where the Jiva holds together the triple Purusha . In this state of consciousness, waking trance is stabilised and one moves freely in one's multiple subtle bodies without losing waking consciousness. In integral Yoga, he will direct the Supramental energy dynamised due to his relatively stronger part of Divine Knowledge towards relatively weaker parts of his untransformed emotional and volitional Nature. A traditional Bhakti Yogi i s considered great when he reconciles his devotion with sacrificial action and realises the Kshara Purusha or Psychic being in the heart. A Greater Bhakti Yogi reconciles his devotion of personal Godhead with the Impersonal Godhead of Jnana Yoga and realises Akshara Purusha or Spiritual Being in addition to the earlier realisation of Kshara Purusha. The greatest Bhakti Yogi realises Kshara and Akshara Purusha's union with the Purushottama, who finally consents to live in the heart, which is also the dual meeting ground of Uttama Purusha and Para Prakriti. The realisation of this dual Godhead in the heart is the beginning of realisation of Bliss Self which is beyond the Supramental action on earth. An integral Bhakti Yogi will direct the Supramental energy dynamised due to his relatively stronger part of Divine Love, Beauty and Delight towards relatively weaker parts of his untransformed volitional and intellectual Nature. In this established state, a traditional Yogi can pursue integral Yoga by inverting the gained Supreme Divine Consciousness earthward. An integral Yogi lives in the great totality of Truth of Universal Consciousness, a totality, which is capable of infinite enlargements as there is no end to the extension of Divine Will, Knowledge, Love and Delight, nastyanto vistarasya me ,⁴ and there is still much of the height to be reached and a wideness to be covered by the eye of vision, bhuri aspasta kartvam.⁵ Through intensification of Psychic and Spiritual contacts, he becomes able to enter the lower realms of Supermind and inverts this gained Divine State towards lower sheaths of individual and universal Mind, Vital and Physical sheaths and transforms them. The great Integral Yogi, due to his integral surrender of Soul and Nature and particularly consecration of the most of the dark domains of Inconscient and Subconscient sheaths, and integral Sraddha of pouring down of Divine Supramental attributes of Light, Love, Ananda, Force, Wisdom and Truth and direct them to the yet untouched realm of Subconscient and Inconscient sheaths and continue transformation action there. The greater Integral Yogi can put forth many states of Consciousness at a time and is able to trace the Supermind concealed in the Inconscient and Subconscient sheath and activate the Inconscient and Subconscient Self; as a result the source of Supramental Force and Delight can burst open and spread from Inconscient and Subconscient Self towards the untransformed Inconscient, Subconscient, Physical, Vital and Mental sheaths for large and mighty transformation action. The greatest Integral Yogi is he, who is able to activate the Supermind concealed in all the sheaths, identified as ten koshas , builds, purifies, transforms and perfects them and there is penetration of Supramental force from all the multiple source of ten Selves; first intermittently, then constantly becomes a normal issue. Thus ten-fold personality is superimposed and combined to enrich his single new personality and his strong central being holds all together and works towards harmonisation and integration of multiple Selves and Nature. So an integral Yogi is at once a Devotee , whose adoration of the Creator, the fundamental Being, will be incomplete without adoration of Him ‘wherever He manifests (as effectual Becoming) or wherever even he hides his godhead—in man and object and every creature;’¹² as developing Soul he is follower of all those who are ahead of him in cognition and Their limitless Consciousness; as developed Soul he is a teacher of all those who are behind him in consciousness; as Slave of all mankind he is fit to become its nameless master and continually engaged in well being of all creatures through movement of universal Consciousness; as Monotheist and Polytheist he has to know Divine entirely in His single and myriad Form; as universal Man he is one and in sympathy with fellow human brothers and accepts them as his own Self in many minds, lives and bodies; as Vedantist he realises the Divine as Creator Father and Master of this existence and liberates humanity through hs realisation Brahma Satya Jagat Mithya ; as Occultist he is both left hand Tantric representing the way of Divine Love and right hand Tantric representing the way of Divine Knowledge; realises Divine as Creatrix Mother of universe and he emerges as centre of world transformation; as Nirvanist he experiences ineffable Ananda of the existence by annulling the construction of the mind; as Ashramite he has regard and absolute obedience towards all Ashram rules formulated by the Mother and enjoys Spiritual protection; as Sadhaka of integral Yoga, all outer norm supports the discovery of Her subtler norm in higher planes of Consciousness and the protection sheath is sealed against any hostile intrusion; as consecrated Child he is one and indivisible portion of Her supreme Consciousness and as integral Yogi he calls down large Divine descent for earth and men. He can liberate men from the one-sided growth, exclusive pursuit, fragmentary knowledge and ‘maimed achievement’¹³ of modern Science, popular Religion and traditional Yoga and lead them towards many-sided, all-inclusive growth, integral concentration, comprehensive knowledge, total purification, transformation and perfection of Soul an Nature. OM TAT SAT References 1: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-72, 2: The Gita-6.47, 3: The Gita-6.32, 4: The Gita-10.19, 5: The Rig Veda-1.10.2, 6: The Gita-12.8, 7: The Gita-4.24, 8: The Gtia-7.19, 9: The Gita-12.20, 10: The Gita-6.36, 11: The Gita-6.41, 12: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-159-160, 13: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-91-92, 14: The Mother’s Centenary Works/4/p-97, 15: “Earthly realisations easily take on a great importance in our eyes, for they are proportionate to our external being with this limited form which makes us men. But what is an earthly realisation beside Thee, before Thee? However perfect, complete, divine it may be, it is nothing but an indiscernible moment in Thy eternity; and the results obtained by it, however powerful and marvellous they may be, are nothing but an imperceptible atom in the infinite march to Thee. This is what Thy workers must never forget, otherwise they will become unfit to serve Thee .” The Mother/Prayers And Meditations-July-17/1914, 16: "The power to do nothing, which is quite different from indolence, incapacity or aversion to action and attachment to inaction, is a great power and a great mastery; the power to rest absolutely from action is as necessary for the Jnanayogin as the power to cease absolutely from thought, as the power to remain indefinitely in sheer solitude and silence and as the power of immovable calm. Whoever is not willing to embrace these states is not yet fit for the path that leads towards the highest knowledge; whoever is unable to draw towards them, is as yet unfit for its acquisition." Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-347, 17: “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.” The Mother/TMCW-7/Questions and Answers-1955/p-350-351, 18: “The Divine meets us in many aspects and to each of them knowledge is the key, so that by knowledge we enter into and possess the infinite and divine in every way of his being, sarvabhavena, and receive him into us and are possessed by him in every way of ours.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-546, Download this WEB PAGE as PDF file: “A perfect equality not only of the self, but in the nature is a condition of the Yoga of self-perfection. The first obvious step to it will be the conquest of our emotional and vital being, for here are the sources of greatest trouble, the most rampant forces of inequality and subjection, the most insistent claim of our imperfection. The equality of these parts of our nature comes by purification and freedom.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-702 "But this causal body is, as we may say, little developed in the majority of men and to live in it or to ascend to the supramental planes, as distinguished from corresponding sub-planes in the mental being, or still more to dwell consciously upon them is the most difficult thing of all for the human being. It can be done in the trance of Samadhi, but otherwise only by a new evolution of the capacities of the individual Purusha of which few are even willing to conceive." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-456

Sri Matriniketan Ashram Sri Aurobindo Centre "Her spirit fulfilled in his spirit, rich with all Time, As if Love’s deathless moment had been found," Savitri-579 "Organisations, however vast and complete they may be, can achieve nothing permanent unless a new force, more divine and all-powerful, expresses itself through a perfected human instrument ." The Mother TMCW-14/Words of The Mother-II/p-277 “I am beginning to understand why Sri Aurobindo always said it was woman (Mother caresses Sujata’s cheek with her finger) that could build a bridge between the two. I am beginning to understand. One day, I’ll explain. I am beginning to understand. Sri Aurobindo used to say: it is woman that can build a bridge between the old world and the supramental world. Now I understand.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-26.04.1972, Ashram is an ancient Indian terminology used for collective Divine living and if one individual at its centre is having direct contact with the Divine, then this collective living around this Soul Centre is identified as the Divine Centre. Sri Aurobindo pointed out ⁵⁰ that Divine Centres through religious movements in the past did not succeed much due to the want of complete Spiritual experience and evolved collectivity. Without waiting for the realisation of complete union with Supreme Sachchidananda and Gnostic community, a Divine Centre like this can be an exceedingly privileged centre of action of New Consciousness when one recognises that his Psychic Being and Spiritual Being are open towards The Mother and Sri Aurobindo's strong Presence from within and above, supported by Their universal Divine Presence from without, represented and subordinated by its immaculate Soul Centre. The Mother proposes that the Ashram must be a field of ceaseless consecrated action without 'rest and enjoyment'⁴³ and must be subsequently transformed into the second Divine Call of bringing 'God down to the world on earth we came,'⁶⁰ and 'whatever does not move forward is bound to fall back.'⁵⁴ This trend can minimise the misuse of Ashram opportunities and misunderstanding of Integral Wisdom. Abode of the Divine Mother The literal meaning of Sri Matriniketan Ashram is the abode, niketan of the Divine Mother, Matri , which is surrounded, concentrated and protected by Her vast harmony and opulence, Sri , subordinated by Her destined children whose mind, life and body have received Soul initiation and shelter, the Ashram . She has chosen this place as a field of manifestation of Her Divinity. She fulfils some of Her special mission of elevation of Consciousness towards Spiritual knowledge and power which will transform the law and Nature of external form and of discovery of the ‘greatest possible spiritual fulfilment’¹ directed towards ‘the most difficult transformation of all’² in resolving harmoniously ‘all problems of existence’²⁹ through dynamic Divine union. It is situated ten kilometres west of the Bay of Bengal , eleven kilometres north-west away, in the outskirts of Brahmapur city in the state of Odisha , dedicated to dynamise Sri Aurobindo’s comprehensive vision and action, initially through activation of Spiritualised Intellect, Buddhi Yoga, ³³ and later through opening and realisation of the Cosmic Self, Vasudevah Sarvamiti .³² Anchor 1a Anchor 2a Anchor 29a Anchor 33a Anchor 32a Garden gladiolus Receptivity A Perfect Vessel The contents, innovations, adventures and splendours of the Spirit cannot be exhausted³ by the profound revelations, exulted narrations and inspired writings of Saints and Seers of all Time. If the Divine Potter¹⁹ shapes one human pot more perfectly than another, then ‘the merit lies not in the vessel but the Maker.'¹⁹ It is ‘an exceedingly good fortune’⁴ for a seeker of integral Yoga as Sri Aurobindo pointed to meet a perfect vessel or ‘one who has realised or is becoming That’⁴ and it reproduces, multiplies and universalises through ‘an outburst of the same divine self-consciousness in other’⁵ unknown Souls in distant lands of our terrestrial humanity. In addition to it, all the creatures of the world are ‘seen and felt as the Divine manifested in many disguises become by that very fact part of integral Yoga.’⁶ The sons of Men, Nara , are also revered and adored as the sons of Gods, Narayana ,and when both the faculties are equally paced then that localises the evolutionary thrust to lift up the general Consciousness of the race. They are at once the leader of all that are behind them in consciousness and follower of all that are ahead of them in cognition. The greatest Master is much less a Teacher, Instructor, Exemplar, Propagator, Orator, Writer, Savant, Scholar, Forecaster, Healer and Preacher than an Influence and Presence pouring down ‘the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him.’⁷ A Sadhaka of integral Yoga is primarily preoccupied with Self-concentration and secondarily preoccupied with self-expansion where the latter is identified as an outcome of universalised Consciousness activated through the rigorous self-disciplines of the former. Thus, he primarily emerges as a symbol of seven-fold indispensable self-concentration that of the follower, seeker of truth, disciple, servant, slave, instrument and child of Their limitless Divine Consciousness. The Divine demands from him ‘subordination and service ’²⁰ for annulment of his ego and 'service and obedience' ²⁴ for taming the lower Nature in his being. If he consents to become a slave of any human instrument for a long period then his fitness² ⁸ for a higher life and Spiritual future is secured. His immediate aim and real business in the world is an 'ascent to the divine Life'²⁵ and 'not to become animals, living like cats and dogs'²⁶ and not to harbour a brute in him which is 'lower than the lowest reptile’s crawl.'²⁷ He secondarily experiences union with the Impersonal Divine followed by union with the Divine’s sevenfold personality of the Creator Father, Creatrix Mother, all-embracing Lover, hidden Master of all works, evolving as a child God, the inner Guide and compassionate Friend of all creatures. And his tertiary objective culminates in the distant aim of becoming above self-expansive sevenfold³⁰ Divine personalities. This is identified as the fitness to hold Savitri's comprehensive Divine Love. The evolving Savitri (the Mother ) within a Sadhak will always be aware and unite with the evolving Satyavan (the Master ) within, in each birth and they wait for the destined meeting with the Spirit: " Among the many who came drawn to her Nowhere she found her partner of high tasks, The comrade of her soul, her other self Who was made with her, like God and Nature, one." Savitri-366 "No equal heart came close to join her heart," Savitri-367 "Still she found not the one predestined face For which she sought amid the sons of men." Savitri-385 Anchor 19a Anchor 3a Anchor 4a Anchor 5a Anchor 6a Anchor 7a Anchor 20a Anchor 24a Anchor 28a Anchor 25a Anchor 26a Anchor 27a Anchor 30a Sri K. Anurakta A profound Yogi and Occultist, established himself in Supreme Consciousness, a Britisher by birth and yet harmonised and synthesised the great traditions of the West and the East, universalised all Deities to realise the One; he lived in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry . In his little hut inside the Sri Aurobindo Hand Made Paper Factory , he was found deeply united with The Mother pouring down Her infinite Love, Compassion and Help to the bereaved. Seeing his close relation with Indian deities, particularly Lord Sri Ganesh , out of curiosity we had asked him long years ago, around the year 2002, whether he is an emanation of Lord Sri Kartikeya , he nodded with monosyllable ‘Yes’, and when asked where his Consciousness is actually established, he explained to us that it is higher than Overmind; when again asked whether he lived in Consciousness where World, Self and God were reconciled, he confirmed with the single syllable ‘Yes.’ His recent state of Consciousness (around the year 2013) had established in absolute Divine state and when asked about his present state he explained that he was holding together The Mother and Sri Aurobindo in the heart, who were preoccupied in transforming his physical cells. The Mother gave his name Anurakta , which means ‘especially and exceedingly devoted to the Divine;’ he later added the prefix Kartikeya , to his name due to his special contact with the south Indian deity Murugan . He was a part and conscious channel of The Mother’s present most difficult action of transforming the earth’s Subconscient hell, ‘where the gods and demons battle in night.’¹³ We got the special opportunity to meet in him ‘the Lover’s everlasting Yes’¹² and Sri Matriniketan Ashram grows under his all embracing Compassion and Grace, holding together the Dual Divine Power within him. S. A. Maa Krishna She was instrumental in developing Sri Matriniketan Ashram from a collective aspiration of a study circle and a school for small children in 1991 with the conviction that the Jiva is a partial manifestation of the Lord, mamaivamsah. One can aspire to begin this integral Yoga with ceaseless remembrance of the Divine, constant sacrificial action and rigorous self-control, without least human attachment, without desire towards earthly enjoyment and 'to fix oneself in the resolution to go to the end whatever happens, whatever difficulties arise.'³⁵ This is also a field of constant Divine giving, which is also 'an outflowing of the knowledge, light, strength, love, joy, helpful shakti ' to the world. One should develop the patience to arrive at the end of this Yoga, not in one life span but an endeavour extending over a thousand years through Spiritual rise and fall in successive rebirths. She followed a long passage to move the Consciousness with the aid of her limited personality and traditional Bhakti Yoga with full of adverse trials, arduous difficulties, worst threats, flat failures and prolonged sufferings. She works out gradually the Divine’s dream of perennial Joy, imperishable Truth, ineffable Beauty, supreme creative Will and detailed organisation and execution of Divine Work with grace, faith, patience and courage. Thus, a shifting of concentration from single Avatara in the heart through partial Divine union of the existing traditional Teaching has extended the hope towards the intense movement of vertical Consciousness which leads one towards realisation of oneness with the universal and transcendent Divine and realisation of dual Avatara in the heart leading towards integral Divine union. The path she follows or the lessons learned from The Mother and Sri Aurobindo in successive years gives this conviction and certainty ‘I carry no power, no knowledge, no capacity to solve any problem, no ability to do thing’ and offer all to the Lord who is Omnipotent and Omniscient source of our existence. He decides everything and is responsible for whatever small or big work is executed through our consecration. He can give large Spiritual experiences which includes the realisation of the One and the Eternal in Impersonal Self, Nirguna Brahman and its extension as Cosmic Manifestation, Saguna Brahman , the infinite depths of universal Silence and the infinite largeness of the universal Action and working of the Divine Force in Subconscient and Inconscient sheaths, contact with Overmental Gods, the subtle physical wideness to reject falsehood and increasing intensity of Light to bridge the gulf between the higher planes of Consciousness and the gross physical world, Psycho-Spiritual communication and interchange with The Mother and the Master to mark the passing out of our limitation and transition in sadhana , confirming that Their each occasional personal appearance and constant impersonal Presence are special privilege to meet the hour of crisis, overcome the critical hour of the difficult gulf that all must cross. The future hope of this endeavour is the activation of seven-fold personal Divine Presence that predominates over the constant impersonal Divine once the Consciousness is established in the Universalised Psychic plane. She received the inner call to serve The Mother in all life through inner and outer collective action, limit-breaking personality and step by step Her Soul saving Divine Consciousness will be established. This is a collective action with twice-born Souls who are linked with The Mother and Sri Aurobindo from past births⁴ ² and the Time proves that they are not separated from each other in successive births and bodies. The literal meaning of her name is the Jivatma’s symbolic oneness with Paramatma ,⁴⁰ represented through triple Avatara , or the Psychic turn to the call of the child-God Krishna fluting to rapture lifted her being briefly to Sri Aurobindo’s Consciousness resulting in the partial transformation of Nature of The Mother possessed outer life, one with the Love of Her limit breaking Love, Ananda of Her overwhelming flame-intense Bliss, the Consciousness of Her world-shaking Consciousness, of which she is a symbol of the living channel and emanation.³⁹ Her frontal Nature is open towards Mahakali Force, who 'acts most naturally through the higher vital which is the instrument of force and power.'⁵⁹ We have nourished a long hope of arriving at 'a pure perfection and shadowless bliss'⁶² in all life and the special privilege of our this birth is meeting in her frontal nature the Divine's 'hands of joy.'⁶³ Anchor 13a Anchor 12a Anchor 35a Anchor 42a Anchor 40a Anchor 39a Her realisation or understanding follows the Mother-nature’s Intentions towards existence; that of firstly, the emergence of the Divine is slow in the mass as their outer Nature is closed between two mental firmaments of brute outwardness and domination of sense activities that refuse to go within whereas its pace can be swift and uninterrupted with the rare gifted individual Soul known as Divine Instrument, Yantra , Emanation, Vibhuti and Incarnation, Avatara; secondly, the basis of Divine collective living, sadhunam rajyam , begins with the discernment of Truth from falsehood, by loss of separative identity in the Divine and it can be more organised and harmonious by going deep into silence to create an atmosphere of Oneness; thirdly, all manifestation, sthabarajangamam,¹⁷ takes place by union of Spirit with Matter and the Creator of this world, even though exceeding His creation, He is Immanent in it as evolving Psychic Consciousness; fourthly, all evolving knowledge is useful for a brief period of time and becomes obsolete afterwards and in order to prevent a knowledge from becoming out dated and remain new for a long time to come it must descend from a very high universal and transcendental plane; fifthly, an individual’s help to collectivity and all humanity is dependent on his degree of realisation of Truth or Soul cultivation by transcending ego which can be measured through his catholicity of universal action, descended knowledge through writings, overflowing expression and captivating Divine Love and he can discharge his greatest service to humanity when he possesses the highest Knowledge which illumines, integralises, harmonises all Knowledge and cures all Ignorance; sixthly, an individual’s capacity in reconciling the Matter and the Spirit or his knowledge on the Unknowable is dependent on the exploration and extension of the whole range of Consciousness from the nether Inconscient plane to the highest Supracosmic plane; seventhly, all destruction, small or big, executed either through human agency or through the Nature’s intervention is generally the outcome of Kali’s wrath and Her limit breaking world action, and the extent of damage gives the measure of human imperfection and unwillingness to change and whatever remains untouched by these disaster and destruction is considered Divine in its essence. 'For God the Time-Spirit does not destroy for the sake of destruction , but to make the ways clear in the cyclic process for a greater rule and a progressing manifestation, rajyam samruddham .' ⁴¹ And lastly, all Spirituality or possession of God’s power of Omnipotence and Omniscience is to be generalised in humanity either through Nature’s unconscious Yoga of popular Religion stumblingly through an elementary stage of propaganda or through Nature’s semi-conscious Yoga of less popular Ascetic schools and the emergence of multiple liberated Souls as Sannyasa has been ‘widely preached and numerously practiced’¹⁶ or through conscious Yoga of lesser popular ancient Vedantic schools with its ideal freedom and self-ruling universalised king Consciousness of the few individuals or through largely developed Yoga of least popular ancient Vedic schools of thought with its ideal of Divine transformation of Nature and of physical Immortality, which is an action left for the last Avatar to accomplish and the physical Presence of successive Avatars organise immense evolutionary movement as They sign ‘salvation's testament’¹⁵ with Their blood and bear the law of earth’s pain and death. And all the above formulations can lead existence far ahead beyond our imagination through the intervention of Nature’s most creative power of Bliss action through a prepared conscious human vessel. Anchor 41a Anchor 15a Anchor 17a Anchor 16a Her task of becoming the beginner of endless integral Yoga, God’s obedient slave who demands subordination and service, The Mother’s consecrated child by becoming absolutely truthful, mediocre action in consciousness to uncover the infinitely superior Divine wisdom or the entire range of Sri Aurobindo’s vision are that; firstly, her liberated existence before the spaceless Infinity and timeless Eternity appears to be nothing but a tiny grain of dust;⁴⁸ secondly, within this limited boundary her physical sheath seems to have large enduring capacity ‘to bear the wounds of Time’¹⁸ which stands as indispensable condition for cellular transformation and her vital sheath is made up of increasing clear purity and intense capacity to hold the divine Love; her mental sheath aspires to liberate herself from all twilight thoughts by walking alone with her Psychic being; thirdly, Divine’s action and Yoga move ahead both in proportion and newness as one unveils initially a Spiritual path of his own fulfilling the norm that the ‘perfection of the integral Yoga will come’¹⁰ when each Sadhaka ‘is able to follow his own path of Yoga’¹⁰ in conformity with its aim with ‘considerable free diversity in the self expression’⁸ and finally all effort, all self-discipline, all set method is transcended by ‘natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine Shakti out of the bud of a purified and perfected nature;’¹¹ fourthly, integral Yoga of Self-perfection can begin after one is thoroughly established in traditional Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga and direct the perfect Spirit to penetrate into imperfect Matter; 'A perfect equality not only of the self, but in the nature is'⁴⁹ identified as fitness to pursue Yoga of Self-perfection; fifthly, the Divine has created a commune through her minimised instrumental guidance³¹ in which the gulf between inner Spiritual life and outer untransformed Nature of a Seeker is bridged through double evolution of Mind and Spirit or slow evolution by movement of three modes of Nature, Gunas and swift Spiritual evolution by movement of Psychic and Spiritual Consciousness and the collective living ‘would create its own body of the life of the spirit’⁸ for the unrestricted prolonged free flow of Psychic and Spiritual Intuition and subsequently seven streams of Overmental Truth, Light, Word, Love, Force, Life-Radiances and Substance-Energy; sixthly, His Yoga will attain culmination by synthesis, integration and universalisation of all Yoga, all Evolution, all the Powers and Personalities of the Mother , all the Occult Science and all Education, and entire love for Him, His Law and His human collectivity for which Sri Matriniketan Ashram is preparing its base and lastly, through ceaseless consecrated Divine action combined with provisional intermittent self-isolation to reduce the hour of outward activities, one can concentrate on the worlds beyond this material world, their universal rhythm, mighty energies, self-existent laws, in order to give instrumental thrust to the pioneering incarnated large subjective action in Consciousness of Their unfinished Evolution in the visible world which is a very small extension of Their already accomplished present invisible action in the subtle world. In brief, we are here in this Ashram, dependent only on the vision-based Divine Action ("A few rare intimations come as guides," Savitri-51), overhead descended Divine Wisdom ("Immense divining flashes cleave her brain," Savitri-51) and ecstatic brief motiveless Divine Love ("The clasp was remembered of the Wonderful," Savitri-237). Anchor 18a Anchor 10a Anchor 8a Anchor 11a Anchor 31a Anchor 8a It is deeply felt that there is no other hope,²³ joy and aspiration other than Their Divine Presence received by giving Them equal service and equal entry into Their Teachings. Their Teachings insist on remaining Truthful under all circumstances and keeping mind, life and body untouched from world perversion and invasion of Subconscient impurity; They further insist to realise total consecration through rigorous Self-control/Concentration extending over a long period and to move the Consciousness vertically by activation of double consecration of Vedantic and Vedic sacrifice. From Them, she understands that what she has known is nothing in comparison to what remains to be known and her service to the Divine is just the starting point and her manifesting action, a mere ripple in the Infinite representing the whole quantum of Divine Mission. All her perception is a long beginning of tracing one’s own unique path in Sadhana , the preliminary stumble of a novice, an infant longing, a forceful determination to leave nothing unchanged within and without and offered this limited understanding of Their vast and catholic Teachings at Their Lotus FEET. Sri Matriniketan Ashram grows under her loving care, purity of Soul and Nature, vital being untouched by lower nature and her loving presence reminds us of three dream visions of collective living from Savitri, 'I witnessed the virgin bridals of the dawn'³⁶ , symbolising purity of collective living, 'Ourselves are citizens of that mother State...'³⁷ , symbolising selfless Spiritual fosterers and ‘nude god-children’⁵⁶ who ‘steeped existence in their youth of soul.’⁵⁶ A Divine Life free from the influence of lower nature, an action guided by Divine Will and 'A blank pure consciousness had replaced the mind'⁴⁴ are the tasks left for us in this birth to accomplish. One can live in this small Ashram yet untouched by corruption and politics till the last breath if he realises this place as the only and the best shrine for his finding the Divine, who is at once Transcendent, Universal and Individual Psychic being. Anchor 37a Anchor 36a Anchor 23a Hibiscus Power of Consciousness Why Sri Matriniketan Ashram? "But, in the beginning (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry in 1926), the first condition for coming here was that you would have nothing more to do with your family!.... In the beginning, it was very, very strict – for a long time... The first condition was: ‘Nothing more to do with your family ...’ ...this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these cords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone?"⁶¹ The Mother Many have enquired with curiosity about the objective outer life without contact/attachment with family members and subjective inner action with patient inner unfolding of the Unknowable at Sri Matriniketan Ashram . Some expressed their doubt and impatience regarding the completeness and fulfillment of this effort that can change the principle and persistent character of human life and pursue its immaculate Divine living beyond all sects, clans, language, religions or its striving towards long slow ultimate human perfection whose highest terms are Immortality, the satisfied delight of the whole being, Omnipotence, freedom and mastery over Self, God and World extending over All Life, replacing either the quest of hurried, immediate, practical, mundane and human achievements of this life or to make itself light and comfortable for the race by throwing away its impedimenta or the indifference to the cry that rises up from a labouring helpless humanity or the selfishness that cares not what becomes of those who left behind us in Consciousness. Few recognise it as a fortress where the highest Spiritual ideal and the motiveless quest could maintain itself in its most absolute purity and the Presence of the eternal Vrindavan , where the imperishable union and oneness of the eternal lover Sri Krishna is entrenched between the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine beloved Sri Radha and the all-embracing ecstasy of His manifestation, the Gopis . Sri Matriniketan Ashram aspires to become a bridge of all that Sri Aurobindo had attempted in accumulating the lost Spiritual Truth of the past and enlarging them into hierarchies of Consciousness in Time through His tapasya and the present Sri Aurobindo through His subtle physical Presence extending far ahead of His future Divine action and vision. Present Sri Aurobindo in the subtle physical is more powerful³⁸ than the past Sri Aurobindo in his bodily existence. Similarly, future Sri Aurobindo is more powerful in the subtle body than the present Sri Aurobindo . In addition to this growing concept of the Divine, we go back to the ancient Aryan truth³⁸ that the earth had forgotten and push forward to some new and unknown Truth descending from the highest Self. This Supreme action enforces change in the individual, group, community, State, Nation and the World through the discovery of the Psychic and Spiritual Being and Subconscient transformation of a few select individuals. This change accepts all the problems of existence, including all that are most obstinate, hostile and infirm as a field of slow infiltration of Divine Force. This Force heals the apparent opposition between the Spiritual life and that of the present imperfect World, reconciles life’s discord with the Integral Divine Truth and insists ceaselessly on our waking surface mentality to be wholly Spiritualised and dynamises waking and non-waking trance that can permit adventure through movement in multiple planes of Consciousness. Anchor 38a The human thought and intellect have the habit of limiting the mental preoccupation to practical and immediate problems of material existence and are helpless and oblivious of the ultimate and lasting solution of the race. When the individual realises that his mind is like a barren mother constantly preoccupied with creation of unreal child and experience of a world utterly false, divided and short-lived, then he permits the mind to fall silent of ideas, constructions and opinions and utilises it as a pure channel for the Light and Truth of Divine Knowledge and the ocean of Infinite Mother Force flows through him and moves all his action. The highest truth and the integral self-knowledge are gained not by leap into static indeterminate absolute Sachchidananda state but by patient transit beyond the Spiritual mind into dynamic Truth-consciousness where the ‘Infinite can be felt, seen, experienced and known in all the fullness of its unending riches.’¹⁴ The passionate aspiration of the few upward to unite with the Divine must be related sufficiently to the descending movement of the Divine, leaning downward to transform eternally its manifestation or the descending Divine Force must invade extensively by breaking down the surface mental, vital and physical sheaths followed by the ascent of Consciousness in order to lift the earth nature to the Divine height. These double exercises of ancient Vedantic and Vedic sacrifices respectively were disturbed in the immediate past extending through many centuries, as all voices of sacred Saints were joined in one great consensus of the intermediate interim solution, of individual happiness in the kingdom of heaven beyond far exceeding the earthly reward and escape even from the kingdom of heaven into self-absorbed bliss in the impersonal infinity. This escapist exclusive Spiritual tendency could be transcended, if few could gather together who had reached the all-embracing Overmental perfection, then a new earth of Divine creation could take shape here and a world of Truth Light could invade the earth’s atmosphere with inexhaustible opportunities, and new discoveries in the midst of receding darkness. Common laburnum Descent of the Light Anchor 14a Bougainvillea Protection Sri Matriniketan Ashram is a formative fortress of the Divine Mother which is intermittently and frequently invaded, possessed, embraced and conquered by the Supreme Lord manifested as Sri Krishna , who wears the glory of Sri Aurobindo’s Consciousness, fulfilling one of the great assurances and visions of The Mother . The Mother was meeting regularly Sri Krishna during Her pre and post Pondicherry life. Later She verified that it was Sri Aurobindo who was coming to Her in that form. When Sri Aurobindo left His body, He used to come often to The Mother in His own form. Day by day this experience was so intense that She started thinking, “Why look after people and things, I want to remain like this forever!”⁹ Sri Aurobindo caught Her thought and stopped walking with Her in subtle Form. Then, the Mother attempted Her effort and tried a lot to persuade the Supreme Lord to walk with Her with His own form. In this exercise, She felt Him, the absolutely concrete Presence, more and more clearly in an impersonal manner. And it was the Supreme Lord who told Her, “First Krishna , then Sri Aurobindo , then I. (which means the Supreme Lord)”⁹ The Divine Mother’s interaction and fusion with Sri Krishna, Sri Aurobindo and the Supreme Lord are the different circumstances of the manifesting Lila of the One in ascending order. This indicates that a diversity of experience is required to pursue integral Yoga and not to remain satisfied with experience in any one plane of Consciousness. Aspiring the highest is divided into two parts. One is a static union with the Supreme Self and the other is a dynamic union with the Supreme Self. The problem of existence cannot be resolved with union with the static Supreme Self and all problems of existence can be resolved by dynamic union with the Supreme Self. It is the Divine who uses the individual as a centre, means of His pure receiving and transmitting channel, Consciousness as universal Witness and world action cannot proceed without this Witness, collectivity as a condition and field of action, human race as a dual union of Nara-Narayana , seeks to express in them some image of unity, omniscience and omnipotence. Its strong aspiration to pursue Sadhana in 'double seclusion'³⁴ that of an outcast from the privilege of light of the outer world and renouncing the enjoyment of five senses, is further complemented by its aspiration to become the Naimisaranya , the ancient Spiritual Centre, a forest land which was famous for its accumulation of Yoga Shakti to such degree that even the Yama , the king of Death was unable to enter that protected forest. All remained ever young including birds and animals and there was no disharmony, violence, suffering, old age, decay and death. Or as described in Savitri , “Age never came, care never lined the face.”²¹ or “His young unaging look on deathless things, His (Divine’s) joy in our escape from death and Time, His immortality and light and bliss.”²² The above vision may appear impossible, but "In the Yoga as in life it is the man who persists unwearied to the last in the face of every defeat and disillusionment and of all confronting, hostile and contradicting events and powers who conquers in the end and finds his faith justified because to the soul and Shakti in man nothing is impossible."⁴⁶ From the above point of view, Sri Matriniketan Ashram's collectivity stands to bridge partly the highest individual aspiration and the ultimate Spiritual destiny of the race. "The soul that can live alone with itself meets God... Forbidding to him rest and earthly ease,"⁴³ are identified as the basis of discovering the Psychic being. Integral Yoga proposes to become truthful and virgin as its indispensable twin foundation⁵¹ for pursuing Spiritual life or 'Only the pure in soul can walk in light.'⁵⁵ Those who ‘follow the true Guide within and without will discover the spiritual law and reach the goal of the Yoga.’⁵² Sri Aurobindo confirms in The Synthesis of Yoga that a 'strong (man) but crude vital natures'⁵³ cannot become the true leader of men . The Mother confirms that a real Guru must have 'an unmixed vital and mental purity.'⁶⁴ One who lives in the Virgin Mother Influence —within, as the Psychic Being, and without, as the physical presence of S.A. Maa Krishna —has his spiritual future considered safe and secure. He can enter double and multiple protection with his realisation of ‘Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light’⁵⁷ and 'Heaven’s leaning down to embrace from all sides earth'⁵⁸ respectively. In contrast, ordinary life⁴⁷ often crucifies⁴⁵ the Psychic Being from within and rarely encounters any virgin Influence from without. Against this backdrop, this Ashram has developed as an isolated cave of tapasya , with deep internal Silence and Peace of The Mother possessed Consciousness extending its Influence directly to the world. Those who step into Sri Matriniketan Ashram, the Guru’s Grace, Force, Light, Peace, Ananda and Protection follow behind them from within and without² in abundance. OM TAT SAT References 1: "A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence — and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal — of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth — a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a Supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos. The powers we are now satisfied to call gnosis, intuition or illumination are only fainter lights of which that is the full and flaming source, and between the highest human intelligence and it there lie many levels of ascending consciousness, highest mental or overmental, which we would have to conquer before we arrived there or could bring down its greatness and glory here. Yet, however difficult, that ascent, that victory is the destiny of the human spirit and that luminous descent or bringing down of the divine Truth is the inevitable term of the troubled evolution of the earth-nature ; that intended consummation is its raison d’eˆtre, our culminating state and the explanation of our terrestrial existence. For though the transcendental Divine is already here as the Purushottama in the secret heart of our mystery, he is veiled by many coats and disguises of his magic world-wide Yoga-Maya; it is only by the ascent and victory of the Soul here in the body that the disguises can fall away and the dynamis of the supreme Truth replace this tangled weft of half-truth that becomes creative error, this emergent Knowledge that is converted by its plunge into the inconscience of Matter and its slow partial return towards itself into an effective Ignorance." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-254, "Love is the power and passion of the divine self-delight and without love we may get the rapt peace of its infinity, the absorbed silence of the Ananda , but not its absolute depth of richness and fullness. Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul’s greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment. " CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-547, 2: "The first step on this long path is to consecrate all our works as a sacrifice to the Divine in us and in the world; this is an attitude of the mind and heart, not too difficult to initiate, but very difficult to make absolutely sincere and all-pervasive. The second step is to renounce attachment to the fruit of our works; for the only true, inevitable and utterly desirable fruit of sacrifice — the one thing needful — is the Divine Presence and the Divine Consciousness and Power in us, and if that is gained, all else will be added. This is a transformation of the egoistic will in our vital being, our desire-soul and desire-nature, and it is far more difficult than the other. The third step is to get rid of the central egoism and even the ego-sense of the worker. That is the most difficult transformation of all and it cannot be perfectly done if the first two steps have not been taken; but these first steps too cannot be completed unless the third comes in to crown the movement and, by the extinction of egoism, eradicates the very origin of desire. " CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-247, " 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, 3: “The Self and Spirit cannot be expressed by the mind’s abstract generalizations; all the inspired descriptions of the seers and mystics cannot exhaust its contents and its splendours.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-296 4: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-130, “The example is more powerful than the instruction; but it is not the example of the outward acts nor that of the personal character which is of most importance. These have their place and their utility; but what will most stimulate aspiration in others is the central fact of the divine realisation within him governing his whole life and inner state and all his activities. This is the universal and essential element; the rest belongs to individual person and circumstance. It is this dynamic realisation that the sadhaka must feel and reproduce in himself according to his own nature; he need not strive after an imitation from outside which may well be sterilising rather than productive of right and natural fruits.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-67 5: “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 and, — who knows? — perhaps even beyond the terrestrial consciousness.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-45, “The stone lying inert upon the sands which is kicked away in an idle moment, has been producing its effect upon the hemispheres.” Sri Aurobindo/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms/p-229, (Earth) “Knows that one high step might enfranchise all.” Savitri-371, "And for everything: when something hurts, for instance, when things resist or grate or howl inside there, instead of your saying, "Oh, how it hurts! "you call the Lord in there: "Come in here," and then you stay calm, not thinking of anything – you simply stay still in your sensation. And more than a thousand times, you know, I was almost bewildered: "Look! The pain is gone!" You didn't even notice how it went. So people who want to lead a special life or have a special organization to have experiences, that's quite silly – the greatest possible diversity of experiences is at your disposal every minute, every minute. Only you must learn not to have a mental ambition for "great" things. Just the other day, I was shown in such a clear way a very small thing I had done ("I," it's the body speaking), a very small things that had been done by the Lord in this body (that's a long sentence!), and I was shown the terrestrial consequence of that very small thing – it was visible, I mean, as my hand is visible to my eyes – and the terrestrial correspondence. Then I understood.” The Mother’s Agenda/20.11.1963, “Whatever one does, it becomes useful if one puts a spark of true consciousness into it …The consciousness one has is much more important than the act one performs. And the most apparently useless acts can become very productive if they are performed with the true consciousness. ” The Mother/TMCW-14/p- 37, "Certainly, a great step will be taken when it becomes natural for man to seek to perfect himself instead of expecting perfection in others …. That reversal is at the basis of all true progress. The first human instinct is, “It’s the fault of circumstances, it’s people’s fault, it’s … See how this fellow is, how that fellow is, how …” And it goes on indefinitely. The FIRST STEP, the very first step is to say, “If I were as I should be, or if the body were as it should be, all would be perfectly all right for it.” If, to make progress, you wait for others to do so, you can wait indefinitely...That’s the first thing that should be spread everywhere...Never lay the blame on others or on circumstances because whatever the circumstances may be, even apparently the worst, if you are in the true attitude and have the true consciousness, it doesn’t matter in the least for your inner progress, not in the least –and I’ll say, including death... That really seems to be the first lesson to be learned." The Mother's Agenda/December 10/1969, "The best way of helping others is to transform oneself. Be perfect and you will be in a position to bring perfection to the world." The Mother/TMCW-14/Words of The Mother-II/p-276, 6: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-165, 7: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-67, 8: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1068-69, 9: The Mother’s Agenda-6/p-131-136, 10: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-57, 11: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-87, 12: Savitri-310, 13: Savitri-686, 14: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-296, 15: Savitri-445, 16: SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-90, 17: “All manifestation, sthabarajangamam , takes place by the union between Field, Matter, Kshetra and Knower of the Field, Spirit, Kshetrajn a.” The Gita-13.27, 18: Savitri-647, 19. CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-250, “The Maker shall recast us and impose A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould Lifting our finite minds to his infinite, Touching the moment with eternity.” Savitri-67, 20. CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-106, 21. Savitri-126, 22. Savitri-484, 23: “In the beginning of the Yoga you are apt to forget the Divine very often. But by constant aspiration you increase your remembrance and you diminish the forgetfulness. But this should not be done as a severe discipline or a duty; it must be a movement of love and joy. Then very soon a stage will come when, if you do not feel the presence of the Divine at every moment and whatever you are doing, you feel at once lonely and sad and miserable. Whenever you find that you can do something without feeling the presence of the Divine and yet be perfectly comfortable, you must understand that you are not consecrated in that part of your being. That is the way of the ordinary humanity which does not feel any need of the Divine. But for a seeker of the Divine Life it is very different. And when you have entirely realised unity with the Divine, then, if the Divine were only for a second to withdraw from you, you would simply drop dead; for the Divine is now the Life of your life, your whole existence, your single and complete support. If the Divine is not there, nothing is left.” The Mother/TMCW-3/Questions and Answers-1929-1931/p-26–27, "It is the lesson of life that always in this world everything fails a man — only the Divine does not fail him, if he turns entirely to the Divine. It is not because there is something bad in you that blows fall on you, — blows fall on all human beings because they are full of desire for things that cannot last and they lose them or, even if they get, it brings disappointment and cannot satisfy them. To turn to the Divine is the only truth in life." CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-625, 24: CWSA-17/Isha Upanishad/p-195, 25: “The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man’s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-48 26: "We are here to give up all desires and to turn towards the Divine and to become conscious of the Divine. To realize and manifest the Divine in our life is the way, not to become animals, living like cats and dogs." The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-30.03.1972, "Man can bring an enlightened will, an enlightened thought and enlightened emotions to the difficult work of his self-development; he can more and more subject to these more conscious and reflecting guides the inferior function of desire. In proportion as he can thus master and enlighten his lower self, he is man and no longer an animal. When he can begin to replace desire altogether by a still greater enlightened thought and sight and will in touch with the Infinite, consciously subject to a diviner will than his own, linked to a more universal and transcendent knowledge, he has commenced the ascent towards the superman; he is on his upward march towards the Divine." Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-80, "To be a man, discipline is indispensable... Without discipline one is only an animal... One begins to be a man only when one aspires to a higher and truer life and when one accepts a discipline of transformation. For this one must start by mastering one’s lower nature and its desires." The Mother/The Mother's Centenary Works/Vol-14/p-46 27: "In street and house, in councils and in courts Beings he met who looked like living men And climbed in speech upon high wings of thought But harboured all that is subhuman, vile And lower than the lowest reptile’s crawl." Savitri-215 28: “There are two who are unfit for greatness and freedom, the man who has never been a slave to another and the nation that has never been under the yoke of foreigners.” SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-115, 29. "For all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony. They arise from the perception of an unsolved discord and the instinct of an undiscovered agreement or unity. To rest content with an unsolved discord is possible for the practical and more animal part of man, but impossible for his fully awakened mind, and usually even his practical parts only escape from the general necessity either by shutting out the problem or by accepting a rough, utilitarian and unillumined compromise." CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-4, "The discords of the worlds are God’s discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda. " CWSA-19/Essays of the Gita/p-382 "It [trying to help someone through words] is a relative and partial help, of course, but it is sometimes useful. A radical help can only come from within through the action of the Divine Force and the assent of the being." CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-317, "In other words a will of entire self-giving opens wide all the gates of the spirit and brings in response an entire descent and self-giving of the Godhead to the human being, and that at once reshapes and assimilates everything in us to the law of the divine existence by a rapid transformation of the lower into the spiritual nature. The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle... but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the Divine, God himself comes to us and takes up our burden. To the ignorant he brings the light of the divine knowledge, to the feeble the power of the divine will, to the sinner the liberation of the divine purity, to the suffering the infinite spiritual joy and Ananda. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-335, “This high consummation of the Yoga will at once solve or rather it will wholly remove and destroy at its roots the problem of action. Human action is a thing full of difficulties and perplexities, tangled and confused like a forest with a few more or less obscure paths cut into it rather than through it; but all this difficulty and entanglement arises from the single fact that man lives imprisoned in the ignorance of his mental, vital and physical nature. He is compelled by its qualities and yet afflicted with responsibility in his will because something in him feels that he is a soul who ought to be what now he is not at all or very little, master and ruler of his nature. All his laws of living, all his dharmas must be under these conditions imperfect, temporary and provisional and at best only partly right or true. His imperfections can cease only when he knows himself, knows the real nature of the world in which he lives and, most of all, knows the Eternal from whom he comes and in whom and by whom he exists. When he has once achieved a true consciousness and knowledge, there is no longer any problem; for then he acts freely out of himself and lives spontaneously in accordance with the truth of his spirit and his highest nature. At its fullest, at the highest height of this knowledge it is not he who acts but the Divine, the One eternal and infinite who acts in him and through him in his liberated wisdom and power and perfection." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-591, "When we live in unity with the Divine in ourselves and the spirit of the universe, these imperfections (the assailing touch of grief, wrath, hatred, fear, inequality of love, trouble of joy, pain of sorrow) fall away from us and disappear in the calm and equal strength and delight of the inner spiritual existence. Always that is within us and transforms the outward touches before they reach it by a passage through a subliminal psychic soul in us which is the hidden instrument of its delight of being. By equality of the heart we get away from the troubled desire-soul on the surface, open the gates of this profounder being, bring out its responses and impose their true divine values on all that solicits our emotional being. A free, happy, equal and all-embracing heart of spiritual feeling is the outcome of this perfection." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-704, “In sum it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience – or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-consciousness is reached above us or born within us.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-137, "In the supramental consciousness, there are no problems — the problem is created by the division set up by the Mind. The Supramental sees the Truth as a single whole and everything falls into its place in that whole. The Supramental is also spiritual, but the old Yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence) absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-existence absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the supramental plane. ” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-133-134, “If you keep your faith unshaken and your heart always open to me, then all difficulties, however great, will contribute to the greater perfection of your being.” The Mother/TMCW/Vol-14/p-227, " When external difficulties subside, when the body becomes passive and quiet, when it is not constantly demanding attention, then you can LIVE in this supramental consciousness and it does not seem so difficult; you feel it is so victorious in its essence that it will end all difficulties . " The Mother’s Agenda/ December 13, 1960, " All mornings are difficult. It's odd: life as a whole goes by with almost dizzying speed – weeks and months go by like that – and mornings, about three hours every morning, last like a century! Each minute is won at the cost of an effort. It is the time of the work in the body, for the body, and not just one body: for instance, all the vibrations from sick people, all those problems of life come from everywhere. And for those three hours, there is tension, struggle, acute seeking for what should be done or for the attitude to be taken.... It's at that time that I have tested the power of the mantra. For those three hours, I repeat my mantra automatically, without stopping; and every time the difficulty increases, a kind of Power comes into those words and acts on Matter. And that's how I know: without the mantra, that work couldn't be done. But that's why I say it has to be YOUR mantra, not something you received from whomever – the mantra that arose spontaneously from your deeper being (gesture to the heart), from your inner guide. That's what holds out. When you don't know, when you don't understand, when you don't want to let the mind intervene and you are ...THAT is there; the mantra is there; and it helps you to get through. It helps to get through. It saves the situation at critical moments, it's a considerable support, considerable." The Mother’s Agenda/September 23, 1964, "The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-335, “So if That is established in a permanent way, there CAN NO LONGER be illness it is impossible. There can no longer be accidents, there can no longer be illness, there can no longer be disorders, and everything should harmonize (probably in a progressive way) just as that was harmonized: all the objects… were full of a joyful enthusiasm – everything obeyed, everything!” The Mother's Agenda/June 6, 1958, "He explores the ceaseless miracle of himself, Till the thousandfold enigma has been solved In the single light of an all-witnessing Soul." Savitri-68 30: “(The Divine is) the perfect Personality capable of all relations even to the most human, concrete and intimate; for he is friend, comrade, lover, playmate, guide, teacher, master, ministrant of knowledge or ministrant of joy, yet in all relations unbound, free and absolute. This too the divinised man becomes in the measure of his attainment...” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-141, “But behind all these and in them he (a Sadhaka ) has felt a Divinity who is all these things, a Bringer of Light, a Guide and All-Knower, a Master of Force, a Giver of Bliss, Friend, Helper, Father, Mother, Playmate in the world-game, an absolute Master of his being, his soul’s Beloved and Lover. All (the seven-fold personal) relations known to human personality are there in the soul’s contact with the Divine; but they rise towards super human levels and compel him (a Sadhaka) towards a divine nature.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-129, “Discipleship to God the Teacher, sonship to God the Father, tenderness of God the Mother, clasp of the hand of the divine Friend, laughter and sport with our comrade and boy-Play-fellow, blissful servitude to God the Master, rapturous love of our divine Paramour, these are seven beatitudes of life in the human body. Canst thou unite all these in a single supreme and rainbow-hued relation? Then hast thou no need of any heaven and thou exceedest the emancipation of the Adwaitin .” SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-137 31: “Distrust a man who has never failed and suffered; follow not his fortune, fight not under his banner.” Sri Aurobindo/SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-115, “Help men, but do not pauperise them of their energy; lead and instruct men, but see that their initiative and originality remain intact; take others into thyself, but give them in return the full godhead of their nature. He who can do this is the leader and the guru.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-13/Essays in Philosophy and Yoga/p-208, "This “helping others” is a perilous business — it brings the “guru” ego or else you very uncertainly rid others of their difficulties and very certainly get them yourself. “Why do you have all these disciples?” said a sage to some Maratha saint (I have forgotten the names); “to have disciples means to add all their difficulties to your own.” “Helping others” has the same disadvantage." CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-318, "In “helping” one often gets part of the other’s inconvenience and many Yogis refuse to take disciples because they will have to assume others’ burdens as well as their own. There are also other dangers — growth of ego etc." CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-319, 32. “After many births of preparation, a Jnana Yogi with a 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, “That is precisely the distortion in the Western attitude as opposed to the attitude of the Gita. It is extremely difficult for the Western mind to understand in a living and concrete manner that everything is the Divine.” The Mother/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms/p-101, 33. “But still this line of development too is necessary, because there must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualised intelligence is necessary for the fullness of our total inner evolution, and without it, if another deeper guidance is lacking, the inner movement may be erratic and undisciplined, turbid and mixed with unspiritual elements or one-sided or incomplete in its catholicity. For the transformation of the Ignorance into the integral Knowledge the growth in us of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise it for all the parts of our nature is an intermediate necessity of great importance.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-913, "The test that we have done this is the presence of an undisturbed calm in the mind and spirit. The sadhaka must be on the watch as the witnessing and willing Purusha behind or, better, as soon as he can manage it, above the mind, and repel even the least indices or incidence of trouble, anxiety, grief, revolt, disturbance in his mind. If these things come, he must at once detect their source, the defect which they indicate, the fault of egoistic claim, vital desire, emotion or idea from which they start and this he must discourage by his will, his spiritualised intelligence, his soul unity with the Master of his being. On no account must he admit any excuse for them, however natural, righteous in seeming or plausible, or any inner or outer justification. If it is the prana which is troubled and clamorous, he must separate himself from the troubled prana, keep seated his higher nature in the buddhi and by the buddhi school and reject the claim of the desire-soul in him; and so too if it is the heart of emotion that makes the clamour and the disturbance. If on the other hand it is the will and intelligence itself that is at fault, then the trouble is more difficult to command, because then his chief aid and instrument becomes an accomplice of the revolt against the divine Will and the old sins of the lower members take advantage of this sanction to raise their diminished heads. Therefore there must be a constant insistence on one main idea, the self-surrender to the Master of our being, God within us and in the world, the supreme Self, the universal Spirit. The buddhi dwelling always in this master idea must discourage all its own lesser insistences and preferences and teach the whole being that the ego whether it puts forth its claim through the reason, the personal will, the heart or the desire-soul in the prana, has no just claim of any kind and all grief, revolt, impatience, trouble is a violence against the Master of the being.... This complete self-surrender must be the chief mainstay of the sadhaka because it is the only way, apart from complete quiescence and indifference to all action, — and that has to be avoided, — by which the absolute calm and peace can come. The persistence of trouble, asanti , the length of time taken for this purification and perfection, itself must not be allowed to become a reason for discouragement and impatience. It comes because there is still something in the nature which responds to it, and the recurrence of trouble serves to bring out the presence of the defect, put the sadhaka upon his guard and bring about a more enlightened and consistent action of the will to get rid of it. When the trouble is too strong to be kept out, it must be allowed to pass and its return discouraged by a greater vigilance and insistence of the spiritualised buddhi . Thus persisting, it will be found that these things lose their force more and more, become more and more external and brief in their recurrence, until finally calm becomes the law of the being. This rule persists so long as the mental buddhi is the chief instrument; but when the supramental light takes possession of mind and heart, then there can be no trouble, grief or disturbance; for that brings with it a spiritual nature of illumined strength in which these things can have no place. There the only vibrations and emotions are those which belong to the anandamaya nature of divine unity.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-722-724, “Buddhiyoga is fulfilled by karmayoga ; the Yoga of the self-liberating intelligent will finds its full meaning by the Yoga of desireless works. Thus the Gita founds its teaching of the necessity of desireless works, niskama karma , and unites the subjective practice of the Sankhyas — rejecting their merely physical rule — with the practice of Yoga.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-109, "Works are far inferior to Yoga of the intelligence , O Dhananjaya ; desire rather refuge in the intelligence; poor and wretched souls are they who make the fruit of their works the object of their thoughts and activities. One whose intelligence has attained to unity, casts away – even here in this world of dualities – both good doing and evil doing. Therefore strive to be in Yoga; Yoga is skill in works. The sages who have united their reason and will with the Divine renounce the fruit which action yields and, liberated from the bondage of birth, they reach the status beyond misery. When thy intelligence shall cross beyond the whirl of delusion, then shalt thou become indifferent to Scripture heard or that which thou hast yet to hear. When thy intelligence which is bewildered by the Sruti, shall stand unmoving and stable in Samadhi, then shalt thou attain to Yoga." The Gita-2.49-53, “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, “The Shakti in her workings will strike ruthlessly at all forms of ignorance and blindness and all even that trusts wrongly and superstitiously in her, and we must be prepared to abandon a too persistent attachment to forms of faith and cling to the saving reality alone. A great and wide spiritual and intelligent faith, intelligent with the intelligence of that larger reason which assents to high possibilities, is the character of the sraddha needed for the integral Yoga. ” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-774 34: "Outcast from empire of the outer light, Lost to the comradeship of seeing men, He sojourns in two solitudes, within And in the solemn rustle of the woods." Savitri-403, 35: CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-294, 36: Savitri-401, 37: Savitri-262, 38: "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 powe r, 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-479, " He (Sri Aurobindo ) himself-he 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." Dec-20/1972/The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-13/P-326-328, "…we had a meditation here on the 15th, (15th, August 1962) at ten o’clock. At quarter to ten, I was sitting here at the table in a total silence. And then ... I can’t say Sri Aurobindo came, for he is always here, but he manifested in a special way.... Concretely, in the subtle physical, he became so tall that, sitting cross-legged as they do here, he covered the whole compound — even extended a bit beyond it! He was literally sitting upon the compound; so to the extent that the people meditating were not closed, they were all inside him.... I have often seen him in his supramental light; he has come very often (he used to come when I went to the balcony; sometimes he was above the Samadhi; he came very often). But that ... first of all, the proportions were enormous - sitting down, I tell you, he extended beyond the compound; and he materialized in a way that could be physically felt. And there was such confidence, such joy, such certainty; everything was so sure, so altogether certain, as though all had been accomplished....He has given us a beautiful gift. All his sweetness and all his splendor and all his power and all his calm were there — and far stronger and clearer than when he was in his body! .... And even when I was working, all the while I would feel him behind me, doing everything. But this was much stronger. Much stronger." The Mother's Agenda/August 18, 1962, "...the Divine of yesterday is only an apprentice to the Divine of tomorrow ..." The Mother's Agenda/October 8, 1956 39: "The Mother’s Vibhutis would normally be feminine personalities most of whom would be dominated by one of the four personalities of the Mother . The others you mention would be personalities and powers of the Ishwara, but in them also, as in all, the Mother’s force would act. I do not quite catch the question about the transformation of the Vibhutis. All creation and transformation is the work of the Mother. ... If you mean the divine personalities of the Mother — the answer is yes. It may even be said that each Vibhuti draws his energies from the Four, from one of them predominantly in most cases, as Napoleon from Mahakali, Rama from Mahalakshmi, Augustus Caesar from Mahasaraswati. ” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-113, 40: “The natural attitude of the psychic being is to feel itself as the child, the son of God, the Bhakta ; it is a portion of the Divine, one in essence, but in the dynamics of the manifestation there is always even in identity a difference. The Jivatman , on the contrary, lives in the essence and can merge itself in identity with the Divine; but it too, the moment it presides over the dynamics of the manifestation, knows itself as one centre of the multiple Divine, not as the Parameshwara . It is important to remember this distinction; for, otherwise, if there is the least vital egoism, one may begin to think of oneself as an Avatara … ” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga/p-61, “But still the Vibhuti is not the Avatar ; otherwise Arjuna, Vyasa, Ushanas would be Avatars as well as Krishna , even if in a less degree of the power of Avatarhood . The divine quality is not enough; there must be the inner consciousness of the Lord and Self governing the human nature by his divine presence. The heightening of the power of the qualities is part of the becoming, bhutagrama , (The Gita-8.19, 9.8) an ascent in the ordinary manifestation; in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, atmanam srijami, (The Gita-4.7) and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature.” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-161, 41: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-387, (The Gita-11.33), " This is the figure of the supreme and universal Being, the Ancient of Days who is for ever, sanatanam purusam puranam , (The Gita-18.38) this is (1) he who for ever creates, for Brahma the Creator is one of the Godheads seen in his body, he who keeps the world always in existence, for he is the guardian of the eternal laws, but (2) who is always too destroying in order that he may new-create, who is Time, who is Death, who is Rudra the Dancer of the calm and awful dance, who is Kali with her garland of skulls trampling naked in battle and flecked with the blood of the slaughtered Titans, who is the cyclone and the fire and the earthquake and pain and famine and revolution and ruin and the swallowing ocean. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-380-381, 42: "We have all met in previous lives. Otherwise we would not have come together in this life. We are of one family and have worked through ages for the victory of the Divine and its manifestation upon earth." The Mother/The Mother's Centenary Works/Vol-3/p-3, 43: Savitri-460, 339, (The Mother said this at the age of 94) “The body has some difficulty, so I can’t be active, alas. It is not because I am old-I am not old. I am not old, I am younger than most of you. If I am here inactive, it is because the body has given itself definitely to prepare the transformation. But the consciousness is clear and we are here to work-rest and enjoyment will come afterwards, Let us do our work here.” April-2/1972/Mother’s Agenda/Vol-13/P: 125, 44: Savitri-545, 45: "She carries crucified God upon her breast." Savitri-180 “And in the cradle slay the divine Child.” Savitri-224 “Each soul is the great Father’s crucified Son,” Savitri-500 " It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice, Offered by God’s martyred body for the world; Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot, He carries the cross on which man’s soul is nailed;" Savitri-445, "Mind keeps the soul prisoner, we are slaves to our acts; We cannot free our gaze to reach wisdom’s sun." Savitri-53 46: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-773, "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, " Man is given faith in himself, his ideas and his powers that he may work and create and rise to greater things and in the end bring his strength as a worthy offering to the altar of the Spirit. This spirit, says the Scripture, is not to be won by the weak, nayam atma balahınena labhyah . All paralysing self-distrust has to be discouraged, all doubt of our strength to accomplish, for that is a false assent to impotence, an imagination of weakness and a denial of the omnipotence of the spirit. A present incapacity, however heavy may seem its pressure, is only a trial of faith and a temporary difficulty and to yield to the sense of inability is for the seeker of the integral Yoga a non-sense, for his object is a development of a perfection that is there already, latent in the being, because man carries the seed of the divine life in himself, in his own spirit, the possibility of success is involved and implied in the effort and victory is assured because behind is the call and guidance of an omnipotent power." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-779-780, 47: "To serve ego and desire without aspiration to a higher nature and a higher law is to have the mind and the temperament of the Asura .” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-280-281, “The evil doers attain not to Me, Souls bewildered by the Maya of three gunas resort to the nature of being of Asura. ” The Gita-7.15, "The soul that fails to get faith in the higher truth and law, must return into the path of ordinary mortal living subject to death and error and evil:" CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-309-310, 48: " LET us shun the paths that are too easy and ask no effort, the paths which give us the illusion of having reached our goal; let us shun that negligence which opens the door to every downfall, that complacent self-admiration which leads to every abyss. Let us understand that however great may have been our efforts, our struggles, even our victories, compared with the distance yet to be travelled, the one we have already covered is nothing; and that all are equal — infinitesimal grains of dust or identical stars — before Eternity." TMCW-1/Prayers and Meditations/p-50, "To be humble means for the mind, the vital and the body never to forget that without the Divine they know nothing, are nothing and can do nothing; without the Divine they are nothing but ignorance, chaos and impotence. The Divine alone is Truth, Life, Power, Love, Felicity... Therefore the mind, the vital, and the body must learn and feel, once and for all, that they are wholly incapable of understanding and judging the Divine, not only in his essence but also in his action and manifestation... This is the only true humility and with it come quiet and peace...This is also the surest shield against all hostile attack. Indeed, in the human being it is always the door of pride at which the Adversary knocks, for it is this door which opens to let him enter." TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-152-153, 49: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-702, 50: "Another possible conception akin to the religious solution is the guidance of society by men of spiritual attainment, the brotherhood or unity of all in the faith or in the discipline, the spiritualisation of life and society by the taking up of the old machinery of life into such a unification or inventing a new machinery. This too has been attempted before without success; it was the original founding idea of more than one religion: but the human ego and vital nature were too strong for a religious idea working on the mind and by the mind to overcome its resistance. It is only the full emergence of the soul, the full descent of the native light and power of the Spirit and the consequent replacement or transformation and uplifting of our insufficient mental and vital nature by a spiritual and supramental supernature that can effect this evolutionary miracle." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1096, 51: “(Q:) I have been here for one and a half years but I know nothing of the sadhana . I meditate, but nothing happens in the meditation. I feel there is no love in me towards the Mother . What shall I do to feel this love? (Ans.) Become truthful, pure, sincere, straightforward.” Sri Aurobindo/1 July 1935/ CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-462, “Brahmacharya (celibacy) is not binding in bhaktimarga or karmayoga , but it is necessary for ascetic jnanayoga as well as for Raja and Hatha yogas. It is also not demanded from Grihastha yogis. In this (integral) Yoga the position is that one must overcome sex, otherwise there can be no transformation of the lower vital and physical nature ; all physical sexual connection should cease, otherwise one exposes oneself to serious dangers. The sex-push must also be overcome but it is not a fact that there can be no sadhana or no experience before it is entirely overcome, only without that conquest one cannot go to the end and it must be clearly recognised as one of the more serious obstacles and indulgence of it as a cause of considerable disturbance.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-542, "I have tried many things, a great many, I have looked a great deal, and I see only one that’s absolute – only one that’s absolute and can bring the absolute result, it’s this (gesture turned Upward): the complete annulment of all that, leaving it all, "To You, Lord – You, You, to You." And it isn’t a being with a form, that’s not it; it isn’t a formless force, it’s ... It has nothing to do with thought, only with this: the contact. And the contact, an unmistakable contact, which nothing can imitate – nothing, nothing at all has the power to imitate it. And for every difficulty, every time, whatever it is, simply this: "Everything to You, Lord. Everything for You, to You. You alone can do it, You, You alone, You alone. You alone are the Truth; You alone are the Power." And those words are nothing, they are only the very clumsy expression of something ... a stupendous Power....It’s only the incapacity, the clumsiness, the lack of faith we mix into it that takes away His power. The minute we are truly pure, that is, under His influence alone, there are no limits, no limits – nothing, nothing, there is nothing, no law of Nature that can resist, nothing, nothing.... Only, the whole thing is that the time must have come, there must be only That left – all the rest spoils, whatever it is, even the highest, purest, noblest, most beautiful and marvelous things: all that spoils. Only That.” The Mother's Agenda/ March 26, 1966, “The supramental is not only Truth itself, but also the very negation of falsehood. The supramental will never come down, settle and manifest in a consciousness harbouring falsehood... Naturally the first condition for conquering falsehood is to stop telling lies, though this is only a preliminary step. An absolute, integral sincerity must finally be established in the being and all its movements if the goal is at all to be attained.” The Mother/TMCW-15/p-90, "If you are not sincere, what happens is that your own consciousness is veiled. Take, for example, a man who tells lies; his consciousness gets veiled and after a while, he can no longer distinguish falsehood from truth. He sees images and calls them truth. One who is wicked loses his aspiration, loses his capacity of realisation, loses all possibility of understanding, feeling and realising. That is the punishment. One puts veils, obstacles between oneself and the Divine” TMCW-5/Questions and Answers-1953/p-21 "At last there wakes in us a witness Soul That looks at truths unseen and scans the Unknown; Then all assumes a new and marvellous face: " Savitri-168 “In transparent systems bodied termless truths,” Savitri-273 "Above the parting of the roads of Time, Above the Silence and its thousandfold Word, In the immutable and inviolate Truth For ever united and inseparable, The radiant children of Eternity dwell On the wide spirit height where all are one." Savitri-282 "Bliss was the pure undying truth of things ." Savitri-324 "A scout of victory in a vigil tower, Her aspiration called high destiny down; A silent warrior paced in her city of strength Inviolate, guarding Truth’s diamond throne. " Savitri-358 (Supreme Said) “ O Savitri, thou art my spirit’s Power, The revealing voice of my immortal Word, The face of Truth upon the roads of Time Pointing to the souls of men the routes to God.” Savitri-703 "But first high Truth must set her feet on earth And man aspire to the Eternal’s light And all his members feel the Spirit’s touch And all his life obey an inner Force." Savitri-708 (Satyavan said) “What high change is in thee, O Savitri? Bright Ever thou wast, a goddess still and pure , Yet dearer to me by thy sweet human parts Earth gave thee making thee yet more divine.” Savitri-718 52: “This will be to him (a Sadhaka of Integral Yoga) 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. (1) 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. (2) 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, "The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings would not matter; for the divine Guide within is not offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of faith or repelled by our weakness; he has the entire love of the mother and the entire patience of the teacher." Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-64, 53: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-249, 54: “In Nature everything is in movement; thus, whatever does not move forward is bound to fall back.” TMCW/Vol-12/On Education/p-63, 55: Savitri-448, 56: Savitri-126-127, 57: Savitri-531, 58: Savitri-716, 59: CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-66, 60: "My (Savitri's) soul and his indissolubly linked.... To bring God down to the world on earth we came," Savitri-692, 61: "(Q) Mother, previously things were very strict in the Ashram, but not now. Why? Yes, I have always said that it changed when we had to take the very little children. How can you envision an ascetic life with little sprouts no bigger than that? It’s impossible! But that’s the little surprise package the war left on our doorstep. When it was found that Pondicherry was the safest place on earth, naturally people came wheeling in here with all their baby carriages filled and asked us if we could shelter them, so we couldn’t very well turn them away, could we?! That’s how it happened, and in no other way ... But, in the beginning, the first condition for coming here was that you would have nothing more to do with your family! If a man was married, then he had to completely overlook the fact that he had a wife and children – completely sever all ties, have nothing further to do with them. And if ever a wife asked to come just because her husband happened to be here, we told her, ‘You have no business coming here!’ In the beginning, it was very, very strict – for a long time. The first condition was: ‘Nothing more to do with your family ...’ Well, we are a long way from that! But I repeat that it only happened because of the war and not because we stopped seeing the need to cut all family ties; on the contrary, this is an indispensable condition because as long as you hang on to all these cords which bind you to ordinary life, which make you a slave to the ordinary life, how can you possibly belong to the Divine alone? What childishness! It is simply not possible. If you have ever taken the trouble to read over the early ashram rules, you would find that even friendships were considered dangerous and undesirable ... We made every effort to create an atmosphere in which only ONE thing counted: the Life Divine ." The Mother's Agenda/August 25, 1954, 62: "And pure perfection and a shadowless bliss Are this afflicted creature’s mighty fate." Savitri-340 " Again the mighty yearning raised its flame That asks a perfect life on earth for men And prays for certainty in the uncertain mind And shadowless bliss for suffering human hearts And Truth embodied in an ignorant world And godhead divinising mortal forms." Savitri-369 63: " As in a mystic and dynamic dance A priestess of immaculate ecstasies Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods, A heart of silence in the hands of joy Inhabited with rich creative beats A body like a parable of dawn That seemed a niche for veiled divinity Or golden temple-door to things beyond." Savitri-15 “Thy peace, O Lord, a boon within to keep Amid the roar and ruin of wild Time For the magnificent soul of man on earth. Thy calm, O Lord, that bears thy hands of joy .” Savitri-696 " Thou shalt be attracted helplessly to all. Men seeing thee shall feel my hands of joy, " Savitri-701 64: The Mother’s Agenda/11.03.1962 Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: Anchor 1 Anchor 2 Anchor 29 Anchor 32 Anchor 33 Anchor 19 Anchor 3 Anchor 4 Anchor 5 Anchor 6 Anchor 7 Anchor 8 Anchor 9 Anchor 10 Anchor 11 Anchor 12 Anchor 13 Anchor 14 Anchor 15 Anchor 16 Anchor 17 Anchor 18 Anchor 20 Anchor 21a Anchor 34a Anchor 9a Anchor 21 Anchor 22 Anchor 23 Anchor 24 Anchor 25 Anchor 26 Anchor 27 Anchor 28 Anchor 30 Anchor 31 Anchor 35 Anchor 36 Anchor 37 Anchor 38 Anchor 39 Anchor 40 Anchor 41 Anchor 42 Anchor 22a Anchor 34 Anchor 43a Anchor 43 ‘The Mother’s International Centre Trust ’ was registered on the auspicious Siddhi Day of 24th November 1997 and all its necessary forms and manifestations were chosen by THEIR Divine Grace. The Trust was formed by the pressure of a Supracosmic vision revealed to me (S. A. Maa Krishna) as its Central Representative. In the vision, I had been to a world of greater tranquil sweetness where there was no soil and no ground but a subtle ether’s field. People were walking, but not on the soil but floating on the surface with feet downward. In that world, trees were there but they had no roots in the soil. I was sitting on a chair whose legs were floating in the space. There was joy everywhere. In the vision, I told myself that this is the Supramental world where there is no Time and Space, no aging and no death and form is represented by the Soul’s brightness. I was sitting near a tree and at the end of the vision, a leaf came to my hand from the air in which it was written ‘Mother’s International Centre ’. During that time, from June 1997 to November 1997, I was living in full of inner pain in the being and was concentrating on my future mission. After that inner seeking, one day I saw this vision. Sri K. Anurakta , our Spiritual Fosterer, consented to form a Trust based on this vision by incorporating a small correction, which reads ‘The Mother’s International Centre Trust . ’ Two types of seekers (dvija) are considered fit to become inmates/members of Sri Matriniketan Ashram. They are mostly insatiable seekers of the Vedanta. In the long run they strive to ascend to the third stage of self-development: " (The first type) One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace by it our ordinary view of things, natural movements, motives of life; one must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. (The Second type) Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and in its light and under its government psychicise our inner and outer parts, turn mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul. Afterwards or concurrently we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, freedom and wideness. (The third type) It is necessary to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality, dissolve the ego, enter into the cosmic consciousness, realise the self, and acquire a spiritualised and universalised mind and heart, life-force, physical consciousness." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/281-282

Integral Physical Education "All here must learn to obey a higher law, Our body’s cells must hold the Immortal’s flame." Savitri-35 “And in the body itself there will be (1) a presence of a greatness of sustaining force, (2) an abounding strength, energy and puissance of outgoing and managing force, (3) a lightness, swiftness and adaptability of the nervous and physical being, (4) a holding and responsive power in the whole physical machine and its driving springs (mahattva, bala, laghuta, dharana-samarthya) of which it is now even at its strongest and best incapable. This energy (mahattva, bala, laghuta, dharana-samarthya) (firstly) will not be in its essence an outward, physical or muscular strength, but will be of the nature, first, of an unbounded life-power or pranic force, secondly, sustaining and using this pranic energy, a superior or supreme will-power acting in the body. (Thirdly) The play of the pranic shakti in the body or form is the condition of all action, even of the most apparently inanimate physical action. It is the universal Prana , as the ancients knew, which in various forms sustains or drives material energy in all physical things from the electron and atom and gas up through the metal, plant, animal, physical man. To get this pranic shakti to act more freely and forcibly in the body is knowingly or unknowingly the attempt of all who strive for a greater perfection of or in the body. The ordinary man tries to command it mechanically by physical exercises and other corporeal means, the Hathayogin more greatly and flexibly, but still mechanically by Asana and Pranayama; but for our purpose (Integral Eduction and Integral Yoga) it can be commanded by more subtle, essential and pliable means; first , by a will in the mind widely opening itself to and potently calling in the universal pranic shakti on which we draw and fixing its stronger presence and more powerful working in the body; secondly, by the will in the mind opening itself rather to the spirit and its power and calling in a higher pranic energy from above, a supramental pranic force; thirdly , the last step, by the highest supramental will of the spirit entering and taking up directly the task of the perfection of the body. In fact, it is always really a will within which drives and makes effective the pranic instrument even when it uses what seem to be purely physical means; but at first it is dependent on the inferior action. When we go higher, the relation is gradually reversed; it is then able to act in its own power or handle the rest only as a subordinate instrumentation .” Sri Aurobindo CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-731-732 Physical exercise, Asana and Pranayama are subordinate instruments of integral physical Education, while activation of the universal pranic shakti, higher pranic energy from above, a Supramental pranic force (“And body bear the immense descent of God.” Savitri-516) and the highest Supramental Will of the spirit are the main instrumentation for the perfection of the body. The two gates of perfection of integral Physical Education are 'mastery of the Prakriti by the Purusha '²⁰ and transformation of Nature or 'sublimation of Nature into her own supreme power, the infinite glories of the Para Shakti .'²⁰ "Physical tamas in its roots can be removed only by the descent and the transformation, but physical exercise and a regular activity of the body can always prevent a tamasic condition from prevailing in the body."² ¹ The Integral Physical Education “A body like a parable of dawn” Savitri-15 “An unseen Presence moulds the oblivious clay.” Savitri-60 “The body illumined with the indwelling God,” Savitri-76 “A body that knew not its own soul within,” Savitri-142 “Make body’s joy as vivid as the soul’s,” Savitri-196 “Then life beat pure in the corporeal frame” Savitri-232 “Bodies made beautiful by the spirit’s light,” Savitri-344 “Outlined by the pressure of this new descent A lovelier body formed than earth had known.” Savitri-354 "Drunk with a wine of lightning in their cells;" Savitri-383 “To wake her body’s spirit to its king.” Savitri-395 "Even as her body, such is she within." Savitri-422 “The body’s self taste immortality.” Savitri-451 “Her body quivered with eternity’s touch” Savitri-671 “Arrived to fathom a deep physical joy;… The limbs were trembling densities of soul.” Savitri-676 “Break into eternity thy mortal mould; Melt, lightning, into thy invisible flame!” Savitri-691 “But I have seen through the insentient mask; I have felt a secret spirit stir in things Carrying the body of the growing God:” Savitri-693 The Maha mantra of Integral Yoga is restated in Integral Physical Education as All Life is Education through rigorous self-control of the body. Rigorous self-control gives birth to the absolute surrender "And the body says to the Supreme Lord: ‘What You want me to be, I shall be, What You want me to know, I shall know, What you want me to do, I shall do.’"²² Integral Physical Education includes and reconciles traditional Karma Yoga ,¹¹ traditional Hatha Yoga ¹² and traditional Japa Yoga ²⁴ in its scope. Indispensable Karma Yoga ¹¹ is given the greatest importance in integral Yoga because it accepts contacts with the world and acceptance of life as means of Divine realisation and can reconcile the Perfect Spirit with the imperfect Matter. Dispensable Hatha Yoga is given importance as it is related to rigorous⁴ self-control of the body,⁸ perfection of physical nature and transformation of cellular substance. Ceaseless Japa Yajna is accepted as it is related with ‘direct Divine action on the cells of the body,’⁵ disciplining the physical mind⁶ and transformation of the Subconscient Sheath.⁵ To awaken the Supreme Consciousness in the cells of the body is the object of Integral Physical Education. ⁹ The grossest intensities of Matter or Physical is only a final form and objective representation of the Divine existence, with the whole of the Godhead ever present in it and behind it. It is defined as a conceptive self-extension of Being which works itself out in the universe as substance or object of consciousness and is represented through our mind as atomic division and aggregation of things. Physical education is defined in the Upanishadic language as earth is our footing and foundation and wider, we extend and surer we enter receptivity, plasticity¹⁵ and training of the body, wider and surer becomes our foundation for the higher knowledge, whose perfection will lead towards imperishability of Matter. Integral Physical Education is defined as our full perfection can come when we give equal importance to physical training in addition to descent of Spiritual energy, universal pranic energy and Supramental energy to the physical body and recognises Matter as an extreme fragmentation of the Infinite and it is our sure base, starting point and foundation of the Spirit’s manifestation and revelation. “Among the many who came drawn to her Nowhere she found her partner of high tasks, The comrade of her soul, her other self Who was made with her, like God and Nature, one.” Savitri-366 “No equal heart came close to join her (Savitri’s) heart, No transient earthly love assailed her calm, No hero passion had the strength to seize; No eyes demanded her replying eyes.” Savitri-367 “All worshipped marvellingly, none dared to claim.” Savitri-368 (King Aswapati said to Savitri) “A mighty Presence still defends thy frame. Perhaps the heavens guard thee for some great soul, Thy fate, thy work are kept somewhere afar. Thy spirit came not down a star alone.” Savitri-374 (King Aswapati said) “Venture through the deep world to find thy mate. For somewhere on the longing breast of earth, Thy unknown lover waits for thee the unknown.” Savitri-374 (King Aswapati said) “There shall draw near to meet thy approaching steps The second self for whom thy nature asks, He who shall walk until thy body’s end A close-bound traveller pacing with thy pace, The lyrist of thy soul’s most intimate chords Who shall give voice to what in thee is mute.” Savitri-374 (Narad said) “In him (Paramatma Satyavan) soul and Nature, equal Presences, Balance and fuse in a wide harmony.” Savitri-430 ‘If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use. Sariram khalu dharma sadhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage, — the body is the means of fulfilment of dharma , and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible.’² (Savitri said) “The heavens were once to me my natural home, I too have wandered in star-jewelled groves, Paced sun-gold pastures and moon-silver swards And heard the harping laughter of their streams And lingered under branches dropping myrrh; I too have revelled in the fields of light Touched by the ethereal raiment of the winds, Thy wonder-rounds of music I have trod, Lived in the rhyme of bright unlabouring thoughts, I have beat swift harmonies of rapture vast, Danced in spontaneous measures of the soul The great and easy dances of the gods.” Savitri-686 Through this education, the Matter finds victorious and infinite happiness, awakens the true physical being, annamaya Purusha , and awareness of an infinite Consciousness, knowledge, power, largeness, immortal existence and a perfectly Divine manhood is possible by developing a body and brain capable of receiving and serving still higher illuminations and an inward absoluteness of self-existence.²¹ ‘Taking support from Sri Aurobindo’s teaching that the body is an indispensable basis for the yoga, that it should not be neglected and that, on the contrary, great care should be given to it, the physical consciousness concentrates almost exclusively on the body and tries to find ways of satisfying it.’¹ (Savitri said to Death God:) “Live, Death, awhile, be still my instrument. One day man too shall know thy fathomless heart Of silence and the brooding peace of Night And grave obedience to eternal Law And the calm inflexible pity in thy gaze. But now, O timeless Mightiness, stand aside And leave the path of my incarnate Force. Relieve the radiant God from thy black mask: Release the soul of the world called Satyavan Freed from thy clutch of pain and ignorance That he may stand master of life and fate, Man’s representative in the house of God, The mate of Wisdom and the spouse of Light, The eternal bridegroom of the eternal bride.” Savitri-666 The three limitations and negations of Matter that resist growth or oppose the faculty of educational development are that of Ignorance, Inertia and Division and these are transformed by Integral Physical Education in to Omniscience, Divine peace and tranquility and Unity. “The athlete heavings of the will were stilled In the Omnipotent’s unmoving peace.” Savitri-320 The first fundamental opposition the Physical offers to the Spirit is the culmination of the principle of Ignorance. Ignorance is defined as Nature’s purposeful oblivion from Self and All and concentration of consciousness in part knowledge. Man forgets his total existence by absorption in either of the three exclusive concentration, that is (1) concentration in one object to the exclusion of the rest, (2) concentration on the present moment by exclusion of the all Time which includes past, present and future and (3) concentration on a part of the inner Being by exclusion of our total Self. It is through educating the physical or increase of concentration that one emerges out of the giant forgetfulness of Matter and becomes divinely self-conscious, free, infinite and immortal. The second fundamental opposition the Matter offers to the Spirit is the culmination of bondage to mechanical Law, a colossal Inertia. While the Spirit is free, master of itself and its work, creator of law, this giant Matter is rigidly chained and subjected by the fixed and mechanical Law and works out unconsciously as the machine works, knows not who created it, by what process and to what end. And when life and mind awake and impose their awareness and guidance on matter, it seems the Nature approves reluctantly up to certain point. But beyond that point it presents an obstinate inertia, obstruction, negation and presents to mind and life its helplessness.¹³ Life’s urge for utter wideness and immortality¹⁶ is met by Matter through narrowness and death and mind’s urge to embrace all knowledge, all light, all love is met by matter’s denial, deviation, error and grossness. Error ever purses its knowledge, darkness is inseparably the companion and background of its light, falsehood ever deforms and obstructs the truth, love is not satisfied due to the presence of hatred and joy is not justified due to the presence of suffering and material life always drags towards hatred, anger, indifference, satiety, grief and pain. “The Spirit’s white neutrality became A playground of miracles, a rendezvous For the secret powers of a mystic Timelessness:” Savitri-326 “On the white purity of the Witness Soul.” Savitri-326 The third fundamental opposition of the Matter to the Spirit is the principle of the culmination of division and struggle. In reality the Matter is indivisible but divisibility is its whole basis of action. The two methods through which the material life experiences union are either the (1) aggregation of the units or (2) assimilation which involves the destruction of one unit by another. Both these methods of union create eternal division. Both the methods repose on death, one as means of life and other as condition of life. When the vital principle manifests its activities in inert Matter, it is compelled to accept the law of death, desire and incapacity and when the mental principle manifests in inert Matter, it meets the Ignorance, limitation of consciousness and duality and there is no assured progress. So the Integral Physical Education⁹ will succeed when the material and physical substance need not be a creation of relation between physical, vital and mental sense and substance but on the contrary there is an ascending and developing state of Consciousness, becomes aware of pure and subtler realm in which forms arise and action takes place and opens towards a light of pure Spiritual perceptive knowledge of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Being in which the subjective Self becomes its own objective substance. Then it will be able to transform its three fundamental oppositions and limitations and Matter will be a field of conscious revelation of the Spirit. “ A wider consciousness opens then its doors; Invading from spiritual silences A ray of the timeless Glory stoops awhile To commune with our seized illumined clay And leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.” Savitri-48 The third fundamental opposition of the Matter to the Spirit is the principle of the culmination of division and struggle. In reality the Matter is indivisible but divisibility is its whole basis of action. The two methods through which the material life experiences union are either the (1) aggregation of the units or (2) assimilation which involves the destruction of one unit by another. Both these methods of union create eternal division. Both the methods repose on death, one as means of life and other as condition of life. When the vital principle manifests its activities in inert Matter, it is compelled to accept the law of death, desire and incapacity and when the mental principle manifests in inert Matter, it meets the Ignorance, limitation of consciousness and duality and there is no assured progress. So the Integral Physical Education⁹ will succeed when the material and physical substance need not be a creation of relation between physical, vital and mental sense and substance but on the contrary there is an ascending and developing state of Consciousness, becomes aware of pure and subtler realm in which forms arise and action takes place and opens towards a light of pure Spiritual perceptive knowledge of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Being in which the subjective Self becomes its own objective substance. Then it will be able to transform its three fundamental oppositions and limitations and Matter will be a field of conscious revelation of the Spirit. “It can immortalise a moment’s work:” Savitri-85, “She has lured the Eternal into arms of Time.” Savitri-178 “The moments there were pregnant with all time.” Savitri-301 “The moment’s thought inspired the passing act.” Savitri-325, “The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed; Heavy and long are the years our labour counts” Savitri-345 “One human moment was eternal made.” Savitri-411 “Earth keeps for man some short and perfect hours” Savitri-421 “Time travels towards revealed eternity.” Savitri-623 This Book-2, Canto-2, of the Savitri book represents an exploration of a subtle physical world. It is an important Spiritual Science, hinted in the Upanishad as dream Self, sukhma sharira. This world is very close to the material world, the meeting place of the Superconscient, Subconscient⁷ and universal world. This subtle physical has an important role in Supramental transformation¹⁴ action and all the happenings and new manifestation in the material world has its source and previous formation in this subtle matter.¹⁰ A purified and universalized subtle matter can act as a field of interpenetration of Superconscient and Subconscient⁸ energies and hence is the preparatory field of all new manifestation. A preliminary attempt is made to enter this vast, affirmative, plastic, immaterial kingdom and to become aware of this Annamaya Purusha, the Soul in the physical sheath (“And Matter’s depths be illumined with a soul” Savitri-268) and Annamaya Kosha or the subtle physical sheath (The gross weighs less, the subtle counts for more;” Savitri-186) which are identified as important base of unfolding of the mystery of the existence. The last perfection of physical education is identified as cellular transformation. The simple formula to repeat The Mother’s Cellular transformation experience or discovery of immortal principles concealed within the cells of the body is to purify the physical substance to the extent of bearing the pressure of All Delight and the burden of the earth’s Inconscient negations. “In our body’s cells there sits a hidden Power (true physical being) That sees the unseen and plans eternity, Our smallest parts have room for deepest needs; There too the golden Messengers can come:” Savitri-169-70 (Supramental beings) “And when that greater Self comes sea-like down To fill this image of our transience, All shall be captured by delight, transformed: In waves of undreamed ecstasy shall roll Our mind and life and sense and laugh in a light Other than this hard limited human day, The body’s tissues thrill apotheosised, Its cells sustain bright metamorphosis.” Savitri-171 Regarding the perfection of body, Sri Aurobindo gave importance to descent of Divine Force to physical substance and this can be subordinated by physical exercises and Asanas . “The ordinary man tries to command it mechanically by physical exercises and other corporeal means, the Hathayogin more greatly and flexibly, but still mechanically by Asana and Pranayama ; but for our purpose (for Integral Education) it can be commanded by more subtle, essential and pliable means; (1) first, by a will in the mind widely opening itself to and potently calling in the universal pranic shakti on which we draw and fixing its stronger presence and more powerful working in the body; (2) secondly, by the will in the mind opening itself rather to the spirit and its power and calling in a higher pranic energy from above, a supramental pranic force; (3) thirdly, the last step, by the highest supramental will of the spirit entering and taking up directly the task of the perfection of the body.” ¹⁷ Regarding perfection of the body, we get new input from the Mother's following experience, "I am translating "The Yoga of Self-Perfection": what the body must be and must become to serve as an instrument. It's touching....But one thing has happened practically without my noticing it. In the past, before that experience [April 13, 1962], the body used to feel the struggle against the forces of wear and tear (different organs wearing out, losing their endurance, their power of reaction, and certain movements, for instance, becoming less easy to make). That's what the body felt, although the body-consciousness never sensed any aging, never, none – that simply didn't exist. But in actual material fact, there was some difficulty.... And now, looking at it in the ordinary way, externally, superficially, you might say there has been a great deterioration; well, the body doesn't feel that way at all! What it feels is that a particular movement, effort, gesture or action belongs to the world – this world of ignorance – and isn't being performed in the true way: it's not the true movement, done in the true way. And its sensation or perception is that the state I was speaking of, soft, with no angles, has to develop along a certain line and produce effects on the body that will make true action possible, action expressing the true will. With no difference on the surface, perhaps (I don't know about that yet) ... but done in another way. And I am not talking about grandiose things, mind you, but of everyday activities: getting up, walking, taking a bath. I no longer have a feeling of incapacity, but a feeling of (what's the word for it?) ... an unwillingness – a bodily unwillingness – to do things in the old way... There is another way to be found....But not "found" with the head, it's not like that.... A way that is somewhere IN THE MAKING.... I am speaking of the smallest things – take brushing the teeth; there's a difference between the way I brush my teeth now and the way I used to. (In appearance, I suppose it's the same thing.)... And I have difficulty (it's almost an unwillingness too) seeing things the way others see them. It's difficult for me, not spontaneous: it would take an effort I don't care to make... As for the head, it has learned to keep still.... I walk in the mornings and afternoons, saying the mantra as I did before; but while before I had to drive thoughts away, concentrate and make an effort, now this state comes and takes over everything – the head, the body, everything – and then I walk in that woolly dream (woolly isn't the right word, but it's all I can find!). It's smooth, soft, without angles and supple! No resistance, no resistance.... Oh, that peace!"¹⁸ OM TAT SAT References 1: TMCW-12/On Education/p-46, 2: CWSA-13/Essays in Philosophy and Yoga/p-521, 3: “A child must cease to be wicked because he learns to be ashamed of being wicked, not because he fears a punishment…In the first case, he progresses; in the second he goes down one rung in human consciousness… Fear is a degradation of human consciousness.” The Mother’s Agenda-22.11.1969, 4: “We (human beings) are not living for the satisfaction of our ego; we live to fulfill God’s will. But to be able to perceive and to know the will of God, we must be without desires and preferences. Otherwise we mistake for God’s will our own limited ideas and principles. It is in the wide peace of an absolute and devoted sincerity free from fixed ideas and preferences that we can realize the conditions required to know God’s Will and it is with a fearless discipline that we must execute it.” The Mother’s Agenda-01.05.1971, “The spiritual consciousness using the mind is employing an inferior means and, even though it brings in a divine light into the mind, a divine purity, passion, ardour into the heart or imposes a spiritual law upon the life, this new consciousness has to work within restrictions; for the most part it can only regulate or check the lower action of the life and rigorously control the body, but these members, even if refined or mastered, do not receive their spiritual fulfilment or undergo a perfection and transformation. For that it is necessary to bring in a higher dynamic principle which is native to the spiritual consciousness and by which, therefore, it can act in its own law and completer natural light and power and impose them upon the members.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-969, “The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-11, “The body is not only the necessary outer instrument of the physical part of action, but for the purposes of this life a base or pedestal also for all inner action. All working of mind or spirit has its vibration in the physical consciousness, records itself there in a kind of subordinate corporeal notation and communicates itself to the material world partly at least through the physical machine. But the body of man has natural limitations in his capacity which it imposes on the play of the higher parts of his being. And, secondly, it has a subconscient consciousness of its own in which it keeps with an obstinate fidelity the past habits and past nature of the mental and vital being and which automatically opposes and obstructs any very great upward change or at least prevents it from becoming a radical transformation of the whole nature. It is evident that if we are to have a free divine or spiritual and Supramental action conducted by the force and fulfilling the character of a divine energy, some fairly complete transformation must be effected in this outward character of the bodily nature. The physical being of man has always been felt by the seekers of perfection to be a great impediment and it has been the habit to turn from it with contempt, denial or aversion and a desire to suppress altogether or as far as may be the body and the physical life. But this cannot be the right method for the integral Yoga. The body is given us as one instrument necessary to the totality of our works and it is to be used, not neglected, hurt, suppressed or abolished. If it is imperfect, recalcitrant, obstinate, so are also the other members, the vital being, heart and mind and reason. It has like them to be changed and perfected and to undergo a transformation. As we get ourselves a new life, new heart, new mind, so we have in a certain sense to build for ourselves a new body.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-729-730 5: “When you follow the ascending path, the work is relatively easy. I had already covered this path by the beginning of the century and had established a constant relationship with the Supreme – That which is beyond the Personal and the gods and all the outward expressions of the Divine, but also beyond the Absolute Impersonal. It’s something you cannot describe; you must experience it. And this is what must be brought down into Matter. Such is the descending path, the one I began with Sri Aurobindo ; and there, the work is immense…The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender’). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forward–oh, not even a real step, just a little step! – everything starts grating; it’s like stepping on an anthill ... And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed – but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for them – they have only to let it be done…The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. It’s like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, ‘O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You!’ It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. ‘Give me the time!’ ...I have also come to realize that for this sadhana of the body, the mantra is essential. Sri Aurobindo gave none; he said that one should be able to do all the work without having to resort to external means. (The Synthesis of Yoga book (p-624) proposes that the dispensable external means or Psycho-physical knowledge will be indispensable after the Spiritual foundation is established. Before this Spiritual foundation any dependency on the external means ' will at once bring in a limitation and subjection to Prakriti.' (p-733 ) ) Had he reached the point where we are now, he would have seen that the purely psychological method is inadequate and that a japa is necessary, because only japa has a direct action on the body. So I had to find the method all alone, to find my mantra by myself. But now that things are ready, I have done ten years of work in a few months. That is the difficulty, it requires time ... And I repeat my mantra constantly – when I am awake and even when I sleep. I say it even when I am getting dressed, when I eat, when I work, when I speak with others; it is there, just behind in the background, all the time, all the time …In fact, you can immediately see the difference between those who have a mantra and those who don’t. With those who have no mantra, even if they have a strong habit of meditation or concentration, something around them remains hazy and vague. Whereas the japa imparts to those who practice it a kind of precision, a kind of solidity: an armature. They become galvanized, as it were.” The Mother’s Agenda-19.05.1959, 6: “It’s an almost physical discipline. Moreover, I have seen that the japa has an organizing effect on the subconscient, on the inconscient , on matter, on the body’s cells – it takes time, but by persistently repeating it, in the long run it has an effect. It is the same principle as doing daily exercises on the piano, for example. You keep mechanically repeating them, and in the end your hands are filled with consciousness – it fills the body with consciousness. ” The Mother’s Agenda-20.09.1960, “There is ONE sound which, to me, has an extraordinary power – extraordinary and UNIVERSAL (that's the important point): it doesn't depend on the language you speak, it doesn't depend on the education you were given, it doesn't depend on the atmosphere you breathe. And that sound, without knowing anything, I used to say it when I was a child (you know how in French we say, "Oh!"; well, I used to say "OM," without knowing anything!). And indeed, I made all kinds of experiments with that sound – it's fantastic, even, fantastic! It's unbelievable…So then, if around this you build something that corresponds to your own aspiration – certain sounds or words that FOR YOU evoke a soul state – then it's very good…All that is traditional benefits from the power of tradition, that goes without saying, but it's necessarily very limited – personally, it gives me the feeling of something shriveled and withered, as if all the juice it could contain had been squeezed out (!) Except if, spontaneously, the sounds correspond to a soul state in you.” The Mother’s Agenda-2.09.1964, “The physical mind is the mind of the physical personality formed by the body. It grows with the body, but it isn't the mind of Matter: it is the mind of the physical being. For instance, it is the mind that makes one's character: the bodily, physical character, which is in large part formed by atavism and education. What is called "physical mind" is all that. Yes, it's the result of atavism , of education and of the formation of the body; that's what makes the physical character. For example, some people are patient, some are strong and so on – physically, I mean, not for vital or mental reasons, but purely physically everyone has a character. That's the physical mind. And it is part of any integral yoga: you discipline this physical mind. I have done it for more than sixty years… But then, that mind, for instance, which is spontaneously defeatist, which has all sorts of fears and worries, which sees the worst, repeats the same things forever, is that the physical mind or the material mind?... It is the most unconscious part of the physical mind, and that's what connects the physical mind with this material substance. But that's already an organized mind, you understand? It is the most material part, the one that borders on the mind ... (what can we call this mind?), we can't even call it "corporeal mind": it is the mind of the cells, a cellular mind…This cellular mind exists in animals, and there is even a faint beginning (but very faint, like a promise) in plants: they respond to a mental action. They respond. As soon as Life manifests, there is already the beginning, like a promise of mind, of mental movement. And in animals, it's very clear. Whereas that physical mind really began to exist only in man. That's what a very small child already has: it already has a physical mind; so that no two very small children are alike, with identical reactions: there is already a difference. And it is especially what is given you with the special FORM of your body, by atavism, and then fully developed by education…No, the physical mind, as soon as you do an integral yoga, you are obliged to deal with it, while this material, cellular mind, I can assure you that it's absolutely new! Absolutely new…It is the mind that was like an uncoordinated substance, with a constant, unorganized activity (Mother gestures to show a constant tremor). This is the mind which is being organized. That's what is important, because Sri Aurobindo said it was unorganizable and the only thing to do was to reject it from existence. And I was under that impression, too. But when the transforming action on the cells is constant, this material mind begins to become organized, that's the wonderful thing! It begins to become organized. And then, as it becomes organized, it learns to FALL SILENT – that's the beautiful thing! It learns to keep calm, silent, and to let the supreme Force act without interfering.” The Mother’s Agenda-31.08.1965, “This body-mind is a very tangible truth; owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past movements and facile oblivion and rejection of the new, we find in it one of the chief obstacles to permeation by the supermind Force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments for the stabilisation of the supramental Light and Force in material Nature.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-189, 7: “However, it’s not a personal subconscient, but a ... it’s more than the Ashram. For me, the Ashram is not a separate individuality – except in that vision the other day,’ which is what surprised me. It’s hardly that. Rather, it is still this Movement of everything, of everything that is included. So it’s like entering into the subconscient of the whole earth , and it takes on forms which are quite familiar images to me, but they are absolutely symbolic and very, very funny!” The Mother’s Agenda-26.07.1960, "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, "The discords of the worlds are God’s discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony, the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-382, 8: “And only in the last few days have all those memories been allowed to rise up again from the subconscient where they were being kept; and with that, the state I lived in for thirty years has resurfaced – with this tremendous difference… And suddenly I said to myself, "How could it be? During all the time he was here, the time we were together (after I came back from Japan, when we were together), life, life on earth, lived such a wondrous divine possibility, so ... really so unique, something it had never lived to such an extent and in such a way, for thirty years, and it didn't even notice!" That ....That's what I have been experiencing recently…Yes, at one point I wondered (I don't remember when, a few days ago): "How could people have lived here, so near (but the same thing is still happening), how could human beings on earth who had an aspiration, who had their consciousness turned towards those things, have lived that possibility, have HAD that possibility at their fingertips, without being able to take advantage of it! How could something so wonderful and unique have taken place here, and yet people had such a small and childish and superficial image of it!"…Truly, I wondered, "Has the time really come? Is it possible? Or will it once again be postponed?"… (silence) Yesterday evening I read something in the book.... Sri Aurobindo is writing to someone who said, "How lucky people are who live near the Mother. " "You don't know what you're talking about! " he replies. "To live in the Mother's physical presence is one of the most difficult things." Do you remember this passage? I didn't know he had written that. "Well, well ..." I thought. He writes, "It is hard to stay near her, because the difference between the physical consciousness of all you people and her physical consciousness is so enormous...." Indeed, that's what tires me out. That's what tires my body, because it is used to living in a certain rhythm, a universal rhythm…(silence) No one can imagine what it was, those thirty years I had ... beyond all problems and difficulties; we went through every possible difficulty – and it was nothing, NOTHING. It was nothing, it was ... like a great harmonious orchestra…(silence) But ... it's clear that Matter must be rigorously hammered if it is to be made ready and able for this Transformation …(silence) And nothing, nothing imaginable in the eternal history of the universe can be compared to that shock: to have lived a perfect divine life as something completely natural and everyday, something OBVIOUS (it was never even in question), and then ... all of a sudden, physically – your base is snatched away. Well, to stay on after that! ... You just go, quite naturally: the base goes, you go…(silence) I can't blame my body for anything. It may be a bit weary, but it has held out very well.” The Mother’s Agenda-09.01.1962, “It was yesterday, I think, in the night (not last night, the night before, the 6th of June, that is), for more than three hours without stop, there was no consciousness of anything any more – not a thought, not a will, not an action, not an observation, nothing. Everything was at a standstill. For instance, all that happens when you have experiences and you work in the subconscient – all that, everything, everything was at a standstill. It was like the action of a Force. Without any thought or idea, only the sensation and a sort of perception (awareness is the right word) of a Force, but a stupendous Force, you know, like the Force of the earth – all the combinations of the forces along with an action that came from above and worked on them. It was going through me (especially around the head down to the chest, but it was going on in the whole body, and it was spherical) , it went through me and out, and out, and out in this direction, that direction, another direction, innumerable directions , and nothing but movements of Force (there was something like a perception of colors, but not in the ordinary way: like a knowledge that certain vibrations corresponded to a particular color), but it was an incalculable MASS, almost ... indefinite, at any rate, and simultaneous. At first I said to myself (laughing), "What's going on?" Then I thought, "All right, it doesn't matter, I'll just let it happen." And it went on and on and on – three hours without letup…I didn't know ... I didn't know anything any more, didn't understand anything any more, had no bearings any more; there was only a Force on the move, and what Force! ... It was a Force that came from beyond and acted upon all the forces of the earth: on big things, on small things, on small, precise points, on enormous things, and it was going on and on and on, on this point, that point, all points together and everywhere. I suppose that if the mind had been associated with the experience, it would have gone a bit mad! It gave that impression, you see, because it was so overwhelming that ... And all the time, all the time in the physical center (the physical center, that is, in the corporeal base), with something in an ecstatic state; it was very interesting how that ecstasy – an ecstasy that sparkled like a diamond – was there, so sweet, so sweet, so peaceful, as though it were there all the while, telling the body, "Don't be afraid, (laughing) don't worry, don't be afraid, all is well." As though the supreme Power were saying all the while, "Don't worry, don't worry, leave it to me, leave it to me...." It lasted more than three hours…I wondered, "What will my condition be like when I get up? Completely dazed, or what?" – Very quiet, nothing different, with only a sort of something that was smiling and saying, "Oh, so things CAN be that way." The mind was absolutely silent, absolutely: all the connections with all that people keep sending from everywhere were cut – all of it was completely gone. There were only the universal forces in action, with something that came from above and impregnated them all, sent them all out. And with it, a point – it was like a point in that immensity – a sparkling point, absolutely ecstatic, in such a peace! An extraordinary ecstasy, which was deliberately saying, "Don't worry; you can see what's going on, can't you, so don't worry, don't worry," because certainly the thing had gone beyond all possible individual proportions…It's the first time. I've had currents of force, I've had actions on the earth, I've had forces coming to me, all sorts of things; but this was different: it was all of that together. It was everywhere at the same time, everything at the same time, with that Inrush, and it was ... There was certainly something that wanted me to be very quiet and not to worry. It was necessary that I should keep very quiet…I had a feeling that I was given the awareness of something that's taking place right now. Because at night, generally, I disconnect myself from everything and universalize myself – no, "universalize" isn't the word: I identify myself with the Lord. That's my way of resting. I do it every night, it is the time when I have my deep rest. But now I've been made aware of this Force at work. Often experiences come (there have been a number of them lately), but it's the first time this one has come, because ... It was certainly something happening FOR the earth; but it didn't come from the center of forces that generally acts on the earth. It wasn't the usual working of forces on the earth. It was "something happening." And it gave the sense that the earth was very small – the movement was towards the earth, it was for the earth, but the earth was very small. Very small. (silence) There were no psychological perceptions (what I call "psychological perceptions" are, for instance, vibrations of love, vibrations of peace, vibrations of light, vibrations of knowledge, of power), they weren't there in that form, it wasn't that. Still, all that must have been there, because there were many things, many things that were all one thing, but one thing which assumed different forms; but I didn't see the forms, I didn't see the colors. It was only a question of pure sensation. A pure vibratory sensation: only vibrations, vibrations, vibrations, on a ... colossal scale…It is a new experience. (silence) Obviously, there was ... there must have been a cause for alarm, because as soon as I became conscious of the experience (it started before I became conscious of it; when I did, it seemed to me it had already been going on for a long time; so when I say three hours, it means three hours during which I was conscious, but it had started long before; it was around eleven at night and lasted till three in the morning), so the second I was made conscious of the "thing," obviously there was a cause for alarm, because immediately I was told, "You see, this is what is going on," and it was thanks to that ecstasy in the body that there was no alarm: "Oh, things are fine, everything is fine." And when the experience was over, it didn't end like an experience exhausting itself; it ended as if, very slowly, the thing were, not exactly veiled to my consciousness, but as if my consciousness were turned away from it, with the feeling, "Don't worry." At the start and at the end. All the same, when I woke up, I thought (because my head felt strange, there was a bizarre sensation as if I had become quite swollen! Swollen, inordinately swollen), I thought, "Maybe when I get up tomorrow morning (I get up at 4:30), I'll find myself in a complete daze!" That's why I observed – but everything was fine, there only remained that sort of feeling of being swollen. I feel (yet it was two nights ago, not last night), I feel as if my head were swollen! But the clear-headedness is the same as ever!! (laughing) Nothing's been disturbed! On the contrary, there is a sort of ... like an acuteness, something more acute in the perception, a little bit ironic – I don't know why. A magnified impression that all the things in the world are much ado about nothing, a lot of fuss about nothing – I've had that feeling for ... for centuries, I could say, but there is in addition something ever so slightly acute and ironic…But otherwise, crystal clear!” The Mother’s Agenda-8.06.1963, “It's still there; even in those who have developed their higher mind, who are able to emerge from that darkness and ignorance, it's still there – it's still there in a sort of mental or vital subconscient. And it's so dark! Thoroughly stupid, you know: it can be given hundreds and thousands of proofs, it remains unaffected – a kind of incapacity to understand. And then it constantly rises to the surface, and I am constantly obliged (gesture of offering to the Heights) to "present" it: "This is still there, that is still there, that ..." And I see very well that the distinction between what goes on in this body and its atmosphere, and what goes on in all other bodies is ... I don't know if the distinction still exists, but it's imperceptible. And the consciousness is aware of all those movements as if they were personal to the physical person. But the physical person (Mother touches her body) isn't just this body – I am not yet sure whether the physical person isn't the whole earth (for certain things, it is the whole earth), or whether the physical person is the entirety of all the bodies of the people I am in contact with. During the last hours of the night, that is, between 2 and 4, I see precise forms; but those precise forms are themselves representative, meaning there are TYPES and those types take on the image of someone I am in contact with or was in personal contact with. But to me they are types: "Oh, it's such and such a type" – but that can be thousands of people. And the action (it's always for an action), the action on the person-type has repercussions on all that he represents…And that's a labor which seems infinite – endless, at any rate…It does have consequences…You see, what I do is this: the thing comes, it's taken up, presented (gesture to the Heights) as though it were mine: "But look, see how I am " (but it's the "I" –the great I), it's presented to the Lord, very humbly, with the sense and feeling of complete helplessness – I simply say, "Here, change it." The feeling that only He can do it, that everything that people have tried everywhere appears childish – everything appears to be childish. The most sublime intelligence seems to me childish. All the attempts that are made to enlighten, organize, educate mankind, to awaken it to a higher consciousness, to give it mastery over Nature and its forces, all of it – all of it, which for a human vision is sometimes utterly sublime, seems absolutely like children playing and having fun in a nursery. And children who love dangerous games, who believe TERRIBLY in what they do (as do children, naturally). I have never met more serious and stern a justice than the justice children have in their games. They really take life seriously. Well, that's exactly the impression it makes on me: the impression of a mankind in infancy which takes what it does with ferocious seriousness. And which will never get out of it – it will never get out of it, it lacks the little something (which may be really nothing at all), a very little something thanks to which ah, everything becomes clear and organized – all that comes from mankind always BORDERS on Truth...So the only thing I can do is this (gesture of presenting): "Look, Lord, see how ignorant and powerless we are, how utterly stupid we are – it's up to You to change it." How do you change it? You can't even imagine the change, you can't even do that. So all my time (same gesture) – not from time to time: constantly, day and night, without letup, day and night without letup. If for an interval of one or two minutes this isn't done, there is something that catches up: "Oh, all that time wasted!" And if I take a close look at what happened, then I see; I see that for these few minutes, I was blissful in the Lord, letting myself live blissfully in the Lord; so I no longer presented things to Him – it happens two or three times a day. A relaxation, you know, you let yourself flow blissfully in the Lord. And it's so natural and spontaneous that I don't even notice it; I notice it when I resume my attitude ... (same gesture to the Heights) of transferring everything to the Lord every minute.” The Mother’s Agenda-16.10.1963, 9: “"... I must tell you once more that for us spiritual life does not mean contempt for Matter but its divinization. We do not want to reject the body but to transform it. For this, physical education is one of the means most directly effective. " The Mother’s Agenda-3.4.1967, “I started with a paradox: "The first condition for acquiring power is to be obedient... "The body must learn to obey before it can manifest power; and physical education i s the most thorough discipline for the body... "So be eager and sincere in your effort for physical education and you will acquire a powerful body." The Mother’s Agenda-27.03.1968, “Physical culture is the best way of developing the consciousness of the body, and the more the body is conscious, the more it is capable of receiving the divine forces that are at work to transform it and give birth to the new race.” TMCW/Vol-12/On Education/p-283, “The education of the physical consciousness (not the body’s global consciousness, but the consciousness of the cells) consists in teaching them ... First of all it’s a choice (it looks like one): it’s choosing the divine Presence – the divine Consciousness, the divine Presence, the divine Power (all that wordlessly), the "something" we define as the absolute Master. It’s a choice of EVERY SECOND between the old laws of Nature – with some mental influence and the whole life as it has been organized – the choice between that, the government by that, and the government by the supreme Consciousness, which is equally present (the feeling of the Presence is equally strong); the other thing is more habitual, and then there’s the Presence. It’s every second (it’s infinitely interesting), and with illustrations: the nerves, for instance ... if a nerve obeys all the various laws of Nature and mental conclusions and all that – the whole caboodle – then it starts aching; if it obeys the influence of the supreme Consciousness, then a strange phenomenon takes place ... it’s not like something getting "cured" – I might rather say, like an unreality fading away... And that’s the life of every second, for the smallest thing, the whole bodily functioning: sleep, food, washing, activities, everything, everything – every second. And the body is learning. There are naturally hesitations stemming from the power of habit and also old ideas floating about in the air (gesture of a swarming in the atmosphere): none of that is personal. As a work, it’s tremendous…And continuous…Continuous. There was a time when it would be forgotten now and then; now it’s beginning not to be forgotten anymore. It’s continuous. There’s only one thing that interrupts it, it’s the work with the outside, the relationship with others for that action which consists in infusing them – infusing them with divine consciousness. So then, this is the result: first, a very clear vision (not a vision in pictures, a very clear vision) of the state they are in; then, this: enveloping and infusing them with divine consciousness; and then, the effect that has, or hasn’t. That’s the occupation in relationships with people. The other work [on the cells] is the life of every minute... It’s growing more and more precise, more and more interesting – but absorbing... And a consciousness – a perception, rather – a growing perception of a state which ... I don’t know how to explain it. There are two simultaneous states: the state of uninterrupted, almost endless continuity, and the state of ... toppling over into decomposition (for the body); the two are constantly like this (Mother places one hand closely over the other). And the choice – the constant choice – based, in fact, on a reliance ... leaning for support on the divine Consciousness for all things and every second, or ceasing to lean on it. To the cells, that choice appears to be a free choice, with a very strong sense (but not at all formulated in words) of the support constantly given by the supreme Consciousness to help them rely on it alone…It’s not mentalized – hardly mentalized at all – and almost impossible to formulate. But it’s very clear. Very clear ... what is it? It’s not in the sensation – it’s in the state of consciousness. It’s very clear states of consciousness. But hard to express. Continuous states, continuous, continuous: night and day, ceaselessly, continuously. The planes change, the activities change, but it’s continuous. The mode of being or way of being may cease and give place to another, but that state of consciousness is perpetual, uninterrupted, universal, eternal – outside time – outside time, outside space. It’s the state of the consciousness.” The Mother’s Agenda-26.06.1968, “And the body is being given an education : it’s being taught how to will – the true way of being and willing. And over the entire material creation (gesture covering and enveloping the earth), there is a tissue – which we might call "catastrophic" – a tissue of bad will. That is to say, a sort of web, yes, a defeatist web – defeatist, catastrophic – where you botch what you wanted to do, where there are all possible accidents, all possible bad wills. Like a web. And the body is being taught to get out of it… It’s as if mingled with the Force that realizes and expresses itself; it’s like something mingling with the material creation. And the body is being taught to break free from it. But it’s difficult, very difficult…It’s the cause of diseases, the cause of accidents – it’s the cause of all destructive things…And this web is there constantly, all the time, like this (same covering gesture). It’s very tightly mingled [with the body]. It’s not clearly separate yet…So that’s how I live. There are still hours during which I don’t know what’s happening outwardly.” The Mother’s Agenda-4.9.1968, “Oh yes, that has a meaning! We could tell them: If that’s what you mean, it’s precisely the goal of physical education . And teaching is an attempt to replace the Consciousness with ... (laughing) an inner library!... If I joke too much, they won’t understand anymore!... We can tell them this: The way to really awaken the physical consciousness is physical education. It’s physical education that teaches the cells to be conscious . But to develop the brain, it’s study, observation, intelligent education – especially observation and reasoning. And naturally, for the whole education of the consciousness from the standpoint of character, it’s yoga.” The Mother’s Agenda-28.9.1968, 10: “At the outset, we can easily see that, since this is an evolution out of a material Inconscience into spiritual consciousness, an evolutionary self-building of Spirit on a base of Matter, there must be in the process a development of a triple character. (1) An evolution of forms of Matter more and more subtly and intricately organised so as to admit the action of a growing, a more and more complex and subtle and capable organisation of consciousness is the indispensable physical foundation. (2) An upward evolutionary progress of the consciousness itself from grade to higher grade, an ascent, is the evident spiral line or emerging curve that, on this foundation, the evolution must describe. (3) A taking up of what has already been evolved into each higher grade as it is reached and a transformation more or less complete so as to admit of a total changed working of the whole being and nature, an integration, must be also part of the process, if the evolution is to be effective.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-730-731, 11: "And here we always come back to the same thing, to what Sri Aurobindo describes in The Synthesis of Yoga: it is the way of knowledge or the way of devotion or the way of works. But the way of works is precisely the one which keeps you in physical life and makes you find your liberation in it; and perhaps this is the most effective way of all but also the most difficult. ” TMCW-8/The Questions and Answers-1956/p-299, “My dear children, love work and you will be happy. Love to learn and you will progress…. If one does not love work, one is always unhappy in life. In order to be truly happy in life, one must love work.” TMCW-12/On Education-337, “It is evident that if we are to have a free divine or spiritual and supramental action conducted by the force and fulfilling the character of a diviner energy, some fairly complete transformation must be effected in this outward character of the bodily nature. ” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-730, (This indicates that for constant union with the Divine, nitya yukata , as hinted in the Gita, can only be effective by the transformation of Nature. Without the transformation of outer Nature, this union can be intermittent.) "If the spirit is everywhere, even in matter — in fact matter itself is only an obscure form of the spirit — and if the supermind is the universal power of the spirit’s omnipresent self-knowledge organising all the manifestation of the being, then in matter and everywhere there must be present a supramental action and, however concealed it may be by another, lower and obscurer kind of operation, yet when we look close we shall find that it is really the supermind which organises matter, life, mind and reason. And this actually is the knowledge towards which we are now moving. There is even a quite visible intimate action of the consciousness, persistent in life, matter and mind, which is clearly a supramental action subdued to the character and need of the lower medium and to which we now give the name of intuition from its most evident characteristics of direct vision and self-acting knowledge, really a vision born of some secret identity with the object of the knowledge." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-793, “The mind eventually becomes wholly intuitivised and exists only as a passive channel for the supramental action; but this condition too is not ideal and presents, besides, still a certain obstacle, because the higher action has still to pass through a retarding and diminishing conscious substance, — that of the physical consciousness. The final stage of the change will come when the supermind occupies and supramentalises the whole being and turns even the vital and physical sheaths into moulds of itself, responsive, subtle and instinct with its powers. Man then becomes wholly the superman. This is at least the natural and integral process.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-826, 12: “The results of Hathayoga are thus striking to the eye and impose easily on the vulgar or physical mind. And yet at the end we may ask what we have gained at the end of all this stupendous labour… But the weakness of Hathayoga is that its laborious and difficult processes make so great a demand on the time and energy and impose so completely a severance from the ordinary life of men that the utilisation of its results for the life of the world becomes either impracticable or is extraordinarily restricted. If in return of this loss we gain another life in another world within, the mental, the dynamic, these results could have been acquired through other systems, through Rajayoga, through Tantra, by much less laborious methods and held on much less exacting terms. On the other hand the physical results, increased vitality, prolonged youth, health, longevity are of small avail if they must be held by us as misers of ourselves, apart from the common life, for their own sake, not utilized, not thrown into the common sum of the world’s activities. Hathayoga attains large results, but at an exorbitant price and to very little purpose.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-35, 13: “The only thing in the world that still appears intolerable to me now is all physical deterioration, physical suffering, the ugliness the powerlessness to express this capacity of beauty inherent in every being. But this, too, will be conquered one day. Here, too the power will come one day to shift the needle a little. Only, one has to climb higher in consciousness: the deeper into matter you want to descend, the higher must you ascend in consciousness…It will take time. Sri Aurobindo was surely right when he spoke of a few centuries.” The Mother’s Agenda-25.02.1958, 14: “The transformation, the perfection cannot for the integral Yoga be complete until the link between the mental and the spiritual action is formed and a higher knowledge applied to all the activities of our existence. That link was the Supramental or Gnostic energy in which the incalculable infinite power of the supreme being, consciousness, delight formulates itself as an ordering divine will and wisdom, a light and power in the being which shapes all the thought, will, feeling, action and replaces the corresponding individual movements.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-764, “But in the gnostic way of being and living the will of the spirit must directly control and determine the movements and law of the body. For the law of the body arises from the subconscient or inconscient: but in the gnostic being the subconscient will have become conscious and subject to the supramental control, penetrated with its light and action; the basis of inconscience with its obscurity and ambiguity, its obstruction or tardy responses will have been transformed into a lower or supporting superconscience by the supramental emergence.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-1021, “A gnostic being will possess not only a truth-conscious control of the realised spirit’s power over its physical world, but also the full power of the mental and vital planes and the use of their greater forces for the perfection of the physical existence. This greater knowledge and wider hold of all existence will enormously increase the power of instrumentation of the gnostic being on his surroundings and on the world of physical Nature.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1015, 15: “The transition between the two appears really possible only through the entry – the conscious and willed entry – of a supramentalized consciousness into a body that we could call an "improved physical body," in other words, the human physical body as it is now, but improved: the improvement produced, for instance, by a TRUE physical training, not in its present exaggerated form but in its true sense. It's something I have seen fairly clearly: in an evolution (physical training is developing very fast nowadays, it's not even half a century since it started), in evolution, that physical training will bring an improvement, that is, a suppleness, a balance, an endurance, and a harmony; these are the four qualities – suppleness (plasticity), balance between the various parts of the being, endurance, and harmony of the body – that will make it a more supple instrument for the supramentalized consciousness…So the transition: a conscious and willed utilization by a supramentalized consciousness of a body prepared in that way. This body must be brought to the peak of its development and of the utilization of the cells in order to be ... yes, consciously impregnated with the supreme forces (which is being done here [in Mother] at the moment), and this to the utmost of its capacities. And if the consciousness that inhabits that body, that animates that body, has the required qualities in sufficient amount, it should normally be able to utilize that body to the utmost of its capacity of transformation, with the result that the waste caused by the death of decomposing cells should be reduced to a minimum – to what extent?... That's precisely what still belongs to the unknown…That would correspond to what Sri Aurobindo called the prolongation of life at will, for an indefinite length of time…But as things are at present, it would seem there is a transitional period in which the consciousness has to switch from this body to another, better prepared body – better prepared outwardly, physically (not inwardly); "outwardly," I mean, having acquired certain aptitudes through the present development, which this body doesn't have, of the four qualities – which it doesn't have in sufficient amount and completeness. That is to say, those four qualities must be in perfect accord and in sufficient amount to be able to bear the work of transformation.” The Mother’s Agenda/April 17, 1965 16: “In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.” TMCW/Vol-12/On Education/p-7-8, 17: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-732, 18: The Mother's Agenda/June 6, 1962 19: "There are all kinds of freedom – mental freedom, vital freedom, spiritual freedom – which are the fruits of successive masteries. But a completely new freedom has become possible with the Supramental Manifestation: it is the freedom of the body." The Mother's Agenda-17.10.1957, 20: "The very physical consciousness in man, the annamaya purusa , can without this supreme ascent and integral descent yet reflect and enter into the self of Sachchidananda . It can do it either by a reflection of the Soul in physical Nature, its bliss, power and infinity secret but still present here, or by losing its separate sense of substance and existence in the Self within or without it. The result is a glorified sleep of the physical mind in which the physical being forgets itself in a kind of conscious Nirvana or else moves about like a thing inert in the hands of Nature, jadavat, like a leaf in the wind, or otherwise a state of pure happy and free irresponsibility of action, balavat , a divine childhood. But this comes without the higher glories of knowledge and delight which belong to the same status upon a more exalted level. It is an inert realisation of Sachchidananda in which there is neither any mastery of the Prakriti by the Purusha nor any sublimation of Nature into her own supreme power, the infinite glories of the Para Shakti. Yet these two, this mastery and this sublimation, are the two gates of perfection, the splendid doors into the supreme Eternal." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-499, 21: CWSA-31/ Letters on Yoga-IV/p-398, 22: The Mother's Agenda/October 3, 1958, 23: "... I am tired of our infirmity. But it is not to rest that this body aspires, it aspires to the plenitude of Your (Supreme Lord) Consciousness, it aspires to the splendor of Your Light, it aspires to the magnificence of Your Power; above all, it aspires to the glory of Your all-powerful and eternal Love." The Mother's Agenda/July 21, 1965 "When formerly I used to speak of the new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone. And similarly, when I am on ‘this’ side – that is, in the realm of the physical consciousness – and I see the supramental power, the supramental light and substance constantly permeating matter, I am seeing and participating in the construction of this zone." The Mother's Agenda/February 3, 1958, 24: “In India the Guru gives a mantra as soon as he accepts a disciple and tells him to go ahead with it. We have no mantra except the Mother’s name. But usually we give work, tell them to aspire, reject, open to the Mother.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother-139, “(Question) Sometimes when I sit in meditation, I say “Ma — Ma — Ma.” Then everything becomes quiet and I feel great peace inside and outside me. Even in the atmosphere around me, I hear “Ma — Ma — Ma.” Is this real or is it only echoes? (Ans) The atmosphere you carry around you is part of your consciousness as much as the rest that you feel inside you. When you repeat the name of the Mother, it begins to echo in all your consciousness, outside as well as inside you. What you experience therefore is quite true and it is a good experience.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-478-479, Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: “When you follow the ascending path, the work is relatively easy. I had already covered this path by the beginning of the century and had established a constant relationship with the Supreme – That which is beyond the Personal and the gods and all the outward expressions of the Divine, but also beyond the Absolute Impersonal. It’s something you cannot describe; you must experience it. And this is what must be brought down into Matter. Such is the descending path, the one I began with Sri Aurobindo ; and there, the work is immense…The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender)("A soul made ready through a thousand years." Savitri-398). With Sri Aurobindo, we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation , and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forward – oh, not even a real step, just a little step! – everything starts grating; it’s like stepping on an anthill ... And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed – but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness , they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for them – they have only to let it be done…The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. It’s like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, ‘O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You!’ It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. ‘Give me the time!’” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-19.05.1959 " One of the very first results of the supramental manifestation was to give the body a freedom and an autonomy it has never before known . And when I say freedom, I don’t mean some psychological perception or an inner state of consciousness, but something else and far better – it is a new phenomenon in the body, in the cells of the body. For the first time, the cells themselves have felt that they are free, that they have the power to decide. When the new vibrations came and combined with the old ones, I felt it at once and it showed me that a new world was really taking birth... In its normal state, the body always feels that it is not its own master: illnesses invade it without its really being able to resist them – a thousand factors impose themselves or exert pressure upon it. Its sole power is the power to defend itself, to react. Once the illness has got in, it can fight and overcome it – even modern medicine has acknowledged that the body is cured only when it decides to get cured; it is not the drugs per se that heal, for if the ailment is temporarily suppressed by a drug without the body’s will, it grows up again elsewhere in some other form until the body itself has decided to be cured. But this implies only a defensive power, the power to react against an invading enemy – it is not true freedom.... But with the supramental manifestation, something new has taken place in the body: it feels it is its own master, autonomous, with its two feet solidly on the ground, as it were. This gives a physical impression of the whole being suddenly drawing itself up, with its head lifted high – I am my own master... And this new vibration in the body has allowed me to understand the mechanism of the transformation. It is not something that comes from a higher Will, not a higher consciousness that imposes itself upon the body: it is the body itself awakening in its cells, a freedom of the cells themselves, an absolutely new vibration that sets disorders right – even disorders that existed prior to the supramental manifestation ." The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-October 17, 1957 "So, regularly, as soon as there comes a pain somewhere or a discomfort or anything, immediately, instantly, the first reaction: "Ah! Lord, what do You want me to learn?" And I become attentive... If everybody does the same thing, if all those who can do it (sincerely, of course, without pretense) do it sincerely: "Ah! Lord, what do You want me to learn?" and then observe, wait, then things are easier, you put yourself at least in better conditions." The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-July 27, 1963

"Our love is the heavenly seal of the Supreme. I guard that seal against thy rending hands." Savitri-633 The Central Truth of Savitri “Night of April 12-13, 1962. Suddenly in the night I woke up with the full awareness of what we could call the Yoga of the world. The Supreme Love was manifesting through big pulsations, and each pulsation was bringing the world further in its manifestation. It was the formidable pulsations of the eternal, stupendous Love, only Love: each pulsation of the Love was carrying the universe further in its manifestation… All the results of the Falsehood had disappeared: Death was an illusion, Sickness was an illusion, Ignorance was an illusion--- something that had no reality, no existence… Only Love, and Love, and Love, and Love –immense, formidable, stupendous, carrying everything.” ¹ The Mother Om Namo Bhagavateh Sri Matriniketan Ashram 15.09.2005 Adorable Pranab Da, Accept our pranam.... Kindly recollect our very auspicious meeting with you on 4th August (my birth day) and 5th August-2005. We were three (Bikram, S.A. Maa Krishna and B.K.B), and you were happy to receive us without knowing our identity and told us how the name of Berhampur has changed to Brahmapuram... Before our departure on 5th August, incidentally I got an opportunity to read few pages of your book in Garden Guest house library, where you narrated a special chakra in the body and through it one can enter the domain of ‘mind of light’ and also how your father got the Darshan of Sri Aurobindo by escaping from Sri Dilip Kumar Ray’s room. We returned with the feeling that those who lead true life have no pretension. We, along with few inmates are staying in Sri Matriniketan Ashram, 11k.m. away from Brahmapur, in a three acre land, isolated from human habitation, in a lonely place. Along with us there are around ten dedicated members who are helping the Divine work from outside and some of them are preparing to join us. A school is attached to it (The Mother’s Ideal Integral School) with students and teachers coming from nearby locality... We were overwhelmed by your strong personality and received strong gust of The Mother’s Love through you. The cassettes presented by you were music and song of new thrill and will be introduced in the school function. In this letter we pray you to grant your good will and blessing towards us, though you told us, “The Mother alone can give blessings and I can extend my good will”. What we feel that you are no longer different from The Mother and your identity with The Mother is already sustained. Your long physical contact with The Mother and also with Sri Aurobindo, gives us opportunity and strength in our Spiritual journey, and we keep strong hope that you are our inspiration on behalf of The Mother... To be simple, strong, straightforward, all-embracing love and devotion towards the Mother, that is what we can learn from you. To keep in constant touch with you without any motive is a tremendous task before us. Sri Matriniketan Ashram is emerging as a true and rare Divine Centre in south Orissa. I am enclosing two copies of our Journal ‘The Descent’ along with this letter where an attempt has been made towards a comprehensive study on Savitri. Grant your blessings on this new born quarterly magazine, released on each Darshan day, extending our gratitude towards the Lord and The Mother. I had an opportunity of meeting The Mother in Her room thrice during my birth day and my age was 7,8 & 9 (1970,71,72) and I had the memory of seeing you there (if my memory is correct)... But my memory of (Sri) Champaklal calling my name is very clear. In the year 1973, I had come to Pondicherry for my birthday along with my birth mother. During that time the Mother had stopped giving Darshan due to Her ill health. One morning, near Samadhi, we heard a loud conversation between you (in English) and the Mother (in French). We gratefully heard the Mother’s most sweet Divine loving voice and your commanding voice with folded hands and the agony of not seeing Her on my birth day was recompensed. With our deep love and regards. At Their Lotus Feet, Bikram N.B. As a memory of my meeting with the Mother, I am able to save Her hand written Birth day card which reads ‘Bonne Fête La Bikram’ and a laminated preservation of Birthday flower bunch, She gave me. From my little French study I came to know that the French word “La” is feminine and I believe that the Mother has drawn my aspiration towards Savitri’s dream vision of collective living of “the virgin bridals of the dawn.” (Savitri-401) Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya Director Department of Physical Education Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry Dated: 23.09.2005 Dear Bikram bhai, Your letter dated 15.09.2005 along with a copy of “The Descent” (Feb-2005-The Central Truth of Savitri) and the paper of 15.08.2005 (The Descent-August-2005-The Book of Bliss) in hand. I have gone through them and found interesting. Glad to know about your dedication for (the) Mother’s work. Sending Her Ashirvadi (blessings). May She guide you and protect you always. With very best wishes. Yours affectionately “Dada” (Incidentally above two papers of The Descent that received Dada’s SUPPORT and also Sri K. Anurakta’s (our Spiritual Fosterer) Grace, which later transformed into ‘THE DIVINE BLISS’ book which was inaugurated in the World Hindu Wisdom Meet, 2014, at Bali, Indonesia.) The Central Truth of Savitri or The Book of Love “Remembrance was a poignant pang, she felt Each day a golden leaf torn cruelly out From her too slender book of love and joy.” Savitri-469 The Divine Love that has built and sustained the creation, has also the greatest power for physical transformation and those very few, who will be able to receive, hold and canalise the fragments of Divine Love of this universal proportion, for the highest evolutionary leap of the race, must satisfy five conditions; firstly, they must have a strong and balanced body and spontaneous and integral purity in order to bear the intensity of the Supreme Ananda ; secondly, they must totally give up all external pleasure by renouncing all participation in the active life by plunging into a rigorous asceticism² or the askesis of above order can be avoided if the inner illumination and sublimation of the being is sufficient enough to reject automatically all gross and obscure enjoyments; thirdly, in order to arrive at the full possession of the subtle and causal body, the physical organs must be sealed against the disturbance of human sight and sound; or as an alternative the mind has to be drawn inward to the depths by the force of the concentration so that the call of physical things can no longer easily attain to it; fourthly a growth of receptive and collaborative surroundings that include more flowers and plants, less animals, birds and children and less human beings; for plants and animals collaborate more in Supramental action and the small collectivity will be the representative of Spiritual concentration; lastly the above discipline and tapasya must accompany true humility and total dependency on the Divine so as to counter the growth of the ego and the pride. What are Human and Divine Love?: “He (King) felt the beating life in other men Invade him with their happiness and their grief; Their love, their anger, their unspoken hopes Entered in currents or in pouring waves Into the immobile ocean of his calm.” Savitri-27 “It turns in us to finite loves and lusts, The will to conquer and have, to seize and keep, To enlarge life’s room and scope and pleasure’s range, To battle and overcome and make one’s own, The hope to mix one’s joy with others’ joy, A yearning to possess and be possessed, To enjoy and be enjoyed, to feel, to live.” Savitri-139-140 “A fragile human love that could not last,.. Joy that forgot mortality for a while Came, a rare visitor who left betimes, And made all things seem beautiful for an hour, Hopes that soon fade to drab realities And passions that crumble to ashes while they blaze Kindled the common earth with their brief flame. A creature insignificant and small Visited, uplifted by an unknown Power,” Savitri-159 “His little hour is spent in little things. A brief companionship with many jars, A little love and jealousy and hate, A touch of friendship mid indifferent crowds Draw his heart-plan on life’s diminutive map.” Savitri-164 “There was no act, no movement in its Vast:… There was no mind there with its need to know, There was no heart there with its need to love.” Savitri-308 “But vain are human power and human love To break earth’s seal of ignorance and death; ... Man, sole awake in an unconscious world, Aspires in vain to change the cosmic dream.” Savitri-315-316 “Too little the strength that now with us is born, Too faint the light that steals through Nature’s lids, Too scant the joy with which she buys our pain.” Savitri-342 “Or bound by the senses and the longing heart, Adoring with a turbid human love, They could not grasp the mighty spirit she was Or change by closeness to be even as she.” Savitri-363 “No transient earthly love assailed her calm,” Savitri-367 “Only a little lifted is Mind’s screen; The Wise who know see but one half of Truth, The strong climb hardly to a low-peaked height, The hearts that yearn are given one hour to love.” Savitri-372 “Wilt thou not make this mortal bliss thy sphere?” Savitri-408 “Love dies before the lover in our breast: Our joys are perfumes in a brittle vase.” Savitri-433 “Thy mind’s light hides from thee the Eternal’s thought, Thy heart’s hopes hide from thee the Eternal’s will, Earth’s joys shut from thee the Immortal’s bliss.” Savitri-443 “A body seeing the end too soon of joy And the fragile happiness of its mortal love.” Savitri-470 (Death said) “I lay waste human happiness with my breath And slay the will to live, the joy to be” Savitri-535 (Death said) “Your transient loves bind not the eternal gods.” Savitri-581 (Death said) “It (human love) is a passion of thy yearning cells, It is flesh that calls to flesh to serve its lust; It is thy mind that seeks an answering mind And dreams awhile that it has found its mate; It is thy life that asks a human prop To uphold its weakness lonely in the world Or feeds its hunger on another’s life.” Savitri-608 (Death said) “For thy passion was a sensual want refined, A hunger of the body and the heart; Thy want can tire and cease or turn elsewhere.” Savitri-611 (Death said) “Wisdom and love thou claimest as thy right; But knowledge in this world is error’s mate, A brilliant procuress of Nescience, And human love a posturer on earth-stage Who imitates with verve a faery dance. An extract pressed from hard experience, Man’s knowledge casked in the barrels of Memory Has the harsh savour of a mortal draught: A sweet secretion from the erotic glands Flattering and torturing the burning nerves, Love is a honey and poison in the breast Drunk by it as the nectar of the gods.” Savitri-618-619 (Death said) “Love shall bind by thee many gathered hearts. The opposite sweetness in thy days shall meet Of tender service to thy life’s desired And loving empire over all thy loved, Two poles of bliss made one, O Savitri. Return, O child, to thy forsaken earth.” Savitri-637 (Death said) “A transient painting on a holiday’s floor Traced for a moment’s beauty love was made.” (Death speaks of the limitation of human love.) Savitri-637 “And Mind in a half-light moves amid half-truths And the human heart knows only human love And life is a stumbling and imperfect force And the body counts out its precarious days,” Savitri-703 “Without self-giving there is no love; but self-giving is very rare in human love which is full of selfishness and demands.”¹¹⁵ The Mother Human love is defined as an exclusive dual enjoyment and a fragile happiness between the lover and the beloved in their heart’s secret chamber by an entire separation from the World, the Self and the God; whereas in the Divine Love this exclusive enjoyment excludes neither the World, nor the Self, nor the God and could deliver mental, vital and physical love from their utter deficiencies. Human love experiences a joy that forgets death for a brief period or ‘Joy that forgot mortality for a while.’¹⁰⁵ It is a brief sattwic flame that can crumble vital passion to ashes⁹⁷ and a sattwic smile can persuade ‘a dead lacerated heart to live again and feel the hands of calm.’⁹⁷ The heart that yearns human love will be tired within one hour, unable to feel it in a continuous way, whereas Divine love is tireless in its nature and can be experienced through all eternity. The Divine Love needs no human hand to feel and clasp but its mighty touch or vibration can heighten ‘the intimacy of soul with soul’⁹⁹ and prolongs ‘the nearness of soul’s clasp with soul,’¹⁰⁰ yet this subtle physical Divine Love remains untouched, pure and alone. Human relationship has a beginning and an end whereas subtle physical relation continues from birth after birth. Human love dies while the lover is still alive on earth. It has a beginning and an end. It is like the perfume of a brief joy and roadside sweetness that ‘earth-bound hearts would pluck.’¹¹⁹ If Satyavan had lived long, human love would have died in the tired human breast and if he lives for a short period then human love will survive awhile, then it will be replaced by other human admirers. This is the reality of earthly life. Whereas Divine Love lives, nourishes, grows and fulfils life long after the death of the Lover. It awakens the Psychic and Spiritual contacts which are the perennial Source of our existence. This Love is identified as subtle physical Love which has the capacity to bridge earth and heaven. This subtle physical relation exists between the Guru and the Disciple in the Psycho-Spiritual plane and the Guru uplifts, takes care and nourishes the Disciple continuously after his physical departure from the body. With the divine union Soul force increases. Soul force strengthens and densifies the subtle physical sheath. Soul saving Subtle physical love can replace the Soul slaying gross physical love. When Subtle physical love becomes strong, it reconciles the human and divine Love. Thus, divine Love can transform life. The object of human love is meant to procreate children and by their attachment forget Divine and on one fine morning Death abruptly ends all the charm of life. In order to prevent Death from becoming a reality, one must discover his Psychic Being. The Queen, the human mother of Savitri, understands the limitation of human love of Moderate and Spiritual Love of Ascetic/Mayavadin /Illusionist/Nirvanist which do not take care to annul human suffering and miseries. (Queen said to Savitri) “Choose once again and leave this fated head, Death is the gardener of this wonder-tree; Love’s sweetness sleeps in his pale marble hand.” Savitri-431 (Queen said to Savitri) “Here on this mutable and ignorant earth Who is the lover and who is the friend? All passes here, nothing remains the same. None is for any on this transient globe.” Savitri-432-33 (Queen said to Savitri) “Only when thou hast climbed above thy mind And liv’st in the calm vastness of the One Can love be eternal in the eternal Bliss And love divine replace the human tie.” Savitri-434 Human love is experienced by exciting the mind, life and body and in the Divine Love they are silenced. In the Yoga of devotion, the normal emotional human aspect is applied no longer to transient worldly relation, but to the joy of All-Loving, the All-Beautiful and the All-Blissful.³ Human love can least satisfy human emotions because it is not free from desire, fear, reaction, fluctuation and attachment and is helpless to harmonise its myriad deformations and perversions. In human love, (whose essence is Divine Love) this unlimited Divine Love suffers limitation, incomprehension, embarrassment, corruption, degradation and narrowness¹²⁷ and restricts itself to the participation of small happiness, external life’s crude movement and obstinately inferior motives. The Divine Love is entirely motiveless and is possessed by self-existent Bliss. Man can ascend to the stairs of self-existent motiveless enjoyment through four successive stages of devotion. First, he is an arta , who calls the Divine during moments of crisis and distress, unable to possess Him but entirely possessed by forces of Ignorance and powers that labour to debase; secondly, he is an artharthi devotee, who seeks the Divine for personal gains, for the satisfaction of his desire, eager to possess Him but limited in capacity through deceptive instruments; thirdly, he is a jijnasu, the seeker after God knowledge who seeks both to possess and be possessed, to receive and give himself to Him in a limited way and lastly he becomes Jnani, the God-knower who possesses Him utterly and be possessed by Him utterly. The God-knower is also a God lover because by knowledge of His being comes the whole delight and he becomes a living channel of the Supreme's descent and the cells become capable of holding this supreme Vibration. The Nature of Divine Love: “Here with the suddenness divine advents have, Repeating the marvel of the first descent, Changing to rapture the dull earthly round, Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death. Well might he (Divine Love) find in her his perfect shrine.” Savitri-14 “Pure mystic voices in beatitude’s hush Appealed to Love’s immaculate sweetnesses, Calling his (Love’s) honeyed touch to thrill the worlds, His (Love’s) blissful hands to seize on Nature’s limbs, His (Love’s) sweet intolerant might of union To take all beings into his (Love’s) saviour arms, Drawing to his (Love’s) pity the rebel and the waif To force on them the happiness they refuse.” Savitri-123 “He (Divine Love) is still the godhead by which all can change.” Savitri-397 “Rare is the cup fit for love’s nectar wine, As rare the vessel that can hold God’s birth; A soul made ready through a thousand years Is the living mould of a supreme Descent.” Savitri-398 “Then Love shall at last unwounded tread earth’s soil; Man’s mind shall admit the sovereignty of Truth And body bear the immense descent of God.” Savitri-516 “He (Divine Love) labours in the depths, exults on the heights; He (Divine Love) shall remake thy universe, O Death.” Savitri-592 Love offers kinghood: Love links life with past births. Love calls down Power to make a new base of life. A smile of love sanctions the long game of life and the sweetness of a love is oblivious of death. Love can recognise the Souls linked with him from past births. Love is a glory from eternity’s sphere. Earth cannot hold Divine Love; the moment he (Love) descends he is abased and disfigured. Love is the godhead by which all the untransformed Nature can change or Love has transforming Power. Love awaits in the heart as an unopened flower. Love penetrates during our sleep and waking state and gives an unknown charm and thrill. Love seeks himself in many minds, hearts and living creatures. Love can call down visions that can look at the Invisible. Without this Love, life has waited long unfilled. Love can bring a God-like sense. Love seeks his truth not in heaven but on earth. Love is a beautiful slave of God preoccupied in transforming earth-Nature. Love’s mission is deceived by surface mind, life and body. Love’s mission is debased by tamasic, rajasic and sattwic inconscient energies. Love’s nectar wine can be held by very few fit Souls. It asks for a thousand years of conscious sadhana. Supreme Love descends to earth through fit Souls. Those who give birth to Avataras (symbol of Divine Love), they are identified as the virgin Mother, Para-prakriti. Lovers meet each other through different paths by travelling across limitless plains of Time; in this birth they link their past births with their future births. Through their meeting, future Divine Life is built. A Brief Touch of Divine Love: ¹ ⁵³ “The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch Persuaded the inert black quietude And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.” Savitri-3 “A hurried imperfect glimpse of heavenly things, Guesses and travesties of celestial types.” Savitri-77 “But rarely burns the flame nor burns for long; The joy it calls from those diviner heights Brings brief magnificent reminiscences And high splendid glimpses of interpreting thought, But not the utter vision and delight.” Savitri-112-13 “Absorbed in the present act, the fleeting days, None thought to look beyond the hour’s gains, Or dreamed to make this earth a fairer world, Or felt some touch divine surprise his heart.” Savitri-145 “A quick celestial flash could sometimes come: The illumined soul-ray fell on heart and flesh And touched with semblances of ideal light The stuff of which our earthly dreams are made.” Savitri-159 “Some face of deathless beauty could be caught… Some hue of the Absolute could fall on life, Some glory of knowledge and intuitive sight, Some passion of the rapturous heart of Love.” Savitri-175-176 “A touch supreme surprised his hurrying heart, The clasp was remembered of the Wonderful, And hints leaped down of white beatitudes.” Savitri-237 “This limited being lifted to zenith bliss, Happy to enjoy one touch of things supreme ,” Savitri-239 “A splendour sullied by the mortal air, Love passes through his heart, a wandering guest Beauty surrounds him for a magic hour, He has visits of a large revealing joy, Brief widenesses release him from himself, Enticing towards a glory ever in front Hopes of a deathless sweetness lure and leave.” Savitri-340 “Some near approached, were touched, caught fire, then failed, Too great was her demand, too pure her force.” (This line indicates Savitri's virgin Mother status is surrounded by a vast world of humanity with an active lower nature symbolised as harlot Power. It is difficult to bridge the gulf between them.) Savitri-366 “All that the lightning-flash of love reveals… Even a brief nearness has reshaped my life.” Savitri-406 “A little bliss is lent thee from above, A touch divine upon thy human days.” Savitri-451 “Bliss was an incident of a mortal hour , A stranger in the insentient universe.” Savitri-455 “Awhile she moved through a blank tranquillity Of naked Light from an invisible sun, A void that was a bodiless happiness, A blissful vacuum of nameless peace.” Savitri-491 “A secret air of pure felicity Deep like a sapphire heaven our spirits breathe; Our hearts and bodies feel its obscure call, Our senses grope for it and touch and lose. If this withdrew, the world would sink in the Void; If this were not, nothing could move or live." Savitri-629 “The prophet moment covered limitless Space And cast into the heart of hurrying Time A diamond light of the Eternal’s peace, A crimson seed of God’s felicity; A glance from the gaze fell of undying Love.” Savitri-712 With the increase of purity, a brief touch of Divine Love can flow through human vessels and can bring unimaginable change in the inner subtle physical and outer life. So, before the consciousness is established in the Supramental plane a Sadhaka can aspire for a brief touch of Divine Love. ‘Love, in its essence and in its origin, is like a white flame obliterating ALL resistances. You can have the experience yourself: whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the weight of accumulated mistakes, the ignorance, incapacity, bad will, a single SECOND of this Love – pure, essential, supreme – melts everything in its almighty flame. One single moment and an entire past can vanish. One single TOUCH of That in its essence and the whole burden is consumed.’¹⁰³ Savitri book confirms that a brief touch of Divine Love through Satyavan’s Presence is more intense and more fulfilled than the ‘riches of a thousand fortunate years’¹¹¹ of human love and association. Transformation of Human Love into Divine Love: “Its (Divine Love’s) bodies woven by a divine sense Prolonged the nearness of soul’s clasp with soul; Its warm play of external sight and touch Reflected the glow and thrill of the heart’s joy, Mind’s climbing brilliant thoughts, the spirit’s bliss; Life’s rapture kept for ever its flame and cry.” Savitri-329 “I have discovered my glad reality Beyond my body in another’s being: I have found the deep unchanging soul of love... Only now for my soul in Satyavan.” Savitri-435 “Always behind this strange divided life Her spirit like a sea of living fire Possessed her lover and to his body clung, One locked embrace to guard its threatened mate.” Savitri-471 “Yet ever they grew into each other more Until it seemed no power could rend apart, Since even the body’s walls could not divide.” Savitri-473 “Or call into thy chamber the Divine And sit with God tasting a human joy.” Savitri-535 “All our earth starts from mud and ends in sky, And Love that was once an animal’s desire, Then a sweet madness in the rapturous heart, An ardent comradeship in the happy mind, Becomes a wide spiritual yearning’s space. A lonely soul passions for the Alone, The heart that loved man thrills to the love of God, A body is his chamber and his shrine.” Savitri-632 “I (Savitri) quiver no more with the assault of grief; A mighty calmness seated deep within Has occupied my body and my sense: It takes the world’s grief and transmutes to strength, It makes the world’s joy one with the joy of God. My love eternal sits throned on God’s calm; For Love must soar beyond the very heavens And find its secret sense ineffable; It (Love) must change its human ways to ways divine, Yet keep its sovereignty of earthly bliss.” Savitri-633 “My will is greater than thy law, O Death; My love is stronger than the bonds of Fate: Our love is the heavenly seal of the Supreme. I guard that seal against thy rending hands. Love must not cease to live upon the earth; For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven, Love is the far Transcendent’s angel here; Love is man’s lien on the Absolute.” Savitri-633 “And all her life was conscious of his life And all her being rejoiced enfolding his.” Savitri-715 “Our love has grown greater by that mighty touch And learned its heavenly significance, Yet nothing is lost of mortal love’s delight.” Savitri-719 “And let me say also that, as regards human love and divine love, I admitted the first as that from which we have to proceed and to arrive at the other, intensifying and transforming into it, not eliminating, human love. Divine Love, in my view of it, is again not something ethereal, cold and far, but a love absolutely intense, intimate and full of unity, closeness and rapture using all the nature for its expression.”¹²⁰ Sri Aurobindo “Unlike human love which is for some and not for the others, my love is for the Supreme Lord alone, but as the Supreme Lord is all, my love is for all equally. The Lord's love is equal, constant, all-embracing, immutable, eternal. ” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/ July 22, 1964 “A sealed identity within her woke; She knew herself the Beloved of the Supreme :” Savitri-525 "Our love is the heavenly seal of the Supreme. I guard that seal against thy rending hands." Savitri-633 "The All-Blissful sat unknown within the heart;" Savitri-43 The gulf between human and Divine Love can be bridged by developing subtle physical faculties by entering deep within or 'That subtle world withdrew deeply within'. (Savitri-527) The subtle physical is identified as an intermediate plane of Consciousness, first earthly heaven and material paradise. Here one feels satisfied with its opulence, faces 'no peril of sky or of abyss,' and 'No yearning for her lost infinitudes.' (Savitri-115) The subtle physical love is possible by entering more and more into the waking and non-waking trance of the Psychic and Spiritual planes, respectively. Humanity is not aware of subtle physical love, where love continues to nourish and fulfil life long after the lover is dead. Savitri book proposes all (prepared Souls) secretly and symbolically replace human love with subtle physical love, which needs no hand to clasp, no feet to move. Subtle physical union keeps the body untouched and pure. It links love with past and future births, extending through all life. This imperishable subtle physical love is further complemented and perfected by the touch of subtle vital, subtle mental, Psychic, Spiritual, Universal and Supramental Love. This subtle physical love purifies, transforms and perfects human love. In a collective Divine living, an individual ‘will be identified with the Divine and with others (fellow brothers) only through the divine consciousness and not through the mental nature.’¹⁰⁶ In a Divine Centre, ‘Influence is not the outward authority of the Teacher over his disciple, but the power of his contact, of his presence, of the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into it, even though in silence, that which he himself is and possesses.’¹¹⁷ For the development of the above Divine faculties, Psychic and Spiritual opening are imperative. The deficiency of this intermediate subtle physical love is that “Our souls forget to the Highest to aspire.” (Savitri-113) So in this state, “yet the ultimate oneness was not there. There was a separateness of soul from soul:” (Savitri-187). A few such examples are presented, which can widen our existing understanding: “His (King Aswapati’s) inner self grew near to others’ selves And bore a kinship’s weight, a common tie, Yet stood untouched, king of itself, alone.” Savitri-27 “She meditates upon mighty words and looks On the unseen links that join the parted spheres.” Savitri-85 “A subtle link of union joins all life. Thus all creation is a single chain:” Savitri-110 “At last the struggling Energy can emerge And meet the voiceless Being in wider fields; Then can they see and speak and, breast to breast, In a larger consciousness, a clearer light, The Two embrace and strive and each know each Regarding closer now the playmate’s face.” Savitri-141 “In the communion of two meeting minds (subtle mental union) Thought looked at thought and had no need of speech; Emotion clasped emotion in two hearts, (subtle vital union) They felt each other’s thrill in the flesh and nerves (subtle physical union) Or melted each in each and grew immense (Spiritual union) As when two houses burn and fire joins fire:” (Psychic union) Savitri-186 “Being felt being even when afar And consciousness replied to consciousness. And yet the ultimate oneness was not there. There was a separateness of soul from soul:” Savitri-187 “Thought was not there but a knowledge near and one Seized on all things by a moved identity, A sympathy of self with other selves, The touch of consciousness on consciousness And being’s look on being with inmost gaze And heart laid bare to heart without walls of speech And the unanimity of seeing minds In myriad forms luminous with the one God.” Savitri-292 “Life was not there, but an impassioned force, Finer than fineness, deeper than the deeps, Felt as a subtle and spiritual power, A quivering out from soul to answering soul, A mystic movement, a close influence, A free and happy and intense approach Of being to being with no screen or check, Without which life and love could never have been.” Savitri-292 “There was no cleavage between soul and soul, There was no barrier between world and God. Overpowered were form and memory’s limiting line; The covering mind was seized and torn apart; It was dissolved and now no more could be, The one Consciousness that made the world was seen; All now was luminosity and force.” Savitri-319 “A universal vision that unites, A sympathy of nerve replying to nerve,… A touch that needs not hands to feel, to clasp, Were there the native means of consciousness And heightened the intimacy of soul with soul.” Savitri-325 “Heart feels for heart, limb cries for answering limb; All strives to enforce the unity all is.” Savitri-398 “Amazed by a joy for which they (Savitri & Satyavan) had waited long, The lovers met upon their different paths, Travellers across the limitless plains of Time Together drawn from fate-led journeyings In the self-closed solitude of their human past, To a swift rapturous dream of future joy And the unexpected present of these eyes.” Savitri-399 “Or else she (Savitri) strove even in mortal time To build a little room for timelessness By the deep union of two human lives, Her soul secluded shut into his soul.” Savitri-471 “For when he (Satyavan) wandered in the forest, oft Her (Savitri’s) conscious spirit walked with him and knew His actions as if in herself he moved; He, less aware, thrilled with her from afar.” Savitri-473 “Wordless she travelled in her lover’s steps, Planting her human feet where his had trod, Into the perilous silences beyond.” Savitri-577 ‘The division of our being from the being of others can only be healed (1) by removing the divorce of our nature from the inner soul-reality, (2) by abolishing the veil between our becoming and our self-being, (3) by bridging the remoteness of our individuality in Nature from the Divine being who is the omnipresent Reality in Nature and above Nature.’¹¹² The transformation of transient unstable vital enjoyment of human love into eternal Divine Love is the prerogative of few decreed developed Soul⁹¹ through practice of mutual self-giving, an interfusion of inner substance, vision through identity, by rapturous fusion of ‘two souls into one’¹¹⁴ body of the God followed by similar fusion of two bodies into one Soul of God and its universalisation. The former is the Psychic experience of ‘wedding of the eternal Lord and Spouse’⁵³ or ‘A diarchy of two united souls,’⁹² in waking trance and the latter is its extension of Spiritual experience of ‘A single being in two bodies clasped,’⁹² or ‘A burning of two bodies in one flame’¹⁰⁴ in dream and sleep trance and its further extension in universal plane as ‘Wedded to all he had been, became himself’⁵⁴ or ‘The calm delight that weds one soul to all.’¹⁰² Or in integral Yoga, exclusive Psychic Divine Love begins with the Soul’s union (Jivatma ) with the Divine (Paramatma) and here one could live without the attraction of mental imitations and without the aid of a human lover. This Psychic Love cannot keep itself satisfied with the highest intensities of exclusive enjoyment; it calls down entire truth of Divine Love in the Spiritual and universal plane in which ‘one could love without return for love’¹ ¹⁶ and it includes all the worlds and worlds beyond to be possessed by the intensities of Supreme Ananda . The nature of the highest Divine Love is all-inclusive, all-embracing, all-compassionate, universal, eternal, absolute immobility and unparalleled intensity of absolute vibration. In order to keep Divine Love unalloyed, warm and homogenous vibratory mass it must search truth in close proximity with the Divine union in Personal, Impersonal, Universal and Transcendent planes. When human love transforms into universalised Divine Love, annulling all division and separation of Consciousness, ‘Then shall the business fail of Night and Death.’⁹⁶ The human love, governed by Nature’s law, which has no power to break the earth’s seal of ignorance, incapacity, inertia and death and it can be transformed into all powerful Divine Love, governed by Supernature’s Law, only when the Lover and the Beloved either by the privilege of past birth or by the Tapasya and consecration of present birth open either to their larger, deeper and more plastic Psychic or Spiritual Being. Thus, the depth and sweetness of mortal emotional joy is fulfilled by the emergence of a wider and more complete movement of Divine Love. Those who have received Savitri’s Divine Love for them all earthly joy, heavenly joy and self-existent joy become pale, insufficient and obsolete. Psychic Love is ‘Much sweeter… than any rapture known’¹⁵⁵ and its ‘momentary and escaping thrill’¹⁵⁵ cannot be recompensed by ‘Earth or all-conquering heaven.’¹⁵⁵ Spiritual Love gives the sense of impersonal Love, Peace, Silence, infinite Existence, infinite Consciousness and ‘The Bliss that none can ever hope to taste.’¹⁵ ⁶ Universal Love is ‘A constant touch of sweetness that linked all hearts’¹⁵ ⁷ or 'Calling his (Love's) honeyed touch to thrill the worlds,' (Savitri-123) or 'Thrilled with the hidden Transcendent’s joy and peace.’¹⁵ ⁸ Supramental Love turns ‘to the best the worst,’¹⁵ ⁹ heals ‘the bitter cruelties of earth’¹⁵ ⁹ and ‘A joy exceeding earth’s and heaven’s poured down.’¹⁵ ⁹ This Supramental 'Divine Love descends first as something transcendent and universal and out of that transcendence and universality it applies itself to persons according to the Divine Truth and Will, creating a vaster, greater, purer personal love than any the human mind or heart can now imagine .'¹ ⁶ ⁰ The dynamisation of Supramental energy can lead towards entry into the dark Subconscient sheath and discovery of the Subconscient Self, which is identified as another important achievement, whose priceless value could have saved the world’¹ ⁶ ¹ and all error and pain ‘became a quivering ecstasy.’¹ ⁶ ² Then subsequently entry into Inconscient sheath and discovery of the Inconscient Self is identified as one of the last and most profound Spiritual experiences, ‘the grand solution’¹ ⁶ ³ in which the height of mortal effort ends and in that darkest world ‘A bliss is born that can remake our life.'¹⁶ ⁴ Avenir Light is a clean and stylish font favored by designers. It's easy on the eyes and a great go-to font for titles, paragraphs & more. Sevenfold personal relation with the Divine: “I am the Madran, I am Savitri. (She is both human and Divine, Jivatma and Para-prakriti) All that I was before, I am to thee still, (human and Divine Lover) Close comrade of thy thoughts and hopes and toils, (The Divine Friend and Playmate) All happy contraries I would join for thee. All sweet relations marry in our life; (The Divine Lover and Beloved.) I am thy kingdom even as thou art mine, The sovereign and the slave of thy desire, (The play with Divine Master is possible through slavehood) Thy prone possessor, sister of thy soul (brotherhood is a derivative of the original personality of Divine Fatherhood.) And mother of thy wants; thou art my world, (The Divine Mother of all-life.) The earth I need, the heaven my thoughts desire, (The Wisdom of Divine Teacher.) The world I inhabit and the god I adore.” Savitri-719-20 Savitri book projects Avataras as brother Souls and slave of all humanity, where Savitri became the Mother of Satyavan’s ‘natural brothers’¹⁰⁷ and ‘She made herself the diligent serf of all.’¹⁰⁹ And, also Divine asks Savitri to take care of earth creatures and further directed her, ‘Thou shalt not shrink from any brother soul.’¹⁰⁸ Since only in the Divine, human emotion can find its real and utter satisfaction, therefore all the life of the Soul is satisfied by the seven-fold personal relation with the divine Beloved and the joy of these relations due to their self-existent motiveless nature, purifies the emotional mind and enhances its capacity to hold more Ananda. A similar fulfilment is demanded of our universal and impersonal part through universal and impersonal union with the Divine. These relationships are not imaginations of mind or illusions but Spiritual facts and the intensity of these relations can multiply in the process of Yoga and ultimately the lover does not seek heaven or liberation from birth or any other thing, but to lose himself eternally in the sole clasp of the Divine Beloved. A Sadhaka of integral Yoga has to realise the World-existence as Lila, Divine Play and he has to become a woman and paramour in Consciousness in order to enter right relation with the Divine Beloved, he has to become the slave and servant in order to enter relation with the Divine Master, he has to become a supple and plastic child with full of joy in order to become a playmate of the Divine Mother and Divine Father, he has to become a student and disciple in order to enter right relation with the Divine Teacher, he has to become a friend and playmate in order to enter relation with his Divine Friend and Playmate. Through intensification of these seven-fold personal relations with the Divine, the Godhead breaks out from a human mould and the Soul of man becomes eternally young, perpetually inexhaustible, creating and re-creating Himself in himself for the pure bliss of that self-creation and self-representation and thus the Divine becomes the Play, the Player and the Playground. As long as the lower Nature in man is active or he is under the subjection of physical (tamasic) mind and vital (rajasic) mind, his godward possibility is seriously restricted and he searches for an outward divisible human love to make up his emotional deficiencies. 1) Discipleship to God the Guru : “He comes unseen into our darker parts And, curtained by the darkness, does his work, A subtle and all-knowing guest and guide, Till they too feel the need and will to change.” Savitri-35 “Or listens following a bodiless Guide” Savitri-80 “Awake with a cry and stir of numberless souls, Arisen from the breast of some deep Infinite, Smiling like a new-born child at love and hope, In her nature housing the Immortal’s power, In her bosom bearing the eternal Will, No guide she needed but her luminous heart:” Savitri-128 “The unfelt Self within who is the guide, The unknown Self above who is the goal.” Savitri-168 “Guide of the traveller of the unseen paths,” Savitri-295 “Young grave disciples fashioned by their touch,” Savitri-382 “And how shall the end be vain when God is guide?” Savitri-339 “They moved unable to forego her light, Desiring they clutched at her with outstretched hands Or followed stumbling in the paths she (Savitri ) made.” Savitri-363 “She (Savitri) walked in their front towards a greater light, Their leader and queen over their hearts and souls,” Savitri-363 “She (Savitri) held their hands, she chose for them their paths: They were moved by her towards great unknown things,” Savitri-364 “Thy soul has strength and needs no other guide” Savitri-374 “One force shall be your mover and your guide, One light shall be around you and within; Hand in strong hand confront Heaven’s question, life:” Savitri-374-375 “A way proposed by an unerring Guide.” Savitri-378 “A ray from self’s solitude of light the guide;” Savitri-460 “All stumbled on behind a stumbling Guide, Yet every stumble is a needed pace On unknown routes to an unknowable goal.” Savitri-625 “The mortal (Savitri ) led, the god (Death ) and spirit (Satyavan ) obeyed And she behind was leader of their march And they in front were followers of her will.” Savitri-639, “Only in an uplifting hour of stress Men answer to the touch of greater things: Or, raised by some strong hand to breathe heaven-air, They slide back to the mud from which they climbed;” Savitri-689 “One cannot imagine –one cannot imagine what a grace it is to have someone in whose hands you can place yourself entirely! By whom you can let yourself be guided without having the need to seek. I had that, I was very, very conscious of it as long as Sri Aurobindo was there. And when he left his body, it was a dreadful collapse...One cannot imagine. Someone you can refer to with the certainty that what he says will be the truth.”⁷² The Mother In traditional Yoga, the Guru strengthens and illumines the practice of written truth, Shastra . In integral Yoga, Guru is an Influence who can purify the subtle body and can call down Divine Presence. The Spiritual Presence of a living Guru is a special privilege in the life of a seeker. Since integral Yoga accepts the Yoga of Knowledge, it has the need of the Divine¹³¹ as All-Wise Guru. Integral Yoga identifies physical Guru as a Spiritual Influence, who is extended Psychically as the inner Guide in the heart, Master of Yoga, the Lord, Light, Enjoyer and Goal of all sacrifice and effort, Spiritually as the Guide above the head, universally as the World-teacher, Jagat Guru , Supramentally¹³ ¹ as the Supreme Mother and the Supreme Lord. The Master of our Yoga is the Parameshwara of the Vedantic teaching, the Parameshwari of the synthetic Yoga of Tantra, Purushottama of the Gita, Moksha of the Adwaitin, Sajujya Mukti of the Jnana Yoga, Samipya or Salokya Mukti of the Bhakti Yoga , Sadharmya or Sadrisya Mukti of Karma Yoga, the supreme Soul and the supreme Shakti. We have to pursue Him and realise Him integrally in all His names and forms and qualities and not to remain satisfied with His one form that has most touched our inner being; we have to know and possess Him integrally, samagram mam,4 in all the world and planes of Consciousness. The greatest Guru can no longer confine himself to teaching and example, but rather he withdraws from these two important activities to plunge himself into deep Divinities and from that depth pours down his Influence,¹ ¹⁷ Presence, Power, Light, Peace and Love to all those who are receptive around him. His touch is like the artist moulding the clay of our mind, life and body. He leads us to knowledge at every step and kindles the inner light and vision. When we cease to think and see for ourselves and think what he wills to think and see for us, then the Guru is fulfilled in his disciples and we enjoy his embrace and possession. 2) Sonship to God the Father: “A greater sonship was his divine right.” Savitri-22 (Satyavan said) “Descend. Let thy journey cease, come down to us. Close is my father’s creepered hermitage Screened by the tall ranks of these silent kings, Sung to by voices of the hue-robed choirs Whose chants repeat transcribed in music’s notes The passionate coloured lettering of the boughs And fill the hours with their melodious cry.” Savitri-402 (Savitri said) “Father and king, I have carried out thy will. One whom I sought I found in distant lands; I have obeyed my heart, I have heard its call. On the borders of a dreaming wilderness Mid Shalwa’s giant hills and brooding woods In his thatched hermitage Dyumatsena dwells, Blind, exiled, outcast, once a mighty king. The son of Dyumatsena, Satyavan, I have met on the wild forest’s lonely verge. My father, I have chosen. This is done.” Savitri-424 “All of his speeding days that he could spare From labour in the forest hewing wood And hunting food in the wild sylvan glades And service to his father’s sightless life He gave to her and helped to increase the hours By the nearness of his presence and his clasp, And lavish softness of heart-seeking words And the close beating felt of heart on heart.” Savitri-472 “Each soul is the great Father’s crucified Son,” Savitri-500 “Her mortal ego perished in God’s night. Only a body was left, the ego’s shell… The individual die, the cosmos pass; These gone, the transcendental grew a myth, The Holy Ghost without the Father and Son, Or, a substratum of what once had been, Being that never willed to bear a world Restored to its original loneliness, Impassive, sole, silent, intangible.” Savitri-552 (Death’s boon offered to Savitri) “Indulgent to the dreams my touch shall break, I yield to his blind father’s longing heart Kingdom and power and friends and greatness lost And royal trappings for his peaceful age, The pallid pomps of man’s declining days, The silvered decadent glories of life’s fall.” Savitri-589 ‘I am the father of the universe,’ pita hamasya jagat ,⁵ thus declared the Gita in its various relations with the devotees. Son-ship to God the Father is acceptable in integral Yoga, as it rests on the foundation of the Vedanta. The four main Upanishads, from which integral Yoga draws sustenance are the gospel of the Divine Life and Divine Work from Isha Upanishad , the gospel of Eternal Bliss from Taittiriya Upanishad , the gospel of Divine Knowledge and self-surrender from Kena Upanishad and working of the Self in the world as creator and master of evolution and the creator Brahman is identified as Consciousness from Aitareya Upanishad. From a Spiritual point of view the Divine Father, Paramatma is the liberator of the Soul, Jivatma and the eternal relation between Nara and Narayana, the human Soul and the Divine Father is fulfilled by their merger and oneness. From a human point of view, life begins from the mother’s love, which liberates the child from a helpless state to arrive at the father’s love, which liberates the child from all other dependencies and influences, to stand alone and independent. But when one discharges the responsibility of fatherhood to God, then He lifts the child Soul to immeasurable and unimaginable heights. The faculty of Divine Fatherhood is observed in King Aswapati in his relation with his Divine daughter Savitri , to whom he called down to earth through his long askesis, tapasya . As Father and Guru , he was aware of Savitri’s mission on earth, which she would accomplish by the help of her second Self, Satyavan . King Aswapati made her aware that her unknown Lover waits for her in the unknown breast of earth and he will ‘give voice to what in’⁸⁸ her is mute and ‘He shall walk’⁸⁸ with her until her body’s end. The King further wanted to know from the heavenly sage Narad, whether her daughter could ‘pour the nectar of sorrowless life’⁸⁹ on her surrounding earth and ‘Heal with her bliss the tired breast of earth.’⁸⁹ He wished for her daughter, ‘glad and griefless days’⁸⁹ and unwounded mortal life. To this question of the King, Narad hinted that each great Soul has to go through fire test, agni parikha, and she ‘must cross on the stones of suffering to its goal’⁹⁰ of Bliss state. 3) Tenderness to God the Mother: “As if a childlike finger laid on a cheek Reminded of the endless need in things The heedless Mother of the universe, An infant longing clutched the sombre Vast.” Savitri-2 “Apart, living within, all lives she bore; Aloof, she carried in herself the world: Her dread was one with the great cosmic dread, Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights; The universal Mother’s love was hers.” Savitri-9 “A Godhead stands behind the brute machine. This truth broke in in a triumph of fire; A victory was won for God in man, The deity revealed its hidden face. The great World-Mother now in her arose:” Savitri-21 “His soul breaks out to join the Oversoul, His life is oceaned by that superlife. He has drunk from the breasts of the Mother of the worlds; A topless Supernature fills his frame:” Savitri-24 “A seeker of hidden meanings in life’s forms, Of the great Mother’s wide uncharted will And the rude enigma of her terrestrial ways He is the explorer and the mariner On a secret inner ocean without bourne: He is the adventurer and cosmologist Of a magic earth’s obscure geography.” Savitri-69 “The eternal Goddess moved in her cosmic house Sporting with God as a Mother with her child:” Savitri-327 “The Ancient Mother clutched her child to her breast Pressing her close in her environing arms, As if earth ever the same could for ever keep The living spirit and body in her clasp, As if death were not there nor end nor change.” Savitri-551 “You are the Mother’s child and the Mother’s love to her children is without limit and she bears patiently with the defects of their nature. Try to be the true child of the Mother : it is there within you, but your outward mind is occupied by little futile things and too often in a violent fuss over them.”⁷³ Sri Aurobindo Traditional Tantra aims at the Spiritual conversion of the whole nature in which liberation, cosmic action, full perfection and enjoyment of Spiritual powers are unified. It includes Hathayoga for perfection of the physical sheath or gross body by concentration on the concealed Divinity in the physical substance and perfection of vital sheath by opening of six energy centres from bottom in ascending order to unite with the Brahman; stresses on Raja Yogic purification, meditation and concentration for perfection of Mental sheath and Psychic sheath which includes perfection of subtle body; directs the emotional and aesthetic powers in the heart Godward through Bhakti Yoga for purity, intensity, infinite passion of God-possession; clings to Jnana Yoga for purification and perfection of ethical and intellectual power directing them towards the Divine oneness; adheres to Karma Yoga for purification and joy of Divine union through action. Integral Yoga accepts the Divine as the Creatrix Mother and almighty Occultist. It differs from traditional Tantra in the sense that it no longer initiates Yoga by dynamising the divinity concealed in the body and vital as ‘soul in the Body’ and ‘soul in the Vital’; rather it begins by activating the ‘soul in Mind’ and opening itself first towards higher Mental or Spiritual faculties and directing these forces as descending Shakti towards opening of Soul in the body and Soul in the vital and purification and liberation of mind, life and body. In traditional schools, the exclusive worship of the Divine Mother for all attainment gets momentum in Tantra . The Tantric Yoga differs from Integral Tantra Yoga in the sense that the Tantric perfection of suddhi, siddhi, mukti and bhukti are universalised in integral Yoga as All-Purification, All-Perfection, All-Liberation and All-Delight and the worship of the personal Mother is realised in Her Individual, Universal and Transcendent form for ‘the divine fulfilment of life.’¹³² In traditional Tantra , the Divine Mother is the giver of the four boons of artha, opulence, kama , pure enjoyment, dharma, the Law of life and Mokhya , liberation; the same boon is transformed in integral Tantra Yoga of (1) conquest of all the money power of the earth for the Divine, (2) all delight born out of integral union with the Divine, (3) the Divine Law born out of Divine Will, Knowledge and Love whose outward and external form is the norms of Integral Yoga and the (4) liberation of Soul, universalisation of Soul, transformation of whole individual Nature and individual becoming the centre of world transformation. In integral Yoga, the Divine Mother’s aspect of Dharma, Kama, Mokhya and Artha can also be extended as Yoga Shakti, Prema Shakti, Jnana Shakti and Artha Shakti. The four Divine faculties, chatvaro manabastatha ,⁷⁸ of Wisdom, Power, Harmony and Perfection, hinted in the Gita as highest secrets, rahasyam uttamam ,⁶ are developed in integral Yoga by practice of four Spiritual disciplines of Yoga of Knowledge, Yoga of Self-Perfection, Yoga of Devotion and Yoga of Work respectively which will culminate in possession of the four Divine Shaktis of Maheswari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati respectively. All possible Spiritual experiences are captured in the wide boundary of integral Yoga and in an attempt to constantly fill ourselves with more experiences, we have identified sixty-four Spiritual and Psychic siddhis and eighteen Supramental siddhis, where the former are exclusive in nature and are related to heightening of individual capacity to its utmost degree and the latter are all-inclusive in nature and have universal repercussions. The first siddhi, with which integral Yoga begins its great enduring journey, is the discovery of the secret woodland in the lotus of the heart where the magic flute of the Eternal Lover is ever heard and the shrine is purified for the wide range play of the Jivatma and Paramatma, Shakti and Shiva and Radha and Krishna. The fullness of such experience comes when the flute of the Lover is echoed in the world and the world beyond. The Mother’s Prema Shakti is entrusted with the four specific mission of (1) strengthening the virgin Power, Para-prakriti , by eliminating the opposing and Soul Slaying harlot power, Apara-prakriti; (2) ‘stay the wheels of Doom’⁵⁵ , (3) ‘break or trample the iron Law’⁵⁶ and (4) ‘call high destiny down’⁵⁷ for the individual, collectivity and the race. She rebuilds Her creation through manifold Divine faculties and the most frontally present faculties are the fourfold Love force, that of Psychic, Spiritual, Universal and Supramental Love. The first three are derived from the Supramental Love that is an all-inclusive and comprehensive Supreme vibration that spreads over all the planes of consciousness with intensest Ananda; it excludes no mortal joy but fulfils it utterly. She liberates the human Soul from the lure of the four exclusive enjoyments, that of the lure of separative egoistic happiness, the lure of joy and laughter of the Soul, the lure of individual happiness in the heavens beyond and the lure of self-absorbed bliss in the impersonal Infinity. These four exclusive enjoyments of escapist traditional Spirituality are transcended in integral Yoga and Savitri declares firmly that a joy becomes imperfect if it is not shared by the whole of the living and non-living creatures. All the discord of life will be resolved through the possession of the all-inclusive Divine in humanity. Since Knowledge is the fundamental determinant of the Chit- aspect of Supreme Sachchidananda , the Divine Mother as Jnana Shakti comes third in the executive order of Her Divine manifestation. She exposes us to four worlds or selves hinted in the Mandukya Upanishad as Waking Self, Dream Self, Sleep Self and the Self of Turiya. These Selves are the constitution of the external world or the gross body of the Divine, the subtle body, the causal body and the Supreme self, which is the origin of all these selves. In Integral Yoga these selves are extensively experienced as Inconscient self, Surface physical self, Subliminal self, Superconscient self, Universal self and Supreme Self. In order to access these selves, a fourfold concentration and fourfold cognition are developed that are (1) Exclusive concentration and Separative Knowledge by indirect contact, (2) Essential concentration and Separative Knowledge by Direct contact, (3) Multiple concentration and Knowledge by Direct contact and (4) Integral Concentration and the Knowledge by Identity. The development of these concentrations and cognitions liberate us from the sevenfold ignorance hinted in Akhupanishad and Mahopanishad and the nature of the ignorance are extensively experienced as Original ignorance, Cosmic ignorance, Egoistic ignorance, Temporal ignorance, Psychological ignorance, Constitutional ignorance and Practical ignorance and the emergence into sevenfold Knowledge, maharsaya sapta purbe ,⁷⁸ is the total Knowledge. The sevenfold (or eight) cosmic existence hinted in the Rig Veda are identified as matter, vital, soul and mind of lower hemisphere and Supermind, Bliss, Consciousness and Existence of higher hemisphere; the ascension of lower hemisphere into the higher hemisphere and descent of the higher hemisphere in to the lower hemisphere are the double movements, directed towards resolving four fundamental problems of existence, that of Ignorance, Suffering, Falsehood and Death. The double movement of ascent and descent is possible by rending¹⁰¹ the veil between the (higher) Mind and Supermind, and that is the condition of the Divine Life in humanity. Since Artha Shakti , Money power is an important power for perfection of the material and vital world, which is the derivative of Existence-aspect or Sat-aspect of Sachchidananda , so it is treated as the fourth or last executive Power of the Divine Mother that at present is shifted into the hands of Asuric forces. When the first three Powers are active on earth’s atmosphere then Artha Shakti will be automatically restored back into the hands of the Divine Mother or on the base of the victory of these triple powers, an individual can rightly handle money for a Divine purpose. When we are able to master the above four faculties, the Divine Mother is satisfied and we enjoy her visible Presence and the status of the Soul’s eternal childhood. 4) Clasp of the hand of the Divine Friend: “Looking for the golden Hand that never came, The advent for which all creation waits, The beautiful visage of Eternity That shall appear upon the roads of Time.” Savitri-199-200 “Offspring of the gulfs, agents of the shadowy Force, Haters of light, intolerant of peace, Aping to the thought the shining Friend and Guide, Opposing in the heart the eternal Will, They veil the occult uplifting Harmonist.” Savitri-225 “A light was with him (King), an invisible hand Was laid upon the error and the pain Till it became a quivering ecstasy, The shock of sweetness of an arm’s embrace.” Savitri-231 “He (King Aswapati) communed with the incommunicable; Beings of wider consciousness were his friends, Forms of a larger subtler make drew near; The Gods conversed with him behind Life’s veil.” Savitri-301 “A friend and yet too great wholly to know, She (Savitri) walked in their front towards a greater light, Their leader and queen over their hearts and souls, One close to their bosoms, yet divine and far.” Savitri-363 “I know that mighty gods are friends of earth.” Savitri-400 “All underwent a high celestial change: Breaking the black Inconscient’s blind mute wall, Effacing the circles of the Ignorance, Powers and divinities burst flaming forth; Each part of the being trembling with delight Lay overwhelmed with tides of happiness And saw her hand in every circumstance And felt her touch in every limb and cell.” Savitri-529 “In the slow process of the evolving spirit, In the brief stade between a death and birth A first perfection’s stage is reached at last; Out of the wood and stone of our nature’s stuff A temple is shaped where the high gods could live.” Savitri-531 “Now has a strong desire seized all my heart To go with Satyavan holding his hand Into the life that he has loved and touch Herbs he has trod and know the forest flowers And hear at ease the birds and the scurrying life That starts and ceases, rich far rustle of boughs And all the mystic whispering of the woods.” Savitri-562 “Then the doomed husband and the woman who knew Went with linked hands into that solemn world.” Savitri-562 “Then hand in hand they left that solemn place Full now of mute unusual memories, To the green distance of their sylvan home Returning slowly through the forest’s heart.” Savitri-721 “Drawn by white manes upon a high-roofed car In flare of the unsteady torches went With linked hands Satyavan and Savitri, Hearing a marriage march and nuptial hymn, Where waited them the many-voiced human world.” Savitri-724 The Gita declared that the Divine is the friend, sakha , helper, saviour of all creatures, suhrdam sarvabhutanam .⁷⁹ He is the charioteer, pilot of our ways, the defender from enemies, fighter in the battle and friend during our difficulties. He is the comrade, playmate of the game of living and the eternal companion and holds our hand in successive lives. His embraces and His blows are equally well intentioned for our Soul’s perfection. These contradictions lead to a greater intimacy with Him. 5) Laughter and sport with our comrade boy, Play-fellow: “Her playmate in the sempiternal spheres” Savitri-16 “Only by him they are, his breath is their life; An unseen Presence moulds the oblivious clay. A playmate in the mighty Mother’s game, One came upon the dubious whirling globe To hide from her pursuit in force and form.” Savitri-60 “An Infant nursed on Nature’s covert breast, An Infant playing in the magic woods, Fluting to rapture by the spirit’s streams, Awaits the hour when we shall turn to his call.” Savitri-169 “As if reversing a deformation’s spell, Released from the black magic of the Night, Renouncing servitude to the dim Abyss, It shall learn at last who lived within unseen, And seized with marvel in the adoring heart To the enthroned Child-Godhead kneel aware, Trembling with beauty and delight and love.” Savitri-171 “Playmates of youthful Nature and child God,” Savitri-266 “Unsolved the riddle of the unfinished Play; The cosmic Player laughs within his mask, And still the last inviolate secret hides Behind the human glory of a Form, Behind the gold eidolon of a Name.” Savitri-311 “Love dwells in us like an unopened flower Awaiting a rapid moment of the soul, Or he (love) roams in his charmed sleep mid thoughts and things; The child-god is at play, he seeks himself In many hearts and minds and living forms:” Savitri-398 “A visioned spell pursued my boyhood’s hours… An early child-god took my hand that held, Moved, guided by the seeking of his touch,” Savitri-404 “His bliss laughs to us or it calls concealed Like a far-heard unseen entrancing flute From moonlit branches in the throbbing woods, Tempting our angry search and passionate pain.” Savitri-614 He is the child born to our desire that we cherish and rear. His joy and laughter lure our Soul to enter an eternal game and develop our Psychic being. He nourishes our maternal and paternal faculties of love and care. He plays with everything and with the smallest things. He takes nothing seriously and takes delight in everything. The child God leading our soul in joy and laughter is profoundly developed in the life story of Sri Krishna. All is united in that deepest many-sided Divine relation and we enjoyed the ‘intimacy of infant God.’⁵⁸ The child God seeks himself in many longing hearts, mind and body and thus feels in his universalised body the existence of this whole creation. 6) Blissful servitude to God the Master: “Although she drives him on her fancy's roads, At play with him as with her child or slave, To freedom and the Eternal's mastery And immortality's stand above the world, She moves her seeming puppet of an hour.” Savitri-65 “He makes of her his moment passion's serf: To obey she feigns, she follows her creature's lead: For him she was made, lives only for his use. But conquering her, then is he most her slave; He is her dependent, all his means are hers; Nothing without her he can, she rules him still.” Savitri-65 “The master of existence lurks in us And plays at hide-and-seek with his own Force; In Nature's instrument loiters secret God.” Savitri-66 “The Master of the worlds self-made her slave Is the executor of her fantasies: She has canalised the seas of omnipotence; She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.” Savitri-121 “Strength was the slave of calm spiritual law,” Savitri-124 “She made herself the diligent serf of all,” Savitri-470 “Accepting cosmos, binds himself Nature’s serf Till he becomes her freedom—or God’s slave.” Savitri-542 “Thy servitudes (slaves) on earth are greater, King, Than all the glorious liberties of heaven.” Savitri-686, “For ever love, O beautiful slave of God!” Savitri-702 Since integral Yoga accepts the Yoga of Works, it has the need of the Divine as the all-Powerful Master, the Lord, the Doer, and the cosmic Worker, who does all work tirelessly to prepare this fragile human mud-engine for heaven’s use. Thus, Divine demands subordination and service from men and insists to do the work of all types, sarvakarmani, ⁸⁰ in the material world, and the Mother stresses, “Work, even manual work, is indispensable to the inner discovery. If one does not work, if one does not put one’s consciousness into matter, it will never develop.”⁷⁴ One should wish to live through action ‘a hundred years’⁸¹ and enjoy in the body the Divine self-fulfilment. Service to the Divine is offered through seven ascending steps. First, the devotee becomes dasya of the servant, God’s servant, who feigns obedience and yet moves by the impulse of his own free will and desire; this is the lowest stage of relation where mere obedience with fear, separation and distance from the Master predominates; secondly, he becomes the dasya of the lover, God’s lover, whose disobedience is overruled by the power of love; in this state all distance, separation, all awe, fear and mere obedience disappears in the oneness of the Beloved; thirdly, he becomes the dasya of the yantra, God’s living and loving instrument with higher stage of self-surrender, who does not obey, but moves to His will as the string replies to the finger of the musician; fourthly he becomes the dasya of the slave, the slave of God, rejoices in His possession and moves helplessly by His Divine Will; fifthly, he becomes dasya of the child, God’s child, where the God is revealed as the Mother and the slave becomes the king child, no longer a separate being, servant, instrument and slave, but a part and portion of Her eternal Consciousness and force, put out from Her for the play and yet always safe in Her. Sixthly, he becomes Vibhuti , the increasing manifestation of the Divine, the Ishwara, ‘which is indeed present in all, even in the weakest or most clouded living being.’⁸² He becomes one with the Divine Ananda , Will, Action and Knowledge. Here the complete joy is manifested by the fusion of Shakti with Ishwara. And beyond the Consciousness of Vibhuti, there exists the seventh state, that of the consciousness of the Avatara, the Supreme Himself assuming a human name and form enters the Lila of the greatest world action. This increasing slavehood of an integral Yogi reduces the gulf created between swift Spiritual evolution of the developed Soul and the slow evolution of the developing Soul. 7) Rapturous love of our divine Paramour: “Our error crucifies Reality To force its birth and divine body here, Compelling, incarnate in a human form And breathing in limbs that one can touch and clasp, Its Knowledge to rescue an ancient Ignorance, Its saviour light the inconscient universe.” Savitri-170-71 “Her eternal Lover is her action’s cause; For him she leaped forth from the unseen Vasts To move here in a stark unconscious world.” Savitri-181 “Or from the gold eye of her paramour” Savitri-349 “An incense floated in the quivering air, A mystic happiness trembled in the breast As if the invisible Beloved had come Assuming the sudden loveliness of a face And close glad hands could seize his fugitive feet And the world change with the beauty of a smile.” Savitri-290 “After all was given she demanded still; Even by his strong embrace unsatisfied, She longed to cry, “O tender Satyavan, O lover of my soul, give more, give more Of love while yet thou canst, to her thou lov’st. Imprint thyself for every nerve to keep That thrills to thee the message of my heart.” Savitri-471 “The Lover winds around his play mate’s limb, Choosing his (Spirit’s) tyranny, crushed in his embrace? To seize him better with her (Matter’s) boundless heart She (Matter) accepts the limiting circle of his (Spirit’s) arms, Bows full of bliss beneath his mastering hands And laughs in his rich constraints, most bound, most free.” Savitri-653 In the traditional Bhakti Yoga, the relation between the Lover and the Beloved is considered closest of all relationships and it proceeds through different stages that are Sangsaya, fear of loss of love leading one to state of doubt, Viraha , sorrow of separation Abhimana, anger and jealousy of separation, Bichheda , the state of complete separation, Vyakulata , passion to reunite again and the end is Milana , complete union. The means through which the love is activated are: - Sammohona , attraction, Uchhatana, excitation, Sosana , possession, Vikhyovana, disappointment and Dahana , burning sensation. Fear, doubt, anger, jealousy, grief, dissatisfaction and passion are the vital impurities. Integral Yoga rejects the vital being’s union with the Divine through the above-mentioned means as there is a danger of inrush of the lower nature and unpurified emotions; rather it experiences the same Divine union by directing purified emotions through the gate of the Psychic being which is a flowering of joy, union, confidence, self-giving and Ananda or one gets impersonal Spiritual Love by rejecting the personal egoistic limitations. The fundamental difference between the exclusive love of the traditional Bhakti Yoga and the comprehensive love of the integral Yoga is that in the former, the Divine union begins from vital sheath by turning vital emotions towards the Divine to arrive at Psychic (as that of Sri Chaitanya ) and Spiritual union (as that of Sri Krishna ); whereas the latter aims at constant union and control of Divine at every moment in all the ten sheaths (which has been discussed later) and Divine union in the mental, vital and physical sheaths are perfected by the pressure of Psychic, Spiritual, Universal and Supramental Love. Love, Psychicised and Spritualised necessarily offers a twofold fulfilment of Personal and Impersonal Joy; the lover and Beloved enjoy their infinite variety of Divine union in difference and they throw themselves finally into an absolute and intense ecstasy of divine Oneness. The sense of this Oneness paves the passage of discovery of the Supramental Self. The prolongation of this ascending union and oneness establishes the Supramental concentration. When the Supramental concentration is established or the Love Supramentalised, the personal relation with the Divine is utterly satisfied and the Divine Beloved lives permanently with His visible (subtle) material vibration. That is the experience of constant purified subtle physical Divine union and highest milana with the Divine Beloved. The descent of Divine Love to the Inconscient Sheath: “The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch Persuaded the inert black quietude And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.” Savitri-3 “A Splendour presses or a Power breaks through, Earth’s great dull barrier is removed awhile, The inconscient seal is lifted from our eyes And we grow vessels of creative might.” Savitri-108 “The poised inconscience shaken with a touch, The intuitive Silence trembling with a name, They cried to Life to invade the senseless mould And in brute forms awake divinity.” Savitri-129 “For since upon this blind and whirling globe Earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining mind And life invaded the material sheath Afflicting Inconscience with the need to feel,” Savitri-353 “Out of division’s dense inconscient cleft, And make them one with God and world and her.” Savitri-363 “A mystery wakes in our inconscient stuff, A bliss is born that can remake our life. ” Savitri-397-398 “He sang the Inconscient and its secret self, Its power omnipotent knowing not what it does All-shaping without will or thought or sense, Its blind unerring occult mystery, And darkness yearning towards the eternal Light, And Love that broods within the dim abyss And waits the answer of the human heart, And death that climbs to immortality.” Savitri-416 “My soul can meet them (Inconscient’s Law and Fate) with its living fire.” Savitri-589 “My God is will and triumphs in his paths, My God is love and sweetly suffers all. To him I have offered hope for sacrifice And gave my longings as a sacrament.” Savitri-591 “Love’s golden wings have power to fan thy void: The eyes of love gaze starlike through death’s night, The feet of love tread naked hardest worlds. He (Divine Love) labours in the depths, exults on the heights; He shall remake thy universe, O Death.” Savitri-592 “I know my coming was a wave from God. For all his suns were conscient in my birth, And one who loves in us came veiled by death.” Savitri-594 “And it is this, this descent to the very bottom, in search of... but it is not an unknown, it is not an unknown—a bursting (it really is like a bursting), that marvellous bursting of the Vibration of Love; that is...it is the memory. And the effort is to turn it into an active reality.”⁷⁷ The Mother “And there I suddenly found myself in front of something like a vault or a grotto (of course, it was only something ‘like’ that), and when it opened, I saw a Being of iridescent light reclining with his head on his hand, fast asleep. All the light around him was iridescent. When I told Theon what I was seeing, he said it was ‘the immanent God in the depths of the Inconscient,’ who through his radiations was slowly waking the Inconscient to Consciousness… I have experienced the descent into the Inconscient many times; this experience of descending to the very bottom of the Inconscient and finding there the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence, under one form or another. it has happened quite frequently.”¹⁵² The Mother In the Upanishadic era, the human body is defined to be composed of five koshas or sheaths. In each of these koshas, the Brahman or Purusha or Self is either concealed or revealed. They are Annamaya kosha, Pranamaya kosha, Manomaya kosha, Vijnanamaya kosha and Anandamaya kosha. Five more nether and intermediate sheaths are incorporated here in integral Yoga, as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo had experienced ten (actually twelve) occult Centres; for They better distinguish the stages of our self-development. The Inconscient sheath is the base, which is a rather darker and impure part of our existence and the dwelling place of four fundamental problems of existence represented by Ignorance, Suffering, Falsehood and Death. The Subconscient sheath, physical sheath, vital sheath and mental sheath have evolved from the Inconscient sheath. In the mental sheath, the physical mind, vital mind, sensory mind, emotional mind and intellectual mind are already evolved and they are under the direct control of the Inconscient sheath. There are higher faculties of the mind sheath that we name them also as Spiritual sheath; they are Higher mind, Illumined mind, Intuitive mind and Over mind, which are yet to evolve in our self-growth. Apart from them, the Psychic sheath, the Universal sheath, the Supramental sheath and Bliss sheath, are yet to evolve and our immediate preoccupation is to participate in the evolution of these higher sheaths and apply their respective concentration towards the perfection of other inferior sheaths. King Aswapati’s exploration of the Inconscient sheath opened the passage of ‘grand solution’ in the problem of existence. On digging the core of darkness, he discovered wells of Light. A cave of darkness guards the Eternal Light. Eternal wraps His head in the Inconscient’s dark covered cloud. He discovered in the heart of Inconscient, the Supreme Consciousness. The activation of this Supreme state of Inconscient Self will flood all the other intermediate sheaths with the Divine faculties of Light, Love, Will and Ananda etc. This discovery of Inconscient Self paves the passage of Supramental invasion to all the intermediate sheaths from two ends of above the head and below the feet or in the language of Savitri ‘Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light.’⁷ The Mother never recounted the invasion of Supramental Love from Inconscient domain; rather there is The Mother’s record of Supramental Power and Supramental Light invading from Inconscient sheath on 7th November, 1958 and night of 24-25 July, 1959 respectively. The Divine Love from the Vijnanamaya Kosha had invaded the vast inconscient sheath through The Mother’s body on the night of 12-13th April, 1962. This experience confirms that there is yet another invasion of Divine Love that waits, through the innermost gate or very bottom gate of Inconscient sheath that is identified as one of Their unfinished tasks (For example of Savitri's line: “A mystery wakes in our inconscient stuff, A bliss is born that can remake our life. ” Savitri-397-398, "He (Divine Love in Inconscient) shall remake thy universe, O Death.” Savitri-592). The utter fullness of such an experience will come with the simultaneous invasion of Divine Love from two extreme ends of top and bottom sheath which is again identified as Their another unfinished mighty task. The descent of Divine Love to the Subconscient Sheath: “Although he (King) once had felt the Eternal’s clasp, Too near to suffering worlds his nature lived, And where he stood were entrances of Night.” Savitri-128 “It (Divine Love) summons the spirit’s sleeping memories Up from subconscient depths beneath Time’s foam; Oblivious of their flame of happy truth, Arriving with heavy eyes that hardly see, They come disguised as feelings and desires, Like weeds upon the surface float awhile And rise and sink on a somnambulist tide. Impure, degraded though her (Subconscient) motions are, Always a heaven-truth broods in life’s deeps; In her obscurest members burns that fire.” Savitri-138-139 “Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice, Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere, We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state, Make the abysm a road for Heaven’s descent, Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.” Savitri-171-72 “Out of the Void this grand creation rose, For this the Spirit came into the Abyss” Savitri-632 “A hidden Bliss is at the root of things.” Savitri-630 “A heavier tread is mine, a mightier touch. There where the gods and demons battle in night Or wrestle on the borders of the Sun, Taught by the sweetness and the pain of life To bear the uneven strenuous beat that throbs Against the edge of some divinest hope, To dare the impossible with these pangs of search, In me the spirit of immortal love Stretches its arms out to embrace mankind. Too far thy heavens for me from suffering men. Imperfect is the joy not shared by all.” Savitri-686 “Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind; A sudden bliss shall run through every limb And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.” Savitri-710 In integral Yoga, the dynamisation of the Brahman or Purusha in the Psychic sheath and higher Mental sheath or Spiritual sheath is our first preoccupation. Second preoccupation is the activation of Brahman in the distant Universal, Supramental and Bliss sheaths; third preoccupation is to activate the Brahman in the Subconscient and Inconscient sheath and the concurrent preoccupation to activate the Brahman in the lower Mental, Vital and Physical sheaths. The above order may vary based on the swabhava and swadharma of a Sadhaka or simultaneous activation of more than one sheath may supersede the above order. The influence of Psychic love and Spiritual love is effective partly to transform the mind, life and body, but for exploring the vast domain of Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths, the greater instrumentation of Supramental Love is essential. Since Divine Love is related with the most intense purification, its Presence is most required in the dark, obscured, restless nether members and unhealthy zone of Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths. The Mother’s present world action is concerned with clearing the Subconscient sheath, which is the uppermost layer of the Inconscient Sheath and that rises up to the surface in order to be transformed. The old pull of Subconscient memory renews and its dull gravitation drags us down to half half-ordered chaos of life and may even draw towards Spiritual fall. Her large subjective action includes penetration and call down of Divine Light to darker parts and is curtained by darkness does Her slow transformative work and establishes control in the individual, local, state, national and international subconscience, layer after layer, so that more and more those sheaths will grow conscious and be possessed by Her Light. The descent of Divine Love to Annamaya Kosha or Physical Sheath: - “Here with the suddenness divine advents have, Repeating the marvel of the first descent, Changing to rapture the dull earthly round, Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death. Well might he (Love) find in her his perfect shrine.” Savitri-14 “The smile of love that sanctions the long game,” Savitri-41 “Even his body’s subtle self within Could raise the earthly parts towards higher things And feel on it the breath of heavenlier air." Savitri-43 “The sweetness of love that knows not death,” Savitri-51 “The beautiful body of a soul at ease, Like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit groves, Childlike she (life) swung in her gold cradle of joy.” Savitri-114 “All the soul’s postures donned divinity. There met the ardent mutual intimacies Of mastery’s joy and the joy of servitude Imposed by Love on Love’s heart that obeys And Love’s body held beneath a rapturous yoke.” Savitri-125 “This limited being lifted to zenith bliss, Happy to enjoy one touch of things supreme, Packed into its sealed small infinity, Its endless time-made world outfacing Time, A little output of God’s vast delight.” Savitri-238 “On an earth which looked towards a thousand suns, That the created might grow Nature’s lord And Matter’s depths be illumined with a soul They tied to date and norm and finite scope The million-mysteried movement of the One.” Savitri-268 “For He who Is grows manifest in the years And the slow Godhead (Annamaya Purusha) shut within the cell Climbs from the plasm to immortality.” Savitri-272 “It longed for the Light that knows not death and birth.” Savitri-277 “The radiant limbs that know not birth and death,” Savitri-278 “As those who have lived long made one in love” Savitri-292 “Incarnating inexpressibly in her limbs The boundless joy the blind world-forces seek, Her body of beauty mooned the seas of bliss.” Savitri-314 “A deathless meaning filled her mortal limbs;” Savitri-373 “Thought, vision, feeling, sense, the body’s self Are seized unutterably and he endures An ecstasy and an immortal change; He feels a Wideness and becomes a Power, All knowledge rushes on him like a sea:” Savitri-375 “As if Love’s deathless moment had been found,” Savitri-579 “Then Love shall at last unwounded tread earth’s soil; Man’s mind shall admit the sovereignty of Truth And body bear the immense descent of God.” Savitri-516 “Always he was with her, a living soul That met her eyes with close enamoured eyes, A living body near to her body’s joy… Body to body near, soul near to soul, Moving as if by a common breath and will They were tied in the single circling of their days Together by love’s unseen atmosphere, Inseparable like the earth and sky.” Savitri-533 “Even now the deathless Lover’s touch we feel:” Savitri-649 “An imperishable Force touching brute things Transform earth’s death into immortal life.” Savitri-664 “Her body quivered with eternity’s touch, Her soul stood close to the founts of the infinite.” Savitri-671 “A physical world is made to express Beauty; if it became harmonious instead of being the ignoble thing it is, if it became harmonious, it would have exceptional vibratory quality!... It is rather curious: the vital world is magnificent, the mental world has its splendours, the overmental world with all its god (who are existing beings, I know them well) is truly very beautiful; but I tell you, since I had that Contact, I have found all that hollow—hollow and ...lacking the essential. And that essential thing, in its principle, is here on earth.”⁷¹ The Mother Our ancient scriptures have represented fivefold Ananda manifested in the physical nature. They are Maithunananda , sex enjoyment, Visayananda, sense enjoyment, Tivrananda , intense enjoyment, Raudrananda, wrathful enjoyment and Vaidyutananda , lightning enjoyment. These enjoyments are established in the form of habits in the physical mind, sensational mind, aesthetic mind, emotional mind and intellectual mind respectively and are separated from the Soul stuff and hence are short-lived enjoyments. In order to transform this transient physical substance into ideal love and pure vessel of self-existent motiveless flawless Ananda , it has to ascend the four stairs of purification through Psychic love, Spiritual love, Universal love and Supramental Love and purify those enjoyments into the image of Soul stuff, Spiritual stuff, Universal stuff and Supramental stuff. The purification of physical sheath offers the four perfections of mahattva, greatness of a sustaining force, bala, an abounding strength, energy and puissance of outgoing and managing force, laghuta, a lightness, swiftness and adaptability of nervous and physical being and dharana-samarthya, a holding and responsive power of physical substance towards the Divine Love. When the physical substance is completely transformed, which is the most difficult exercise among transforming action of all the sheaths, then the physical substance will be able to hold the three Divine faculties of Supreme Love, Supreme Delight and Supreme Beauty. Through descent of pure Divine Love, life span can be increased indefinitely through activation of ‘immense spiritual fate’¹¹³ and one remains eternally young. The descent of Divine Love to Pranamaya Kosha or Vital Sheath: - “Heaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure. There could have reached our divinised sense and heart Some natural felicity’s bright extreme, Some thrill of Supernature’s absolutes:” Savitri-123 “Only to be was a supreme delight, Life was a happy laughter of the soul And Joy was king with Love for minister. The spirit’s luminousness was bodied there. Life’s contraries were lovers or natural friends And her extremes keen edges of harmony:” Savitri-124 “A mystic Presence none can probe nor rule, Creator of this game of ray and shade In this sweet and bitter paradoxical life, Asks from the body the soul’s intimacies And by the swift vibration of a nerve Links its mechanic throbs to light and love.” Savitri-138 "Only was lit some heat of the flame of Life, Some joy to be, some rapturous leaps of sense. All was an impetus of half-conscious Force, A spirit sprawling drowned in dense life-foam, A vague self grasping at the shape of things." Savitri-146 “Made (subtle) sense a road to reach the intangible: It thrilled with the supernal influences That build the substance of life’s deeper soul.” Savitri-236 “Aware of forms to which our eyes are closed, Conscious of nearnesses we cannot feel, The Power within her shaped her moulding sense In deeper figures than our surface types.” Savitri-356 “Or longing with their self of life and flesh They clung to her for heart’s nourishment and support: The rest they could not see in visible light; Vaguely they bore her inner mightiness.” Savitri-363 “In a narrow passage, the subconscient’s gate, She breathed with difficulty and pain and strove To find the inner self concealed in sense.” Savitri-489 “The All-Wonderful makes a marvel of each event, The All-Beautiful is a miracle in each shape; The All-Blissful smites with rapture the heart’s throbs, A pure celestial joy is the use of sense.” Savitri-663 “But you see, you see all the way I have come...And I was born with a consciously prepared body—Sri Aurobindo was aware of that, he said it immediately the first time he saw me: I was born free. That is, from the spiritual standpoint: without any desire. Without any desire and attachment. And mon petit, if there is the slightest desire and the slightest attachment, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do this work. A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control (the vital of this present incarnation was sexless—a warrior), an absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior—no desires, no attachments...Since my earliest childhood, I have done things which, to human consciousness, are “monstrous;” my mother went so far as to tell me that I was a real “monster,” because I had neither attachments nor desires. If I was asked, “Would you like to do this?” I answered, “I don’t care.” If people were nasty to me, or if people died or went away, it left me absolutely calm—and so: “You are a monster, you have no feelings.” And with that preparation... It is eighty-six years since I came here, mon petit! For thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo consciously, without letup, night and day... We shouldn’t be in a hurry.”⁶⁹ The Mother “But I can tell you one thing: even before Her (Ananda aspect of the Divine Mother) coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga) from the mental plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the mental plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time – I didn’t seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after no more than a month of this yoga, I looked exactly like an 18 year old! And someone who knew me and had stayed with me in Japan’ came here, and when he saw me, he could scarcely believe his eyes! He said, ‘But my god, is it you?’ I said, ‘Of course!’…Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went away – because on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so many things to change.”¹¹² The Mother “I should perhaps add one or two things to avoid misapprehensions. First, the love for the Divine of which I speak is not a psychic love only; it is the love of all the being, the vital and vital-physical included, — all are capable of the same self-giving. It is a mistake to believe that if the vital loves, it must be a love that demands and imposes the satisfaction of its desire; it is a mistake to think that it must be either that or else the vital, in order to escape from its “attachment”, must draw away altogether from the object of its love. The vital can be as absolute in its unquestioning self-giving as any other part of the nature; nothing can be more generous than its movement when it forgets self for the Beloved. The vital and physical should both give themselves in the true way — the way of true love, not of ego desire.”¹¹⁸ Sri Aurobindo Behind the surface life of desire and sense there is in us an inner and subtle vital being, which is not dissolved by death; if this vital Godhead is brought out into prominence, then it lifts life with the Supreme's touch and will be a true instrument of Divine Nature. The innermost domain of subtle vital Sheath that is close to the true Psychic being is called the true vital Being which has direct access to the Divine in the Spiritual domain. True vital is the means through which the sacrificial flame will rise in order to bring down Divine forces to the subtle vital and gross vital substance. True vital is the purest part of the vital where the Divine is stationed and around it there is extension of subtle vital and around subtle vital there is extension of gross vital. Both gross vital and subtle vital are subject to impurity and the purity of subtle vital grows as it is exposed to the influence of true vital Being. The fourfold perfection of the Vital Sheath are purnata , fullness of life, prasnnata , clear purity and gladness, samata , vital and emotional equality and bhoga-samarthya , capacity for possession and enjoyment or capacity to hold the Divine Love in the vital sheath. Integral Yoga proposes six-fold disciplines through which life will be transformed into the image of the Divine. First, life as it is a movement of desire; for Divine living the desire must be abolished and in its place there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of true vital being; secondly, life is driven partly by the influence of physical mind, vital mind, emotional mind, sensory mind, intellectual mind, and these faculties are still under the domination of ignorant forces; for Divine living these lower mind faculties must cease to be anything but an instrument of the inmost Psychic being; thirdly, there is a veil that separates the lower mind faculties from higher mind faculties, which are higher Mind, illumined Mind, intuitive Mind and Over Mind; for Divine living the lid that separates these two domains must be broken and vital sheath must come under the direct influence of higher Mind; the six lotuses or energy centres open from top in descending order and vital sheath opens by the pressure of higher mental sheath or Spiritual sheath; fourthly, life for its satisfaction turns towards separative ego; ego must disappear and must be replaced by true Spiritual person and the formation of universal sheath begins; fifthly, the law of love is a Divine Presence and Influence to realise and fulfil oneself in others and by others, to possess and be possessed by others because without being possessed one does not possess oneself utterly; sixthly, the life must open itself towards Supramental pranic force and will for its complete transformation and perfect enjoyment and with the exposure towards Divine Love one ‘does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages.’⁸ Lastly, we may take the help of external physical means of Hatha Yogic asana and pranayama and Raja Yogic japa, for the full and free working of the universal Pranic Shakti . The descent of Divine Love to Manomaya Kosha or Mental Sheath: “His brain was wrapped in overwhelming light, An all-embracing knowledge seized his heart: Thoughts rose in him no earthly mind can hold, Mights played that never coursed through mortal nerves: He scanned the secrets of the Overmind, He bore the rapture of the Oversoul.” Savitri-302 “There was no mind there with its need to know, There was no heart there with its need to love. All person perished in its namelessness.” Savitri-308 “I shall save earth, if earth consents to be saved. Then Love shall at last unwounded tread earth’s soil; Man’s mind shall admit the sovereignty of Truth And body bear the immense descent of God.” Savitri-516 “The Power that from her being’s summit reigned, The Presence chambered in lotus secrecy, Came down and held the centre in her brow Where the mind’s Lord in his control-room sits; There throned on concentration’s native seat He opens that third mysterious eye in man, The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen, When Light with a golden ecstasy fills his brain And the Eternal’s wisdom drives his choice And eternal Will seizes the mortal’s will.” Savitri-665 “Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind; A sudden bliss shall run through every limb And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.” Savitri-710 “When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the Supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. ‘It’s strange,’ He said to me, ‘it is an endless work! Nothing seems to get done—everything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again.’ Then I gave Him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: ‘It will be like that until we touch bottom.’ So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience…how to put it? …practically, objectively; He experienced it only in His consciousness, not in the body—but my body has always participated), both of us descended immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.”⁹ The Mother Behind the silence and stillness of surface mind, there is a vast domain of inner or subtle mind and the innermost domain of subtle mind which is close to the true Psychic being, is truth Mind or true Mental Being, the Divine stationed in the subtle mind. This truth Mind wakes to new-born truths which are inexpressible to the surface mind and is having direct access to the Divine Source in the higher mental or Spiritual sheath and Supramental Sheath. Truth mind ascends to Psychic being in the heart and Spiritual Being above the head and the corresponding Divine Force descend on our mental, vital and physical sheaths for their Divine illumination and transformation. We have divided Manomaya Kosha into two parts, one of lower mentality, which requires transformation and the other of higher mentality, the Spiritual faculties above the head, which are responsible for our Spiritual transformation. Integral Yoga begins with the opening of passage to higher mental faculties of Higher mind, Illumined mind, Intuitive mind and Over mind, which are sealed to the common man. For our integral fulfilment and perfection, we have to convert our lower mind faculties of ethical and intellectual mind into Truth, Right of Divine nature and illumination of Divine knowledge, our emotional and aesthetic mind into the Divine love, unity and creative enjoyment of Divine beauty, our dynamic and volitional mind into working of Divine power, our sensational and physical mind into possession of higher states of Samadhi dynamised in the waking state.¹⁰ All the above-mentioned lower mind faculties are to be thrown into the Psychic fire within; under its pressure all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and undivine perversions are burned away. Then a flame of larger Spiritual love emerges out of the mental sheath for further purification and perfectibility of life. Thus, mental sheath prepares itself to the exposure of Universal and Supramental love. A fully developed mental sheath or the subtle mind can support and hold a well built gross body and is a meeting ground of all other sheaths for transformation action. The descent of Divine Love to Chaitya Kosha or Psychic Sheath: “The soul must soar sovereign above the form And climb to summits beyond mind’s half-sleep; Our hearts we must inform with heavenly strength, Surprise the animal with the occult god.” Savitri-171 “In passionate responses half-unveiled He reached the rim of ecstasies unknown; A touch supreme surprised his hurrying heart, The clasp was remembered of the Wonderful, And hints leaped down of white beatitudes.” Savitri-237 “Adored and pure and still on his heart’s throne… Immaculate in white virginity… Or as a lover clasps his one beloved, Godhead of his life’s worship and desire, Icon of his heart’s sole idolatry, She now is his and must live for him alone: She has invaded him with her sudden bliss, An exhaustless marvel in his happy grasp, An allurement, a caught ravishing miracle. Her now he claims after long rapt pursuit, The one joy of his body and his soul:” Savitri-274 “A single ecstasy without a break, Love was a close and thrilled identity In the throbbing heart of all that luminous life.” Savitri-325 “I have found the deep unchanging soul of love.” Savitri-435 “O lover of my soul, give more, give more Of love while yet thou canst, to her thou lov’st” Savitri-471 “In the kingdom of the lotus of the heart Love chanting its pure hymeneal hymn Made life and body mirrors of sacred joy And all the emotions gave themselves to God.” Savitri-529 “A divine Puissance then takes Nature’s place And pushes the movements of our body and mind; Possessor of our passionate hopes and dreams, The beloved despot of our thoughts and acts, She streams into us with her unbound force, Into mortal limbs the Immortal’s rapture and power. An inner law of beauty shapes our lives;” Savitri-530 “Over the body she loved her soul leaned out” Savitri-571 “Only the spirit knew the spirit still, And the heart divined the old loved heart, though changed.” Savitri-576 “In other spaces, and the soul she loved” Savitri-578 “The soul of the beloved now seen no more.” Savitri-585 “An adoration reigned in the yearning heart, A spirit of purity, an elusive presence Of faery beauty and ungrasped delight Whose momentary and escaping thrill, However unsubstantial to our flesh, And brief even in imperishableness, Much sweeter seemed than any rapture known Earth or all-conquering heaven can ever give.” Savitri-603 “And let his soul be one with him I love;” Savitri-614 “But the soul grows concealed within its house; It (Psychic being) gives to the body its strength and magnificence; It (Psychic being) follows aims in an ignorant aimless world, It lends significance to earth’s meaningless life.” Savitri-658-659 “In the heart’s cave speaks secretly with God . But these are touches and high moments lived; Fragments of Truth supreme have lit his soul, Reflections of the sun in waters still.” Savitri-659 “If our souls could see and love and clasp God’s Truth,” Savitri-663 “Eternity multiplied its vast self-look Translating its endless mightiness and joy Into delight souls playing with Time could share In grandeurs ever new-born from the unknown depths, In powers that leaped immortal from unknown heights, In passionate heart-beats of an undying love, In scenes of a sweetness that can never fade.” Savitri-671 “I open the wide eye of solitude To uncover the voiceless rapture of my bliss, Where in a pure and exquisite hush it lies Motionless in its slumber of ecstasy, Resting from the sweet madness of the dance Out of whose beat the throb of hearts was born.” Savitri-697 “Awakened to the meaning of my heart That to feel love and oneness is to live And this the magic of our golden change, Is all the truth I know or seek, O sage.” (Supramentalised Psychic transformation.) Savitri-724 Our true Psychic being is behind the surface desire soul and emotional mind which is a ‘hurtling field of joy and grief, love and hatred, wrath, fear, struggle, aspiration, disgust, likes, dislikes, indifferences, content, discontent, hopes, disappointments, gratitude, revenge and all the stupendous play of passion.’¹¹ The Psychic Love’s momentary beauty and ungrasped delight, however unsubstantial and escaping to our thrilling flesh, it is much sweeter than any rapture known. In Psychic love, the joy comes from within, is pure, without demand and sincere in self-giving. It has its own more personal love, bhakti, surrender, vision and sense of The Mother everywhere and the heart within. In Spiritual love, Ananda comes from above the head; it is more impersonal and universal and less exclusive in nature. Supramental love is all-inclusive, does not depend on outer contact. It has access to both personal and impersonal elements of our being. Psychic love springs from the inmost Psychic being, which has the capacity to discern and reject mind and life’s falsehood, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda. Intensification of Psychic love depends on its opening towards the flame of Spiritual and Supramental Love. The true Psychic being holds the true physical, true vital and true mental being which are the innermost stuff of the subtle physical, subtle vital and subtle mental sheath and this innermost Psychic Being has direct access to the Divine in the Spiritual and Supramental domain. It is the first Divine instrument to transform nature, leading towards Psychicisation of nature where mind, life and body will be completely under the control of the Psychic being. Psychicisation is a powerful aid towards Spiritualisation and Supramentalisation of the Psychic being. The descent of Divine Love to the Spiritual Sheath: “Leaped out from a chance tension of the soul, Some hue of the Absolute could fall on life, Some glory of knowledge and intuitive sight, Some passion of the rapturous heart of Love. A hierophant of the bodiless Secrecy Interned in an unseen spiritual sheath, The Will that pushes sense beyond its scope To feel the light and joy intangible, Half found its way into the Ineffable’s peace, Half captured a sealed sweetness of desire That yearned from a bosom of mysterious Bliss, Half manifested veiled Reality.” Savitri-176 “As if a miracle of heart’s change by joy He watched in the alchemist radiance of her suns The crimson outburst of one secular flower On the tree-of-sacrifice of spiritual love.” Savitri-190 “The Bliss that is creation’s splendid grain Or the white passion of God-ecstasy That laughs in the blaze of the boundless heart of Love.” Savitri-287 “The Spirit’s white neutrality became A playground of miracles, a rendezvous For the secret powers of a mystic Timelessness: It (Spirit) made of Space a marvel house of God, It poured through Time its works of ageless might, Unveiled seen as a luring rapturous face The wonder and beauty of its Love and Force.” Savitri-326-327 “A consciousness that saw without a seer, The Truth where knowledge is not nor knower nor known, The Love enamoured of its own delight In which the Lover is not nor the Beloved Bringing their personal passion into the Vast, The Force omnipotent in quietude, The Bliss that none can ever hope to taste.” Savitri-548 “Immortal yearnings without name leap down, Large quiverings of godhead seeking run And weave upon a puissant field of calm A high and lonely ecstasy of will.” Savitri-572 “Around him nameless, infinite she surged, Her spirit fulfilled in his spirit, rich with all Time, As if Love’s deathless moment had been found, A pearl within eternity’s white shell.” Savitri-579 “The Love our hearts call down to heal all strife,” Savitri-661 “Oh, it’s an impression equivalent to the one I had when Sri Aurobindo gave my mind silence (during the first meeting with Him). It became perfectly blank and empty (gesture to the forehead), blank and empty, and there was nothing anymore: I couldn’t think anymore, not one idea, not one system anymore, nothing –in a word, total imbecility! It never came back. You see, it went up above, and here there was nothing.”⁷⁰ The Mother Nirvana is an impersonal, signless, featureless, blank pure Spiritual Consciousness that replaces mind. In Spiritual life, the more one enters the higher planes of consciousness the more one will meet the threat from the Inconscient plane. That is a part of the Divine play in order to bridge the gulf between Heaven and Hell. It is like a mighty storm from the Inconscient world, which is chased by the mighty Sun from the Supramental world. In integral Yoga, the individual Spiritual Self is won to merge not with the Supreme Self alone but also dynamised as the descent of universal Divine Shakti for the transformation of Nature. Transformation of isolated individual Nature is not practicable but to adventure in all the planes of the Consciousness till all the worlds or planes of consciousness are possessed by Divine Shakti . Thus, Savitri’s Spiritual force must be used to conquer the greater kingdom of untransformed Nature. She will ascend this Spiritual being to the absolute state of the Divine so that Nature and Soul will experience the descent of the absolute Divine state. At the same time, she will accept to be small and a mere human on earth so that high and low can meet in a single body. She will uncover the Unknowable and grow conscious of the tops of the Superconscient plane by banishing all thought from her and by becoming God’s void. So, she realises her Spiritual Self, God, by casting off her mind, by stepping back from name and form and annuls herself completely. The Spiritual approach of life of becoming a true Divine instrument is that his understanding proceeds without the aid of thought, he speaks whatever is needed to be said, does whatever need to be done and knows things without the aid of knowledge; his impersonal Love needs no aid of the Lover and Beloved. It has greater instrumentality of Knowledge, Power and Will and unlimited intensity of Love, Joy and Beauty. The descent of Divine Love to Visva Atma and Universal Sheath: “The universal Mother’s love was hers.” Savitri-8 “A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary, Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven; Love in her was wider than the universe, The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.” Savitri-15 “His bliss in her to him is his whole world:” Savitri-62 “Pure mystic voices in beatitude’s hush Appealed to Love’s immaculate sweetnesses, Calling his (Love’s) honeyed touch to thrill the worlds, His (Love’s) blissful hands to seize on Nature’s limbs, His (Love’s) sweet intolerant might of union To take all beings into his (Love’s) saviour arms, Drawing to his (Love’s) pity the rebel and the waif To force on them the happiness they refuse.” Savitri-123 “There reigned a breath of high immune content, A fortunate gait of days in tranquil air, A flood of universal love and peace. A sovereignty of tireless sweetness lived Like a song of pleasure on the lips of Time.” Savitri-127 “And when that greater Self comes sea-like down To fill this image of our transience, All shall be captured by delight, transformed:” Savitri-171 “Waking and sleep lay locked in mutual arms; Helpless and indistinct came pleasure and pain Trembling with the first faint thrills of a World-Soul.” Savitri-157 “And lay on the breast of universal love.” Savitri-233 “Feels now the closeness of a waiting love,” Savitri-289 “One who could love without return for love, Meeting and turning to the best the worst, It healed the bitter cruelties of earth, Transforming all experience to delight; Intervening in the sorrowful paths of birth It rocked the cradle of the cosmic Child And stilled all weeping with its hand of joy; It led things evil towards their secret good, It turned racked falsehood into happy truth; Its power was to reveal divinity.” Savitri-291 “A fire of passion burned in spirit-depths, A constant touch of sweetness linked all hearts, The throb of one adoration’s single bliss In a rapt ether of undying love.” Savitri-291 “A love that bore the cross of pain with joy Eudaemonised the sorrow of the world, Made happy the weight of long unending Time, The secret caught of God’s felicity.” Savitri-312-133 “His being, spread to embrace the universe,… His universal sympathy upbore, Immense like ocean, the creation’s load As earth upbears all beings’ sacrifice, Thrilled with the hidden Transcendent’s joy and peace.” Savitri-318-319 “To him the universe was her bosom of love,” Savitri-327 “Her greatness and her sweetness and her bliss, Her might to possess and her vast power to love:” Savitri-362 “And the loneliness that separates soul from soul, She wished to make all one immense embrace That she might house in it all living things” Savitri-362 “My spirit has glimpsed the glory for which it came, The beating of one vast heart in the flame of things, My eternity clasped by his eternity And, tireless of the sweet abysms of Time, Deep possibility always to love.” Savitri-435 “When I have loved for ever, I shall know. Love in me knows the truth all changings mask. I know that knowledge is a vast embrace: I know that every being is myself, In every heart is hidden the myriad One.” Savitri-594 “A Lover leaning from his cloister’s door Gathers the whole world into his single breast.” Savitri-632-3 “My heart is wiser than the Reason’s thoughts, My heart is stronger than thy bonds, O Death. It sees and feels the one Heart beat in all, It feels the high Transcendent’s sunlike hands, It sees the cosmic Spirit at its work; In the dim Night it lies alone with God. My heart’s strength can carry the grief of the universe And never falter from its luminous track, Its white tremendous orbit through God’s peace. It (Savitri’s heart) can drink up the sea of All-Delight And never lose the white spiritual touch, The calm that broods in the deep Infinite.” Savitri-635 “More hearts till love in us has filled thy world!” Savitri-687 “And the mandate of thy secret world-wide love.” Savitri-687 “An energy of the triune Infinite, In a measureless Reality she dwelt, A rapture and a being and a force, A linked and myriad-motioned plenitude, A virgin unity, a luminous spouse, Housing a multitudinous embrace To marry all in God’s immense delight, Bearing the eternity of every spirit, Bearing the burden of universal love, A wonderful mother of unnumbered souls.” Savitri-695 “For ever love, O beautiful slave of God! O lasso of my rapture’s widening noose, Become my cord of universal love. The spirit ensnared by thee force to delight Of creation’s oneness sweet and fathomless, Compelled to embrace my myriad unities And all my endless forms and divine souls.” Savitri-702 “His living cosmic spirit shall enring, Annulling the decree of death and pain, Erasing the formulas of the Ignorance, With the deep meaning of beauty and life’s hid sense, The being ready for immortality, His regard crossing infinity’s mystic waves Bring back to Nature her early joy to live, The metred heart-beats of a lost delight, The cry of a forgotten ecstasy, The dance of the first world-creating Bliss.” Savitri-706 “In the night, I am always given a state of human consciousness to put right, one after another—there are millions of them. And there are always all the images and events that illustrate that particular state of consciousness. At times, it is very hard going: I wake up tired, as after a long period of work.”⁷⁰ The Mother “The sorrow of all living things shall come And knock at his (Avatara’s) doors and live within his house;” Savitri-446 With the complete dissolution of ego, the universal sheath takes possession of the lower sheaths of mind, life and body, and it widens their capacity to the proportion of the universe. The universalisation process begins with the breakdown of the walls of mental, vital and physical sheaths by a powerful inrush of the Divine into these lower sheaths and changes our nature into a reflection of Divine nature by possession of universal love, joy and oneness. A Sadhaka feels oneness with all the bodies and identifies that as his true physical existence, universal life as his true vital existence, universal Mind as his true mental existence and is aware of their desires, struggles, joys, sorrows, thoughts, in a sense as if they were his own problem to be cured in his universal sheath. The Mother recounts, “All the mornings are difficult...for instance, all the vibrations from sick people, all those problems of life come from everywhere. And for those three hours, there is tension, struggle, acute seeking for what should be done or for the attitude to be taken...It is that time I have tested the power of mantra...I repeat my mantra automatically, without stopping; and every time the difficulty increases, a kind of Power comes into those words and acts on Matter...It saves the situation at critical moments...it restores order.”⁷⁵ “But I found that interesting, because ... It's generally like this: the Force is there, working, and if something comes (a call from someone, a prayer or something), all this (gesture to the forehead) generally remains absolutely still, immobile, merely letting the Force pass through, and all I sometimes do is simply (gesture of offering or presenting something upward): "Lord, here is this task, it's for You." That's all, and I leave it. But in this case, I was sitting at my table (the telegram had just come), concentrating, and I quite deliberately and consciously put him in contact with the Force. Because there was a whole world of suggestions, he expected the end: "Now it's the end." So because of that, I concentrated and put a formation.”¹⁴³ Universal love is Spiritual in its origin and is founded in the sense of the One and the Divine everywhere. ‘When the universal love seized his heart, it is decisive sign that the Divine has taken possession of him; and when he has the vision of the All-beautiful everywhere and can feel at all times the bliss of His embrace, that is the decisive sign that he has taken possession of the Divine.'¹² There are three grades of universalisation; in the first stage Sadhaka is identified with lower sheaths of universal mind, life and body; he is depressed by the cosmic suffering and elated by cosmic joy and ‘this oneness can be carried even to the body, as in the story of the Indian saint who, seeing a bullock tortured in the field by its cruel owner, cried out with the creature’s pain and the weal of the lash was found reproduced on his own flesh.’¹³ In the second stage, this subjection of the lower sheath to the reaction of Prakriti is added with a new faculty of freedom and oneness with Sachchidananda. The Soul becomes ‘free and superior to the cosmic reactions; the soul understands, accepts the experience, sympathises, but is not overpowered or affected, so that at last even mind and body learn also to accept without being overpowered or even affected except on their surface.’¹ ³ In the third stage the Sadhaka attains a ‘spiritual supremacy and freedom which enables him to understand perfectly, put the right values on things, and heal from above instead of struggling from below. It does not inhibit the divine compassion and helpfulness, but it does inhibit the human and animal sorrow and suffering.’¹³ To recapitulate, in the first stage the Sadhaka due to his universalisation bears the burden of earth’s suffering; out of this endurance perfect equality is born; in the second stage his suffering is added with the capacity to heal the universal problems by transforming equality into ecstasy; in the third stage the mind, life and body utterly obey the higher sheaths, or highest of the bliss sheath of perfect ecstasy and heals the universal problem with fullness of bliss, without any trace of suffering. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were missioned on earth for the greatest world action of the Avataras , of bearing the heavy burden of earth. They had accepted the second stage of universalisation and cleared the vast debris of universal Inconscient by Their prolonged suffering. They would have easily reached the third stage of universalisation had they sealed off and excluded the burden of transforming the universal Subconscient and Inconscient from the scope of Their integral world action. In this physical transformation process, healing of the body by the pressure of Sachchidananda consciousness alone from above is discouraged, because that will distance the possibility of discovery of the All-Mighty Power of Subconscient and Inconscient Self ingrained in the cells of the body or awakening of the same Sachchidananda force from below. So for transformation of the body, the simultaneous action of Sachchidananda force from above the head and below the feet are highly desirable. Despite the above constraint, The Mother had promised⁸⁶ that Her children need not have to suffer like Them because of the reduced burden of the Inconscient sheath and will be able to ascend to the third stage of universalisation, where transformation action will be accelerated with full of Bliss. The ecstasy will have the power to restore order in the physical working and there will be victory over the forces of dissolution. The Mother recounted, ‘Sri Aurobindo wrote very clearly: for all those who have faith and open themselves in surrender and faith, the work will be done automatically. As long as he was here...all the thirty years I spent with him working, NOT ONCE did I have to make an effort for a transformation. Simply, whenever there was a difficulty, I repeat, My Lord, my Lord, my Lord... I just thought of him—hop! It went away. Physical pain: he annulled it.’⁸⁶ If a liberated Soul’s consciousness is universalised, then through movement of his Consciousness many unknown Souls in distant lands will be liberated. Thus, the task of a liberated Soul of liberating others is accomplished or earth “Knows that one high step might enfranchise all.”¹⁴⁴ Love is a mutual self-giving; it grows in the subtle physical and subsequently universalises and manifests in the world. There is a specialty of intimate Divine Love when one becomes united with the universal Divine. This is hinted and developed in Savitri : “All here shall be one day her sweetness’ home, All contraries prepare her harmony;” Savitri-314 “All contraries heal their long dissidence. There meet and clasp the eternal opposites, There pain becomes a violent fiery joy; Evil turns back to its original good, And sorrow lies upon the breasts of Bliss:” Savitri-451 “Here in Life’s nether realms all contraries meet; Truth stares and does her works with bandaged eyes And Ignorance is Wisdom’s patron here:” Savitri-494 “All contraries were true in one huge spirit Surpassing measure, change and circumstance. An individual, one with cosmic self In the heart of the Transcendent’s miracle And the secret of World-personality Was the creator and the lord of all.” Savitri-556 “All contraries are aspects of God’s face.” Savitri-656 The descent of Divine Love to Vijnanamaya Kosha or Supramental Sheath: - “Here came the thought that passes beyond Thought, Here the still Voice which our listening cannot hear, The Knowledge by which the knower is the known, The Love in which beloved and lover are one.” Savitri-297-98 “There (in Supramental) substance was a resonant harp of self, A net for the constant lightnings of the spirit, A magnet power of love’s intensity Whose yearning throb and adoration’s cry Drew God’s approaches close, sweet, wonderful.” Savitri-328-29 “One moment fill with thy eternity, Let thy infinity in one body live, All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light, All-Love throb single in one human heart.” Savitri-345 “All mights and greatnesses shall join in her; Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth, Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair, And in her body as on his homing tree Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings. Savitri-346 “Loved all and spoke no word and made no sign,” Savitri-358 “They reached the one-self in all through boundless love.” Savitri-381 “To live, to love are signs of infinite things, Love is a glory from eternity’s spheres. Abased, disfigured, mocked by baser mights That steal his name and shape and ecstasy, He (Love) is still the godhead by which all can change.” Savitri-397 “All that the lightning-flash of love reveals” Savitri-406 “His large identity and all-harbouring love” Savitri-446 “All-love was hers and its one heavenly cord Bound all to all with her as golden tie.” Savitri-471 “When unity is won, when strife is lost And all is known and all is clasped by Love Who would turn back to ignorance and pain?” Savitri-633 “My love eternal sits throned on God’s calm; For Love must soar beyond the very heavens” Savitri-633 “When we begin living the Spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which for us is the proof that we have entered the Spiritual life; well yet another occurs when we enter the Supramental world… This is why even our Spiritual life, which is such a total reversal compared to ordinary life, seems something so…so totally different when compared to this Supramental consciousness that the values are almost opposite.”⁵² The Mother “Two or three nights ago, something like that occurred: in the middle of the night, early morning, there was a descent of this Force, a descent of this Truth-Power; and this time it was everywhere, but with a special concentration in the brain—not in this brain: in THE brain (experience of earth consciousness). And it was so strong, so strong, so strong! The head felt as if it were about to burst—yes, as if everything were going to burst—so that for about two hours I simply had to keep calling for the widening of the Lord’s Peace... And with the consciousness that this descent into unprepared brain would be enough to drive you completely mad or absolutely daze, or else you would burst...there was tremendous fever- though nothing even remotely like an “illness”!”⁶⁷ The Mother In most of the individual Souls the Supramental sheath or the causal body is not formed¹⁶⁸ and it is very difficult to take shape around the subtle body. It takes shape through interference of Divine faculties from Sat-kosha, Tapas kosha and Anandamaya kosha. This interference is possible by the ascension of individual consciousness to Anandamaya world and beyond, which are above the Supramental sheath and corresponding descent of Divine Love, Divine Delight and Divine Beauty to the Vijnanamaya kosha. Supramental Sheath is also built gradually by the activation of the supramental Self. Supramental Love serves the following six-fold purpose; firstly, it offers integral union and perfect satisfaction of the relation between Purusha and Prakriti ; secondly, it brings active ecstasy in addition to deeper calm and Supramental silence; thirdly, an intense unity with all creatures founded on profound oneness; fourthly, the realisation of one in many and many in one is inherent; fifthly , the power of Love Supramentalised can take hold of all living relations without hesitation or danger and turn them Godward, delivered from their crude, mixed and petty human settings and sublimated into the happy material of a Divine life; sixthly, it would be utterly possible to embrace all contacts with men and the world in a purified sleepless flame-force.¹⁴ The source of Divine Love, Anandamaya Kosha or Bliss Sheath: “On the bare peak where Self is alone with Nought And life has no sense and love no place to stand, She must plead her case upon extinction’s verge, In the world’s death-cave uphold life’s helpless claim And vindicate her right to be and love.” Savitri-12 “And sudden ecstasies from a world of bliss.” Savitri-31 “The quintessence glowed of Life’s supreme delight.” Savitri-120 “Only to be was a supreme delight, Life was a happy laughter of the soul And Joy was king with Love for minister. The spirit’s luminousness was bodied there. Life’s contraries were lovers or natural friends And her extremes keen edges of harmony:” Savitri-124 “In the deep breast of God’s supreme delight.” Savitri-200 “Happy to enjoy one touch of things supreme,” Savitri-238 “There was no mind there (in Bliss Self) with its need to know, There was no heart there with its need to love. All person perished in its namelessness. There was no second, it had no partner or peer; Only itself was real to itself. A pure existence safe from thought and mood, A consciousness of unshared immortal bliss, It dwelt aloof in its bare infinite, One and unique, unutterably sole.” Savitri-308-309 “A Heart was felt in the spaces wide and bare, A burning Love from white spiritual founts Annulled the sorrow of the ignorant depths; Suffering was lost in her immortal smile. A Life from beyond grew conqueror here of death; To err no more was natural to mind; Wrong could not come where all was light and love.” Savitri-313-14 “Her clasp shall turn to ecstasy our pain.” Savitri-314 “A Bliss, A Light, a Power, a flame-white Love Caught all into a sole immense embrace; Existence found its truth on Oneness’ breast And each became the self and space of all. The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul, To feel was a flame-discovery of God, All mind was a single harp of many strings, All life a song of many meeting lives; For worlds were many, but the Self was one.” Savitri-322-23 “There leaps out unity’s supreme delight” Savitri-324 “And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.” Savitri-346 “The Bliss for which the world’s derelict sorrows yearn:” Savitri-661 “There was no more the torment under the stars, The evil sheltered behind Nature’s mask; There was no more the dark pretence of hate, The cruel rictus on Love’s altered face. Hate was the grip of a dreadful amour’s strife; A ruthless love intent only to possess Has here replaced the sweet original god.” Savitri-679 “The bliss that made the world in his body lived, Love and delight were the head of the sweet form.” Savitri-683 “Know the thrilled bliss with which I made the worlds.” (all the subtle worlds) Savitri-701 “Some rapture of the bliss that made the world,” Savitri-704 “Since soon after the beginning of the century this work (of permeation of Supreme Ananda into disorder of mind, life and material substance) has been going on. Afterwards, there was all the Psychic work, in the same way (gesture of widening): the identification and the response. Then the vital work, which I began with Sri Aurobindo when we were staying over there (at the Guest House); then the physical work, but there it is ... gropingly learning one’s job. Now there is a sort of certainty: you see, you come into contact with something, and then you know instantly what should be done and how it should be done; the vibration comes, meets a response, and goes back—and this is going on every minute, all the time .”⁶⁶ The Mother "The other states of being, the vital, the mind, may enjoy the intermediary contacts. The supreme Lord alone can satisfy me."¹⁶⁵ The Mother Above Anandamaya kosha , there are also two other sheaths of Tapas kosha and Sat kosha . We have excluded these two sheaths from our study because of their inaccessibility at the present stage and we shall instead pursue perfection through the above-mentioned ten koshas. When Divine Love is profoundly dynamised in the earth’s atmosphere, then the other two higher sheaths above Anandamaya Kosha find substantial base for manifestation. Love, Joy and Beauty are the fundamental determinants of the Divine Delight of Existence, and we can see at once that these are the very stuff and nature of that Delight.¹⁵ When we pursue the process of self-manifestation, we shall find that Joy has its original and utter gladness in a trinity of the Enjoyer, the Enjoyed and the Delight; Love finds itself in the trinity of the Lover, the Beloved and Love; Beauty restores itself in the trinity of possessor of Beauty, the Beauty possessed and Beauty that holds them together. Ascension of individual consciousness to Anandamaya Kosha and descent of the Ananda, Love and Beauty to Vijnanamaya Kosha, strengthens the causal body and we require a well-built causal body for full exercise of Supramental influence on the lower sheaths. The Incarnating Dual Power: “The twin duality for ever one” Savitri-35 “This whole wide world is only he and she.” Savitri-63 “For him she was made, lives only for his use.” Savitri-65 “For this is sure that he and she are one.” Savitri-72 “She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze.” Savitri-125 “And all her soul a counterpart of his soul.” Savitri-125 “The dual Energy they have justified” Savitri-186 “She now is his and must live for him alone: She has invaded him with her sudden bliss, An exhaustless marvel in his happy grasp, An allurement, a caught ravishing miracle.” Savitri-274 “He is lost in her, she is his heaven here.” Savitri-275 “Incarnating her beauty in his clasp She (Para prakriti) gave for a brief kiss her immortal lips And drew to her bosom one glorified mortal head:” Savitri-275 “Self-made from the dual power creation rose.” Savitri-284 “A burning of two bodies in one flame.” Savitri-468 “And Krishna and Radha for ever entwined in bliss,” Savitri-525 “A dual Power at being’s occult poles Still acted, nameless and invisible:” Savitri-553 “Her spirit fulfilled in his spirit, rich with all Time,” Savitri-579 “I have burned in flame to travel in his steps.” Savitri-638 “Two powers from one original ecstasy born Pace near but parted in the life of man; One leans to earth, the other yearns to the skies: Heaven in its rapture dreams of perfect earth, Earth in its sorrow dreams of perfect heaven. The two longing to join, yet walk apart, Idly divided by their vain conceits; They are kept from their oneness by enchanted fears; Sundered mysteriously by miles of thought, They gaze across the silent gulfs of sleep... Meanwhile you two shall serve the dual law” Savitri-684 “I know that I (Savitri) can lift man’s soul to God, I know that he (Satyavan) can bring the Immortal down.” Savitri-687, “My soul and his indissolubly linked In the one task for which our lives were born, To raise the world to God in deathless Light, To bring God down to the world on earth we came, To change the earthly life to life divine.” Savitri-692, “O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light And bring down God into the lives of men;” Savitri-699, “A dual power of God in an ignorant world, In a hedged creation shut from limitless self, Bringing down God to the insentient globe, Lifting earth-beings to immortality.” Savitri-702 “The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door, Eternal Supermind touch earthly Time.” Savitri-705 “Thy body is my body’s counterpart... Two fires that burn towards that parent Sun, Two rays that travel to the original Light.” Savitri-720 “…when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the Supramental forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, He was always telling me that everything I did (when we meditated together, when we worked)—all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures (mudras), all my reactions—was absolutely tantric , as if I had pursued a tantric discipline. But it was spontaneous, it did not correspond to any knowledge, any idea, any will, nothing, and I thought it was like that simply because, as He knew, naturally I followed.”¹⁶ “And he gave me his own example (I had mine, too) of certain things considered dangerous or bad, which we both did independently and spontaneously and which were a great help to us!”⁸⁴ The Mother Integral Yoga does not recommend the Tantric means of external human aid to experience the Divine Love for beginners or its necessity is dispensable in order to avoid distortion, abasement and the Spiritual fall. Its indispensable end is that the Divine Love can be experienced through Purusha’s union with Prakriti in Ignorance, Ishwara-Shakti union in the Knowledge and Brahman-Maya union in the Supramental, Vijnana . We have to understand Radha and Krishna or the Divine incarnation of Savitri and Satyavan in this inner perspective, where marriage between the ‘eternal Lord and Spouse’⁵³ takes place in our heart’s secluded chamber ‘Like lovers in a lonely secret place’¹³³ and this union between Paramatma and Para-prakriti extends to all other nine planes of Consciousness. If we accept Savitri as a continuation of Radha and Krishna’s Overmental Love for developed Souls of Instruments, Emanations and Incarnations, it can equip us with some more insight of wave/plastic nature of universal Love where river, Atma, flows into a mighty sea, Paramatma and a Lover ‘Gathers the whole world into his single breast.’¹⁴⁰ Thus, the Soul can recognise its answering supreme-Soul. In ancient Indian discipline, the Radha and Krishna’s relation has been symbolised through sixty-four pure postures, yoga mudras , thirty-two pure subtle-physical union, alingana , sixteen special pure joy, ratis, twelve various penetrating Divine gaze of clinging to sight’s embrace, chahani , and various enchantment of delightful liquid voices and heart disclosing sweet words, swara. The above postures (“All the soul’s postures donned divinity.”¹³⁹ ) are symbols of various subtle enjoyments beyond the limitation of three gunas leading to the ascension of Consciousness from the lower sheaths of mind, life and body to higher sheaths of Psychic and Spiritual culminating in Overmental Ananda and they had the experience of profound Ananda in Their mortal body through Divine descent. Their exclusive Divine Love is intended towards the exclusive liberation of a Soul, established in Brahma Nirvana, ⁶ ⁰ with gusts of intense Ananda, atyantam sukhamasnute ,⁶¹ and accelerates the universal evolution through multiple concentrations of Overmental descent to the universal sheath. They were instrumental in opening the first gate or the lower ranges of the Supramental world. Savitri and Satyavan are the symbolic reincarnation of Radha and Krishna who have broken the bright lid of Overmind in order to enter wider and higher ranges of the Supramental world, whose Light, Love and Power have far greater instrumental capacity in capturing all the ten sheaths. They prepared their life with new undying base and ‘reached the one-self in all through boundless love’¹³⁴ and Supramental Love ‘is still the godhead by which all can change.’¹³⁵ Savitri and Satyavan lived together in their Soul’s chamber from the beginning of the creation and their exclusive as well as all-inclusive Divine Love begins, after their Psychic and Spiritual opening or they ‘glimpsed the presence of the One in all’ and the dual Consciousness is subsequently thoroughly established in the Supramental and Bliss Self, through ascension of Consciousness and it is directed towards union in their subtle, universal and causal body in order to bring down Supramental concentration into their mortal body with deep physical joy. Thus emotion clasped emotion in two hearts, felt each other’s thrill in flesh, nerve and tissue, limb cried for answering limb, melted each in each and grew immense and finally lost themselves in the Infinite Consciousness. Since the Supramental Force has the power of penetration in all the sheaths and is deeply interested to transform them, its action is treated as comprehensive. The ascension of Consciousness towards Supreme Ananda and descent of Supreme Ananda to lower sheaths are indispensable dual movements of Jivatma and Parmatma in the integral Yoga. The danger of inrush of lower nature is observed during the transition of ascension of consciousness from lower sheaths to higher sheaths or ‘bloom of their purity and passion one’⁸⁵ whereas the same danger is not entirely excluded during the transition of descent of consciousness from higher sheaths to lower sheaths if the process of purification is not sufficient. In the integral Yoga the above problem is overpowered if the ascent and descent are routed through a strong influence of the Psychic being. Since Savitri and Satyavan had established themselves in Spiritual and Supramental purity from the beginning, and both had a strong Psychic being and Psychicised Supramental Presence, the problem of inrush of lower nature was controlled and annulled through strong Psychic and Spiritual influence and ‘claimed deep union with its outer selves.’⁸ ⁷ In them, the spirit of delight in sensuous things are transformed into ‘more sweetness than can now be dreamed.’⁸⁷ In Savitri and Satyavan’s subtle physical relation, the ascension of Consciousness to new height in Supramental and Bliss Self were pursued or witnessed by them in meditating peaks, and during the corresponding descent of Bliss, Light, Power and flame white Love to the new depths in mental, vital, physical, Subconscient and Inconscient sheaths, the dual action were essential, and they were represented through variety of spontaneous and independent subtle Yogic postures, not postures of petty mechanical bounds of human mind because the inner experiences were entirely sincere to multiply the action of Supramental and facilitates increased capacity to hold the strong and powerful inrush of Divine forces and Ananda. Satyavan’s ability to bring down a higher Supramental force was supported by Savitri in order to hold it in her pure material vessel or ‘Heal with her bliss the tired breast of earth.’⁶⁴ This dual exercise has to continue for a prolonged uninterrupted period, keeping in view of the vast, complex, dark, recalcitrant domain of lower sheaths, which require to be enriched with sweet Subconscient memory and this serves as a bank to provide wealth of positive Spiritual energy and strength to meet in support of overcoming of the hour of crisis and struggle in God’s Night. Physical postures are only an aid which comes by itself and are the outcome of entirely sincere inner experience; yet there are supreme states of Consciousness, which require no posture, no hands to clasp and no feet to move of any external kind. There are inner movements or shifts of Consciousness, which will open new vistas of ascent of Soul, descent of Shakti and expansion of Consciousness. Great actions can be initiated either in the subtle body or in the causal body through spontaneous inner movement of Consciousness. Thus, the Supramental touch of Divine Love ‘needs not hands to feel, to clasp.’¹³⁶ In the epic Savitri, all possible Soul postures¹³⁹ of Radha and Krishna have been thoroughly revised, multiplied and extended along with a new birth of various postures in order to accommodate more subtle and causal body enjoyments of its own and donned a new pulsation of Divine Love in order to satisfy its Supramental requirement. The eternal variety of Ananda of Divine love which were flooded through Radha and Krishna’s union are extensively multiplied in Savitri with ‘More vivid raptures than earth’s life can bear.’⁸⁷ So for those strong Souls who are preoccupied with Psychic and Spiritual experience and are in touch with Supramental Consciousness, these experiences are accessible to them either through waking trance or through Samadhi of deeper state. For entering into Samadhi, the traditional Raja Yoga, Jnana Yoga or Bhakti Yoga methods may be followed. The first step is to constantly hear their name, qualities, relation and their Divine union; secondly, the constant thinking of all these movements; thirdly, setting and fixing of the mind on the objects and by this one enters full realisation of Divine union and ecstasy. The exercise of infinite variety of motiveless enjoyment through the descent of Ananda purifies our whole being in the destined path of perfection. Out of the four habitations of the Soul, Jivatma, the eye is considered its first habitation in waking trance. The dream trance, Swapna samadhi and sleep trance, Suspti are the two other states in which the Soul resides in the throat and heart centre respectively. Turiya is the fourth supreme state of Jivatma, where the Soul lives in the mystic Brahmarandhra in the head and all other states of sleep, dream and waking are the derivation of this supreme Turiya . Integral Yoga stresses due importance on the waking trance and in this active state, it is possible to enter the Spiritual and Supramental experience of all kinds. The experience of Divine union through the eye or ‘a look’ or ‘a gaze’ has been extensively experienced in Savitri . “The spirit is not limited like the waking material consciousness, and the supermind when it takes possession of the waking consciousness, dematerialises it, delivers it from its limits, converts the material and the psychic into the nature of the spiritual being.”¹²¹ Dream trance and sleep trance are the Spiritual and Supramental experiences of the subtle and causal bodies, respectively. These have twofold utilities in integral Yoga, first, there are infinite series of depths, supreme states of trance to which the Soul rises, where the truth mind ascends itself towards higher Mind, illumined Mind, intuitive Mind, Overmind, mind of Light, Supermind and supreme Ananda and in those states the action of sense mind and physical mind are annulled and direct experience of all these higher planes of Consciousness is acquired; as a result the whole seeing, living and active consciousness of waking state is enlarged; secondly, once these higher states are accessed, it has to be brought as much as possible into the waking Consciousness. The dynamisation of the Supreme state and intermediate higher states of Consciousness in the waking state, resulting in waking trance, is the full benefit that we can draw from Samadhi experience. Supreme Love descended through Savitri: “My Love is stronger than the bonds of Fate: Our love is the heavenly seal of the Supreme. I guard the seal against thy (Death’s) rending hands. Love must not cease to live upon the earth; For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven, Love is the far Transcendent’s angel here; Love is man’s lien on the Absolute.” Savitri-633 Sri Aurobindo had never used the word ‘Love Supreme’ or ‘Supreme Love’ anywhere in His epic Savitri. (but the Mother had used this word in her Agenda.¹⁴⁶ ) Rather we notice words like, ‘terrible in love,’¹⁷ ‘Love’s golden wings,’¹⁸ ‘all Love,’¹⁹ ‘boundless love,’²⁰ ‘Immortal Love,’²¹ ‘vast power to love,’²² ‘seas of love,’²³ ‘burning Love,’²⁴ ‘outstretched arm of Love,’²⁵ ‘spiritual love,’²⁶ ‘a power more ruthless than Love,’²⁷ which give us the insight to move towards the Supreme Love. From this study we have concluded that Savitri had an infinite variety of Spiritual and Psychic experiences and seemingly finite variety of Supreme experiences which must come in stages and the last eighteen are identified as:- ‘Life supreme,’²⁸ ‘Omniscience supreme,’²⁹ ‘Trinity supreme,’³⁰ ‘occult Supreme,’³¹ ‘supreme Intelligence,’³² ‘Voice supreme,’³³ ‘word supreme,’³⁴ ‘all negating Void supreme,’³⁵ or ‘emptiness of the Supreme,’³⁶ ‘silent still Supreme,’³⁷ or ‘still Supreme,’³⁸ ‘supreme epiphany,’³⁹ ‘touch supreme,’⁴⁰ ‘things supreme,’¹¹⁰ ‘power supreme,’⁴¹ ‘supreme delight,’⁴² ‘supreme identity,’⁴³ ‘Light supreme,’⁴⁴ or ‘supreme light,’⁴⁵ ‘Will supreme’⁴⁶ and ‘Truth supreme.’⁴⁷ Savitri’s realisation of ‘Supreme Love’ is the ‘head of the sweet form’⁴⁸ of ‘supreme delight’ that ‘made the world’, activated to transform all the vibratory difficulties of earth. Sri Aurobindo was aware of the activation of this great pulsation of Divine Love that contracts and expands the creation through mobile blissful manifestation and immobile blissful non-manifestation in the immediate future through The Mother’s physical form, as He wrote, “There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother… There are among them Presences indispensable for Supramental realisation,--most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of Supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter…”⁴⁹ Sri Aurobindo had also foreseen no immediate realisation of Savitri’s last Spiritual experience of ‘Truth supreme’ in The Mother’s physical form and left the issue to the Mighty Mother, the last Avatara, who shall again ‘take birth in Time’⁵⁰ and ‘Then shall the Truth supreme be given to men.’⁵⁰ The ‘Truth supreme’ is the last siddhi of the integral Yoga and it is that Spiritual experience of Savitri in which Inconscient Sheath of the whole earth will be illumined and earth will be eliminated from the influence of Ignorance, Suffering, Falsehood and Death. When the action of ‘Love Supreme’ is sufficiently dynamised in earth’s atmosphere then The Mother will work towards the manifestation of three other Divine faculties of ‘Will Supreme,’ ‘Omniscience Supreme’ and ‘Truth Supreme;’ for they represent the manifestation of Chit, Tapas and Sat aspect of Supreme Sachchidananda respectively. Then that will be the period of Supramental earth where no one is left untransformed. The Mother’s Unfinished Yoga: “It bore the stroke of That which kills and saves” (Savitri’s heart bore the stroke of Supramental energy that slays falsehood and saves the truth.) Savitri-20 “One soul’s ambition lifted up the race;” Savitri-44 “He mastered the tides of Nature with a look:” Savitri-219 “His gates to the world were swept with seas of light.” Savitri-236 “And guards the world with its all seeing gaze.” Savitri-317 “He (King Aswapati) stood fulfilled on the world’s highest line Awaiting the ascent beyond the world, Awaiting the descent the world to save.” Savitri-319 “Her aspiration called high destiny down;” Savitri-358 (Earth) “Knows that one high step might enfranchise (liberate) all” Savitri-371 “He still must travel Hell the world to save.” Savitri-450 “Sometimes one life is charged with earth’s destiny,” Savitri-460 “Man in the world’s life works out the dreams of God.” Savitri-479 “One man’s perfection still can save the world.” Savitri-531 “He who would save the world must be one with the world,” Savitri-537 “Its gaze controls the turbulent whirl of things.” Savitri-571 “Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls Earth is the heroic spirit’s battle field” Savitri-686 “You (Savitri) are my Force at work to uplift earth’s fate,” Savitri-702 “Some shall be made the glory’s receptacles And vehicles of the Eternal’s luminous power. These are the high forerunners, the heads of Time, The great deliverers of earth-bound mind, The high transfigurers of human clay, The first-born of a new supernal race.” Savitri-705 “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.”⁷⁶ The Mother Sri Aurobindo’s requirement of one hundred perfect instruments, are they who live in cosmic consciousness, by whose pressure all objective life will become part of the subjective existence and they realise, perceive, feel, see and hear only the Divine in every way, in all forms and all happenings of the world are taking place within their vast universal Self. Their outer surface Nature is a concentration and radiation of silence, calm, stillness and peace. ‘To grow in the spirit is the greatest help one can give to others, for then something flows out naturally to those around that helps them.’¹²⁵ The ‘special work’¹² ⁶ of integral Yoga is ‘of bringing down the higher consciousness with all its effect for the earth’¹² ⁶ without ‘too eager to help others,’¹² ⁵ without ‘accepting the nature of man and the world as it is’¹² ⁶ and by standing ‘apart from the rest of the world.’¹²⁶ Integral Yoga proposes that Universalised Consciousness is the outcome of a long movement of Consciousness between Psychic and Spiritual planes replacing the earlier slow evolution of consciousness between three modes of Nature, Gunas and in this vast Consciousness (1) equality becomes perfect and consecration becomes complete and absolute, or this surrender of whole being ‘has to be accomplished slowly and with difficulty by the being itself before the supramental transformation can become at all possible;’¹⁴⁸ ‘A perfect equality not only of the self, but in the nature’¹⁴⁷ is also the sign of universalized consciousness; (2) exclusive concentration of Mind is replaced with the faculty of Multiple-concentrations; thus one can pursue triple Yoga of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti simultaneously and ceaselessly, (3) transformation of human Nature into Divine Nature is practicable, as in this Consciousness the World is inseparable from the individual; with the activation of cosmic Self, Savitri had this experience, ‘all changed within her and without.’¹⁵⁰ (4) His time and space experience is completely different from ordinary man subjected to three gunas, the latter lives in the present succession of moments oblivious of his past and future and his little habitation of space is separated from the world and the former lives in the triple time of past, present and future and the whole world lives within his cosmic Self; his universalised Spirit can move backward towards the past of this birth and past births and illumine the obscure corners of his Subconscient and Inconscient sheaths and his Spirit can travel forward in time to call down all future possiblities to present moment; (5) outer wandering and movement reduces and is replaced by the more and more inner wandering of Soul which shows interest only in eternal things and 'In every shrine it cries for the clasp of God’¹⁴⁹ ; (6) in this Cosmic Consciousness, Matter is real to Spirit, Spirit is real to Matter and Matter is reconciled with Spirit in order to resolve all world problem; (7) in addition to his own individual suffering, he is ready to bear a part of earth's heavy burden and suffering and ‘only the self-ruler (swarat ) and master man (samrat ) can help, in leading the human race forward spiritually towards this consummation and towards some image of a greater divine truth in their personal and communal existence. He becomes a light and power of the Truth to which he has climbed and a means for others’ ascension’¹⁵¹ and thus, (8) a fitness has arrived for ascension into still higher Supramental Consciousness. The immediate preoccupation of these instruments of Truth who are concerned with Integral Yoga will be the increase and accumulation of Soul Force through fourfold Divine union that of Jivatma’s union with Paramatma, Jivatma’s union with Para-prakriti, Paramatma’s union with Para-prakriti and Para-prakriti’s union Apara-prakriti. This accumulation or multiplication of Soul Power to transform the lower Nature is identified by Sri Aurobindo as 'the utmost importance in the Yoga of self-perfection.’¹⁵⁴ Their action on the world will be largely inner subjective action dictated by the power of triple-time of the Spirit and they will accumulate Spiritual energy to such an extent that the Transcendent Divine forces of oceanic proportion will invade the earth’s dark Inconscient rock. The danger of the Inconscient Sheath swallowing the whole earth to its dark breast, perpetually stands as an evolutionary threat and barrier. Earth is to be saved from life’s immense desire and destructive Forces from their ‘bleeding roots’¹²⁸ through invasion of strong affirmative Spiritual forces from below, within and above and to keep this action active and its growing intensity is the responsibility of few fit channels of human instruments. A Spiritual fence of protection is to be built which at present is confined to few privileged Souls, who will admit ‘through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation.’¹³⁸ This Spiritual wall will extend itself to cover the whole of humanity. Or a ‘golden tower’⁶⁵ of protection is built in the subtle world with the help of ‘flame child’⁶⁵ who are prepared Souls, ready to become channels of vast inflow of Supreme Ananda. Integral Yoga aims at a comprehensive solution or all-time panacea of all the problems of existence through complete immunisation of disease, decay, sorrow, dissidence and strife and the process of inoculation begins at individual and collective level depending on the degree of restoration of harmony and opening towards a comprehensive Concentration. A safe passage in the subtle world is to be made in order to help living and dead Souls⁹⁸ so that they can easily travel different planes of Consciousness for their Soul’s training and arrive at the Psychic plane and cosmic Self for their accumulation of Spiritual energy and rebirth respectively. At the same time the Yoga Shakti must drive out all tamasic forces to eliminate incapacity, poverty, illiteracy, ‘ugliness and powerlessness to express beauty,¹³⁷ malnutrition of the body from the whole of the race and drive out all rajasic forces to eliminate all discordant human action of violence, destructive aggression, tyranny of beast wrath, hatred, injurious brutality, corruption, bottomless ingratitude that disfigure earth nature and enjoyments of temporal nature. Those destined Souls for the Divine work will protect and guard earth in three stages. First, they will have a ‘vision and knowledge of the triple time’."¹²² or partial/complete foreknowledge of immediate future doom and holocaust of individual, state, national and universal proportion ‘by going back from the surface physical mind to the psychic and spiritual consciousness;’¹² ² secondly, they will keep the concentration alive to reduce and minimise the quantum of such catastrophe through intervention of the overhead Divine Grace or vibration of Harmony of which they are conscious channel; thirdly, they will maintain the effort to completely annul the root of all such destruction and vibration of disorder through intervention and invasion of Supreme Harmony and Light to the yet untouched dark province of Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths. A conscious movement of Consciousness between Psychic and Spiritual planes can liberate¹⁴⁴ distant unknown living and dead Souls from the subjugation of their untransformed Nature and, thus, the purpose of invisible self-expansion through self-concentration or the liberated Souls liberating others is accomplished. The steps through which they will immediately control the world event through the evolution of preliminary Psychic and Spiritual faculties are: - 1) The perception, thought, feelings and happenings of world event which are entirely guided by forces of Ignorance, are gathered directly through vision without the aid of any external means of communication like telephone, newspaper and internet etc or ‘of establishing a direct communication between mind and mind without the aid of the physical organs and the limitations they impose on our consciousness.’¹²³ ‘The psychical consciousness, as it develops, makes us aware of the great mass of thoughts, feelings, suggestions, will impacts, influences of all kinds that we are receiving from others or sending to others or imbibing from and throwing into the general mind atmosphere around us.’¹²⁴ The outer aid is useful only to verify the degree of accuracy of the direct inner vision. 2) Harmonised vibrations of thoughts and feelings or Spiritual idea force formulating itself in the world are communicated to them (individual and group) by secret unspoken word, transmission of will-power, Spiritual Influence which are already tuned with the Divine-Will. Or as the Psychic being ‘evolves in power, precision and clearness, we are able to trace these to their source or feel immediately their origin and transit to us and direct consciously and with an intelligent will our own messages.’¹²⁴ Or the ‘spiritual inner consciousness has then to deal with these (dark and obscure) influences in such a way that, as soon as they approach or enter (the Spiritual realm), they become either obliterated and without result or transformed by their very entry into its own mode and substance.’¹²⁹ 3) Silent compulsion on them to act according to these communicated ideas, power of the heart and dynamic life forces. ‘There is necessarily a commerce here between disparate influences: the inner spiritual influence is met by quite opposite influences strong in their control of the present world-order; the new spiritual consciousness has to bear the shock of the dominant and established unspiritualised powers of the Ignorance.’¹²⁹ As a result, the single and multiple results are experienced through power of the Self and development of essential and multiple Concentrations. The Nature of living of a Spiritual man will be ‘an accomplished inner existence whose light and power will take perfect body in the outer life.’¹³⁰ 4) They will be egoless transparent instruments to determine the events, actions and the results of action of objective life throughout the world by pure intervention of their subjective subtle-physical existence and silent Will-Power of multiple Concentrations. Their ‘environmental being must be so steeped in the spiritual light and spiritual substance that nothing (no world influence) can enter into it without undergoing this transformation…’¹²⁹ If a Sadhak attains Cosmic Consciousness, then he must pursue sadhana in secrecy and silence. His presence will be intolerable for the common man because of this particular nature, ‘Universal, he is all,--transcendent, none.’¹ ⁴ ¹ When he lives in universal Self he becomes very intimate with all and when he lives in transcendent Consciousness, he goes beyond all these relations or ‘A distance severed her from those most close.’¹⁴¹ This is unbearable to man’s righteousness. His outward appearance will be marked with Truth-Power or the ‘sound of infinity’¹⁴² in his voice and his eyes will shine with the ‘light of things beyond.’¹ ⁴ ² So, through frequent/constant increase of invasion of vibration of Order and permeation of a superior Harmony into the Inconscient, Subconscient and material life, the world would move towards the process of transformation. ‘Supreme Love eliminates all problems, even the problem of creation...But the world is not ready yet, it may take a few thousand years.’⁹⁵ Thus, Sri Aurobindo’s vision of creating ‘a new world, a new humanity, a new society expressing and embodying the new consciousness’⁹⁴ is in the process of realisation by reconciliation of Spirit with Matter and by harmonisation of body with the Soul. This is a task offered to the most conscious individual through realisation of Soul as the centre of the World and its objective manifestation in the form of a Divine Centre or the emergence of a formative and affirmative Ashram living. Integral Yoga aims at a comprehensive solution of all the problems of existence through complete immunisation of disease, decay and death and the process of inoculation begins at individual and collective level depending on the degree of restoration of harmony and opening towards a comprehensive Concentration. The world and humanity ‘is beginning to be ready for the manifestation of supreme Power. And this supreme Power would result from a constant identification.’⁹³ The above work will pave the passage of The Mother’s highest work of manifestation of ‘Supreme Ananda ,’ ‘Supreme Love,’ ‘Omniscience Supreme’ and ‘Truth Supreme.’ Supreme Love descended through The Mother’s physical embodiment: - “A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame, A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes, A violent ecstasy, a Sweetness dire, Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs And penetrated nerve and heart and brain That thrilled and fainted with epiphany: His nature shuddered in the Unknown’s grasp. In a moment shorter than death, longer than Time, By a Power more ruthless than love, happier than Heaven, Taken sovereignly into eternal arms, Haled and coerced by a stark absolute bliss, In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force Hurried into unimaginable depths, Upborne into immeasurable heights, It was torn out from its mortality And underwent a new and bourneless change.” Savitri-81 “It is said that divine Love doesn’t manifest because, in the world’s present state of imperfection, the result would be catastrophe—that is a human vision. Divine Love manifests, has manifested eternally, will manifest eternally, and it is the incapacity of the material world...not only of material world, but of the vital world and mental world, and of many other worlds that are not ready, that are incapable—but HE is there, He is there, right there! He is there permanently: It is THE Permanence.”" ⁶⁸ The Mother “Ultimately, nothing but omnipotence could convert the world, convince the world. The world isn't ready to experience supreme Love. Supreme Love eliminates all problems, even the problem of creation: there are no more problems, I know it since that experience [of April 13]. But the world isn't ready yet, it may take a few thousand years. Although it is beginning to be ready for the manifestation of supreme Power (which seems to indicate that this will manifest first). And this supreme Power would result from a CONSTANT identification…But this "constancy" isn't yet established: one is identified and then one isn't, is and then isn't, so things get delayed indefinitely. You wind up doing exactly what you tell others not to do – one foot here and one foot there! It just won't do.¹⁴⁶ The Mother Supreme Love is beyond Manifestation and Non-manifestation. The Mother’s experience on the night of 12-13th April, 1962 is instructive for us. The experience which began after midnight and continued for four hours indicates that the above experience is not a part of waking trance but rather an experience in complete trance where the Supreme state is able to re-invade all the descending hierarchies. During this re-invasion, when the Supreme state entered the domain of gross physical sheath, the waking state became active and the same experience continued in the waking trance. The predominance of the physical mind in the waking state is partly nullified by the strong gusts of Love, which gave the sensation in physical sheath that death, suffering, falsehood and ignorance are non-existent and illusory. We understand this experience as an inter-penetration and union between The Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s causal body, where the intensities of Divine force reached beyond all measures of previous Spiritual experiences, and its interaction with the physical sheath generated new sensations and suffocation of intense order. In all Supramental experiences, the original formula of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss cannot be separated from its integral functioning. But in this experience of The Mother, the Ananda aspect of the Divine had far dominated over the Existence and Consciousness aspect of the Divine. If we note the Supramental experience of The Mother of 24-25th July, 1959, where the Mother first time met Sri Aurobindo in subtle physical, this experience clarified our stand that Sri Aurobindo took nine years after His physical departure in 1950, in order to build a passage and develop a concrete relation with The Mother in subtle physical. After this experience, The Mother claimed to meet Sri Aurobindo almost ‘every night’⁸³ for the purpose of transformation action. Their joint work in the subtle body and the causal body prepared the passage for a series of Supramental experiences in the gross physical sheath of The Mother, of which the experience of 12-13th April, 1962 was one of the major milestones or decisive Spiritual experiences. In Savitri, Sri Aurobindo had foreseen this particular Supramental experience of 12-13th April, 1962, with all the similar symptoms as noted by The Mother . This is probably due to Sri Aurobindo’s contact with the Divine Love (The Mother's fifth Power) in 1946,¹⁶ ⁷ represented in the Yoga of King Aswapati. If we look into the matter, it will open more insight:- 1) “I was the Origin—I was the Origin. For more than two hours, consciously, here on this bed, I was the Origin. And it was like gusts—like great gusts ending in explosions. And each one of these gusts was a span of the universe… And each gust of this essence of Love was dividing and spreading out… but they weren’t forces, it was far beyond the realm of forces. The universe as we know it no longer existed; it was a sort of bizarre illusion, bearing no relation to THAT. There was only the truth of the universe, with those great gusts of colour—they were colored with something that is the essence of colour… And then a Voice was explaining everything to me (not exactly a Voice, but something that was Sri Aurobindo’s origin, like the most recent gust from the Origin). As the experience unfolded, this Voice explained each gust to me, each span of the universe; and then it explained how it all became like this (The Mother makes a gesture of reversal): the distortion of the universe. And I was wondering how it was possible, with that Consciousness, that supreme Consciousness, to relate to the present, distorted universe. How to make connection without losing that Consciousness? A relationship between the two seemed impossible. And that’s when a sort of Voice reminded me of my promise, that I had promised to do the Work on earth and it would be done. “I promised to do the Work and it will be done.” (Ref: Mother’s Agenda-3/p-138) “In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force Hurried into unimaginable depths, Upborne into immeasurable heights,” (Ref: Savitri-81) “Thus swaying in strong gusts of happiness” (Ref: Savitri-469) “It brought a grandiose gust of the Breath of Life;” (Ref: Savitri-492) 2) “It was Love in its supreme essence—which has nothing to do with what people normally understand by that word… It was stupendous. I lived more than two hours like that, consciously... It was the formidable pulsations of the eternal, stupendous Love, only Love: each pulsation of the Love was carrying the universe further in its manifestation... The heavens are ringing with chants of the Victory! Truth alone exists; truth alone shall manifest. Onward! … Onward! Compared to the experience, what I say is nothing, nothing, nothing but words” (Ref: The Mother’s Agenda-3/131, 132, 138) “His nature shuddered in the Unknown’s grasp. In a moment shorter than death, longer than Time, By a Power more ruthless than love, happier than Heaven, Taken sovereignly into eternal arms, Haled and coerced by a stark absolute bliss,” (Refer: Savitri-81) 3) “Then began the process of descent (descent was not the right word), and the Voice was explaining it to me—I lived through it in all detail, and it wasn’t pleasant. It took an hour and a half to change from that true Consciousness to the individual consciousness. Because throughout the experience this present individuality no longer existed, this body no longer existed, there were no more limits, I was no longer here—what was here was THE PERSON. An hour and a half was needed to return to the body-consciousness, to the individual consciousness. (Ref: The Mother’s Agenda-3/p-138) “A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame, A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes, A violent ecstasy, a Sweetness dire, Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs And penetrated nerve and heart and brain That thrilled and fainted with epiphany:” (Ref: Savitri-81) 4) “And the consciousness is a limitless consciousness, like a material equivalent or expression of these gusts—it’s like waves, but waves with no… Not separate waves, but a MOVEMENT of waves; a movement of what might be called material, corporeal waves, as vast as the earth, but not …round, not flat…Something giving a great sense of infinity but moving in waves. And this wave movement is the movement of life. And the consciousness (the body consciousness, I suppose) floats along in this, with a sensation of eternal peace… But it is not an expanse—that’s not the word for it. It is a limitless movement, with very harmonious and very tranquil rhythm, very vast, very calm. And this movement is life itself.” (Ref: The Mother’s Agenda-3/p-145) “His nature shuddered in the Unknown’s grasp. In a moment shorter than death, longer than Time,” (Ref: Savitri-81) 5) “And in that experience I was sent back to the body, because the thing —that creative gust—had to be realised through this body.” (Ref: Mother’s Agenda—3/144) “A violent ecstasy, a Sweetness dire, Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs And penetrated nerve and heart and brain” (Ref: Savitri-81) 6) “There was something I have never told anyone, but when the doctor was called … I was constantly fainting, you know: I would take a step and –plop! So the doctor was called and they began watching over me (everything was supposedly going wrong, all the organs, everything breaking down), and he declared I was sick and wasn’t to stir from my bed…” (Ref: The Mother’s Agenda-3/p-152) “That thrilled and fainted with epiphany:” (Ref: Savitri-81) “Her human nature faint with heaven’s delight,” (Ref: Savitri-677) “And even the Spirit that holds the universe Fainted in luminous insufficiency.” (Ref: Savitri-307) 7) “All the results of the Falsehood had disappeared: Death was an illusion, Sickness was an illusion, Ignorance was an illusion—something that had no reality, no existence…Only Love, and Love, and Love, and Love – immense, formidable, stupendous, carrying everything.” (Ref: The Mother’s Agenda-3/p-131) “It was torn out from its mortality” (Ref: Savitri-81) “His young unaging look on deathless things, His joy in our escape from death and Time,” (Ref: Savitri-484) 8) “Something really radical has happened, in the sense that …I tried once just to see if I could do it and I didn’t succeed: I can’t go back to the old way of relating to the body. It’s impossible.” (Ref: The Mother’s Agenda-3/p-153) “But one thing has happened practically without my noticing it. In the past before that experience [April-13], the body used to feel the struggle against the forces of wear and tear (different organs wearing out, losing their endurance, their power of reaction, and certain movements, for instance, becoming less easy to make). ("All beauty ended in an aging face;" Savitri-205) That’s what the body felt, although the body-consciousness never sensed any aging, never, none—that simply didn’t exist. ” (Ref: The Mother’s Agenda-3/p-196) “And underwent a new and bourneless change.” (Ref: Savitri-81) "A celestial bacchanal for ever pure, Unstayed by faintness as in mortal frames Life was an eternity of rapture’s moods: Age never came, care never lined the face. " Savitri-126 “All he had been and all towards which he grew Must now be left behind or else transform Into a self of That which has no name.” (Ref: Savitri-307) The Fifth Power of The Mother : “A giant drop of Bliss unknowable Overwhelmed his limbs and round his soul became A fiery ocean of felicity;” (First Supreme experience of Divine Love.) Savitri-237 “A mystery wakes in our inconscient stuff, A bliss is born that can remake our life.” (Second experience) Savitri-397-98 “Two powers from one original ecstasy born… One leans to earth, the other yearns to the skies :” (Third experience) Savitri-684 "Love’s golden wings have power to fan thy void: The eyes of love gaze starlike through death’s night, The feet of love tread naked hardest worlds. He labours in the depths, exults on the heights; He shall remake thy universe, O Death.” (Third experience) " Savitri-592 “It (dynamic Spirit) is within, below, without, above.” (Fourth experience) (Spirit is within us as Psychic Being, true physical Being and true vital Being and true mental Being, below the feet as Subconscient Self and Inconscient Self, without as cosmic Self and above as Spiritual, Supramental and Bliss Self.)) Savitri-98 "Heaven’s leaning down to embrace from all sides earth," (fourth experience) Savitri-716 The Mother’s four Mediatrix aspects of Wisdom, Power, Harmony and Perfection are more active in earth’s atmosphere from 24th November, 1926, in order to link the existence with the Supreme and lead human evolution towards its fullness of Being, fullness of Consciousness and fullness of Life. Mahalakshmi is the Mother’s aspect of love that must come and work with all its plentitude before the establishment of supreme Love. On the night of 12-13th, April-1962, the aspect of Her Supreme Love, Creatrix Bliss, had become active in the earth’s atmosphere. To become identified with this particular aspect of The Mother’s Power is to become one with ‘the most powerful of all redeeming and creative forces’⁵¹ which ‘has yet been the least frontally present in earthly life.’⁵ ¹ The Supramental Consciousness in the form of Truth, Light, Power and Force must descend first in the manifested nature and is sufficiently sublimated so as to be able to receive and bear the pressure of the Divine Love, which is ‘most powerful, pure, rare and intense of all divine energies.’⁵ ¹ The fifth Mother Power is identified as ‘most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divinest Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe.’⁵⁹ A series of Supramental experiences of finite variety waits behind our crudely formed subtle and causal body, leading them to well-built and integrated Sheaths of perfect vessel, where Divine Love shall repeat its action in four profound stages. (1) In the first stage, the blissful Divine Love will spread the universe through the overhead descent of causal body action in the Supramental Sheath. (2) In the second stage, the repetition of the same experience through an explosion in the bottom-most layer of the Inconscient sheath, leading to the opening of the Inconscient Self or ‘Love that broods within the deem abyss.’⁶³ (3) In the third stage, both the states Supramental Self and Inconscient Self are activated and they coexist in the profoundest whirlwind or gusts of Consciousness, leading the creation towards ‘supreme epiphany.’³⁹ (4) In the fourth stage, Supramental energy is dynamised in all the ten sheaths or it is experienced as rushing into the body from all ends. The Mother speaks more about Her fifth personality, ‘She has come, bringing with Her a splendor of power and love, an intensity of divine joy heretofore (up to this time) unknown to the Earth. The physical atmosphere has been completely changed by her descent, permeated with new and marvelous possibilities. But if She is ever to reside and act here, She has to find at least a minimal receptivity, at least one human being with the required vital and physical qualities, a kind of super-Parsifal gifted with an innate and integral purity, yet possessing at the same time a body strong enough and poised enough to bear unwaveringly the intensity of the Ananda She brings. (This passage suggests that Supramental Love will be active in a very pure and very strong body.) Thus far, She has not found what is needed. Men remain obstinately men and do not want to or are unable to become supermen. All they can receive and express is a love at their own dimension: a human love – whereas the supreme bliss of divine Ananda eludes their perception. At times, finding the world unready to receive Her, She contemplates withdrawing. But how cruel a loss this would be! It is true that at present, her presence is more rhetorical than factual, since so far She has had no chance to manifest. Yet even so, She is a powerful instrument in the Work, for of all the Mother’s aspects, She holds the greatest power to transform the body. Indeed, those cells which can vibrate at the touch of the divine Joy, receive it and bear it, are cells reborn, on their way to becoming immortal. But the vibrations of divine Bliss and those of pleasure cannot cohabit (to live together as if they are married) in the same vital and physical house. We must therefore TOTALLY renounce all feelings of pleasure to be ready to receive the divine Ananda. But rare are those who can renounce pleasure without thereby renouncing all active participation in life or sinking into a stern asceticism. And among those who realize that the transformation is to be wrought in active life, some pretend that pleasure is a form of Ananda gone more or less astray and legitimize their search for self-satisfaction, thereby creating a virtually insuperable obstacle to their own transformation.’¹⁶⁶ OM TAT SAT References: 1: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-3/131, 2: The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-6/291-94, 3: CWSA (Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo)/Vol-23(or The Synthesis of Yoga)/39, 4: The Gita-7.1, 5: The Gita-9.17, 6: The Gita-4.3, 7: Savitri-531, 8: CWSA/Vol-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/183, 9: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-2/379, 10: CWSA/Vol-24/ The Synthesis of Yoga/621, 11: CWSA/Vol-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/351, 12: CWSA/Vol-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/591, 13: CWSA/Vol-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/416-17, 14: CWSA/Vol-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/169, 15: The Life Divine/314, 16: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-1/417, 17: Savitri-711, 18: Savitri-592, 19: Savitri-555,471, 20: Savitri-381, 21: Savitri-346, 22: Savitri-362, 23: Savitri/372, 24: Savitri-314, 25: Savitri-200, 26: Savitri-190, 27: Savitri-81, 28: Savitri-197, 29: Savitri-76, 30: Savitri-89, 31: Savitri-331, 32: Savitri-250, 33: Savitri-694, 34: Savitri-405, 35: Savitri-545, 36: Savitri-536, 37: Savitri-533, 38: Savitri-497, 333, 39: Savitri-663, 40: Savitri-237, 145, 706, 329, 41: Savitri-542, 42: Savitri-120, 200, 124, 325, 43: Savitri-579, 44: Savitri-20, 45: Savitri-484, 46: Savitri-378, 47: Savitri-44, 658, 659, 661, 662, 663, 705, 48: Savitri-682, 49: The Mother-35, 50: Savitri-705, 51: CWSA/ Vol-23/167, 52: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-1/236, 53: Savitri-411, 54: Savitri-410, 55: Savitri-19, 56: Savitri-346, 57: Savitri-358, 58: Savitri-403, 59: The Mother-53, 60: The Gita-5.25, 61: The Gita-6.28, 62: Savitri-405, 63: Savitri-416, 64: Savitri-422, 65: Savitri-702, 66: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-5/78, 67: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-5/95-98, 68: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-5/134, 69: The Mother’s Agenda-5/100-101, 70: The Mother’s Agenda-5/170-71, 71: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-5/138, 72: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-5/181, 73: SABCL/27/176, 74: The Mother’s Agenda-11/228, 75: The Mother’s Agenda-5/225, 76: The Mother’s Agenda-5/195, “This is exactly what Sri Aurobindo wanted, what he was trying for He said: “If I could find one hundred people, that would be enough.”” TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorism-p-198, 77: The Mother’s Agenda-5/p-263, 78: The Gita-10.3, 79: The Gita-5.29, 80: The Gita-3.26, 81: Isha Upanishad-2, 82: CWSA/Vol-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/741, 83: “You see, there’s a curious fluctuation possibly indicating that your dream is part of the present attack which continues with such violence.... The night before last, between midnight and half-past, there was a formidable attack. When I emerged from it, I felt that something had lifted, a victory had been won and that the body’s condition had improved. It happens like that, the horizon clears and this Certainty comes with. (The presence is always here – Sri Aurobindo and I are together almost every night – but the night when I saw that formation, the illness spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was quite sick in his bed, just as I saw him in 1950.) So when it lifts, all is well: once again there is harmony, there is joy, there is force ... and again the whole thing continues, the effort continues, consciously. Yet there is a kind of fluctuation: it will go on like that for a few moments or a few hours and then suddenly everything becomes muddled again and I am beset by ... a fatigue. A fatigue which is – I can’t say almost unbearable, because nothing in the consciousness feels it to be unbearable – but it makes me like this (Mother clenches her fist tightly in a tension to ‘hold on).” 11.02.1961, The Mother’s Agenda-4/46, “To give a rather curious example, there was a kind of spell of illness over the Ashram, stemming mainly from people’s thoughts, from their way of thinking. It was quite widespread and it was horrible, gloomy, full of fear, pettiness, blind submission, oh! Everyone was in a state of expectation....55 In short, the atmosphere was such that there was an attempt to prevent me from leaving my room – I had to sneak out! It was disgusting! Well, on the very night I saw the spell over the Ashram, Sri Aurobindo was lying sick in his bed, just as I had seen him in 1950. Normally, we spend almost every night together, doing this, seeing that, arranging things, talking – it’s a kind of second life behind this one, and it makes existence pleasant. But that night when I had to sneak out of my room (in my nightgown!), and people were trying to find me to ... (laughing) force me back into bed, he was lying sick in bed – and this struck me hard, for it means these things still affect him in his consciousness. He was in a kind of trance and not at all well. It didn’t last, but nonetheless....” The Mother’s Agenda-18.02.1961, “I so often hear Sri Aurobindo speak, and I say it in French, but I use the English word because I hear him speak…Often the thought alone comes, but quite often it's the exact words; and then, while speaking in French I tend to use the English words. While I take my bath, for instance, he always speaks to me and tells me the things I have to write or say; so afterwards, when I come out of the bathroom, I very often have to ask for a piece of paper and a pen, and I write…It's constantly, constantly like that…I remember, some time ago, at night, I said to him (I see him almost every night, but for a few days I hadn't seen him, then I met him at night ... because he is always there [Mother makes a gesture enveloping her], but at night, in that subtle physical world, I see him objectively, as if I were meeting him), and I said to him, "I haven't seen you for a few days," like that, in jest. Then he put on his most serious air, but with all his irony: "Oh, I am very busy these days." And ... (laughing) the next day I learned they were shooting a film on Sri Aurobindo's life! So I thought he must have been busy sending them good suggestions. But it was so comical! With straight-faced seriousness: "Oh, I am very busy." (Mother laughs)” The Mother’s Agenda-25.01.1967 84: The Mother’s Agenda-4/134, 85: Savitri-409, 86: “I asked myself if for everybody the supramental process will always automatically involve a lot of physical suffering. No. No, because I have a growing proof that those things I have mastered now, in the body, I have the power (I keep receiving letters and notes from here or there, from people here or there who have an illness) ... it is beginning; so far it's only a beginning, a very small beginning: the power to eliminate pain. You know, on a smaller scale, what happened with your illness. Yes, but I didn't mean sick people. I mean people who today or in the future will seek to effect the transformation in themselves. No, they ... Will they have to go through all that suffering? No! That Sri Aurobindo wrote very clearly: for all those who have faith and open themselves in surrender and faith, the work will be done automatically.98 As long as he was here, mon petit, all the thirty years I spent with him working, NOT ONCE did I have to make an effort for a transformation. Simply, whenever there was a difficulty, I repeated, My Lord, my Lord, my Lord ... I just thought of him – hop! it went away. Physical pain: he annulled it. You know, some things that were hampering the body, some old habits that had come back, I only had to tell him: off they would go. And through me, he did the same for others. He always said that he and I did the Work (in fact, when he was here, it was he who did it; I only did the external work), that he and I did the Work, and that all that was asked from the others was faith and surrender, nothing more.” The Mother’s Agenda/ August 10, 1963, The Mother’s Agenda-4/271, 87: Savitri-675, 88: Savitri-374, 89: Savitri-422-23, 90: Savitri-457, 91: “It is that which the spirit in Love is seeking here in the darkness of the Ignorance and it is that which it finds when individual human love is changed into the love of the Immanent Divine incarnate in the material universe.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-160 “In that larger play of the Divine the joy of the relations of divine love also is possible without the lapse into the ego-sense, —just as the supreme state of human love likewise is described as the unity of one soul in two bodies.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-367 “And since love is the effective power and soul-symbol of bliss-oneness he will approach and enter into this oneness by the gate of universal love, a sublimation of human love at first, a divine love afterwards, at its summits a thing of beauty, sweetness and splendour now to us inconceivable.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-509 “There is a movement of (Divine) love, as in the aspiration of human love, to separate the lover and the loved in the enjoyment of their exclusive oneness away from the world and from all others, shut up in the nuptial chambers of the heart. That is perhaps an inevitable movement of this path. But still the widest love fulfilled in knowledge sees the world not as something other and hostile to this joy, but as the being of the Beloved and all creatures as his being, and in that vision divine works find their joy and their justification.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-551 “This is in essence the power of love itself in the heart and soul turning from earthly objects to the spiritual source of all beauty and delight. There live in this seeking all the sentiment and passion, all the moods and experiences of love concentrated on a supreme object of desire and intensified a hundredfold beyond the highest acme of intensity possible to a human love.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-575 92: Savitri-295, 93: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-3/p-239-240, 94: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-8/p-389, 95: The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-3/p-239-240, “A burning Love from white spiritual founts Annulled the sorrow of the ignorant depths; Suffering was lost in her immortal smile.” Savitri-314 “Her clasp shall turn to ecstasy our pain.” Savitri-314 96: Savitri-633, 97: “Joy that forgot mortality for a while… And passions that crumble to ashes while they blaze Kindled the common earth with their brief flame.” Savitri-159, “Her (Mother of light of sattwic mind) smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart To live again and feel the hands of calm.” Savitri-514, 98: “As soon as I came upon Theon’s teaching (even before meeting him personally), and read and understood all kinds of things which I hadn’t known before, I began to work quite systematically. Every night, at the same hour, I was working to construct – between the purely terrestrial atmosphere and the psychic atmosphere – a path of protection across the vital, so that people wouldn’t have to pass through it (for those who are conscious but without knowledge it’s a very difficult passage – infernal.) I was preparing this path, doing this work (it must have been around 1903 or 1904, I don’t remember exactly) for months and months and months. All sorts of extraordinary things happened during that time – extraordinary. I could tell long stories.... Then, when I went to Tlemcen, I told Madame Theon about it. ‘Yes,’ she told me, ‘it is part of the work you have come on earth to do. Everyone with even a slightly awakened psychic being who can see your Light will go to your Light at the moment of dying, no matter where they die, and you will help them to pass through.’ And this work is constant. Constant. it has given me a considerable number of experiences concerning what happens to people when they leave their bodies. I’ve had all sorts of experiences, all kinds of examples – it’s really very interesting.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda- June 24, 1961, 99: Savitri-325, 100: Savitri-329, 101: “Rent man’s horizons into infinity.” Savitri-359, “To rend the veil of the last mysteries.” Savitri-360, “The knot of the two, the higher and the lower hemisphere, is where mind and supermind meet with a veil between them. The rending of the veil is the condition of the divine life in humanity; for by that rending, by the illumining descent of the higher into the nature of the lower being and the forceful ascent of the lower being into the nature of the higher, mind can recover its divine light in the all-comprehending supermind, the soul realise its divine self in the all-possessing all-blissful Ananda, life repossess its divine power on the play of omnipotent Conscious-Force and Matter open to its divine liberty as a form of the divine Existence.” CWSA/21/The Life Divine-279, 102: Savitri-6, 103: The Mother’s Agenda- January 10, 1961, 104: Savitri-468, 105: Savitri-159, 106: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-211, 107: Savitri-404, 108: Savitri-701 109: Savitri-470, 110: Savitri-123, 238, 111: Savitri-435, 112: The Mother’s Agenda/August-25-1954, 113: Savitri-75, 114: “This culmination of sacrifice is the height even of human love and devotion when it tries to become divine; for there too the highest peak of love points into a heaven of complete mutual self-giving, its summit is the rapturous fusing of two souls into one.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-108, 115: TMCW/14/127, 116: Savitri-291, 117: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-67, 118: CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother-462, 119: Savitri-588, 120: CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II- p-344, 121: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-841, 122: “It is therefore only by going back from the surface physical mind to the psychic and spiritual consciousness that a vision and knowledge of the triple time, a transcendence of our limitation to the standpoint and view range of the moment, can be wholly possible.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-892, “Meanwhile there are certain doors opening from the inner on to the outer consciousness which make an occasional but insufficient power of direct retro-vision of the past, circumvision of the present, prevision of the future even in the physical mind at least potentially feasible.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-892, “The supermind has the vision of the three times, trikaladrsti; it sees them as an indivisible movement and sees too each containing the others. It is aware of all tendencies, energies and forces as the diverse play of unity and knows their relation to each other in the single movement of the one spirit.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-792, 123: “The phenomena of this vital consciousness and sense, this direct sensation and perception of and response to the play of subtler forces than the physical, are often included without distinction under the head of psychical phenomena. In a certain sense it is an awakening of the psyche, the inner soul now hidden, clogged wholly or partially covered up by the superficial activity of the physical mind and senses that brings to the surface the sub- merged or subliminal inner vital consciousness and also an inner or subliminal mental consciousness and sense capable of perceiving and experiencing directly, not only the life forces and their play and results and phenomena, but the mental and psychical worlds and all they contain and the mental activities, vibrations, phenomena, forms, images of this world also and of establishing a direct communication between mind and mind without the aid of the physical organs and the limitations they impose on our consciousness.” The Synthesis of Yoga-874, 124: “For there is a continuous scale of the planes of consciousness, beginning with the psychical and other belts attached to and dependent on the earth plane and proceeding through the true independent vital and psychical worlds to the worlds of the gods and the highest supramental and spiritual planes of existence. And these are in fact always acting upon our subliminal selves unknown to our waking mind and with considerable effect on our life and nature. The physical mind is only a little part of us and there is a much more considerable range of our being in which the presence, influence and powers of the other planes are active upon us and help to shape our external being and its activities. The awakening of the psychical consciousness enables us to become aware of these powers, presences and influences in and around us; and while in the impure or yet ignorant and imperfect mind this unveiled contact has its dangers, it enables us too, if rightly used and directed, to be no longer their subject but their master and to come into conscious and self-controlled possession of the inner secrets of our nature. The psychical consciousness reveals this interaction between the inner and the outer planes, this world and others, partly by an awareness, which may be very constant, vast and vivid, of their impacts, suggestions, communications to our inner thought and conscious being and a capacity of reaction upon them there, partly also through many kinds of symbolic, transcriptive or representative images presented to the different psychical senses. But also there is the possibility of a more direct, concretely sensible, almost material, sometimes actively material communication — a complete though temporary physical materialisation seems to be possible — with the powers, forces and beings of other worlds and planes. There may even be a complete breaking of the limits of the physical consciousness and the material existence. The awakening of the psychical consciousness liberates in us the direct use of the mind as a sixth sense, and this power may be made constant and normal. The physical consciousness can only communicate with the minds of others or know the happenings of the world around us through external means and signs and indications, and it has beyond this limited action only a vague and haphazard use of the mind’s more direct capacities, a poor range of occasional presentiments, intuitions and messages. Our minds are indeed constantly acting and acted upon by the minds of others through hidden currents of which we are not aware, but we have no knowledge or control of these agencies. The psychical consciousness, as it develops, makes us aware of the great mass of thoughts, feelings, suggestions, will impacts, influences of all kinds that we are receiving from others or sending to others or imbibing from and throwing into the general mind atmosphere around us. As it evolves in power, precision and clearness, we are able to trace these to their source or feel immediately their origin and transit to us and direct consciously and with an intelligent will our own messages. It becomes possible to be aware, more or less accurately and discerningly, of the activities of minds whether near to us physically or at a distance, to understand, feel or identify ourselves with their temperament, character, thoughts, feelings, reactions, whether by a psychic sense or a direct mental perception or by a very sensible and often intensely concrete reception of them into our mind or on its recording surface. At the same time we can consciously make at least the inner selves and, if they are sufficiently sensitive, the surface minds of others aware of our own inner mental or psychic self and plastic to its thoughts, suggestions, influences or even cast it or its active image in influence into their subjective, even into their vital and physical being to work there as a helping or moulding or dominating power and presence.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-877-879, 125: “To concentrate most on one’s own spiritual growth and experience is the first necessity of the sadhak — to be too eager to help others draws away from the inner work. There is also likely to be an overzeal and haste which clouds the discrimination and makes what help is given less effective than it should be. To grow in the spirit is the greatest help one can give to others, for then something flows out naturally to those around that helps them.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV-317, “The idea of helping others is a subtle form of the ego. It is only the Divine Force that can help. One can be its instrument, but you should first learn to be a fit and egoless instrument.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-318, “The best way to help the world is to transform oneself by an integral and intensive yoga.” The Mother/TMCW-14/Words of The Mother-II/p-277, 126: “That is all right in the ordinary karmayoga which aims at union with the cosmic Spirit and stops short at the Overmind — but here a special work has to be done and a new realisation achieved for the earth and not for ourselves alone. It is necessary to stand apart from the rest of the world so as to separate ourselves from the ordinary consciousness in order to bring down a new one… It is not that love for all is not part of the sadhana, but it has not to translate itself at once into a mixing with all — it can only express itself in a general and when need be dynamic universal goodwill, but for the rest it must find vent in this labour of bringing down the higher consciousness with all its effect for the earth. As for accepting the working of the Divine in all things that is necessary here too in the sense of seeing it even behind our struggles and difficulties, but not accepting the nature of man and the world as it is — our aim is to move towards a more divine working which will replace what now is by a greater and happier manifestation. That too is a labour of divine Love.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram- 812-813, “There must come upon us in the change at once a reversal and rejection of our present way of existence and a fulfilment of its inner trend and tendency.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-1012, 127: “The heart’s love of God may be blind, narrow and ignorant and lead to fanaticism and obscurantism; it may, even when otherwise pure, limit our perfection by refusing to see Him except in a limited personality and by recoiling from the true and infinite vision. The heart’s love of man may equally lead to distortions and exaggerations in feeling, action and knowledge which have to be corrected and prevented by the purification of the understanding.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-309, 128: Savitri-318 , 129: CWSA-22/The Life Divine-994-995, 130: CWSA-22/The Life Divine-1013, 131: “The relation of Guru and disciple is only one of many relations which one can have with the Divine, and in this Yoga which aims at a supramental realisation, it is not usual to give it this name; rather, the Divine is regarded as the Source, the living Sun of Light and Knowledge and Consciousness and spiritual realisation and all that one receives is felt as coming from there and the whole being remoulded by the Divine Hand. This is a greater and more intimate relation than that of the human Guru and disciple, which is more of a limited mental ideal. Nevertheless, if the mind still needs the more familiar mental conception, it can be kept so long as it is needed; only do not let the soul be bound by it and do not let it limit the inflow of other relations with the Divine and larger forms of experience.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-192-193, 132: ““Even Vaishnavism and Tantra are in the end other-worldly; mukti is the aim of their efforts and anything else could be only incidental and secondary or a result on the way.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-401, “Even Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life; here (in Integral Yoga) the object is the divine fulfilment of life.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-400, 133: Savitri-105, 134: Savitri-381, 135: Savitri-397, 136: Savitri-325, 137: “The only thing in the world that still appears intolerable to me now is all physical deterioration, physical suffering, the ugliness the powerlessness to express this capacity of beauty inherent in every being. But this, too, will be conquered one day. Here, too the power will come one day to shift the needle a little. Only, one has to climb higher in consciousness: the deeper into matter you want to descend, the higher must you ascend in consciousness…It will take time. Sri Aurobindo was surely right when he spoke of a few centuries.” The Mother’s Agenda-25.02.1958, “There will be other consequences that by opposite means will tend to eradicate the perversion and ugliness created in life due to the intervention of the mind, a whole range of deformations that have aggravated suffering, misery, moral poverty, a whole zone of sordid and repugnant miseries that makes an entire portion of human life so hideous. That must disappear. That is what in many respects makes humanity infinitely inferior to animal life, with its simplicity and its natural spontaneity, and which in spite of everything is harmonious. Suffering among animals is never as miserable and sordid as it is in a whole section of humanity perverted by a mentality exclusively turned towards egoistic needs…One must rise above, surge forth into the Light and the Harmony, or sink back down into the simplicity of a wholesome, unperverted animal life.” The Mother’s Agenda-June-1958, 138: “In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-138-139, 139: “All the soul’s postures donned divinity.” Savitri-125 140: Savitri-633, 141: “Universal, he is all, — transcendent, none. To man’s righteousness this is his cosmic crime,” Savitri-657 “Some near approached, were touched, caught fire, then failed, Too great was her demand, too pure her force. Thus lighting earth around her like a sun, Yet in her inmost sky an orb aloof, A distance severed her from those most close.” Savitri-366 “Sri Aurobindo once said (jokingly, as it were), while talking with those around him (I was there and we were talking about Christianity and the "new Christ"), he told them, "Oh, if the new Christ comes, the Church will crucify him!"” The Mother’s Agenda-October-7, 1967, 142: (Death said) “Thy voice carries the sound of infinity, Knowledge is with thee, Truth speaks through thy words; The light of things beyond shines in thy eyes.” Savitri-663, 143: The Mother’s Agenda-6th May 1967, 144: “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 and, — who knows? — perhaps even beyond the terrestrial consciousness.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-45, “The stone lying inert upon the sands which is kicked away in an idle moment, has been producing its effect upon the hemispheres.” Sri Aurobindo/TMCW-10/p-229, “As soon as I came upon Theon’s teaching (even before meeting him personally), and read and understood all kinds of things which I hadn’t known before, I began to work quite systematically. Every night, at the same hour, I was working to construct-between the purely terrestrial atmosphere and the psychic atmosphere-a path of protection across the vital, so that people wouldn’t have to pass through it (for those who are conscious but without knowledge it’s a very difficult passage-infernal.) I was preparing this path, doing this work (it must have been around 1903 or 1904, I don’t remember exactly) for months and months and months. All sorts of extraordinary things happened during the time-extraordinary. I could tell long series… Then, when I went to Tlemcen, I told Madame Theon about it. ‘Yes, ‘she told me, ‘it is part of the work you have come on earth to do. Everyone with even a slightly awakened psychic being who can see your Light will go to your Light at the moment of dying, no matter where they die, and you will help them to pass through,’ And this work is constant. Constant. It has given me a considerable number of experiences concerning what happens to people when they leave their bodies. I’ve had all sorts of experiences, all kinds of examples-it’s really very interesting.” June-24/1961/Mother’s Agenda/Vol-2/P: 231-238, (Earth) “Knows that one high step might enfranchise all.” Savitri-371, “Over the years I have had a considerable number of experiences in this realm, and my first action is always the same: send the Peace (I do this in all cases, for everyone) and happy the Force, The Power of the Lord, for the best thing to happen. Some people are very sick, sick to the point where there is no hope, where they cannot be cured, where the end is coming; but they sense that their souls must still need to have certain experiences, so they hang on-they don’t want to die. In such cases I apply the Force for them to last as long as possible. In other cases, on the contrary, they are weary of suffering, or indeed the soul has finished its experience and desires to be liberated. In such a case, if I am sure of it, sure that they themselves are expressing the desire to depart, it’s over in a few hours-I say this with certainty because I’ve had a considerable number of experiences. There is a certain force which goes out and does what is necessary. I haven’t done either of these things for your father-neither to prolong to his life (because when people are suffering it’s not a very kind to prolong their lives indefinitely), nor to finish it, because I didn’t know-one can’t do either without knowing the person’s conscious wish.” June-24/1961/Mother’s Agenda/Vol-2/P: 231-238 145: “A universal light was in his eyes, A golden influx flowed through heart and brain; A Force came down into his mortal limbs, A current from eternal seas of Bliss; He felt the invasion and the nameless joy.” Savitri-79 “Across the unfolding of the seas of self Appeared the deathless countries of the One. A many-miracled Consciousness unrolled Vast aim and process and unfettered norms, A larger Nature’s great familiar roads.” Savitri-91 “The Master of the worlds self-made her slave Is the executor of her fantasies: She has canalised the seas of omnipotence; She has limited by her laws the Illimitable.” Savitri-121 “A scale of sense that climbed with fiery feet To heights of unimagined happiness, Recast his being’s aura in joy-glow, His body glimmered like a skiey shell; His gates to the world were swept with seas of light.” Savitri-236 “Absolved from the ligaments of death and sleep He rode the lightning seas of cosmic Mind And crossed the ocean of original sound; On the last step to the supernal birth He trod along extinction’s narrow edge Near the high verges of eternity, And mounted the gold ridge of the world-dream Between the slayer and the saviour fires; The belt he reached of the unchanging Truth, Met borders of the inexpressible Light And thrilled with the presence of the Ineffable.” Savitri-299-300 “Incarnating inexpressibly in her limbs The boundless joy the blind world-forces seek, Her body of beauty mooned the seas of bliss.” Savitri-314 “One moment fill with thy eternity, Let thy infinity in one body live, All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light, All-Love throb single in one human heart. Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet All heaven’s beauty crowd in earthly limbs!” Savitri-345 “Leaving earth’s safety daring wings of Mind Bore her above the trodden fields of thought Crossing the mystic seas of the Beyond To live on eagle heights near to the Sun.” Savitri-360 “Amid her tresses’ cloudy multitude Her long eyes shadowed as by wings of Night Under that moon-gold forehead’s dreaming breadth Were seas of love and thought that held the world; Marvelling at life and earth they saw truths far.” Savitri-372 “Unsatisfied he yearned for me through time, Sometimes with wrath and sometimes with sweet peace Desiring me since first the world began. He rose like a wild wave out of the floods And dragged me helpless into seas of bliss.” Savitri-614 “My dreadful hands laid on thy bosom shall force Thy being bathed in fiercest longing’s streams. Thou shalt discover the one and quivering note, And cry, the harp of all my melodies, And roll, my foaming wave in seas of love.” Savitri-700 “A power dwelt in her soul too great for earth, A bliss lived in her heart too large for heaven; Light too intense for thought and love too boundless For earth’s emotions lit her skies of mind And spread through her deep and happy seas of soul.” Savitri-715 “Her mind, a sea of white sincerity,” Savitri-15, “Toiling to transform the still far Absolute Into an all-fulfilling epiphany, Into an utterance of the Ineffable, She would bring the glory here of the Absolute’s force, Change poise into creation’s rhythmic swing, Marry with a sky of calm a sea of bliss.” Savitri-195-196 “There Knowledge called him to her mystic peaks Where thought is held in a vast internal sense And feeling swims across a sea of peace And vision climbs beyond the reach of Time.” Savitri-299 “His soul was all in front like a great sea Flooding the mind and body with its waves; His being, spread to embrace the universe, United the within and the without To make of life a cosmic harmony, An empire of the immanent Divine.” Savitri-318 “In these new worlds projected he became A portion of the universal gaze, A station of the all-inhabiting light, A ripple on a single sea of peace.” Savitri-325 “Its ordered hours proclaimed the eternal Law; Vision reposed on a safety of deathless forms; Time was Eternity’s transparent robe. An architect hewing out self’s living rock, Phenomenon built Reality’s summer-house On the beaches of the sea of Infinity.” Savitri-329 “Always behind this strange divided life Her spirit like a sea of living fire Possessed her lover and to his body clung, One locked embrace to guard its threatened mate.” Savitri-471 “An inner law of beauty shapes our lives; Our words become the natural speech of Truth, Each thought is a ripple on a sea of Light.” Savitri-530-531 “Then out of the engulfing sea of trance Her mind rose drenched to light streaming with hues Of vision and, awake once more to Time, Returned to shape the lineaments of things And live in borders of the seen and known.” Savitri-579 “My heart’s strength can carry the grief of the universe And never falter from its luminous track, Its white tremendous orbit through God’s peace. It can drink up the sea of All-Delight And never lose the white spiritual touch, The calm that broods in the deep Infinite.” Savitri-635-636 “As one drowned in a sea of splendour and bliss, Mute in the maze of these surprising worlds, Turning she saw their living knot and source, Key to their charm and fount of their delight, And knew him for the same who snares our lives Captured in his terrifying pitiless net, And makes the universe his prison camp And makes in his immense and vacant vasts The labour of the stars a circuit vain And death the end of every human road And grief and pain the wages of man’s toil.” Savitri-678 “All was the violent ocean of a will Where lived captive to an immense caress, Possessed in a supreme identity, Her aim, joy, origin, Satyavan alone.” Savitri-579, “But higher still can climb the ascending light; There are vasts of vision and eternal suns, Oceans of an immortal luminousness, Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks, There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight; A burning head of vision leads the mind, Thought trails behind it its long comet tail; The heart glows, an illuminate and seer, And sense is kindled into identity.” Savitri-659-660 “The Two opposed each other face to face. His being like a huge fort of darkness towered; Around it her light grew, an ocean’s siege.” Savitri-667 “Air seemed an ocean of felicity Or the couch of the unknown spiritual rest, A vast quiescence swallowing up all sound Into a voicelessness of utter bliss; Even Matter brought a close spiritual touch, All thrilled with the immanence of one divine.” Savitri-672 “An oceanic spirit dwelt within; Intolerant and invincible in joy A flood of freedom and transcendent bliss Into immortal lines of beauty rose.” Savitri-680 “Break into eternity thy mortal mould; Melt, lightning, into thy invisible flame! Clasp, Ocean, deep into thyself thy wave, Happy for ever in the embosoming surge.” Savitri-691-692, 146: The Mother’s Agenda-4.07.1962, “And when the day comes for the manifestation of supreme Love – a crystalized, concentrated descent of supreme Love – that will truly be the hour of Transformation, for nothing will be able to resist That. But as it’s all-powerful, a certain receptivity must be prepared on earth so its effects are not devastating. Sri Aurobindo has explained it in one of his letters. Someone asked him, ‘Why doesn’t this Love come now?’, and he replied something like this: If divine Love in its essence were to manifest on earth, it would be like an explosion; for the earth is not supple enough or receptive enough to widen to the measure of this Love. The earth must not only open itself but become wide and supple. Matter – not just physical Matter, but the substance of the physical consciousness as well – is still much too rigid.” The Mother’s Agenda-10.01.1961, “As an experience, it's absolutely certain: when you come in touch with eternal Love, supreme Love, the first, immediate ... (what should I say?) perception or sensation (it's not an understanding, it is much more concrete) is that even the most enlightened, kneaded, prepared material consciousness is INCAPABLE of manifesting That! The first impression is that sort of incapacity. Then comes the experience of something manifesting a type of ... not exactly "cruelty," because it's not cruelty as we conceive it; but in the totality of circumstances, there is a vibration which is felt as a certain intensity of refusal of love as it is manifested here – that's exactly the thing: something in the material world refuses the manifestation of love as it exists at present (I don't refer to the ordinary world but to the consciousness at its present highest). It's an experience, I am speaking of something that has taken place. Then the part of the consciousness that has been touched by that opposition calls out directly to Love's origin WITH AN INTENSITY IT COULD NOT HAVE HAD WITHOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF THE REFUSAL. Limits are broken, a flood descends which could NOT manifest before, and something is expressed which was not expressed before.” The Mother’s Agenda/15.05.1963, “More and more, there is something that presses to make itself known and is formulated like this: what wants to come for next February is the Truth-Light ... (Mother repeats like an incantation) the Truth-Light, the Truth-Force, the Truth- Light, the Truth-Force ... to prepare the way for the manifestation of supreme Love. But that is for later on…But immediate, immediate: the Truth-Light, the Truth-Force. It's becoming precise…I didn't think about it. It was perfectly blank in my head. I didn't know at all…And then that came.” The Mother’s Agenda-15.01.1965, “Yes, this problem of the transformation, I see more and more clearly that there are three approaches, three ways to go about it, and that in order to be more complete one should combine the three. One – the most important, naturally – is the way we could call "spiritual," the way of the contact with the Consciousness – Love-Consciousness-Power, that is. These three aspects: supreme Love-Consciousness-Power. And the contact, the identification: making all the material cells capable of receiving Him and expressing Him – of BEING That. Of all the ways, that is the most powerful and most indispensable. There is the occult way, which brings all the intermediary worlds into play. There is a very detailed knowledge of all the powers and personalities, all the intermediary regions, and it makes use of all that. That's where one makes use of the Overmind godheads: it's in this second way. Shiva, Krishna, all the aspects of the Mother are part of this second way. Then there is the higher intellectual approach, which is the projection of a surpassing scientific mind and takes up the problem from below. It has its own importance too. From the standpoint of the detail of the procedure, it reduces approximation, it gives a more direct and precise action. If one can combine all three, then obviously the thing will go faster. Without the first, nothing is possible (and even, the other two are an illusion without the first: they lead nowhere, you go round in circles endlessly). But if you clothe the first in the other two, then I think the action is more precise, direct, rapid.” The Mother’s Agenda-04.03.1967, “Tell me, it would be lovely if one could take people's consciousness as one takes a flower, and then, because one looks at it and holds it and the vibration is that Vibration of supreme Love, it opens up, like that, becomes organized, and grows magnificent…It would be fine if one could do that – (laughing) perhaps one can!” The Mother’s Agenda-15.03.1967, 147: “A perfect equality not only of the self, but in the nature is a condition of the Yoga of self perfection. The first obvious step to it will be the conquest of our emotional and vital being, for here are the sources of greatest trouble, the most rampant forces of inequality and subjection, the most insistent claim of our imperfection. The equality of these parts of our nature comes by purification and freedom…All that comes to it from the world with menace or with solicitation, it will refer to the higher principles, to a reason and heart, in touch with or changed by the light and calm joy of the spirit… There is no question here of an ascetic killing of the life-impulse and its native utilities and functions; not its killing is demanded, but its transformation.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-702-703, 148: “But this highest condition is difficult and must evidently take long to bring about; for the participation and consent of the Purusha to the transition is not sufficient, there must be also be the consent and participation of Prakriti. It is not only the central thought and will that have to acquiesce, but all the parts of our being must assent and surrender to the law of spiritual Truth; all has to learn to obey the government of the conscious Divine Power in the members. There are obstinate difficulties in our being born of its evolutionary constitution which militate against this assent. For some of these parts are still subject to the inconscience and subconscience and to the lower automatism of habit or so-called law of nature,--mechanical habit of mind, habit of life, habit of instinct, habit of personality, habit of character, the ingrained mental, vital, physical needs, impulses, desires of natural man, the old functionings of all kinds that are rooted there so deep that it would seem as if we had to dig to abysmal foundations in order to get them out: these parts refuse to give up their response to the lower law founded in the Inconscient; they continually send up to the conscious mind and life the old reactions and seek to reaffirm them there as the eternal rule of Nature. Other parts of the being are less obscure and mechanical and rooted in inconscience, but all are imperfect and attached to their imperfection and have their own obstinate reactions; the vital part is wedded to the law of self-affirmation and desire, the mind is attached to its own formed movements, and both are willingly obedient to the inferior law of the Ignorance. And yet the law of participation and the law of surrender are imperative; at each step of the transition (1) the ascent of the Purusha is needed and (2) there must be too the consent of each part of the nature to the action of the higher power for its change. There must be then a conscious self-direction of the mental being in us towards this change, this substitution of Supernature for the old nature, this transcendence. The rule of conscious obedience to the higher truth of the spirit, the surrender of the whole being to the light and power that come from the Supernature, is a second condition which has to be accomplished slowly and with difficulty by the being itself before the supramental transformation can become at all possible.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-962-63, 149: Savitri-631, 150: Savitri-554, 151: “In this self-development the soul finds that it has accomplished on this line the object of the whole integral Yoga, union with the Supreme in its self and in its universalised individuality. So long as he remains in the world-existence, this perfection must radiate out from him, — for that is the necessity of his oneness with the universe and its beings, — in an influence and action which help all around who are capable of it to rise to or advance towards the same perfection, and for the rest in an influence and action which help, as only the self-ruler and master man can help, in leading the human race forward spiritually towards this consummation and towards some image of a greater divine truth in their personal and communal existence. He becomes a light and power of the Truth to which he has climbed and a means for others’ ascension.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-642, 152: The Mother’s Agenda/November 7/1961, 153: “The human form is naturally unable to bear the Divine Love or contain it, because it is itself a creation of the ignorance, weak and impure. It must be transformed in order to be capable of that; it must become strong and pure. First of all, it must have the strength to love the Divine alone and turn away from all other ties. But besides that a new consciousness must be created in it — first a consciousness of pure and purifying Divine Peace from above which must take hold of all down to the most physical — then in that peace an increasing inner strength pure and unegoistic — then the Divine Light and Knowledge transforming all the consciousness and movements. When this has been done, then the human form can contain the Divine Love and Ananda. Till then the touches of the Divine Love and Ananda are usually momentary or brief, they cannot remain. In an impure consciousness the Divine Love if it came in would create a perturbation and possibly be attacked by a mixture which would make it impossible for it to stay. It is therefore that touches only can come.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-334, 154: “The power of the soul over its nature is of the utmost importance in the Yoga of self-perfection; if it did not exist, we could never get by conscious endeavour and aspiration out of the fixed groove of our present imperfect human being; if any greater perfection were intended, we should have to wait for Nature to effect it in her own slow or swift process of evolution.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-628, “The Yoga of self-perfection brings out this soul-force and gives it its largest scope, takes up all the fourfold powers and throws them into the free circle of an integral and harmonious spiritual dynamis. The godhead, the soul-power of knowledge rises to the highest degree of which the individual nature can be the supporting basis. A free mind of light develops which is open to every kind of revelation, inspiration, intuition, idea, discrimination, thinking synthesis; an enlightened life of the mind grasps at all knowledge with a delight of finding and reception and holding, a spiritual enthusiasm, passion, or ecstasy; a power of light full of spiritual force, illumination and purity of working manifests its empire, brahma-tejas, brahma-varcas ; a bottomless steadiness and illimitable calm upholds all the illumination, movement, action as on some rock of ages, equal, unperturbed, unmoved, acyuta .” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-750, 155: Savitri-603, 156: Savitri-548, 157: Savitri-291, 158: Savitri-318-319, 159: Savitri-685, 160: CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-333, 161: Savitri-42, 162: Savitri-231, 163: Savitri-89, 164: Savitri-398, 165: The Mother's Agenda/July, 1965, 166: The Mother's Agenda/August 25, 1954, 167: "I don’t know dates. I don’t know, I never remember dates. I can only tell you this ... that it happened before Sri Aurobindo left his body, that he was told about it beforehand and that he ... well, he acknowledged the fact. But there was a formidable battle with the Inconscient, for when I saw that the level of receptivity was not what it should have been, I blamed the Inconscient ... and tried to wage the battle there. I don’t say it was ineffectual, but between the result obtained and the result hoped for, there was a considerable difference. But as I said, you who are all so near, so steeped in this atmosphere ... who among you noticed anything? – You simply went on with your little lives as usual. I think it (The Mother's fifth Power- The Divine Love) was in 1946, Mother, because you told us so many things at that time. Right. (A child:) Sweet Mother, now that She has come, what should we do? You don’t know? Try to change your consciousness. Now you may ask me the questions you wanted to ask ... That’s all? Mother, there is not even one single man? I don’t know. Mother, you are wasting your time with all these Ashram people. Oh! ... But you see, from an occult standpoint, it is a selection. From an external standpoint you could say that there are people in the world who are far superior to you (and I would not disagree!), but from an occult standpoint, it is a selection. There are ... It can be said that without a doubt the majority of young people here have come because it was promised them that they would be present at the Hour of Realization – but they just don’t remember it! (Mother laughs) I have already said several times that when you come down on earth, you fall on your head, which leaves you a little dazed! (laughter) It’s a pity, but after all, you don’t have to remain dazed all your lives, do you? You should go deep within yourselves and there find the immortal consciousness – then you can see very well, you can very clearly remember the circumstances in which you ... you aspired to be here for the Hour of the Work’s realization. But actually, to tell you the truth, I think your lives are so easy that you don’t exert yourselves very much! How many among you have truly an INTENSE need to find their psychic beings? To find out truly who they are? To find out what their roles are, why they are here? ... You just let yourselves drift. You even complain when things aren’t easy enough! You just take things as they come. And sometimes, should an aspiration arise in you and you encounter some difficulty in yourself, you say, ‘Oh, Mother is there! She’ll take care of it for me!’ And you think about something else." The Mother's Agenda/August 25, 1954, 168: "The terminology of Yoga recognises besides the status of our physical and vital being, termed the gross body and doubly composed of the food sheath and the vital vehicle, besides the status of our mental being, termed the subtle body and singly composed of the mind sheath or mental vehicle,(manah. -kosa) a third, supreme and divine status of supra-mental being, termed the causal body and composed of a fourth and a fifth vehicle (vijnanakosa and anandakosa) which are described as those of knowledge and bliss." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-16, "But this causal body is, as we may say, little developed in the majority of men and to live in it or to ascend to the supramental planes, as distinguished from corresponding sub-planes in the mental being, or still more to dwell consciously upon them is the most difficult thing of all for the human being. It can be done in the trance of Samadhi, but otherwise only by a new evolution of the capacities of the individual Purusha of which few are even willing to conceive." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-456, "If he rises into the knowledge-self beyond the highest mental stature, if he becomes the knowledge-soul, the Spirit poised in gnosis, vijn˜a¯ namaya purus.a, and puts on the nature of its infinite truth and power, if he lives in the knowledge-sheath, the causal body as well as in these subtle mental, interlinking vital and grosser physical sheaths or bodies, then, but then only he will be able to draw down entirely into his terrestrial existence the fullness of the infinite spiritual consciousness; only then will he avail to raise his total being and even his whole manifested, embodied ex- pressive nature into the spiritual kingdom. But this is difficult in the extreme; for the causal body opens itself readily to the consciousness and capacities of the spiritual planes and belongs in its nature to the higher hemisphere of existence, but it is either not developed at all in man or only as yet crudely developed and organised and veiled behind many intervening portals of the subliminal in us. It draws its stuff from the plane of the truth- knowledge and the plane of the infinite bliss and these pertain altogether to a still inaccessible higher hemisphere." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-473, "The sleep-state is a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed in us, its faculties not active, and therefore we are in relation to that plane in a condition of dreamless sleep. The Turiya beyond is the consciousness of our pure self-existence or our absolute being with which we have no direct relations at all, whatever mental reflections we may receive in our dream or our waking or even, irrecoverably, in our sleep consciousness." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-520, "For behind the gross physical sheath of this materially visible and sensible frame there is subliminally supporting it and discoverable by a finer subtle consciousness a subtle body of the mental being and a spiritual or causal body of the gnostic and bliss soul in which all the perfection of a spiritual embodiment is to be found, a yet unmanifested divine law of the body." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-695, Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy. “There is a love in which the emotion is turned towards the Divine in an increasing receptivity and growing union. What it receives from the Divine it pours out on others, but truly without demanding a return. If you are capable of that, then that is the highest and most satisfying way to love.” The Mother TMCW/Vol-14/p-122 “Sri Aurobindo had also written to the effect, ‘If Divine Love were to manifest now in all its fullness and totality, not a single material organism would but burst.’ So we must learn to widen, widen, widen not only the inner consciousness (that is relatively easy – at least feasible), but even this conglomeration of cells. And I’ve experienced this: you have to be able to widen this sort of crystallization if you want to be able to hold this Force. I know. Two or three times, upstairs (in Mother’s room), I felt the body about to burst. Actually, I was on the verge of saying, ‘burst and be done with.’ But Sri Aurobindo always intervened – all three times he intervened in an entirely tangible, living and concrete way ... and he arranged everything so that I was forced to wait. Then weeks go by, sometimes even months, between one thing and another, so that some elasticity may come into these stupid cells. So much time is wasted. We are ... oh! We are so hard! (Mother hits her body) As hard as a rock. But three times now, I’ve really felt that I was on the verge of ... falling apart. The first time it brought a fever, a fever so ... I don’t know, as if I had at least 115°! – I was roasting from head to toe; everything became red hot, and then ... it was over. That was the day when suddenly – suddenly – I was ... You see, I had said to myself, ‘All right, you must be peaceful, let’s see what happens,’ so then I brought down the Peace, and immediately I was able to pass into a ‘second of unconsciousness – and I woke up in the subtle physical, in Sri Aurobindo’s abode.’ There he was. And then I spent some time with him, explaining the problem. But that was really an experience, a decisive experience (it was many months ago, perhaps more than a year ago). So I explained the problem to Sri Aurobindo , and he replied (by his expression, not with words, but it was clear), ‘Patience, patience – patience, it will come.’ And a few days after this experience, ‘by chance’ I came upon something he had written where precisely he explained that we are much too rigid, coagulated, clenched for these things to be able to manifest – we must widen, relax, become plastic. But this takes time.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/12th November-1960

" “The Mother of all godheads and all strengths Who, mediatrix, binds earth to the Supreme. ” Savitri-313 The Mother Handbook "The boon that we have asked from the Supreme is the greatest that the Earth can ask from the Highest, the change that is most difficult to realise, the most exacting in its conditions. It is nothing less than the descent of the supreme Truth and Power into Matter , the supramental established in the material plane and consciousness and the material world and an integral transformation down to the very principle of Matter. Only a supreme Grace can effect this miracle. The supreme Power has descended into the most material consciousness but it has stood there behind the density of the physical veil, demanding before manifestation, before its great open workings can begin, that the conditions of the supreme Grace shall be there, real and effective. (1) A total surrender, (2) an exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, (3) a constant and integral choice of the Truth and (4) rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions made (for activation of Supreme Grace). But these must be fulfilled entirely, without reserve, without any evasion or presence, simply and sincerely down to the most physical consciousness and its workings." The Mother The Mother's Agenda/February 21, 1963, "There has never been here any real surrender, any giving up of yourself freely and simply into the hands of the Divine Mother. And yet that is the only way to succeed in the supramental Yoga. 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.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on The Mother/p-143 The Mother book gives the message of the second Divine Call of Jivatma's union with Paraprakriti and attainment of Cosmic Consciousness. It aims at the possession of the tantric objective of dynamic Divine Shakti with the help of the Vedantic method. The Vedantic self-disciplines of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga have been restated here in new terms and combinations of fivefold methods: aspiration, rejection, surrender, faith and sincerity. The first three are utilised to enter union with the static Divine and the last three are meant to experience dynamic Divine union. And consecration is divided into two types, that of Purusha Yajna and Prakriti Yajna . Faith is also divided into two parts that of ascending faith and descending faith or the faith that helps in the ascent of the Soul and the faith that prolongs the descent of Shakti . The first chapter of The Mother book gives importance to discernment of truth from falsehood and acceptance of the former by the rejection of the latter is the starting point of all Yoga. The second chapter gives importance to the psycho-spiritual Vedantic method to enter partial static and dynamic union with the Divine. The third chapter insists on the integration of this Divine union through faith, sincerity and surrender. The fourth chapter stresses the acceptance and utilisation of the Money power for the Divine Work by individuals having control over the lower Nature. The fifth chapter hints at the essence of Karma Yoga and the attainment of dynamic oneness with the Divine Mother. The sixth chapter develops direct contact with the four mediatrix Spiritual Mother Powers after opening of the Spiritual Being above the head, which are given utmost importance and identified as an extension of the Yoga of Self-perfection hinted in The Synthesis of Yoga . This mediatrix Impersonal Nameless Spiritual Mother is hinted in Savitri as: (Supreme Lord said to Savitri) "Abandoning the dubious middle Way, A few shall glimpse the miraculous Origin And some shall feel in you the secret Force And they shall turn to meet a nameless tread , Adventurers into a mightier Day." Savitri-704 There are four aspects or "sides" of the universal Mother: Maheshwari (the supreme Mother), Mahakali (the warrior aspect and the aspect of love), Mahalakshmi (the aspect of harmony and beauty), and Mahasaraswati (perfection in the arts and in work). This is also the supreme mystery; the Gita has hinted as four powers of Manu , ‘chatvaro manabastatha’ (The Gita-10.6) but never developed. These four Mediatrix Spiritual Mother Powers also complement the four Psychic Mother Powers, hinted in the Gita as chaturvarna . (The Gita-4.13) In each birth, we accumulate the Soul forces of Brahma Shakti, Kshetra Shakti, Vaisya Shakti and Shudra Shakti and in this birth, we can reconcile them for Supreme consummation. The reconciliation of the four Spiritual Mother Powers of Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, and Mahasaraswati paves the way for the Yoga of Self-perfection and the extension of Supramental/Bliss action. The method of self-discipline proposed by The Mother book is simple, where purified intellect is utilised for ceaseless aspiration, ceaseless renunciation of lower Nature and ceaseless practice of consecration to experience Divine union in waking trance. Its objective of complete possession of Divine Shakti in individual life is difficult to realise. There are still many missing links and gulfs that will connect the static and dynamic Brahman and the movement of Consciousness between the Psychic being and the Spiritual Being. It proposes to initiate the transformation of Nature with the aid of Purusha Yajna and intensify this action by a more powerful Prakriti Yajna . Faith, sraddha , is identified as the central Truth of The Mother book, which reinforces the contact between static and dynamic Divine. OM TAT SAT “I am not eager to be the Guru of anyone. It is more spontaneously natural for me to feel the Mother of all and to carry them forward silently through the power of love.” The Mother The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-82, The personality of Mediatrix Spiritual Mother, or universal Mother, developed in The Mother book is also hinted and developed in Savitri. " The great World-Mother now in her arose: A living choice reversed fate’s cold dead turn, Affirmed the spirit’s tread on Circumstance, Pressed back the senseless dire revolving Wheel And stopped the mute march of Necessity." Savitri-21 " The great World-Mother by her sacrifice Has made her soul the body of our state; Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness Divinity’s lapse from its own splendours wove The many-patterned ground of all we are. An idol of self is our mortality." Savitri-99 " I felt a covert touch, I heard a call, But could not clasp the body of my God Or hold between my hands the World-Mother’s feet ... But thou hast come and all will surely change: I shall feel the World-Mother in thy golden limbs And hear her wisdom in thy sacred voice." Savitri-405-406 " Casting aside its veil of Ignorance, Allied to gods and cosmic beings and powers It built the harmony of its human state; Surrendered into the great World-Mother’s hands Only she obeyed her sole supreme behest In the enigma of the Inconscient’s world." Savitri-530 The Supreme Word of The Mother : The Power of Consecration has to replace the power of Tapasya and The Mother’s power alone can rend the lid between the higher and lower Hemisphere and bring down into the world of Ignorance, Falsehood, Suffering and Death the unending Light, Truth, Immortal’s Ananda and the Life Divine. The Supreme Method of The Mother : For the transformation of Nature, Prakriti Yajna or Vedic sacrifice (holocaust of Prakriti , sacrifice of the Divine Mother) is considered more powerful than Purusha Yajna or Vedantic sacrifice. Both methods are to be combined for effective transformation though for beginners of sadhana , Vedantic sacrifice is considered indispensable. So The Mother book proposes a safe and secured Vedantic method of self-discipline in order to arrive at the Tantric/Vedic aim. The Supreme Siddhi or Perfection of The Mother : The highest Supramental Force permeates from above the head from Spiritual, Supramental and Bliss Self, within from Psychic, true Mental, true Vital and true Psysical Being, below the feet by the opening of Subconscient and Inconscient Selves, and all around by opening of universal Self and awake in the body the Supreme Love, Beauty and Ananda . Or "It (dynamic Spirit) is within, below, without, above." (Savitri-98) The Supreme Grace of The Mother : The Divine Grace will act when either of the four conditions below is satisfied. The Supreme Divine Grace will intensify only when the four conditions are simultaneously satisfied in Integral Concentration of (1) total and sincere surrender, (2) exclusive self-opening to the Divine Power, (3) constant and integral choice of descending overhea Truth and (4) constant and integral rejection of falsehood of mind, vital, body, surrounding world and Subconscient plane. Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: The Practice of Integral Yoga through The Mother Handbook I The Handbook II of The Mother The Central Truth of The Mother “I have quite the feeling that I myself ‘do’ nothing at all, absolutely nothing. The only thing I do is this (gesture of offering upwards), constantly this, in everything – in thoughts, feelings, sensations, in the body’s cells, all the time: ‘You, You, You. It’s You, it’s You, it’s You ...’ That’s all. And nothing else. (Her life the altar, herself the sacrifice. Savitri-473) … In other words, a more and more complete, a more and more integral assent, more and more like this (gesture of letting herself be carried). That’s when you have the feeling that you must be ABSOLUTELY like a child… If you start thinking, ‘Oh, I want to be like this! Oh, I ought to be like that!’ you waste your time.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/ November 12, 1960 “During the whole time Sri Aurobindo was here, the four entities he speaks of, the four aspects of The Mother , were always present. And I was constantly obliged to tell one or other of them, “Now keep calm, now, now, calm down”—they were always inclined to intervene!” The Mother The Mother's Agenda/27th June 1962 “Answer that there are many paths of Yoga, — Sri Aurobindo’s is one which is very difficult and exacting and he does not care to accept anyone into it unless he is satisfied that he has a special call and is capable of following the path. No one is admitted to the Asram as a member in the indefinite and conditional way he suggests. It is no use taking up Yoga without knowing what it is. If he wants to read books on the subject, he can read the Essays on the Gita and The Mother . They will not give him a complete idea of this path and its conditions and objects, but they should at least give him some notion of what Yoga is and of the spirit of this Yoga” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and His Ashram/p-569 “Once in the early part of my life (Priti Dasgupta) in the Ashram , the Mother told me while giving flower: “Every morning, read a little bit of Sri Aurobindo’s book, The Mother . Just as in India people read the Gita in the morning. You make the same kind of inner progress by re ading The Mother as you do by reading the Gita . Read it regularly every morning.” The Mother Moments Eternal/ Priti Dasgupta