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Objective in Detail “Our object (object of Integral Yoga) is to make the spiritual life and its experiences fully active and fully utilizable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions. But in the Rajayoga it tends to withdraw into a subliminal plane at the back of our normal experiences instead of descending and possessing our whole existence.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-37 “In a certain sense it may be an error to speak of a goal anywhere in a progression which may well be infinite. Still we can conceive of an immediate goal , an ulterior objective beyond our present achievement towards which the soul in man can aspire. There lies before him the possibility of (1) a new birth; (2) there can be an ascent into a higher and wider plane of being and its descent to transform his members. (3) An enlarged and illumined consciousness is possible that shall make of him a liberated spirit and a perfected force — and, if spread beyond the individual, it might even constitute a divine humanity or else a new, a supramental and therefore a superhuman race. It is this (1) new birth (dvija ) that we make our (immediate) aim: (2) a growth into a divine consciousness is the whole meaning of our Yoga, (3) an integral conversion to divinity not only of the soul but of all the parts of our nature.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-90 The increasing impulse of all individual life is to know, realise and master its own world and that urge of endless potentialities concealed within everything is an essential feature of the growing self-manifestation of the Divine in cosmic existence. All can serve the Divine, but few can dare to pursue The (Divine) Mother’s unfinished Yoga or Nature’s conscious integral Evolution in its entirety. Among those few who are entirely aware of the whole course of Her Yoga and Evolution, fewer can hold Her Supreme Force or fix the Eternal in time made things and it is still the fewest to whom She reveals Her Integral and absolute Shakti in its entirety, samagram-mam.⁶ The Mother Nature attempts universal Divine Incarnation or progressively manifest God in human body by emergence of concealed Consciousness through the diffusion of all Her human vessel but succeeds with the few through concentrated dynamic movement. The success of the few through intensive and swift evolution is the final promise and completest sanction of Nature towards the success of all or the Divinisation extended to the whole of humanity. This is a task left to the last Avatar to realise. The first object of integral Yoga is the Divine union and joy in the heart and Psychic transformation of nature in Ignorance by Purusha’s suffusion into Prakriti and experiencing the first reversal of Consciousness¹¹ through Divine action, liberation, freedom, creation and Ananda ; the second object is the Divine union in many sided world action, free enjoyment of cosmic unity and the Spiritual change of nature; thus, the second reversal of Consciousness¹² of intense joy through union of Ishwara and Ishwari is realised; the third object is Divinisation of Nature through inrush of Para Shakti and third reversal of Consciousness¹³ through fusion of dual power of the Divine, Brahman and Maya , leading the creation towards Supramental transformation and the utilisation of transformed individuality as centre of world transformation; the last object is the movement of Consciousness towards the source of Ananda through fourth reversal of Consciousness¹⁴ of experiencing the Origin of Existence through intense oneness of Sat and Chit . Thus, the complete realisation of Sachchidananda is the highest ascending Spiritual experience of integral Yoga, where the utmost fundamental awareness of identity, mutual inclusion and interpenetration of Consciousness would be inherent and all would be a direct action of Consciousness in Being itself, identical, intimate, intrinsically self-aware and all-aware. To repose in this last and highest summit of Omniscient and Omnipotent Bliss world permanently is in the end the supreme self-perfection of our evolving human Consciousness. This highest Consciousness is dynamised and the descending Spiritual experience of integral Yoga is the transformation of Subconscient and Inconscient Sheaths and the movement of the world towards conscious emergence of full Sachchidananda in its own creation. An Integral Yogi or the Divine’s dearest Child is at once a child, not doing any sadhana , but it is done for him due to his entire reliance on The Mother and the sadhaka of integral Yoga pursuing sadhana through renunciation, effort, concentration, consecration and askesis and he can serve as a link in between the Supreme Mother Consciousness and the earth consciousness. He is outwardly a mere man, Nara , and inwardly Divine, Narayana, shall preoccupy himself in the entire effort to reveal God in humanity, Nara-Narayana . One Integral Yogi is discerned from another from the degree of opening towards the Divine Shakti and capacity to receive, canalise, hold and assimilate it in his ‘universalised subtle body’⁷ for earth and men. The Mother is at once the Supreme Mother, the Chit Shakti, the Creatrix of the universe, not doing any sadhana and the Sadhaka of integral Yoga pursuing Her Sadhana in the body and a Mediatrix in between Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana and the World, and She draws heaven seeking and world shunning liberated Souls earthward to reconcile Self and Nature, fills in them the equal Divine Presence and builds in the abysm of Hell a road to Heaven. Sri Aurobindo is at once the Supreme Purusha, the Purushottama, carrying within Him the immutable, the unmanifest Divine, the Akshara Purusha and the mutable, the manifest Divine, the Kshara Purusha , and an Intermediary, the Guru , linking the disciples with the three Purushas and fusing Himself with the Supreme Prakriti , The Mother , for the highest action and delight of the Divine Lila. The Mother is the living representative of Consciousness by whose movement one will arrive at Sri Aurobindo , the living representative of the Being, the Supreme Self. Their relation is the union between Sat and Chit leading the creation to Supreme Ananda. Supramental Consciousness, Vijnana , the Real-Idea inherent in all cosmic force and existence, is the fourth name²⁴ of the Divine activated through Their supreme relation linking the Sachchidananda to lower triple creation of Mind, Life and Body; if dynamised sufficiently then the lower creation retains its lost Divinity and the Divine Life becomes practicable. The Divine attracts all human beings with four lures that of (1) earthly enjoyments, (2) the attraction towards Heaven beyond and its joy, (3) attraction towards ineffable self-existent play of Ananda , here in this earth, ihaiva and (4) attraction of His Supreme reality of Oneness for which He created four Centres though not strictly divided, are that of the World, the Ascetics’ Fortress, the Divine Centre or the Ashram and the Virgin Mother’s Fortress. They allow us to take into account the total nature of man and recognise the legitimate and right place of this quadruple attraction through which reconciliation of Life and Spirit are worked out from birth to birth and man stands here with his highest aspiration at these four critical turning points to discover an evolutionary synthesis with Spiritual insight, largeness of view, symmetry and completeness of human life. These are the four stairs of Soul’s great adventure through which The Mother’s Shapeless Infinite Consciousness lures the Eternal to descend into the arms of Time and dynamises four kinds of progressive movements that of (1) moderate Spirituality through path of purification of intellect and emotion with the assistance of Science and Religion, (2) exclusive Spirituality through the path of indifference and renunciation with the aid of traditional schools of Yoga or later Vedantic Saints, (3) comprehensive Spirituality through the path of consecration and loss of ego of the Ancient Vedantic Seers and (4) Spirituality of cellular change and physical Immortality through the path of annulment of Self and Nature to find the Supreme transforming Light of the Veda, virgin Mother’s Yoga or Savitri’s Yoga. The Fortress of Moderate Spirituality: A mere man can elevate himself to the status of God either by slow evolution through long succession of rebirths or swift and concentrated evolution in this life, though the former effort always precedes the latter. It is safe for man to begin his conscious God-ward journey through a moderate path which is neither too extreme, dangerous and strenuous effort of Titans, nor that of the Gods with their superhuman thought and power, nor that of animals and birds who are driven by unthinking will, nor the senseless whirl of the inanimate Matter. So, he can experience progress, change, expansion and enlargement by the developmental urge discovered by the Mother-nature either through Religion which is an unconscious Yoga of Nature through devotion or through Science which is an unconscious Yoga of Nature through intellect or through entry into spiritual thought and preparation, which is identified as integral Yoga for beginners. All noble and high Religions aim at transfiguration of son of men into son of God and are having three fundamental ways or three essential affirmations of approaching life that can be adopted with regard to our existence: Firstly, the belief in the immortality, the eternal persistence of the individual human Spirit apart from the body, that is our Supra-terrestrial or other worldly existence or an occult link through which all things are ordered, governed and harmonised in their fundamental relations and process; secondly, it is in Heavens beyond that we must seek our entire Divine fulfilment, and their other assertion of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the perfect upon Earth must be put aside as delusion, or in any case, the Absolute, the Parabrahman is the origin and goal of all existence, that is our Supracosmic view of things; thirdly, an emphasis on the development of the Ethical and Spiritual being as the means of ascension and therefore the one proper business of this brief life in this world of Matter; during this temporary stay from birth to death we have to study the laws of becoming and take the best advantage of them to realise the dynamism and potentiality in us, that is our cosmic and Terrestrial existence. It is practically impossible for man taken as a race to guide his life permanently or wholly by the leading motive of any of these three mental attitudes towards life to the exclusion of the other two claims on his nature. Thus, one of the above three does not harmonise with the other two and by this disharmony, humanity is thrown into great perplexities of contradiction and hence subjects itself to doubt and denial. Integral Yoga rejects the above three limiting conclusions or unsatisfactory solutions that after liberating Mind, Life and Soul within one must turn from the unconquerable Material principle and from the intractable and unregenerate Earth to find elsewhere his Divine substance. In integral Yoga, a fourth fundamental theory is developed which is integration, synthesis and reconciliation of the above three Religious factors which recognise the other states of Matter or an ascending series of the Divine gradations of substance and through acceptance of this higher law, the luminous and puissant material transfiguration is possible. In this last category would fall the view of Integral Spiritual Evolution where Supracosmic is accepted as source and support, the Supra-terrestrial or otherworldly for a condition and connecting link and the cosmic and Terrestrial for its field and circumstance, and with human Life and Mind for its nodus, turning point and dynamic mould into which Divine existence can be poured in for a higher and even highest perfection. Infinite Being, Sat, loses itself in the appearance of non-being, Nihil and emerges in the appearance of a finite Soul, the Psychic Being in whom manifestation is felt as a necessity; Infinite Consciousness, Chit, loses itself in the appearance of a vast indeterminate Inconscience and emerges in the appearance of a superficial limited consciousness of Mind with inherent will, aim, endeavour and purpose; Infinite self-sustaining Force, Tapas, loses itself in the appearance of a chaos of atoms and emerges in the appearance of the insecure balance of a world of Vital with inherent life urge, tendency, desire and seeking; Infinite Delight, Ananda , loses itself in the appearance of an insensible Matter with inherent secret energy and emerges in the appearance of a discordant rhythm of varied pain, pleasure and neutral feeling of indifference in the Physical; Infinite Unity of Sachchidananda loses itself in the appearance of a chaos of multiplicity of Mind, Life and Body and emerges in a discord of forces and beings which seek to recover unity by possessing, dissolving and devouring each other. An integral Moderate Soul Seeker is made aware of transforming the apparent negations of Mind, Life and Body through practice of Yoga. The three negations of Mind are identified as limitation of Consciousness (which gave birth to Pleasure, Pain and Indifference), Ignorance and Dualities are transformed in integral Yoga into Infinite Consciousness, Integral Knowledge and Oneness; of Life are identified as Death, Desire or Hunger and Incapacity are 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. Every thought and impulse of an integral moderate is reminded in the language of the Kena Upanishad , “That is the Divine Brahman and not this which men here cherish and adore.”²⁰ He can enlarge his experience on Existence and its Source through entry into a practice followed by the experience of an all-inclusive Integral Divine and can ignite in him the spirit of Oneness through the triple Vedantic formula of atmani atmanam atmana of living for the Divine, by the Divine and in the Divine. His partial self-giving to the Divine shall culminate in integral self-giving through the method as proposed by the Mother, "Some give their soul to the Divine, some their life, some offer their work, some their money, a few consecrate all of themselves and all they have—soul, life, work, wealth; these are the true children of God. Others give nothing. These, whatever their position, power and riches are for the Divine purpose valueless ciphers.”²² The Ascetics’ Fortress: The Ascetics’ Fortress is born by following the later Vedantic doctrine of Illusionism and Asceticism, an impatience of heart and mind which seeks vehemently the One and denies the Many, receives the breath of the Spirit’s height and recoils from the secret of the Matter’s depth; it belittles the individual and the cosmos for the sole escape into Transcendence and neglects the building of the link principles that bridges the lower mental Maya with higher Supramental Maya . It is the revolt of Spirit against Matter and has dominated the Indian mind for last two thousand years and all have lived in the shadow of the three great Refusals, of chain of Work, Karma , of bondage to the principle of rebirth, Punarjanma and of cosmic Illusion of life, Maya . Renunciation is identified as the sole path of Knowledge and the ultimate end of life for all is the garb of the Ascetic. A traditional Ascetic is an exclusive Spiritual seeker who returns by inaction and silence to the Spirit’s immobile liberty and ecstasy of Divine embrace; because of his revolt and disgust with the animal grossness and mud of Matter, impatient of the purposeless stir, trouble and self-imprisoned narrowness of Life and tired out by the goalless running and downward vision of the Mind. He enters into a trance through meditation, contemplation, and silencing of the mind and awakens in him the Presence of the One. But for him the Matter still sleeps empty of its Lord. He saves his Spirit while the body is lost and mute; lives still with Death, ancient Ignorance and Inconscient base and he lives in a Void or devastating simplicity of nullification, that is his fate. But for an integral Ascetic, the opposition of Spiritual life and mundane ordinary life is reconciled by discovering a relation between dynamic Spirit and static Matter. A traditional Ascetic is exclusively attached to his own individual salvation and regards other Souls as figments of his mind and considers their salvation unimportant. He regards his personal escape from bondage as real and does not bother for other brother Souls who remain behind in bondage. He remains indifferent towards that cry that rises from the labouring humanity. The limitation of a divided ego builds his individualised personality. These limitations are corrected in integral Yoga, though personal salvation remains the primary necessity, pivot and keynote of definitive Divine action and human fulfilment. An individual salvation is not sufficient for an integral Ascetic; for he must break through all separative boundaries, the narrower intensity of a limited individual fulfilment, ‘selfishness that cares not what becomes of those left behind us’¹⁸ and opens to a cosmic Consciousness and spreads himself in the World-nature. ‘With weakness and selfishness, however spiritual in their guise or trend, he can have no dealings; a divine strength and courage and a divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be, they are that very nature of the Divine which he would take upon himself as a robe of spiritual light and beauty.’¹⁸ Integral Yoga transforms the three Ascetic Negations into three Integral Affirmations- that of chain of Karma is transformed into liberated worker and preservation of individual activities is no longer inconsistent with attainment of Cosmic and Transcendent consciousness; rebirth is not meant to encircle in the net of desire and ultimate escape into cessation of birth but it is accepted as means of Spiritual evolution and the emergence of the Divine in all creatures must be the high-uplifted goal and the later Vedantic mental Maya of Illusion which creates false mental forms and appearances of this apparent world-existence with its relation to pure, infinite, indivisible, immutable Existence, which is the God’s play with division, darkness, limitation, desire, strife and suffering has first to be embraced and accepted as an inverse creative movement of the Divine Consciousness, then to be overcome and transformed by ancient Vedantic Supramental Maya, a forward creative Consciousness of the Eternal, which is the God’s play of the infinities of existence, the splendours of Knowledge, the glories of force mastered and the ecstasies of Love illimitable of all comprehending and all containing Consciousness; thus, the undivine mental Maya of adverse formative power of a lower knowledge and deluding magic of the Rakshasa become the all-knowledge and the order truth of the dynamic Being and true magic of the Divine Magician or the Illusion-Power of the Divine Knowledge in the world which creates appearances, negations, denial, pessimism and incapacity, works out in lower nature the Truth Power of Knowledge leading the creation towards complete affirmation of Supramental Divine Maya of conscious Knowledge. A renunciation of life and release into the Spirit of the Ascetic creates an exaggeration of the impulse of liberation, more complete and more final, but more perilous in its effects on the individuals and collectivities, which destroyed the symmetry and disturbed the balance of ancient Indian Vedic culture and cut it into two irreconcilable movements of life, the normal life of interests and desires with ethical and religious colouring and supernormal inner life by rejection of surface living. An Integral Ascetic retains the old Aryan synthesis of reconciling human perfection through normal and natural mental development with his Spiritual evolution. The full liberation can come by liberation of all the parts of Soul and Nature, universal detachment from all things, universal awareness of Knowledge and aesthesis and yet opens him to the touch of Spiritual Sympathy, Compassion and Oneness. In integral Yoga, the Ascetic or the later Vedantic formula of attaining the Spirit’s height, “One without the second,” ekamevadvitiyam (The Chandogya Upanishad-6.2.1 ) is sufficiently linked with the other complementary ancient Vedantic formula of comprehensiveness and illumining the Matter’s depth, “all this is the Brahman ,” Sarvam Khalu Idam Brahman . (The Chandogya Upanishad-3.14.1) Thus, the ascent of Consciousness to explore the height of the Spirit is followed by the descent of Consciousness to penetrate the depth of Matter is realised. The Divine Centre: A Divine Centre grows by following the ancient Vedantic doctrine, of calm, wise and clear teachings of most ancient sages who relied for everything not on intellect and conscience but on Intuition, Vision and Spiritual experience and for them, this world is primarily a formation of Consciousness and secondarily a material formation of things and objects. They had ‘the knowledge of the three times, trikaladristi, — held of old to be a supreme sign of the seer and the Rishi ,’¹⁵ the patience and strength to find and know the secret of Existence and clarity and humility to admit the limitation of existing knowledge. The steady eye of the ancient wisdom promises to know God equally in the One and the Many, in the Spirit and the Matter, a patient search of Truth everywhere without distinction. A Divine Centre is born either by the intensification of the evolution of a liberated ascetic Soul or consecrated Mystic with Gnostic Consciousness decides to live in the group as collective Soul-power of the Truth–consciousness, to intensify double purpose of the liberation of Soul through Divine union or ascension of Consciousness and transformation of Nature through prolongation of Divine union or through the descent of Divine Shakti. The three stages through which the Divine Centre extends its influence on the surrounding are that firstly, the Centre would act initially as a Fortress, a secured atmosphere for a long period with minimising its contact and commerce with the outside world which takes up all life and action and offer them to the Divine till sufficient amount of Yoga Shakti is accumulated and self mastery over lower nature, swarat, individual perfection and an inner completeness of being followed by mastery over surrounding atmosphere, samrat , are realised by one or some of its central representatives; secondly it would go through the period to build a Spiritual wall and admits through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of Spiritual transformation and thus, a door towards outside world is made open, the problems of a part of the surrounding world are accepted, pacified and nullified in the subtle body of its perfected vessels leading towards a complete universality and oneness with all life upon earth; during this intermediate divine change there can be a beginning of this fundamental ecstasy of being translated into a manifold beauty, love and delight; thirdly, the subtle and causal sheaths are more and more illumined, densified and perfected through the all embracing Divine contact, the Spirit within becomes powerful enough to receive and transform more and more world influence, admit within its borders as much of human life as is turned towards Spirituality and entire range of life’s more visible activities, resulting in a new world, a change in the total life of humanity or, at least, a new perfected collective life in the earth nature where none could escape the law of Ecstasy. This Divine Centre is not a religious association. Religious institutions do not insist on the whole change of human nature by entire self-giving and have no vision of curing the root problem and origin of human malady. They enter into ever-ambiguous compromises with the lower nature and short-lived enjoyments; establish an imperfect customary mental control over physical and vital desires and instincts; seek to net the human heart with pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism, annexing vital nature into the fanaticism, homicidal fury; draw the physical in man towards hollow ceremony and lifeless rituals. The Divine Centre is not a monastery, mattha,²⁵ or ascetic retreat of world shunning and heaven-seeking discipline of exclusive quest of the Divine by entire rejection of world existence and its mundane theory, hunger for personal salvation and freedom from rebirth; here this existence is fully embraced and welcomed as the body and rhythm of the Brahman and full of Presence of the Divine; isolated individual liberation is extended to others, “the sum-total of all souls”²¹ as our Divine self-interest and 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 not a democratic institution where change is enforced through external manipulation of phenomena, here nothing is decided by collective opinion by activating the highest ideology of mind; nor an autocratic institution with aggrandisement of individual ego; nor a political institution; here all associations of political, religious, social, family, mental, vital and physical are abandoned. One must arrive at the conscious unity and truly succeed in living selflessly for others not by mere sympathetic love and knowledge of mental understanding but by an inner Spiritual force of Love and Compassion and our being does embrace the being of others as our own Self in universalised Conciousness. The individual Soul must exist in relation to the World, Nature and fellow Beings with an absolute and inalienable conscious Power, Freedom and Self-knowledge. The Consciousness of the Infinite creates all possible relations between the Many and the One and confirms all other personal relations to give them their fullness, significance and entire Delight. All his relation with the Divine is culminated by his comprehensive Self-knowledge which is the truth of the Infinite in Being, the Infinite in Consciousness, the Infinite in Delight repossessed as his own Self and Reality of which the finite is only a mask and an instrument for various expression; it insists on the emergence of Infinite Consciousness in the true individual Soul, a conscious power of the Eternal, who always recovers the truth of himself by self-realisation, always exists by the law of unity and always capable of mutuality and harmony. The individual conscious Soul would know the intention, scope and inevitable result of every action and would not crave or struggle but put forth an assured force self-limited to the immediate object in view. This Divine Centre is not a business institution where everything is centred around wealth and profit; here money or wealth is accepted as a subordinate, secondary, dispensable outer support of primary indispensable inner development; it is Nature’s vital force turned into one of greatest powers of action and manifestation. Like air, water, fire and ether it cannot be under anybody’s personal possession, nor can there be any inheritor of it, nor can we put a ban on money power with the spirit of an ascetic shrinking, nor can it be misappropriated for enslaving self-indulgence in our gratification but utilised for the true, beautiful, harmonious Divinised vital and physical existence and must be put at the service of the Divine for the highest benefit of humanity. Here everything is centred around the three Divine faculties of Will, Knowledge and Love represented by the Psychic Being in the heart and the Spiritual Being above the head. All actions, both of the inner and outer life are done here as an offering to manifest the Divine’s Will through its Soul Centre or Central Representative, who is recognised as the purest vessel and fit channel to receive the Divine’s instruction, vision and command, adesh . The individual Soul Centre is only the upholder of His Shakti, recipient, channel, reflector of Her Power, trustee of Her thought, plan and action, executor of Her Will in eternal Time and luminously participates in Her Love, Light, Beauty, Joy and Force. The Virgin Mother’s Fortress: The Virgins’ Fortress is the ultimate dream of the Divine Mother who is symbolised in the Veda as the high-bred golden maiden, Savitri, present always in earth’s atmosphere since the beginning of the creation, intends to build Her extreme Spiritual and Supramental superstructure and fulfills the deficiencies of all the previous three institutions through virgin Influence ²³ which draws one irresistibly towards the Divine only. Thus, she endlessly unfolds the endless Truth and Timeless mystery. The first objective of a more concentrated Divine Centre or Virgin Mother’s Fortress is to safeguard the Time’s virginity ¹ from invasion of various world forces and universal Subconscient and wide open its door for marriage with Eternity, Spiritual Being 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. A true virgin is she or he whose mind, life, body and soul are pure enough to be united with the Divine and guards Truth’s diamond throne. Its second objective is to bridge the gulf between the dream truth and earth fact through the annulment of manifold void and oblivion in Consciousness that can keep the passage open for the virgin Fire ² or Psychic being. Its third objective is to build a similar bridge between the subtle physical and the Superconscient Bliss sheath through movement of Consciousness that seems to recoil from reaching to its Source, the virgin Sun ³ or Supramental being. And the last objective is that Earth could have been made equal and the peer of Heaven and Heaven’s joy could have stabilized here, had Earth been made pure and virgin. If the dream of the Virgins’ Fortress can extend towards the realisation of a virgin Earth ,⁴ then through the earth’s virgin form the Formless will shine with all its resplendent glory and establish the empire of the Soul and lift Earth to the neighbourhood with the Heaven. Thus, a marriage between the virgin Earth and virgin Heaven annexes Divinity to a mortal scheme and all discords are healed that Time’s torn heart has made and Immortality captures Time and carries ahead the Life. Thus, earth life can be transformed into an ecstatic playfield of ‘virgin bridals of the dawn.’⁵ OM TAT SAT References: 1: "Creating in a young and virgin Time." Savitri-38, 2: "An ocean of untrembling virgin fire;" Savitri-16, 3: "And high dependencies of her virgin sun," Savitri-124, 4: "Heaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure." Savitri-123, 5: Savitri-401, 6: " The Blessed Lord said: Hear, O Partha, how by practising Yoga with a mind attached to me and with me as ashraya (the whole basis, lodgement, point of resort of the conscious being and action) thou shalt know me without any remainder of doubt, integrally. " The Gita-7.1, 7: “Among the thousands of men one here and there strives after perfection, siddhi, and of those who strive and attain to perfection one here and there knows Me Integrally, in all principles of my existence... Such integral Yogis with universalised subtle body, Vasudeva Sarvamiti, and the knowledge of the Purushottama or Supramental Consciousness are very rare.” The Gita-7.3, 19. 11: “Wisdom transcendent touched his (King’s) quivering heart:” Savitri-33, 12: “A mystic Form that could contain the worlds, Yet make one human breast its passionate shrine, Drew him (King Aswapati) out of his seeking loneliness Into the magnitudes of God's embrace.” Savitri-81 13: “The One (Supreme Mother) keeps in his heart (of King Aswapati) and knows alone.” Savitri-52, 14: “The All-Blissful sat unknown within the heart (of King Aswapati)” Savitri-43, 15: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-886, 16: “I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete if he cannot live ascetically or follow a life as bare as the barest anchorites” Sri Aurobindo/SABCL-26/On Himself/130, 17: “The Vedanta is the God’s lamp to lead thee out of this night of bondage and egoism; but when the light of Veda has dawned in thy soul, then even that divine lamp thou needest not, for now thou canst walk freely and surely in a high and eternal sunlight.” CWSA-12/Essays Human and Divine-p-472, 18: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-327, 19: “A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have not only to assimilate the influences of the great theistic religions of India and of the world and a recovered sense of the meaning of Buddhism , but to take full account of the potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking; and, beyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-10, 20: “That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 72, "Know That for the Brahman and not this which men cherish here."CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-403, 21: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 270, 22: The Mother/ TMCW-1/Prayers and Meditations-1, 23: "The virgin forms through which the Formless shines," Savitri-327, 24: "In the ancient Indian system there is only one triune supernal, Sachchidananda . Or if you speak of the upper hemisphere as the supernal, there are three, Sat plane, Chit plane and Ananda plane. The Supermind could be added as a fourth , as it draws upon the other three and belongs to the upper hemisphere. The Indian systems did not distinguish between two quite different powers and levels of consciousness, one which we can call Over-mind and the other the true Supermind or Divine Gnosis. That is the reason why they got confused about Maya (Overmind- Force or Vidya-Avidya) and took it for the supreme creative power . In so stopping short at what was still a half-light they lost the secret of transformation — even though the Vaishnava and Tantra Yogas groped to find it again and were sometimes on the verge of success. For the rest, this, I think, has been the stumbling-block of all attempts at the discovery of the dynamic divine Truth; I know of none that has not imagined, as soon as it felt the Overmind lustres descending, that this was the true illumination, the gnosis, — with the result that they either stopped short there and could get no farther, or else concluded that this too was only Maya or Lila and that the one thing to do was to get beyond it into some immovable and inactive Silence of the Supreme." CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-83 25: “The peculiarity of this (integral) Yoga is that until there is siddhi above, the foundation does not become perfect. Those who have been following my course (integral Yoga) had kept many of the old samskaras ; some of them have dropped away, but others still remain. There was the samskara of Sannyasa, even the wish to create an Arabinda Matha (Sri Aurobindo Monastery ). Now the intellect has recognised that Sannyasa is not what is wanted, but the stamp of the old idea has not yet been effaced from prana (breath, life energy). So there was next this talk of remaining in the midst of the world, as a man of worldly activities and yet a man of renunciation. The necessity of renouncing desire has been understood, but harmony of renunciation of desire with enjoyment of Ananda has not been rightly seized by the mind.” Sri Aurobindo/The Mother’s Agenda-3/271, "There is another point. You sent a message about an “Aurobindo Math ” which seemed to show you had caught the contagion which rages in Bengal. You must understand that my mission is not to create maths , ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna & Kali . That is my teaching, as you can see from the Review, and my name must never be connected with monastic forms or the monastic ideal. Every ascetic movement since the time of Buddha has left India weaker and for a very obvious reason. Renunciation of life is one thing, to make life itself, national, individual, world-life greater & more divine is another. You cannot enforce one ideal on the country without weakening the other. You cannot take away the best souls from life & yet leave life stronger & greater. Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach, — no other renunciation. " CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-222, "When the Unity has been well founded, the static half of our work is done, but the active half remains. It is then that in the One we must see the Master and His Power, — Krishna and Kali as I name them using the terms of our Indian religions; the Power occupying the whole of myself and my nature which becomes Kali and ceases to be anything else , the Master using, directing, enjoying the Power to his ends, not mine, with that which I call myself only as a centre of his universal existence and responding to its workings as a soul to the Soul, taking upon itself his image until there is nothing left but Krishna and Kali. This is the stage I have reached in spite of all setbacks and recoils, imperfectly indeed in the secureness and intensity of the state, but well enough in the general type. When that has been done, then we may hope to found securely the play in us of his divine Knowledge governing the action of his divine Power. The rest is the full opening up of the different planes of his world-play and the subjection of Matter and the body and the material world to the law of the higher heavens of the Truth." CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-290, Download this Web Page in PDF format: THE MUNDANE PERFECTION “Never forget that, as much outside as in the Ashram, if you want to lead a happy life, you must be the master of your lower nature and control your desires and vital impulses; otherwise there is no end to the miseries and the troubles.” The Mother The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-14/p-255 MODERATE SPIRITUALITY “The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves, — and Yoga means a plunge into all the multiple profundities of the soul, —we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively, surrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-75 THE ASCETICS' FORTRESS "A sannyasi who makes demands is not sincere. To be sincere a sannyasi must be perfectly satisfied with what is given to him and ask for nothing more. In all that happens to him, he must see the Divine’s Grace and be at once happy and grateful for it... 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." The Mother TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-47 "These three elements, (1) a union with the supreme Divine, (2) unity with the universal Self, and (3) a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-622 “If you look at yourself carefully, you will see that one always carries in oneself the opposite of the virtue one has to realise (I use “virtue” in its widest and highest sense). You have a special aim, a special mission, a special realisation which is your very own, each one individually, and you carry in yourself all the obstacles necessary to make your realisation perfect. Always you will see that within you the shadow and the light are equal: you have an ability, you have also the negation of this ability. But if you discover a very black hole, a thick shadow, be sure there is somewhere in you a great light. It is up to you to know how to use the one to realise the other .” The Mother TMCW/Vol-4/Questions and Answers-1950-1951/p-118 All aim of Integral Yoga or the entire aim of this Yoga is the All Purification, sarva suddhi, All Perfection, sarva siddhi, All Liberation, sarva mukti and All Delight, sarva bhukti as envisaged and further univesalised, the highest object of synthetic teachings of Tantra followed by regarding the spirit in man as a universal being capable of Oneness with the Divine in all Souls and all Nature and this extended view is given its entire practical consequence in spiritualizing humanity; integral physical and mental perfection and experience of Samadhi , as highest envisaged result of Hatha and Raja Yoga ; full dynamisation of All Will, sarva iccha, All Knowledge, sarva Jnana, and All Love, sarva prema as envisaged in Integral Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga . It accepts the Spiritual experience of oneness with the Brahman, Brahmanirvana, liberation of Nature, mukti , Cosmic Consciousness, Vasudevah sarvam iti of the immediate aim of the Gita by rejecting its ultimate aim of freedom from rebirth, punarjanma na vidyate . The aim of integral Yoga is something more complex and less exclusive – less exclusively positive of the highest condition of the soul, less exclusively negative of its Divine radiations. It has to make the Spiritual life and its experiences of Samadhi , fully active and fully utilizable in the waking state and even in the normal use of the functions. To possess Him and be possessed by Him, in ourselves and in all planes, states of Consciousness and things, to enjoy Him in all passivity and activity, of unity and of difference, of peace and of turmoil is the entire definition of the aim of Integral Yoga. (Ref: The Synthesis of Yoga/p-674, 54, 320, 37, 63 )

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. The 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 Sachchidanada 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 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. 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 the 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 vistas to the future will wide open 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 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 process of the 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 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 underlie and sustain 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 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 much vaster Subliminal and Subconscient mind, which is the greater part of our identity and contains height, depth and profundities to which no man can measure or fathom. This knowledge gives us the starting point of the true Science and also 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, explore 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 the humanity. Our true happiness and completeness lies in true growth of our whole being and 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 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 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 draws 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 on 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, 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 schools 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 vast number of difficult formulations and all the elements that have grown in the course of 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; follows 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 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 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. 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 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 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 becomes militant and dominant Church and the Christianity organise themselves into mutual strife and they battled together fiercely to live, grow and possess the world as much 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 later 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 Subliminal plane and Protestants have something of the inner Divine Presence. . Integral Yoga accepts and adores the compassionate Christ as Divine Incarnation. The Cross²² which symbolises purification and suffering, is transformed in integral Yoga¹⁹ into 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 native 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 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 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 Christ as the Divine Incarnation, its gospel of universal Love, brotherhood, equality and charity and rejects 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. 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 construction of mind and by withdrawing from such construction, 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 stands. The Law of Moderation-3: Or Integral Yoga for Beginners: 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. i) All Renunciation, Sarva Parigraham : 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. 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 react 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 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. ii) All Equality, Sarva Samata : “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, ra¯jyam˙ samr.ddham, 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 constitute our mind, heart and body but also the Self, as 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 achievements of Yoga.’ 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, Sarva Yajna : Integral Yoga insists on the buddhi, will and emotion to dwell constantly on the master idea of the 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.’ 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 for more intense and comprehensive Supramental being. Then, Integral Yoga is pursued by the direct interference and guidance of these three beings and the integral method is evolved. iv) All Purification, Sarva Suddhi : "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, 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 physical mind can also be pursued either by method of constant concentration of psycho-spiritual Mantra, constant repetition of psycho-physical, Japa; as the Words have direct harmonious effect on the vibration of the physical substance, or the method of changing the centre of living above the head and direct the inverted Spiritual force to possess the physical 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. 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 Life and transmit their right taste, rasa, and principle of delight in them to the higher function. 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 deprived of the fullness and perfection of life. Its purification is achieved by 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 Samyama: 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. 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. 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 Shastra : 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 systematic study of different spiritual experiences and find an interrelation with each other and how these experiences drive towards the Supramental realm; thus, its 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 in to 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 Supramental sheath or Vijnanamaya kosha. It brings authentic identities of Divine wisdom, movement of Divine will and vibration of the Divine delight intensities. vii) Divine All Teacher, Sarva Guru Shakti: “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 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 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 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 Sadhaka 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 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 Para Shakti: - “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 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, works 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, appears 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 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 realistion 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 thought, will, feeling and action. 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: 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. The equilibrium status of Purusha and Prakriti is defined as equality. Surrender is defined as the Prakriti’s submission to Purusha . 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 . Purity is the passive status of Purusha which witnesses the action of Prakriti. Shastra defines the right relation of the Purusha and Prakriti i n Ignorance and their play in the higher planes of Consciousness. The Guru is the static state of Purusha in Ignorance, Ishwara in the Knowledge and Brahman in the Supramental State. 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 cannot confront extreme adversity and Death, cannot reconcile Spirit with Matter and hence to submit and surrender before negative energies like Ignorance, Falsehood, Suffering and Death are its natural trend. It has to learn the lesson to accumulate Spiritual energies and ascend to the state of ancient Vedantic Seers of Brahma Satya Jagat Satya through later Vedantic Spiritual Seekers with the realisation of Brahma Satya Jagat Mithya . 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: The Gita-2.42, 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/16/207, The Mother’s Centenary Works/13/82, 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, 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: “The cross is the sign of the triple being, transcendent, universal and individual.” CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-183, "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-December 31, 1969 23: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-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, 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, 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 Hierarchies of Ashram Living "Work here (in the Ashram) and work done in the world are of course not the same thing. The work there is not in any way a divine work in special- it is ordinary work in the world. But still one must take it as a training and do it in the spirit of Karmayoga - what matters there is not the nature of work in itself, but the spirit in which it is done. It must be in the spirit of the Gita , without desire, with detachment, without repulsion, but doing it as perfectly as possible, not for the sake of the family or promotion or to please the superiors, but simply because it is the thing that has been given in the hand to do. It is a field of inner training, nothing else. One has to learn in it these things, equality, desirelessness, dedication. It is not the work as a thing for its own sake, but one’s way of doing it that one has to dedicate to the Divine. Done in that spirit, it doesn’t matter what the work is. If one trains oneself spiritually like that, then one will be ready to do in the true way whatever special work directly for the Divine , (such as the Ashram work) one may any day be given to do." Sri Aurobindo SABCL-23/Letters on Yoga-II/p-852 “My children, I have told you, repeated it in every tone, in every way: if you really want to profit by your stay here, try to look at things and understand them with a new vision and a new understanding based on something higher, something deeper, vaster, something more true, something which is not yet but will be one day. And it is because we want to build this future that we have taken this special stand.”¹⁶ The Mother The Hierarchies of Ashram Living Ashram ³⁷ is an ancient Indian terminology used for collective² 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. Ashram's living evolves through the slow and swift evolution of Consciousness; thus, a hierarchy of ascending Consciousness is built which completes its action through a hierarchy of descent of Divine Consciousness. The collaborators of The Mother’s work in Consciousness are Sadhakas , Children and Integral Yogis , who are an indispensable part of collective Divine Living called the Ashram , the Divine Centre, while Visitors, Devotees and Ashramites¹ are its dispensable organ; the former represents the indivisible Spiritual Consciousness of developed Soul and the latter stands for the divisible mental consciousness of developing Soul. Visitors, Devotees, Ashramites, Sadhakas , Children and Integral Yogis are the beginners, expanders, stabilisers, intensifiers, identifiers and integrators of Consciousness respectively. Here they do not represent an individual or a person but a symbol of a transitional formative state in the hierarchy of ascending Consciousness. Each formative Consciousness has some limitation that inhibits our growth and Spiritual possibility that augments our progress, to which we are most concerned now. A Visitor makes his upward gaze out of curiosity and receives the Divine’s touch beyond his expectation. He is unable to hold this Presence. His business in early preparatory steps is to evolve his capacity, distinguish his personality and possess firmly, powerfully and completely his own individuality. ⁴ ⁶ His self-giving to the Divine is dependent on the evolution of a well-formed part of his personality. In him, the individual consciousness appears as Mind and Intellect and is given as a vehicle of progressive evolutionary manifestation to be clearly aware of itself and things. “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.” ⁴ ⁹ An enthusiastic Visitor turns into a Devotee , who lives in the Spiritual aspiration of the heart, accumulates inspiration towards God-given work, takes the responsibility of spreading, expanding and creating Mission/Centres and devotes his time to serve the Divine Power and develops ideas, ideals and a new range of activities. His analytic mind cannot transform his nature but can control, harmonise, lay on it the law of mental ideal and can impose a summary patchwork on his divided and half-constructed being. The need of his separative personal life limits his Spiritual pursuit. The observing and governing dynamic Consciousness of a devotee is responsible for generalising an incomplete Spiritual movement and the initial approach of mind turning towards Spirituality is a growth of religious temperament, some devotion in the heart, new values for all things, faithful in the conduct and many-sided effort striving to embrace the all-containing Knowledge. A seeking devotee turns into an Ashramite in this life or after many births of preparation, who receives the Divine’s call to lead a Divine Life, yet compromises in between the Law and downward pull²⁶ of his past world attraction, attachment and habits. Ashramites ⁵ are of three types, ‘tamasic, rajasic and sattwic’ .⁴ based on their dynamic nature and are of four categories that of Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shudra based on the predominance of their Soul force, dominant tendencies and efficiency. An Ashramite stabilises the main function of collective living. His action is appreciated by entire self-giving of the outer life to the Divine and partial dissolution of separative personal life in the Divine. His mental waking Consciousness is a small selection of our entire conscious being which always limits the Illimitable, divides the Indivisible and in the end a growing obstacle to the truth of things; behind it, there is much vaster subliminal and subconscious mind which is identified as the starting point of a true science of Spirituality. Finally, in Ashram living, two types of Ashramites find their safe shelter; one that of moderate Ashramite , who consecrate his actions and emotions to the Divine through the practice of Karma and Bhakti Yoga ; the other that of ascetic Ashramite, who in addition to consecrated action and devotion, practice Self-control as means of uniting with the Divine. An Ashramite’s right living is ensured when he gives first priority to the Divine which is reconciled with the second priority, the Law of Divine Living, here known as integral Yoga and further reconciled with the third priority of collective living, the symbol of mutuality. The objective of a true Ashramite is not to ‘be a big Purna Yogi or a supramental being’³² but to leave everything in the hand of the Mother ‘and to wish to be whatever she wants you to be.’³² A dedicated Ashramite turns into a Sadhaka ³ in this life or after many births of preparation, in whom the Law of integral Yoga is intensified in its process of manifestation. The separative personal life of a devotee and the separative collective life of an Ashramite are dissolved in him ‘with the progressive disappearance of egoism and impurity and ignorance’³⁶ and by uniting more and more with the Divine. He establishes himself in Sadhana by developing or retracing his own path of Yoga . There are two types of Sadhakas ; one that of later Vedantic integral Sadhaka preoccupied with individual Yoga and does not have the responsibility of bearing the burden of earth and the other that of ancient Vedantic integral Sadhaka preoccupied with universal Yoga of bearing a part of the burden of the earth. The former Sadhaka’s liberated Soul status does not influence the surrounding world in perfecting their imperfection⁵¹ and he does not have the sense of fatherhood, motherhood and compassion towards the brother Souls and remains satisfied with his own isolated ecstatic Soul status. The latter Sadhaka is a perfect Arya with realisation of three poises of the Self. He is one with the Transcendent Self, one with the universal Self, represented as oneness with the whole of earth and its humanity and his own individual Psychic Self carrying the Transcendent and Universal Mother. He feels responsibility and care towards the brother Souls and as a secondary Source he assists the twice-born brother Souls in strengthening their contact with the primary Source, here identified as The Mother and Sri Aurobindo . Each Sadhaka in this path is preoccupied with his own scientific method of Yoga developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis, psychological observation, constant revelatory results, established Spiritual experiences, profounder catholic understandings and he is not indifferent towards world sufferings, world miseries and world falsehood. For him, Divine life is real, concrete and verifiable. He does not act according to the construction of a fixed and routine system but with a sort of free, scattered and gradually intensive purposeful working based on his temperament, the helpful material his nature offers, widening of consciousness and life and obstacles which he experiences to the purification and perfection. An integral aim is pursued through integral and synthetic methods to arrive at the result of integral Purification, Realisation, Liberation, Perfection and Delight of active oneness. In a Sadhaka the waking consciousness is extended to Cosmic Consciousness by an inner enlargement from the individual into universal existence and his instrumental individual action, will, personal feeling, thought and energy disappear while taking up transformation action of the lower grades of this Nature. He does not make an effort to think, act, will and feel separately but the Divine Shakti thinks, enjoys, feels and acts in his system ⁴ ⁷ and he feels his body one with all bodies, his life one with the whole sea of infinite life and his mind one with the struggle, thought and joy of all existence. A growing Sadhaka through arduous tapasya emerges into a consecrated Child ,⁴⁵ no longer cherishes a duality between a Sadhaka and the Mother but identifies as a part and indispensable portion of Her Divine Consciousness. This working of Her Consciousness-Force, Shakti , in Knowledge through Her children is defined as possession of Calm within to accommodate the fine entries of Celestial Fire into the manifesting Nature and welling out from its silence the perennial source of inexhaustible Action, Creation and Ananda . His action is appreciated by the entire ecstatic consecration of inner and outer living, knowledge of the movement of Consciousness and limitless plasticity towards Divine transformation.³¹ Thus, a constant dynamic Supramental Divine union is the state of the Consciousness of a King Child. An integral Yogi ⁴⁰ or the dearest Child is at once a Child, not doing any sadhana , but it is done for him due to his entire childlike reliance on the Mother through absolute consecration and the Sadhaka of integral Yoga pursuing sadhana through rigorous effort, askesis and self-control and he can serve as a link in between the supreme Mother Consciousness and the earth consciousness. He is outwardly a mere man of action, Nara and inwardly a possessor of Divine Consciousness, Narayana , shall preoccupy himself in an entire effort to reveal God in humanity, Nara-Narayana . The goal of his evolving Integral Consciousness, Maya, is the basis of the entire harmonisation of life, the development of a seven-fold Divine personality, and the total transformation and integration of Nature and Being. It is exceedingly good fortune for a Sadhaka of integral Yoga to receive the assistance of an integral Yogi 'who has realised or is becoming That which he (a Sadhaka) seeks for and can by opening to it in this vessel of its manifestation himself realise it.'⁵⁰ The Mother is at once the Supreme Mother, the Chit Shakti , the Creatrix Mother of the universe, not doing any Sadhana ; as the Mediatrix Mother, She stands in between Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana and the World, and the Sadhaka of integral Yoga pursuing Her universalised Sadhana in the body; as the Executrix Mother, She draws heaven seeking and world shunning liberated Souls earthward to reconcile Self and Nature, fills in them the equal Divine Presence and builds in the abysm of Hell a road to Heaven and as the Ambassadress Mother She calls down ceaselessly Timeless Eternity and Spaceless Infinity to illumine the Subconscient earth. Thus, through Her virgin Influence, lower Nature is initially controlled and finally transformed into Divine Nature and all ordinary earth-bound action is transformed into Divine action, all mundane thought into Divine Wisdom and all human emotions into Divine Love. Sri Aurobindo is at once the Supreme Purusha, the Purushottama , carrying within Him the immutable, the unmanifest Divine, the Akshara Purusha and the mutable, the manifest Divine, the Kshara Purusha ; as an Intermediary, the Guru , He links the disciples with the three Purushas and He fuses Himself with the Supreme Prakriti, The Mother , for the highest action and delight of the Divine Lila. The Mother is the living representative of Consciousness, Chit Shakti , by whose movement one will arrive at Sri Aurobindo , the living representative of the Being, Supreme Self, Sat Purusha . Their supreme relationship is the union between Sat and Chit leading the creation to Ananda . Supramental Consciousness, Vijnana, is the fourth name of the Divine activated through the multiplication of Their Soul Force and this supreme relation links the Sachchidananda Consciousness to the lower triple creation of the mind, life and body; if dynamised sufficiently, then the lower creation retains the lost Divinity and the Life Divine becomes practicable. In Their effort to enlarge the experience of integral Divine Union of three Powers of the Will, Iccha Shakti , Knowledge, Jnana Shakti and Love, Prema Shakti in harmonising and transforming the earth nature, the Law of the Divine, cosmos, collectivity and individual Soul were evolved which gave birth to the norms of inner and outer living, ideals, right standards of conduct and self-discipline of integral Yoga. These outer laws of self moulding are continually evolving temporary higher and higher standards ‘as long as they are needed’²⁴ to serve the Divine in the world march and in the Supramental plane they become free automatic obedience to the truth of things and inevitable right execution in the action and all is determined by the Consciousness and Being. Any imposition of a rigidly fixed set of strict principles, precise mental rules, constructed laws of conduct and artificial limiting standards are abrogated because they stand as barriers to the eternal onflow of Divine opulence. Its method has been the method of evolutionary Nature with many-sided wideness, catholicity, plasticity,²⁵ universality, integration of being, followed by the outcome of the largest, deepest, widest and highest form of every possible line of Spiritual realisation and Spiritual self-discipline and complete dynamism of that return to the truth of Nature. So, a Visitor’s outward living cannot free his ‘gaze to reach wisdom’s sun.’²¹ He feels the need to serve the Divine and becomes a Devotee. A Devotee’s intermittent contact with the Divine’s ray gives him hope and aspiration to trace the Divine’s Sun Light and to live in the vicinity of the ‘deathless sun.’¹¹ He feels the need that his service and subordination to the Divine must be entire and he emerges as Ashramite . ‘A ray has touched him from the eternal sun’¹² and thus his hope and aspiration are intensified. An Ashramite, through the mental effort of consecrated action, consecrated thought and consecrated emotion, experiences static Divine union and he emerges as Sadhaka . He learns the lesson of the ascent of the Soul and traces ‘through white rays to meet an unseen Sun.’¹³ A Sadhaka dynamises his union with the Divine to become one with the Divine Shakti, lives constantly ‘in the rays of an intuitive Sun’¹⁴ and emerges as a Child. A Child further moves the consciousness to feel the Divine Mother’s ‘high Transcendent’s sunlike hands’²³ and ‘in the ray reveal the parent sun.’²⁰ He finds the established relation between static and dynamic Divine to hold together The Mother and Sri Aurobindo as ‘the deathless Two-in-One’¹⁵ or as 'incarnate dual Power'³⁸ and emerges as an integral Yogi . Their supreme relation of ‘trance of bliss’¹⁵ sustains this mutable world and works out the intense and large universal action ‘To lift earth-hearts nearer the Eternal sun’³⁵ or 'one high step might enfranchise all.'³⁹ The Basic Indispensable Law ⁴ ⁴ of Ashram Collective Living : " First indispensable condition to be admitted in the Ashram: The candidate must have taken the resolution to dedicate his life unconditionally to the service of the Divine."⁸ The Mother “The indispensable basis of our Yoga is sincerity, honesty, unselfishness, disinterested consecration to the work to be done, nobility of character and straight forwardness. They who do not practice these elementary virtues are not Sri Aurobindo’s disciples and have no place in Ashram .”⁵ The Mother “You must never forget that I disapprove of quarrels²² and always consider that both sides are equally wrong. To surmount one’s feelings, preferences, dislikes and impulses, is an indispensable discipline here.”⁶ The Mother “Ninety-nine out of a hundred people come here to be comfortable and do nothing; one in a hundred comes with a Spiritual aspiration, and even then…it is mixed. The three conditions: (A set of rules for admission to Ashram ) a: The sole aim of life is to dedicate oneself to the Divine realisation. b: Sri Aurobindo’s absolute authority (represented by The Mother ) (through inner contact) is recognised. c: To those who want to practice the integral Yoga, it is strongly advised to abstain from three things. So the three things ([laughing] you put your fingers in your ears): sexual intercourse (it comes third) and drinking alcohol and... [whispering] smoking.”⁷ The Mother “By definition the Ashramite has resolved to consecrate his life to the realisation and service of the Divine...For this four virtues are indispensable, without which progress is uncertain and subject to interruptions and troublesome falls at the first opportunity: Sincerity, faithfulness, modesty and gratitude.”⁸ The Mother “The two indispensable conditions to live as a disciple in the Ashram :- 1. To be resolved to make the needs of the soul come before all others, and to satisfy the other needs, those of the body, vital and mind, only so far as they do not interfere with the fulfillment of the needs of the soul. 2. To be convinced that I am in a position to know the needs of the soul of each and every one and that therefore I have the right and the competence to judge in this respect.”⁸ The Mother “Take advantage of the circumstances to get rid of all attachment to the members of your family. You must learn that you have no more brothers, sister, father, mother, except Sri Aurobindo and myself, and you must feel free and unconcerned whatever happens to them. We are your whole family, your protection, your all in all.”⁹ The Mother “It is not from disgust for life and people that one must come to yoga. It is not to run away from difficulties that one must come here. It is not even to find the sweetness of love and protection, for the Divine’s love and protection can be enjoyed everywhere if one takes the right attitude. When one wants to give oneself totally in service to the Divine, to consecrate oneself totally to the Divine’s work, simply for the joy of giving oneself and of serving, without asking for anything in exchange, except the possibility of consecration and service, then one is ready to come here and will find the doors wide open.”¹⁰ The Mother There exists an inner and subtle Divine Centre of which Sri Aurobindo Ashram is an objective manifestation. In this subtle Ashram, disciples and devotees are linked only³⁴ with Their all-inclusive Consciousness inwardly through Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental ascension and linked only with Them in the outer Ashram through Their Divine Action, Divine Presence and live Their Teachings spontaneously. In this future Spiritual evolution of the Gnostic community, nothing can be regarded as irrational, incredible and insignificant and even a small beginning of work can drive towards mighty Supramental fulfillment; ‘each wayside act’³⁰ can heighten and deepen the Soul’s movement; a Supramental vision seen in the flash of moments can toil through ages to express and stabilise; everything moves, acts, things to be done and the way to do it are guided by spontaneous intuitive Light and Truth from beyond. The growth of higher consciousness equips a Sadhaka with new supernormal capacities of action and his Divine work in the world is a spontaneous development of his triple instrumental overhead power of Will, Knowledge and Love, which opens for him an unlimited prospect of self-concentration and self-expansion. If the inception of his Divine work through activation of Divine Will, the descent of overhead knowledge, music and word continue to inspire people, and continue to radiate its light and love through centuries, then that action is identified as Supramental action. In brief, the Supramental action, knowledge and love do not become old and obsolete in the passage of time and they survive for the longest period. Any manifestation through activation of the three gunas are short-lived and makes life poor, insecure, narrow and limited. Any manifestation through activation of the Psychic being, the Spiritual being and the Supramental being is long-lived and it makes life opulent, secured and an experience of unlimited free flow of Divine energies. If other Divine Centres/Gnostic Centres are to evolve in other parts of the world on the basis of impersonal and universal Consciousness, then its broad modalities are hinted in The Synthesis of Yoga and The Life Divine . It ‘matters little for them of what aspect of personal or impersonal Divine they adore or even what guide they choose.’¹⁷ The ‘free individual spirit who is the soul centre of its’¹⁸ multiple liberating Souls is the basis of the formation of the Divine Centre.¹⁹ When his consciousness is raised towards Supramental Consciousness, then a Gnostic Centre is born. Thus, the community of Divine Centre can act as the energy centre of the world with its sole responsibility of calling down the Transcendent Divine force to earth and man. The aim of Divine Life is perfection. In order to arrive at perfection, one must have a complete account of his imperfection. This full account is possible by identifying his imperfection in tamasic, rajasic and sattwic Nature. The imperfection and limitation of sattwic mind is further segregated as schoolman mind, fixed mind and outer mind. He has to identify his imperfections and limitations in three untransformed subliminal inner nature which are identified as the Mother of the seven sorrows, the Mother of might and the Mother of light. A Sadhaka of integral Yoga must recognise that one part of his Nature (particularly surface life) is a Visitor; other parts are segregated as a Devotee, Ashramite , Sadhaka , Child and integral Yogi. He must be thoroughly dissatisfied with the achievements of his partial Divine union and must strive for complete Divine union and integral perfection. For the integration of his Being and Nature, he must learn the lesson of movement of Consciousness through which his multiple (ten) Selves and multiple (ten) subtle sheaths can be purified, transformed, integrated and perfected. A seeker of Truth is considered fit²⁷ to begin Ashram living if he has gone through the prior experience of overcoming extreme adversity. ⁴ ⁸ He is considered fit²⁹ to become a Sadhaka of integral Yoga if he has a strong foundation of Vedantic Spirituality and has exhausted the perfections of traditional Yoga. He is identified as a privileged Sadhak ⁵² if he has discovered the true Guide within as the Psychic Being and without as the living Spiritual Teacher. He is considered fit to become consecrated Child when he is 'perfectly truthful'⁴⁵ by rejecting falsehood. And he is considered fit²⁸ to become an integral Yogi if he does not live content like a traditional Yogi in a pure ecstatic state of higher Consciousness but utilises his universalised Spiritual energy to bear a part of the burden and miseries of earth. If he has no desire⁵ ³ and ego,⁵ ⁴ then he is considered fit to ascend to the Supramental Consciousness. Recapitulation: “To remain here is possible only for those who feel deep in themselves that here is the only place in the world where they must live. ”⁴² The Mother “If you want to find your soul, to know it and obey it, remain here at any cost. If this is not the aim of your life and you are ready to live the life of the immense majority of men, you may certainly go back to your family.”⁴² The Mother “It is good that you have decided to concentrate on the true object of your coming here, but while absorption in mental work and social contacts is not favourable for Yoga, excessive seclusion has also its spiritual disadvantage . An inner concentration supported by a limitation of external contacts is sufficient. Some kind of activity and service to the Divine is also a very necessary element in the integral spiritual life.”⁴³ Sri Aurobindo A Visitor is not aware of the vertical movement of ascending and descending Consciousness; instead, he is aware of the horizontal movement of limited mental consciousness subject to three gunas .³³ A Devotee experiences partial union with the Divine through the intermittent movement of Consciousness between the higher plane and the lower untransformed triple modes of mind. An Ashramite repeats this experience in a protected environment through self-control of purified intellect. A Sadhaka moves the Consciousness through rigorous self-control. A Child moves the Consciousness through Vedic and Vedantic Sacrifice. An integral Yogi integrates Consciousness through triple movements of Will, Wisdom and Love in the higher plane. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo are the primary Sources and symbols of the comprehensive movement of Consciousness. For a Sadhaka, those who are ahead of him in Consciousness are identified as secondary Sources and behind him in consciousness are tertiary Sources. A Sadhaka of integral Yoga meets all the above personalities within himself and does not waste time⁴¹ in helping others or gathering together of devotees, lokasangraha , and utilises time exclusively to bridge the gulf between the highest Sachchidananda Consciousness and the lowest dark Consciousness of the Inconscient plane. A Sadhaka’s Spiritual life is secured through the complete union of the Soul with the Divine. His first object is to give Them (dual Divine Consciousness) consecrated service without rest and earthly ease, which will establish him as a slave of all humanity and in the consciousness of the King Child with the extension of the inner and outer Kingdom. His second object is to develop his own path of Yoga through concentration, contemplation and meditation of written truth and constant restatement and renovation of the best standards of the race which will establish him as a disciple of the Lord, Prophet, Pathfinder, Pioneer of new Consciousness and Teacher. His last object is to emerge as Lover of the Divine, lover of brother Souls and lover of all creatures and humanity. Thus, his Spiritual life is fulfilled by the emergence of triple overhead energies of Delight, Love and Beauty. OM TAT SAT References: 1: “The other day, I told N, (and I told him loud enough for everyone to hear): ‘We can dispense with a good half of the Ashramites straight away and not lose a single Sadhaka …’ People imagine that by the simple fact of being here they become disciples and apprentice Yogis! But it is not true…” The Mother’s Agenda-2/p-184, 2: "I could have begun this work (of transformation) on the body thirty years ago, but I was constantly caught up in this harassing ashram life. It took this illness’ to enable me truly to begin doing the sadhana of the body. It does not mean that thirty years were wasted, for it is likely that had I been able to start this work thirty years ago, it would have been premature. The consciousness of the others also had to develop – the two are linked, the individual progress and the collective progress, and one cannot advance if the other does not advance."The Mother’s Agenda-May 19, 1959, 3: “What is aimed at by us is a spiritual truth as the basis of life, the first words of which are (1) surrender and (2) union with the Divine and (3) transcendence of ego. So long as that basis is not established, a Sadhaka is only an ignorant and imperfect human being struggling with the evils of the lower Nature.” Sri Aurobindo/The Mother’s Agenda-4/p-422, “There are three main possibilities for the sadhak — (1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine. (2) To do everything himself like the full Adwaitin and the Buddhist . (3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc. helped by the Force.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-171, 4: “Tamas brings in all the ignorance, inertia, weakness, incapacity which afflicts our nature, a clouded reason, nescience, unintelligence, a clinging to habitual notions and mechanical ideas, the refusal to think and know, the small mind, the closed avenues, the trotting round of mental habit, the dark and the twilit places. Tamas brings in the impotent will, want of faith and self-confidence and initiative, the disinclination to act, the shrinking from endeavour and aspiration, the poor and little spirit, and in our moral and dynamic being the inertia, the cowardice, baseness, sloth, lax subjection to small and ignoble motives, the weak yielding to our lower nature. Tamas brings into our emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want of sympathy and openness, the shut soul, the callous heart, the soon spent affection and languor of the feelings, into our aesthetic and sensational nature the dull aesthesis, the limited range of response, the insensibility to beauty, all that makes in man the coarse, heavy and vulgar spirit. Rajas contributes our normal active nature with all its good and evil; when unchastened by a sufficient element of sattwa , it turns to egoism, self-will and violence, the perverse, obstinate or exaggerating action of the reason, prejudice, attachment to opinion, clinging to error, the subservience of the intelligence to our desires and preferences and not to the truth, the fanatic or the sectarian mind, self-will, pride, arrogance, selfishness, ambition, lust, greed, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, the egoisms of love, all the vices and passions, the exaggerations of the aesthesis, the morbidities and perversions of the sensational and vital being. Tamas in its own right produces the coarse, dull and ignorant type of human nature, rajas the vivid, restless, kinetic man, driven by the breath of action, passion and desire. Sattwa produces a higher type. The gifts of sattwa are the mind of reason and balance, clarity of the disinterested truth-seeking open intelligence, a will subordinated to the reason or guided by the ethical spirit, self control, equality, calm, love, sympathy, refinement, measure, fineness of the aesthetic and emotional mind, in the sensational being delicacy, just acceptivity, moderation and poise, a vitality subdued and governed by the mastering intelligence.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-686, 5: The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-123, "This Yoga (Integral Yoga) too is not a Yoga of knowledge alone — knowledge is one of its means, but its base being self-offering, surrender, bhakti, it is based on the heart and nothing can be eventually done without this base. There are plenty of people here who do or have done Japa and base themselves on bhakti, very few comparatively who have done the “head” meditation; love and bhakti and works are usually the base — how many can proceed by knowledge? Only the few." CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-226-227" 6: The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-14/p-262, 7: The Mother’s Agenda-6/p-128-129, 8: The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-112-113, 9: The Mother’s Centenary Edition/Vol-14/p-305, 10: The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-111, 11: Savitri-452, 12: Savitri-622, 13: Savitri-23, 14: Savitri-299, 15: Savitri-295, 16: The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/Vol-8/p-240, 17: “That is why it is always said that, no matter what aspect of the Divine you adore or even what guide you choose, if you are perfect in your self-giving and absolutely sincere, you are sure to attain the spiritual goal.” The Mother/The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/Vol-8/p-243, 18: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-675, 19: “If on the other hand the soul moves in its impulse of freedom towards the discovery of another and divine centre of control through which the Infinite can consciously govern its own action in the individual, it is moving towards the gnosis where that centre pre-exists, the centre of an eternal harmony and order.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-502, 20: Savitri-312, 21: Savitri-53, 22: “The division of our being from the being of others can only be healed by (1) 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.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-655, 23: Savitri-635, 24: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-191, 25: ‘The Law divine is truth of life and truth of the spirit and must take up with a free living plasticity and inspire with the direct touch of its eternal light each step of our action and all the complexity of our life issues.’ CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-203, 26: “Everybody has to deal with the lower nature. No Yoga can be done without overcoming it, neither this Yoga nor any others. A Yogic life means a life in which one tries to follow the law of Yoga, aim of Yoga in all details of life…Here people do not do that, they live like ordinary people, quarrelling, gossiping, indulging their desires, thinking of Yoga only in their spare moments.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-603-04, 27: “Mon petit, that's why we started the Ashram ! That was the idea. Because when I was in France , I was always asking myself, "How can people have the time to find themselves? How can they even have the time to understand the way to free themselves?" So I thought: a place where material needs are sufficiently satisfied, so that if you truly want to free yourself, you can do so. And it was on this idea that the Ashram was founded, not on any other: a place where people's means of existence would be sufficient to give them the time to think of the True Thing. (Mother smiles) Human nature is such that laziness has taken the place of aspiration (not for everyone, but still fairly generally), and license or libertinism has taken the place of freedom. Which would tend to prove that the human species must go through a period of brutal handling before it can be ready to get away more sincerely from the slavery to activity. ” The Mother’s Agenda/September 16, 1964, “The truth is, VERY FEW people are ready to be here, very few. We have taken in all types – we accept, we accept, we accept – afterwards, we sift. And the sifting goes on more and more. Actually, we accept everything, the entire earth, and then ... (gesture) there’s a churning. And everything useless goes away.” The Mother’s Agenda-04.03.1961, “It really amused me. If you asked ... if you asked people here, not too many would have such a clear idea: "They have come to do something entirely new and very difficult."” The Mother’s Agenda-14.08.1962, “I was very young at that time, and I always used to tell myself that if ever I could do it, I would try to create a little world — oh! quite a small one, but still... a small world where people would be able to live without having to be preoccupied with food and lodging and clothing and the imperative necessities of life, so as to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material living would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realisation…Well, towards the middle of my life — at least, what is usually the middle of a human life — the means were given to me and I could realise this, that is, create such conditions of life. And I have come to this conclusion, that it is not this necessity which hinders people from consecrating themselves to an inner realisation, but that it is a dullness, a tamas , a lack of aspiration, a miserable laxity, an I-don’t-care attitude, and that those who face even the hardest conditions of life are sometimes the ones who react most and have the intensest aspiration… And of these, the foolishness which seems to me the most disastrous is to keep one’s tongue going: chatter, chatter, chatter. I haven’t known a place where they chatter more than here, and say everything they should not say, busy themselves with things they should not be concerned with. And I know it is merely an overflow of unused energy.” TMCW-8/Questions and Answers-1956/160-161, “Sweet Mother, Some say that You have stated: “Among the 1500 people who are here, there are only 250 or so who understand Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, only forty-five who practise it, five who are capable of realisation and only one who can be transformed.” What is the truth? (Answer given by the Mother) I may have said something of the kind. But the exactness of the numbers is certainly fanciful... It is true that the number of those who take the yoga seriously is not considerable...But the Divine Grace is infinite!” TMCW/Vol-16/p-337, " But he (Sri Aurobindo) did speak of a transformation preceding the appearance of the first supramental being. That’s what he had told me. He told me that his body wasn’t capable of withstanding the transformation, that mine was more capable-he says it there too... But it’s difficult. As I told you the other day." Jan-19/1972/The Mother’s Agenda/Vol-13/P-42, "Now, according to what I have seen and tested (with “little tests” done casually), there are certainly-oh, being EXTEREMELY generous, patient and (what shall I say?) merciful-there are a good third who are here only because they are comfortable : you work if you want to, you don’t work if you don’t want to, you always eat, you always have shelter and clothes, and ultimately, you sort of do as you please (you must pretend to obey, that’s all). And if you’re denied a convenience, you start grumbling-Yoga is simply out of the picture! It’s a hundred thousand miles away from their consciousness (their mouths are full of words, but it’s only lip service). Sometimes you have a little scruple in order to appear to be doing some work. And some have grown very old or come here because they have become unfit for life outside…so we can’t send them away! (It was wrong to accept them-I must say I have little to do with that acceptance: I’ll say no, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they will pretend they heard yes, but anyway…that’s life.) So I can’t sent them away. But I am going to make life ascetic for them: one won’t be here to be comfortable anymore-then for what?" Jan-22/1964/Mother’s Agenda/Vol-5/p-34-35 28: “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!...” The Mother’s Agenda/July 18, 1961, "But for the sadhaka of the integral Yoga this inner or this outer solitude can only be incidents or periods in his spiritual progress. Accepting life, he has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world’s burden too along with it, as a con- tinuation 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. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-77-78, 29: “His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, — if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita , for example, the Upanishads, the Veda . Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-p-55, “I may say that the way of the Gita is itself a part of the Yoga here and those who have followed it, to begin with or as a first stage, have a stronger basis than others for this Yoga . To look down on it therefore as something separate and inferior is not a right standpoint… I suggested the Gita method for you because the opening which is necessary for the Yoga here seems to be too difficult for you. If you made a less strenuous demand upon yourself, there might be a greater chance.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-445-446, 30: Savitri-636, 31: “To be a Yogi, a Sannyasi, a Tapaswi is not the object here. The object is transformation, and the transformation can only be done by a force infinitely greater than your own; it can only be done by being truly like a child in the hands of the Divine Mother.” 7 June 1928/ CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-142-143, 32: “Everyone who is turned to the Mother is doing my Yoga. It is a great mistake to suppose that one can “do” the Purna Yoga i.e. carry out and fulfil all the sides of the Yoga by one’s own effort. No human being can do that. What one has to do is to put oneself in the Mother’s hands and open oneself to her by service, by bhakti, by aspiration; then the Mother by her light and force works in him so that the sadhana is done. It is a mistake also to have the ambition to be a big Purna Yogi or a supramental being and ask oneself how far have I got towards that. The right attitude is to be devoted and given to the Mother and to wish to be whatever she wants you to be. The rest is for the Mother to decide and do in you.” April 1929/CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-151-152, 33: “The three gunas become purified and refined and changed into their divine equivalents: sattwa becomes jyotih., the authentic spiritual light; rajas becomes tapas, the tranquilly intense divine force; tamas becomes s´ama, the divine quiet, rest, peace.” “You cannot drive out rajas and tamas, you can only convert them and give the predominance to sattwa. Tamas and rajas disappear only when the higher consciousness not only comes down but controls everything down to the cells of the body. They then change into the divine rest and peace and the divine energy or Tapas; finally sattwa also changes into the divine Light. As for remaining quiet when tamas is there, there can also be a tamasic quiet.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-47, 34: “There are two atmospheres in the Asram , ours and that of the sadhaks. When people with a little perceptiveness come from outside, they are struck by the deep calm and peace in the atmosphere and it is only when they mix much with the sadhaks that this perception and influence fade away. The other atmosphere of dullness or unrest is created by the sadhaks themselves — if they were opened to the Mother as they should be, they would live in the calm and peace and not in unrest or dullness.” CWSA-35/On Himself and the Ashram/p-632 35: Savitri-397, 36: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-61, 37: “An Asram means the house or houses of a Teacher or Master of spiritual philosophy in which he receives and lodges those who come to him for the teaching and practice. An Asram is not an association or a religious body or a monastery — it is only what has been indicated above and nothing more.” CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-530, “We are here in the Ashram to do this work together with the help of Sri Aurobindo’s knowledge and force, in an attempt to realise a community that is more harmonious, more united, and consequently much more effective in life.” The Mother/TMCW/12/On Education/p-355, 38: Savitri-705, 39: Savitri-371, 40: “Such a complexity (evolution of Inconscient, Subconscient, Subliminal, Psychic, Spiritual, Universal, Supramental and Bliss Self etc.) and gathering up of many personalities in one person can be a sign of a very advanced stage of the individual’s evolution when there is a strong central being that holds all together and works towards harmonisation and integration of the whole many-sided movement of the nature.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-849, 41: "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 “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, “As for the people who want to draw others to the Yoga, I should say that if they draw themselves nearer to the inner goal that would be a much more fruitful activity. And in the end it would “draw” much more people and in a better way than the writing of many letters.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-325," 42: TMCW-13/Words of the Mother-I/p-140-141, 43: CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-380, 44: “You say that you wish to lead the spiritual life, but for that you should understand that the first point is to overcome all the lower movements, all the attractions, all the attachments, for all these are absolutely contrary to the spiritual life…The spiritual life demands that one is exclusively turned towards the Divine and the Divine alone. All that one does should be done for the Divine; all occupations, all aspirations, all, without exception, should be directed towards the Divine with a complete surrender of the whole being…I know that this cannot be done in a day. But the decision that it may be so should be taken in an unshakable manner . It is only on this condition that I can accept you for the spiritual life.” TMCW/Vol-13/Words of the Mother-I/p-112, 45: “Sweet Mother, What are the qualities needed for one to be called “a true child of the Ashram”? Sincerity, courage, discipline, endurance, absolute faith in the Divine work and unshakable trust in the Divine Grace. All this must be accompanied by a sustained, ardent, persevering aspiration and a boundless patience.” TMCW-16/Some Answers from the Mother-345-346, TMCW-13/Words of the Mother/p-113, “Only those who are perfectly truthful can be my true children.” TMCW-14/Words of the Mother/p-190, “MESSAGES TO STUDENT BOARDING HOUSES: We all want to be the true children of our Divine Mother. But for that, sweet Mother, give us patience and courage, obedience, goodwill, generosity and unselfishness, and all the necessary virtues.” TMCW-12/On Education-127 46: " In fact, the first victory is to create an individuality (separative identity). And then later, the second victory is to give this individuality to the Divine. And the third victory is that the Divine changes your individuality into a divine being... There are three stages: the first is to become an individual; the second is to consecrate the individual, that he may surrender entirely to the Divine and be identified with Him; and the third is that the Divine takes possession of this individual and changes him into a being in His own image, that is, he too becomes divine... Generally, all the yogas stopped at the second. When one had succeeded in surrendering the individual and giving him without reserve to the Divine to be identified with Him, one considered that his work was finished, that all was accomplished.... But we begin there, and we say, “No, this is only a beginning. We want this Divine with whom we are identified to enter our individuality and make it into a divine personality acting in a divine world.” And this is what we call transformation. But the other precedes it, must precede it. If that is not done, there is no possibility of doing the third. One can’t go from the first to the third; one must pass through the second." The Mother's Centenary Works/Vol-7/p-402-403, 47: "The Sadhaka has not only to think and know but to see and feel concretely and intensely even in the moment of the working and in its initiation and whole process that his works are not his at all, but are coming through him from the Supreme Existence. He must be always aware of a Force, a Presence, a Will that acts through his individual nature." SABCL-20/217, CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-229, “Especially, in proportion as the partial lights of the mind become transformed into lights of gnosis, in whatever slighter or greater degree that may happen, we feel it as a transformation of our mentality into his and more and more he (Divine) becomes the thinker and seer in us. We cease to think and see for ourselves, but think only what he wills to think for us and see only what he sees for us. And then the teacher is fulfilled in the lover; he lays hands on all our mental being to embrace and possess, to enjoy and use it.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-603, 48: “When I was asleep in the Ignorance, I came to a place of meditation full of holy men and I found their company wearisome and the place a prison; when I awoke, God took me to a prison and turned it into a place of meditation and His trysting ground.” SABCL-17/The Hour of God-84, (the above two places are Sri Ramakrishna Mission of Dakhineswar and Alipore Jail, respectively.) 49: CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-555, 50: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-130, 51: "If such be the intention of the Supreme within him, the liberated soul (Sadhak 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. But it (Sadhak of integral Yoga) may too be called to a work which 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." Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-268, 52: "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, “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, 53: "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." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-80, “A new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare the coming of the superhuman being... Open yourselves to this consciousness if you aspire to serve the Divine Work.... To come into contact with this new consciousness, the essential condition is no longer to have any desires and to be wholly sincere.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-9th April 1969 54: "It is necessary to keep this in mind; we must remember that our Yoga is not undertaken for the sake of the acquisition of supermind itself but for the sake of the Divine; we seek the supermind not for its own joy and greatness but to make the union absolute and complete, to feel it, possess it, dynamise it in every possible way of our being, in its highest intensities and largest widenesses and in every range and turn and nook and recess of our nature. It is a mistake to think, as many are apt to think, that the object of a supramental Yoga is to arrive at a mighty magnificence of supermanhood, a divine power and greatness, the self-fulfilment of a magnified individual personality. This is a false and disastrous conception, disastrous because it is likely to raise the pride, vanity and ambition of the rajasic vital mind in us and that, if not overpassed and overcome, must lead to spiritual downfall, false because it is an egoistic conception and the first condition of the supramental change is to get rid of ego . It is most dangerous for the active and dynamic nature of the man of will and works which can easily be led away by the pursuit of power. Power comes inevitably by the supramental change, it is a necessary condition for a perfect action: but it is the Divine Shakti that comes and takes up the nature and the life, the power of the One acting through the spiritual individual; it is not an aggrandisement of the personal force, not the last crowning fulfilment of the separative mental and vital ego. Self-fulfilment is a result of the Yoga, but its aim is not the greatness of the individual. The sole aim is a spiritual perfection, a finding of the true self and a union with the Divine by putting on the divine consciousness and nature." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-280-281, Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: THE MOTHER'S VIRGIN FORTRESS “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!” The Mother The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol.3/p-176 SRI AUROBINDO'S CONSCIOUSNESS "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." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-27 THE MOTHER'S CONSCIOUNESS “There is one divine Force which acts in the universe and in the individual and is also beyond the individual and the universe. The Mother stands for all these, but She is working here in the body to bring down something not yet expressed in this material world so as to transform life here—it is so that you should regard her as the Divine Shakti working here for that purpose.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/-p-50 “The Asram exists solely for Yoga and for a purely spiritual purpose; it is not a political or social or religious institution and it abstains from all these activities, this abstention is necessary for its existence. If any member engages in them, it involves the Asram itself and gives it the appearance of entering into activities which are not proper to it, and if any such impression of that kind is created, it may have serious consequences.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-690 “It is good that you have decided to concentrate on the true object of your coming here, but while absorption in mental work and social contacts is not favourable for Yoga, excessive seclusion has also its spiritual disadvantage. An inner concentration supported by a limitation of external contacts is sufficient. Some kind of activity and service to the Divine is also a very necessary element in the integral spiritual life.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-380 “I don’t remember the context; but I suppose he [the writer of Yogic Sadhan] means that when one has to escape from the lower dharma, one has often to break it so as to arrive at a larger one. E.g. social duties, paying debts, looking after family, helping to serve your country, etc. etc. The man who turns to the spiritual life, has to leave all that behind him often and he is reproached by lots of people for his Adharma . But if he does not do this Adharma , he is bound for ever to the lower life — for there is always some duty there to be done — and cannot take up the spiritual dharma or can do it only when he is old and his faculties impaired.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-439 “Everyone who is turned to the Mother is doing my Yoga . It is a great mistake to suppose that one can “do” the Purna Yoga i.e. carry out and fulfil all the sides of the Yoga by one’s own effort. No human being can do that. What one has to do is to put oneself in the Mother’s hands and open oneself to her by service, by bhakti , by aspiration; then the Mother by her light and force works in him so that the sadhana is done. It is a mistake also to have the ambition to be a big Purna Yogi or a supramental being and ask oneself how far have I got towards that. The right attitude is to be devoted and given to the Mother and to wish to be whatever she wants you to be. The rest is for the Mother to decide and do in you.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-151-152

The Descent (This experience of S.A. Maa Krishna took place while conducting a group meditation in the school premises on 12.11.2000.) Q:- What happened during yesterday evening's meditation ? Yesterday, it was a rare experience in meditation. It took all the children to Brahman consciousness. You can ask what happened to them individually. When I started first meditation I saw that all were in a disturbed state. Exactly at 6.00 p.m. the meditation started (from 6.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.). I saw during meditation that nothing happened... So in a subtle manner, I tried to see with everybody where from disharmony was generating and saw three boys P, A & S were creating the disharmony. Yes, during the meditation, I didn’t undergo a deep state. Even though the meditation was not deep but there was also no irritation, because in the whole being a deep Peace was descending. It was peace, not the force, just after sitting in meditation, peace descended, peace entered into the entire body, leading the whole body to a calm state. Even though there was no deep meditation, it did not matter much due to the prevailing peace. Peace was descending, but force was not descending. Peace was different from force, as force will press you…. force is such a thing that those who have experienced it can only feel. As there was peace, there was Ananda also. Then, after meditation with my eyes closed, I was just concentrating on Sri Aurobindo, and in that time I saw immediately in front of my eye a Virata Rupa (a huge shape) of Sri Aurobindo . I saw Sri Aurobindo exactly in the shape of Viswa Rupa of the Gita , (Vision of the World-Spirit), only Sri Aurobindo , in a huge shape, he was sitting. He was sitting in a chair as he usually sits, but the sitting shape has turned huge. Huge, huge…. There was nothing except Him…. Nothing except Him. He was covering the whole world. He had covered the entire earth. His shape was so Virata that nothing was seen without Him. Q:- Did you see the vision with your eyes opened or closed ? Eyes were closed. Then I was seeing blue color, not blue color, but sky blue color light, along with Sri Aurobindo . Q:- Was the blue light in his body ? No, I was seeing Sri Aurobindo and that light. Then I wanted to recite a mantra .. After seeing this Virata Rupa, lip was dumb founded. After some time, I was able to utter O-o-o-m, while uttering this O-o-o-M, I saw a Virata OM (huge shape of OM) replacing Sri Aurobindo. And Sri Aurobindo’s shape had vanished. Sri Aurobindo’s shape turned into a huge OM. Q:- Which mantra were you chanting? Only OM , only OM , with the chanting OM, everything turned to OM . Q:- Were there multiple OM in every object ? No, only one OM, OM was covering everything, the earth. It was a rare and new experience. Only one OM covering everything, Virata OM . OM was radiating towards everywhere. Q:- Which color ? Golden and blue. Q:- Blue is in the background ? Yes, same as I saw Sri Aurobindo . Q:- It means OM was written in Golden color ? It was radiating in golden color, it was reddish gold, red color was also visible. It was radiating towards every side, which I can see even now! Then I tried to repeat a mantra, but it was not possible. This OM chanting persisted for some time. Then I was able to repeat this mantra: ‘Om Sri Aurobindam charanau saranam prapadye Sri Mata Sri Aurobindaya Namah. ’ It was difficult to come back to the rhythm of the mantra , but after uttering the word Om Sri Aurobindam Charanau ….torrents of Force rushed in a continuous manner, it was such a torrent that it was a rainfall. It was like a rain of Light and Force, I was feeling the force was entering each cell of the body. Not through the head, it was through the whole body force was entering, the whole body. While uttering this mantra three to four times, I observed P, who was reciting it without harmony, so I directed him to go out of the room. Then the chanting continued. Then I saw A was creating a disturbance, so I directed him to go out of the room. It felt as if I had gone completely to another world along with the boys. Nobody was having any existence there, only the Divine was there. That force and that cosmic….that transcendental force was felt completely. After the descent of force, I observed jnana (divine knowledge) was descending continuously. Then I saw near the head of each child the OM. Q:- You saw OM near everybody’s head? Yes. After the descent of the Divine force, Jnana (knowledge) descended. When Knowledge descended, I started speaking. What I spoke that time I don’t remember now. Then I saw that near everybody’s head, the OM has occupied a place. That big OM slowly entered into everybody in the shape of small OM in the form of jnana . Then I repeated this mantra . “Om Aham Brahmasmi ” (which means I am Brahman. ) It was a new experience. I told the children that you all are Brahman, we all have come from the Supreme and one day we will return again to the Supreme. Without him, we do not have any existence. So we all should merge in Him, without That there is no other way. That is why we are all Brahman. We are THAT only and nothing else. Q:- When you repeated ‘Om Aham Brahmasmi’ what happened ? At that time, another boy, S created a disturbance. So I directed S to go out of the room. Then, while merged in this mantra, I again saw another boy Sg. created a disturbance through chanting the mantra. But I saw force is entering the body of Sg., so I indicated him to keep quiet. Then I witnessed another rare experience. The OM residing over the forehead of each participant, and thereafter it started moving slowly to their heart centre. When the OM reached the heart centre, I saw it extinguished. Q:- Was the OM entering through head ? No, the Om was entering through the forehead with each individual and vanished near the heart centre. From the head the knowledge descended and it took everybody towards the realisation of the Brahman . Up to this, I observed that the force was still descending into the atmosphere. After sitting for ten minutes, I saw them one by one coming to me to do pranam. While receiving that pranam I felt my non-existence and only the Divine is there and I am that Brahman. Brahman is merging into the Brahman . So I witnessed the Brahman doing pranam to Brahman . It was 7.30 p.m. and it seemed one and half hours had passed very quickly. This experience gave me a lot of strength. I am surrendering this experience at the Feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. OM TAT SAT The Descent OM SRI AUROBINDO MAA 2.11.2000 Dear Maa Krishna , Thank you very much for your loving letter of 27th October enclosing the first (and significant) issue of “The Descent” . The Mother says, “IT IS MOST USEFUL AND IMPRESSIVE AND WILL CONTINUALLY GROW IN STRENGTH.” PROFOUND GRACE AND BLESSINGS. Truly, every sincere effort is a Victory and every sustained effort is a magnificent Victory. A friend sent me a Diwali Card with a very nice message. It was: “SUCCESS IS A JOURNEY NOT A DESTINATION!” You know the way, you know the journey and your trust and love for The Mother & Sri Aurobindo is true and sustained. This is truly a victory. More and more devoted persons will benefit from ‘The Descent’ as the years go by. Time is really of little consequence as The Mother controls Time within Her power. All will be achieved for all is Her wonderful and delightful Dream. We fly in Her Sky of Supramental Light and swim with power & determination in Her Oceans of ecstasy. From within our hearts, She Transforms and in our silenced mind Sri Aurobindo vibrates the truth of Sat Chit Ananda . Please convey my love to Bikram (and to Prasant & other boys). My love to you. At Their Feet, Signed Anurakta. N.B. One may note that the Mother, our primary Source, had deputed Sri K. Anurakta as our Spiritual Fosterer and secondary Source. Regarding the secondary Source, Sri Aurobindo wrote, "This will be to him (a Sadhaka) 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) Sri K. Anurakta had insisted us, "Since The Mother has given you a special work directly for the Divine, so the Ashram should be sealed against all the disturbing human presence and adverse circumstances." He further advised to keep the Ashram atmosphere captive from world influence. When we informed Sri K. Anurakta that Sri Matriniketan Ashram aspires to become a Virgins' Fortress; hearing this, without any reply, he entered a deep trance. 1. First Issue of The Descent, October 2000 2. Ashram INAUGURAL ISSUE, February 2003 3. THE DESCENT, A Wearisome Book, Feb-2011 4. THE DESCENT APRIL- 2024 5. THE DESCENT AUGUST 2024 6. THE DESCENT-November-2024 7. THE DESCENT-FEB- 2025 8. THE DESCENT-APRIL- 2025 9. THE DESCENT-AUGUST- 2025 10. THE DESCENT SEPTEMBER 2025 11. THE DESCENT NOVEMBER 2025 Utility of The Descent Integral Yoga enlarges and modifies this feeling that untrained intellect is insufficient to understand the overhead truth and proposes²⁶ that the mystery of written truth can be easily understood if one’s Psychic being and Spiritual being are open or if buddhi , intelligent will, is sufficiently purified. If one will read or study Shastras or Their Teachings with the help of intellect or the three gunas, then that exercise followed by restlessness and fatigue, is identified as tamaso-sattwic action. Or if the written truths are not ‘constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth constantly reshaped and developed in the inner thought and spiritual experience of a developing humanity,’³⁵ then they become ‘monuments of the past, but have no actual force or vital impulse for the future.’³⁵ If he will translate¹⁰ them into mother tongue or restate¹¹ them through formulation of trained mind and purified intellect, then that exercise ‘becomes a science and art of spiritual living’³⁶ and it is identified as sincere sattwic effort in order to understand²⁶ written truth and to trace a path of his own Sadhana ²⁸ respectively. Or a largescale entry into Their Teachings can give a brief Supramental touch and this touch can be prolonged by the development and densification of the subtle body. If he will receive overhead Spiritual support for above two actions after (prolonged) concentration, contemplation and meditation, then that exercise is identified as a Divine action from higher planes of Consciousness. In the passage of time, he waits till sattwic mind’s construction and its constant element of falsity, half-light, half-truth, twilight and limitations are replaced by the higher and wider creative knowledge from within and above. His persistent effort to reveal immortal Words,¹² arrive at their perfection, when all his wisdom is a dictation, command and adesh from the Supreme alone. Thus, he prevents the written truth from becoming a dead convention and customised Religion and by constant restatement of the written truth, he retraces a Spiritual path of his own. A Sadhaka of integral Yoga becomes accountable in his thought and action to his Self, World and the Divine by opening, holding and noting down the new overhead Wisdom, overhead Will and overhead Love, which will further assist in tracing a Spiritual path of his own. The Gita proposes that tapasya through body or physical education and tapasya through mental self-control or mental education must accompany tapasya through speech and restatement of the written truth.¹⁵⁰ It further clarifies that ‘As much use as there is in a well with water in flood on every side, so much is there in all the Vedas for the Brahmin who has the knowledge.’¹²⁷ ‘All Shastra is the outcome of past experience and a help to future experience. It is an aid and a partial guide.’¹²⁶ All the written Truths are ‘a means, not an end’¹⁴⁰ and an incomplete account¹³⁹ of an eternal unfolding of endless Truth. They are like seed¹⁴⁶ of the banyan tree and a temporary scaffold;¹⁰ ¹ if practiced through long years of concentration, contemplation and meditation, then this exercise can end in a mighty manifestation of a banyan tree and a permanent emergence of invisible ‘double ladder’¹⁰ ¹ linking the gulf between Sachchidananda plane and the Inconscient plane. In order to prevent the written truth from becoming old, obsolete, past untouched monument¹⁰ ⁰ and dead convention or from becoming customised Religion,¹⁰⁰ it must be constantly restated through the overhead descent of Supreme knowledge. OM TAT SAT References are taken from the book 'The Mother's Manifestation' whose manuscript can be downloaded here (References of first para: page-26, References of second para: page-266 ) “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.” The Mother The Mother's Agenda/Vol-3/p-131 “At once, emerging, it (Psychic being) is ready and eager to break all the old ties and imperfect emotional activities and replace them by a greater spiritual Truth of love and oneness. It may still admit the human forms and movements, but on condition that they are turned towards the One alone. It accepts only the ties that are helpful, the heart’s and mind’s reverence for the Guru , the union of the God-seekers, a spiritual compassion for this ignorant human and animal world and its peoples, the joy and happiness and satisfaction of beauty that comes from the perception of the Divine everywhere. It plunges the nature inward towards its meeting with the immanent Divine in the heart’s secret centre and, while that call is there, no reproach of egoism, no mere outward summons of altruism or duty or philanthropy or service will deceive or divert it from its sacred longing and its obedience to the attraction of the Divinity within it. It (Psychic Being) lifts the being towards a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all the downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One Highest; but it calls down also this transcendent Love and Beatitude to deliver and transform this world of hatred and strife and division and darkness and jarring Ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an intense and immense will for the good of all, for the embrace of the World-Mother enveloping or gathering to her her children, the divine Passion that has plunged into the night for the redemption of the world from the universal Inconscience. It is not attracted or misled by mental imitations or any vital misuse of these great deep-seated Truths of existence; it exposes them with its detecting search-ray and calls down the entire truth of divine Love to heal these malformations, to deliver mental, vital, physical love from their insufficiencies or their perversions and reveal to them their true abounding share of the intimacy and the oneness, the ascending ecstasy and the descending rapture.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-156-157

The Mundane Perfection “There are three stages of the ascent , — (1) at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, (2) in the middle the mental, higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, (3) at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance. (1) In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. (2) In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are half-lights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. (3) In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever. ” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-208-209 The Agenda of Mundane Perfection “A gaol is this immense material world: Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed Law, At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace.” Savitri-18 “He too is a machine amid machines; A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought, A beating heart cuts out emotion’s modes; An insentient energy fabricates a soul.” Savitri-20 “A long dim preparation is man's life, A circle of toil and hope and war and peace Tracked out by Life on Matter's obscure ground.” Savitri-24 “A struggling ignorance is his wisdom’s mate: He waits to see the consequence of his acts, He waits to weigh the certitude of his thoughts, He knows not what he shall achieve or when; He knows not whether at last he shall survive, Or end like the mastodon and the sloth And perish from the earth where he was king. He is ignorant of the meaning of his life, He is ignorant of his high and splendid fate.” Savitri-53 “Even in his mortal session in body’s house, An aimless traveller between birth and death, Ephemeral dreaming of immortality, To reign she spurs him. He takes up her powers; He has harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.” Savitri-65 “Content to breathe, to feel, to sense, to act, Life had for them no aim save Nature’s joy And the stimulus and delight of outer things; Identified with the spirit’s outward shell, They worked for the body’s wants, they craved no more.” Savitri-143 “There was no thinking self, aim there was none: All was unorganised stress and seekings vague.” Savitri-147 “It knew itself a creature of the mud; It asked no larger law, no loftier aim; It had no inward look, no upward gaze.... It took appearance for the face of God,... It knew not the Immortal in its house; It had no greater deeper cause to live. In limits only it was powerful; Acute to capture truth for outward use, Its knowledge was the body’s instrument; Absorbed in the little works of its prison house It turned around the same unchanging points In the same circle of interest and desire, But thought itself the master of its jail.” Savitri-149-150 “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-164-165 “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 “Our human knowledge is a candle burnt On a dim altar to a sun-vast Truth; Man’s virtue, a coarse-spun ill-fitting dress, Apparels wooden images of Good; Passionate and blinded, bleeding, stained with mire His energy stumbles towards a deathless Force.” Savitri-280-281 “The world lived on made empty of its Cause, Like love when the beloved’s face is gone.” Savitri-305 “Assailed on earth and unassured of heaven, Descended here unhappy and sublime, A link between the demigod and the beast, He knows not his own greatness nor his aim; He has forgotten why he has come and whence.” Savitri-336-37 “Once were my (Satyavan) days like days of other men: To think and act was all, to enjoy and breathe; This was the width and height of mortal hope:” Savitri-406-7 "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 “But when she (Savitri) came back to her self of thought, Once more she was a human thing on earth, A lump of Matter, a house of closed sight, A mind compelled to think out ignorance, A life-force pressed into a camp of works And the material world her limiting field.” Savitri-488 (Savitri said) “Nay, let me work within my mortal bounds, Not live beyond life nor think beyond the mind; Our smallness saves us from the Infinite.” Savitri-520 "The men who walked beneath an unreal sky Seemed mobile puppets out of cardboard cut And pushed by unseen hands across the soil Or moving pictures upon Fancy’s film:" Savitri-546 (Death said) “This is the world in which thou mov’st, astray In the tangled pathways of the human mind, In the issueless circling of thy human life, Searching for thy soul and thinking God is here.” Savitri-618 “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 (Savitri said) “The souls of men have wandered from the Light And the great Mother turns away her face. The eyes of the creatrix Bliss are closed And sorrow’s touch has found her in her dreams.” Savitri-628 (Death said) “Vainly thou seekst in Matter’s world an aim; No aim is there, only a will to be.” Savitri-644 If one’s all action, all thinking process and all emotions are executed comfortably without contact with the Divine, then he is identified as a Mundane. "Those who have given themselves up too entirely to this outward drive of the mentality, fall into the hands of the lower nature, cling to it and make it their foundation."¹¹ In integral Yoga, if one excludes the Divine from his action, thought and association, then that exercise is identified as a waste of time¹ ² and energy. Nature’s first evolutionary basis is material life, and man must first accord due importance to his external fact of material and vital existence; the Nature’s force of conservation is secured by the abundant multiplication of the physical man. His next greater preoccupation in the evolution is to find himself as a mental being in the material life—as much as possible perfected individual and social existence. European civilization moved in this direction through the Hellenic idea and was further reinforced by the Romans through the ideal of organised power, the cult of reason, the interpretation of life by intellectual thought, constructive and utilitarian organisation and the last outcome of this inspiration was the Government of life by Modern Science. The ancient Indian trend was a pursuit of an ideal truth, good and beauty and moulding of mind, life and body into perfection and harmony by this ideal. As soon as the mind is sufficiently developed, there awakens in man the Spiritual preoccupation, the discovery of Self and the inmost truth of Being, perfection of Nature by the Power of the Spirit, the solidarity, unity, mutuality of all beings in the Spirit. This Eastern ideal of love, truth, compassion, altruism, philanthropy and service, carried by Buddhism and other ancient Spiritual disciplines, were carried to the coasts of Asia and Egypt and from there poured by Christianity into Europe. The barbaric flood of tamasic inertia and rajasic vitality created confusion and darkness over Asia and Europe respectively and these religious motives burned for some centuries like dim torch lights and had not succeeded to make this world a little happier, they only gave infinitesimal bits of momentary relief to human suffering till it was abandoned by modern man who has found another light, the light of Science. In Europe , the negation of the materialist that Matter alone is real and the Spirit is a lie moved towards the fullness of riches and the triumphant mastery of this world’s powers and possessions. It has experienced an enormous and indispensable utility for a very brief period of rationalistic materialism through which the human race was passing. The modern dominant trend pushes Religion aside as an out-of date superstition; Spiritual realisations and experiences are discredited as a shadowy mysticism, fundamentally false because incompatible with the self-evident truth of the material world and a sublimated crudity deviating from true human evolution, which should be solely the evolution of physical strength and life-power of practical physical mind, the reason governing thought, conduct and organising intelligence. The prevalent mundane existence depends ultimately on the false perception that (1) to cabin ourselves in the acceptation of formula of material life and its experiences as the only reality; (2) outward life and its narrow domain of objective external solidities are alone valid standard knowledge and hence deserves importance; (3) all our pursuit is directed towards an outwardly acquired or learned knowledge and tied the thought to visible things and rely strictly on the wholesome and nourishing outer source and its constructing principle; (4) material energy is ordinarily accepted as the sole cause and mode of things, the sole instrumentation of the World-Force and creator of this universe and to think that the God lives hidden in the clay is a high insanity;⁶ (5) the materialist ideal considers the extrovert¹ attitude as the only safety and to go inward and live inward is a difficult task or opposes the introvert action considering it as age-long superstition, entry into darkness, dull emptiness and become morbid; all other Spiritual experience claiming to be real must be either a hallucination or an imitation or subjective result of superstitious imagination and no evidence could be accepted of such facts unless it is objective truth and physical actuality in its character; (6) the most of the Spiritual experiences of any kind are beyond the perception of ‘tribunal of the common mentality’² and they consider their own incapacity of experience as a proof of their invalidity or their non-existence and demand physically valid proof of a supraphysical fact and (7) lastly, we conclude that the eternal Becoming is the only truth of our existence and the eternal Being is only a hallucination, fiction of our intelligence, undeserving of inquiry, an idea born out of our words and verbal dialectics and non-existent; through this superficial inner look we do not find the Spiritual self but the unhealthy life-ego and the mind-ego;¹ this inward tendency has not solved the problem of life nor any of the problems with which humanity is at grips and hence all the adventure of the Unseen is discouraged and even prohibited. The above present appearance or status is accepted as a veiled and partial figure of the Infinite and to limit ourselves to this first figure of imperfect humanity is to exclude our Divine potentiality and deprive ourselves of bringing a wider meaning into our human existence. The consistent materialist recognises itself as a creature of mud, is ignorant of the larger Spiritual law and loftier inner aim of life that develops an inward look and upward gaze; he is aware only of its needs and its desires, seeks a partial and short-lived power, knowledge and happiness and falls into the illusion of the chain of works. Thus, the aim of the most mundane philosophy is fulfilment, human perfection, satisfaction of the individual but this can be best assured when we deliver ourselves from limiting mental and vital ego and command a wider life, a larger existence, a higher consciousness and a happier Soul state. Most of humanity devotes the major part of their energy to life on earth, to the terrestrial needs, interests, desires, and ideals suitable to the individual and the race. The law, condition of growth, the natural impulse of rule imposed upon the general humanity is the care of the body, sufficient development and enjoyment of the vital and mental being, the pursuit of high and large individual and collective ideal of attainable human perfection. Without these things man could not attain his full manhood. Any view, ideology or partial knowledge that neglects, unduly belittles and intolerantly condemns them is unfit to be the general and complete law of human living. Nature takes good care so that the race shall not neglect these fundamental necessities; for they are the part and portion of the Divine plan in us and the first step of maintenance of their material and mental ground and these are also the foundation and body of her structure. A considerable part of the race had swerved aside to the real call of the Ascetic life;³ they adhered to the normal life but with an underlying belief in its unreality, a greyness and restless dissatisfaction with the life in which they must still continue and the poor inconclusiveness of the greatest results they can achieve. This belief can insist to unnerve the life impulse and an increasing littleness of its motives and an absorption in an ordinary narrow living. Thus, humanity is deprived of a natural response to the Divine Being’s larger joy in cosmic existence and a failure of the great progressive human idealism of collective self-development and a noble embrace of the battle and the labour. If we push far enough the materialist conclusion that Matter alone is real, then we arrive at the insignificance and unreality of the life of the individual and the race. Thus, man is compelled either towards a transient existence of ‘live a life’ or a dispassionate and objectless service of the race and the individual, with full awareness that the latter is a transient friction of the nervous mentality and the former is only a little more long-lived collective form of same nervous spasm of matter. Thus, he works and enjoys under the impulsion of a material energy which deceives him with a brief delusion of life or with a nobler delusion of an ethical aim and a mental consummation. One high and reasonable aim for the individual human being is to study the law of the Becomings and take the best advantage of their secret. His business is to make the most of such actualities as exist and to seize on or to advance towards the highest possibilities that can be developed here or are in making. His highest thought and largest contribution is towards the present intellectual, moral and vital welfare and future progress of the race. Welfare and progress of humanity during its persistence on earth provide the largest field and the natural limits for the terrestrial aim of his being. The superior persistence of the race and the greatness and importance of the collective life should determine the nature and scope of his ideals. But if the progress or welfare of humanity be excluded as not his highest business or as delusion of ego, the individual is there to achieve his greatest possible perfection or make the most of his life in whatever way his nature demands will then be life’s significance. It is a fact that an inward turn and movement in finding the personal self is not an imprisonment but an initial step to discover our universality and true freedom. Since development is clearly the law of the human Soul, it is most likely to be discovered by giving full and legitimate value to each part of his composite being and many-sided aspiration. This finding must be an integration and evolutionary synthesis.⁴ The synthesis of this kind was attempted in the ancient Indian culture⁹ and did not succeed due to the exaggeration of any of its four intentions. It accepted four legitimate motives for integration and fulfillment of human living, -- (1) man’s basic needs of food, clothing and shelter, (2) satisfaction of his desires and new wants and enjoyment of maximum opportunities of existence, a period of normal living to satisfy human interests and ego; (3) his ethical and religious aspiration, a period of development of moderate Spirituality and (4) his ultimate Spiritual realisation of God, Light, Freedom, Bliss and Immortality and an ultimate release from the ordinary mundane existence. In the ancient culture greatest emphasis was laid on fitting of the individual into the community and the individual had to pass first through the social status of the physical, vital, mental being with his satisfaction of interest, desire, pursuit of knowledge and right living before he could reach fitness for a truer self-realisation and free Spiritual existence. It is a fact that it is impossible for all to trace out the whole circle of development in a single short lifetime. So a theory of complete evolution is developed through a long succession of rebirths, or all life, before one could be fit for the ultimate Spiritual realisation. Man’s failure to reconcile the above synthesis gave birth to two schools in opposition to each other and human thought falls apart towards two opposite extremes, (1) first one is the normal mundane and pragmatic life of interests and desires with an ethical and religious colouring and coating which regards the fulfillment and satisfaction of the mental, vital and physical ego-sense as the object of life and looks no farther while the other is (2) an abnormal or supernormal inner life which begins and is founded on Ascetic renunciation, regards the conquest of ego in the interest of Soul, Spirit or whatever the ultimate reality as one thing supremely worth living. In Europe, the affirmation of the Materialist directed life towards the fullness of riches and the triumphant mastery of this world’s powers and possessions. In India ,¹⁰ the Ascetic affirmation has resulted in a great heaping up of the treasures of the Spirit. The gulf between the two is to be reconciled through a synthesis of Evolution . Since life has no Divine significance in the immediate future so the impatience of human intellect searched some shortcut and stumbled on some maimed achievement or recoil towards a past egoistic life and its satisfaction. Life is split between Spiritual and Mundane and there can only be an abrupt transition and not a harmonious reconciliation of integral human existence. Man has recently advanced considerably in knowledge of the physical world, in the handling of his surroundings, in his purely external and utilitarian use of the secret laws of Nature and Science has succeeded in mechanizing the life of the whole of humanity. He continues to manifest the same capacities and incapacities, the same qualities and defects, the same efforts, blunders, achievements, frustrations as that of the early beginnings of the race. If progress there has been, it is at most perhaps in a wider circle. Man today is not wiser than the ancient Seers and Sages and Thinkers, not more Spiritual than the great Seekers of old, the first mighty Mystics, not having the more courageous and war loving attitude than the ancient Kings; not superior in arts and crafts to the ancient Artists and Craftsmen; the old races that have disappeared showed as potent an intrinsic originality, invention, capacity of dealing with life. If the present modern man in this respect has gone a little farther, it is because he has inherited the achievements of his forerunners. Nothing warrants the idea that he will ever hew his way out of the half-knowledge and half-ignorance which is the stamp of his type. Even if he develops a higher knowledge, he may not be able to break out of the utmost boundary of the mental circle. Now a stage has been reached in which the human mind has reached in certain direction of enormous growth, while in the other stands arrested and bewildered and may no longer find a safe exit. Man has raised a huge and complex structure, a huge mechanical organisation and scientific knowledge of external life for the service of his mental, vital and physical claims, urges and enjoyments, a complex, political, social, religious, administrative, economic and cultural machinery, an organised collectivity for his intellectual, sensational, aesthetic and material satisfaction and for the multiplication of new wants and an aggressive expansion of the collective ego. He is a dangerous servant of his blundering ego and unlimited appetites. Yet he is searching for a greater seeing mind beyond the sense knowledge, the rapidity and sureness with which it has embraced the visible universe is only an earnest of the energy and success which we may hope to see repeated in the conquest of what lies beyond, an intuitive Soul of knowledge, discovery of higher truth, good and beauty which could provide the basic fullness of life, the discovery⁷ of a greater and diviner Spirit which would intervene and use life for a higher perfection of the being and a condition of free growth that exceeded it. What is necessary now is that there should be a turn in humanity felt by some or many towards the vision of this high change, a feeling of its imperative need, the sense of its possibility, the will to make it possible in themselves and to find the way. Humanity is now at the critical juncture of its world destiny, where he will either escape or resolve the problem through Spiritual ascension. The surface consciousness of a mundane⁵ is ignorant of mass relations, separated from each other, rooted in a divided ego and mind’s constructed knowledge and must strive for some kind of right relation between their embodied ignorance. His relations formed in groups are constantly marred by imperfect understanding, gross misunderstanding, strife, discord, unhappiness and the superficiality of his mind’s deceptive constructions is the cause of his frustration. For perfect social living he labours to establish unity, mutuality and harmony and what he builds is a constructed unity, an association of interests and egos enforced by law and social custom and imposes an artificial constructed order in which the interests of some prevail over the interests of others. He is a social being and for its perfection he has to improve ethical and social relation with other men and live for its benefit and utility; society is also there for the service of all, to give them their right relation, education, training, economic opportunity, right frame of life. Modern spirit has sought a civilization of material order and comfort and generalised the utilitarian rationality through Reason, Science and Education which will make the individual a perfected social being in a perfected economic society. The Spiritual ideal is substituted by mentalised and moralised humanitarianism, relieved of all religious colouring and a social ethic. Thus, the race is hurried forward by its own momentum into a chaos of its life in which all received values and firm ground of conduct and culture were overthrown and seemed to disappear from its social organisation. These disorders, defects and disharmonies are normal to a status and energy of Ignorance and can only be dissolved by a greater Light than that of mind nature or life nature. The relation between one mundane community and another mundane community is accommodated with a constant recurrence of strife of collective ego with collective ego and through persistent readjustment of social order one can experience nothing better than an imperfect structure of life, a narrow domain of objective external solidities, a combination of association and regulated conflict, an accommodation of interests grouped or dovetailed into each other to form a society and a consolidation by need and the pressure of struggle with outside forces. An increasing mechanisation, a standardisation, a fixing of all into a common mould in order to ensure harmony is its mental method. The aim which the most mundane philosophy pursues, the fulfillment, perfection, satisfaction of the individual, is best assured not by satisfying the narrow ego but by finding freedom in a higher and larger Self and change by true union of consciousness founded upon a nature of Self-knowledge, entry into inner or subliminal reality, inner realisation of unity, concord of our inner forces of being and inner forces of life; for in that way alone can there come liberation from Ignorance in which our mentality dwells and a release into a complete consciousness, a true and integral self-realisation and self-knowledge. The outer apparent natural man, the ephemeral being, the son of death, subject to constraint of his material embodiment and imprisoned in a limited mentality, must become the real inner Man; he has to recognise himself as the child of Immortality, son of God. His first business is to evolve his individual separative personality and its perfect disengagement from the lower subconscient urges in which the individual is overpowered by the mass consciousness of the world and entirely subject to the mechanical workings of three modes of Nature; he has to evolve all his human capacities of power, knowledge and enjoyment so that he may turn them upon the world with more and more self-mastery and force and then his next business is to successfully turn his faculties to higher, larger and greater work, to enlarge his partial being into a complete realisation and union of Supreme Self,⁸ his partial consciousness into an integral Consciousness, his self mastery, swarat, into mastery over environment, samrat, world union and world harmony, transform his obscure, erroneous and ignorant mentality into luminous knowledge, will, feeling and action. OM TAT SAT References: - 1: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1064, 2: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-677, 3: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-702, 4: "That equation can only be found if we recognise the purport of our whole complex human nature in its right place in the cos- mic movement; what is needed is to give its full legitimate value to each part of our composite being and many-sided aspiration and find out the key of their unity as well as their difference. The finding must be by a synthesis or an integration and, since development is clearly the law of the human soul, it is most likely to be discovered by an evolutionary synthesis . A synthesis of this kind was attempted in the ancient Indian culture. It accepted four legitimate motives of human living, — (1) man’s vital interests and needs, (2) his desires, (3) his ethical and religious aspiration, (4) his ultimate spiritual aim and destiny, — in other words, the claims of his vital, physical and emotional being, the claims of his ethical and religious being governed by a knowledge of the law of God and Nature and man, and the claims of his spiritual longing for the Beyond for which he seeks satisfaction by an ultimate release from an ignorant mundane existence. It provided for a period of education and preparation based on this idea of life, a period of normal living to satisfy human desires and interests under the moderating rule of the ethical and religious part in us, a period of withdrawal and spiritual preparation, and a last period of renunciation of life and release into the spirit."CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-703, 5: “Our aim becomes quite other; it is to live in the Divine, the Infinite, in God and not in any mere egoism and temporality, but at the same time not apart from Nature, from our fellow-beings, from earth and the mundane existence, any more than the Divine lives aloof from us and the world. He exists also in relation to the world and Nature and all these beings, but with an absolute and inalienable power, freedom and self-knowledge.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-436, 6: “The worst of it is that generally the whole material reality seems to be the only reality, and everything which is not that seems altogether secondary. And the “right” of that material consciousness to rule, guide, organise life, to dominate all the rest, is justified to such an extent that if someone tries to challenge this sacrosanct authority, he is considered half-mad or extremely dangerous. It seems to me one must still go a very long way to consider material life in the way Sri Aurobindo has described it here (CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-171-172). And I am quite convinced that if one feels it like that, sees it like that, as he has described it, one is very, very close to the remedy.” TMCW-8/Questions and Answers-1956/p-289-290, 7: “Everything can be part of “sadhana” ; it depends on the inner attitude. Naturally, if one lets himself be invaded by the Western atmosphere, farewell to the sadhana. But even in the most materialistic milieu, if one retains one’s aspiration and one’s faith in the Divine Life, the sadhana can and should continue.” The Mother/TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-44, “The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life. But as soon as we go deep within ourselves, — and Yoga means a plunge into all the multiple profundities of the soul, — we find ourselves subjectively, as man in his growth has found himself objectively, surrounded by a whole complex world which we have to know and to conquer.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-75, “The Transcendence of this lower triple being and this lower triple world, to which ordinarily our consciousness and its powers and results are limited, -- a transcendence described by the Vedic seers as an exceeding or breaking beyond two farmaments of heaven and earth, --opens out a hierarchy of infinitudes to which the normal existence of man even in its highest and widest flights is still a stranger. Into that altitude, even to the lowest step of its hierarchy, it is difficult for him to rise.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-465 8: “But this exclusive consummation (realisation of Supreme Self) is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one’s own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane , into activities of the divine consciousness utilizable for the projection of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualization and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-38-39, 9: "The ancient civilisation of India founded itself very expressly upon four human interests; first, desire and enjoyment, next, material, economic and other aims and needs of the mind and body, thirdly, ethical conduct and the right law of individual and social life, and, lastly spiritual liberation; kama, artha, dharma, moksa. The business of culture and social organisation was to lead, to satisfy, to support these things in man and to build some harmony of their forms and motives. Except in very rare cases the satisfaction of the three mundane objects must run before the other; fullness of life must precede the surpassing of life. The debt to the family, the community and the gods could not be scamped; earth must have her due and the relative its play, even if beyond it there was the glory of heaven or the peace of the Absolute. There was no preaching of a general rush to the cave and the hermitage." CWSA-20/The Renaissance in India/125-126, 10: “The Indian system did not entirely leave this difficult growth to the individual’s unaided inner initiative. It supplied him with a framework; it gave him a scale and gradation for his life which could be made into a kind of ladder rising in that sense. This high convenience was the object of the four Asramas. Life was divided into four natural periods and each of them marked out a stage in the working out of this cultural idea of living. There was the period of the (1) student, (2) the period of the householder, (3) the period of the recluse or forest-dweller, (4) the period of the free supersocial man, parivrajaka. (1) The student life was framed to lay the groundwork of what the man had to know, do and be. It gave a thorough training in the necessary arts, sciences, branches of knowledge, but it was still more insistent on the discipline of the ethical nature and in earlier days contained as an indispensable factor a grounding in the Vedic formula of spiritual knowledge. In these earlier days this training was given in suitable surroundings far away from the life of cities and the teacher was one who had himself passed through the round of this circle of living and, very usually, even, one who had arrived at some remarkable realisation of spiritual knowledge. But subsequently education became more intellectual and mundane; it was imparted in cities and universities and aimed less at an inner preparation of character and knowledge and more at instruction and the training of the intelligence. But in the beginning the Aryan man was really prepared in some degree for the four great objects of his life, artha, kama, dharma, moksa. (2) Entering into the householder stage to live out his knowledge, he was able to serve there the three first human objects; he satisfied his natural being and its interests and desire to take the joy of life, he paid his debt to the society and its demands and by the way he discharged his life functions he prepared himself for the last greatest purpose of his existence. (3) In the third stage he retired to the forest and worked out in a certain seclusion the truth of his spirit. He lived in a broad freedom from the stricter social bonds; but if he so willed, gathering the young around him or receiving the inquirer and seeker, he could leave his knowledge to the new rising generation as an educator or a spiritual teacher. (4) In the last stage of life he was free to throw off every remaining tie and to wander over the world in an extreme spiritual detachment from all the forms of social life, satisfying only the barest necessities, communing with the universal spirit, making his soul ready for eternity. This circle was not obligatory on all. The great majority never went beyond the two first stages; many passed away in the vanaprastha or forest stage. Only the rare few made the last extreme venture and took the life of the wandering recluse. But this profoundly conceived cycle gave a scheme which kept the full course of the human spirit in its view; it could be taken advantage of by all according to their actual growth and in its fullness by those who were sufficiently developed in their present birth to complete the circle. ” CWSA-20/The Renaissance in India/p-174 to 176, 11: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-326, 12: “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, "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, (Death said) “I lay waste human happiness with my breath And slay the will to live, the joy to be” Savitri-535 Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: “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 “A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have not only to assimilate the influences of the great theistic religions of India and of the world and a recovered sense of the meaning of Buddhism, but to take full account of the potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking ; and, beyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-10, “No material organisation, whatever its degree of preparation, is capable of bringing a solution to the miseries of man…Man must rise to a higher level of consciousness and get rid of his ignorance, limitation and selfishness in order to get rid also of his sufferings.” The Mother The Mother's Centenary Works/Vol-14/p-277

The Central Thuth of The Mother "And behind her is the Ishwara and faith in him is the most central thing in the sraddha of the integral Yoga. This faith we must have and develop to perfection that all things are the workings under the universal conditions of a supreme self-knowledge and wisdom, that nothing done in us or around us is in vain or without its appointed place and just significance, that all things are possible when the Ishwara as our supreme Self and Spirit takes up the action and that all that has been done before and all that he will do hereafter was and will be part of his infallible and foreseeing guidance and intended towards the fruition of our Yoga and our perfection and our life work. This faith will be more and more justified as the higher knowledge opens, we shall begin to see the great and small significances that escaped our limited mentality and faith will pass into knowledge. Then we shall see beyond the possibility of doubt that all happens within the working of the one Will and that that will was also wisdom because it develops always the true workings in life of the self and nature. The highest state of the assent, the sraddha of the being will be when we feel the presence of the Ishwara and feel all our existence and consciousness and thought and will and action in his hand and consent in all things and with every part of our self and nature to the direct and immanent and occupying will of the Spirit. And that highest perfection of the sraddha will also be the opportunity and perfect foundation of a divine strength: it will base, when complete, the development and manifestation and the works of the luminous supramental Shakti ." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-781-782 The Central Truth of The Mother or The Book of Consecrated Faith “A glad and strong and helpful submission is demanded to the working of the Divine Force, the obedience of the illumined disciple of the Truth, of the inner Warrior who fights against obscurity and falsehood, of the faithful servant of the Divine. This is the true attitude and only those who can take and keep it, preserve a faith unshaken by disappointments and difficulties and shall pass through the ordeal to the supreme victory and the great transmutation.”³¹ Sri Aurobindo “I have said somewhere, or may be written, that no matter how great your faith and trust in the divine Grace, no matter how great your capacity to see it at work in all circumstances, at every moment, at every point in life, you will never succeed in understanding the marvellous immensity of Its Action, and the precision, the exactitude with which this Action is accomplished; you will never be able to grasp to what extent the Grace does everything, is behind everything, organises everything, conducts everything, so that the march forward to the divine realisation may be as swift, as complete, as total and harmonious as possible, considering the circumstances of the world.”¹⁵ The Mother This paper chooses Sraddha as central truth of The Mother book because through prolongation of faith, the static Divine union of the Supreme Self is dynamised to experience union with the Supreme Mother; thus through 'ascending faith,' a contact with the Divine is established and through 'descending faith' the Divine Shakti comes down to mind, life, body, subconscient and inconscient planes. The Maha Mantra of integral Yoga in the language of The Mother book is "All Life is Yoga or All Life is possession of the fourfold Divine Shaktis ." The Maha Vakya or Supreme Word is "The Mother’s power and not any human endeavour and tapasya can alone rend the lid and tear the covering and shape the vessel and bring down into this world of obscurity and falsehood and death and suffering Truth and Light and Life divine and the immortal’s Ananda ."⁴⁰ ‘The Mother ’ book proposes a Vedantic self-discipline in order to arrive at a Tantric aim. It gives us hints that by prolonging the Vedantic sacrifice of static Divine Union, one will arrive at the dynamic Divine Union of Tantric objective. Faith acts as a link through which static Divine union is dynamised and it also serves as a link through which dynamic Divine Shakti penetrates into Material life. So, faith acts as a connecting link in both the ascending and descending action of Consciousness. The faith has its double utility in integral Yoga, that of firstly, (1) the faith in the Divine, Vedantic faith which is defined as ‘ascent of the whole being to the truth seen by it or offered to its acceptance;’⁵ and the other is (2) faith in the Shakti, Vedic faith, which is defined as Influence²⁷ and Will of the Supreme dynamised as Shakti, directed to press upon the lower nature of mind, life and body to realise the greater truth of self-becoming and self-exceeding.¹⁹ It is a free perception or an imperative direction from the inner Spirit. The dependency on the ever-growing static and dynamic faith, sraddha , is felt imperative in four successive stages. The true nature of static faith as proposed in the Gita is of quadruple kind ; first is the ‘faith of each man takes the shape, hue, quality given to it by his stuff of being, his constituting temperament, his innate power of existence, sattvanurupa sarvasya sraddha ;’¹⁶ secondly , Sraddha is that it is an aspect of the Self, sraddhamayayo Purusha ;² thirdly, whatever is man’s faith that he becomes ultimately, yo yachhadra sa evasah .² Lastly, this faith is Divinely fulfilled and culminated in an eternal flame of knowledge, sraddhavan labhate jnanam .³ Integral Yoga proposes that the true nature of dynamic faith is of quadruple kind. Firstly, we have to change our central faith¹⁷ from the formation of ordinary material and mental man that concentrates on the ‘development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things’¹ to a ‘deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine.’¹ If the equality, the Psychic light and will are already there, then a sure guidance and protection will be present throughout and we will realise that all is done for the best, the progress assured and victory inevitable. Secondly , If the central faith is established in the Divine, then one’s Spiritual destiny³⁰ is decreed. Thirdly, the dynamic faith has the magic power to bring the dead back to life, the capacity to turn the bitter poisons of the world into immortal nectar, can see the happier positive Spiritual intention behind all adversity and opposition, the mystery of Divine Love behind all hatred, jealousy and suffering and the flower of Divine strength and joy in the seed of pain. Fourthly , a Sadhaka of integral Yoga must remember that he carries with him a fragment of Eternal’s Omnipotence and Omniscience or ‘Godhead’s seed’³⁵ and its entire revelation in his bodily life is the inevitable consequence of his integral faith that is only a will aiming at the realisation of a greater static and dynamic truth. This Integral Faith is really an influence from the supreme Spirit which calls the lower nature to rise out of its petty limitation and narrowness and transforms itself to illimitable Divine Nature. The two active mental imperfections, (1) samsaya, the sceptical doubt,²⁸ which always turns its back on our total knowledge of Spiritual possibilities and (2) asuya , the constant carping of the narrow uncreative intellect which paralyses⁵ our collective Ashram living, must however be conquered for the Divine perfection by systematic development of sraddha. We begin this journey with the three elements of complete mental faith on the Divine that are (1) the mind's constant concurrence, (2) strong consent of the will and (3) the heart’s intense delight and submission. The last siddhi, perfection of faith in the Divine Shakti is identified as ‘intimate feeling of her presence and her powers and the satisfied assent of all our being to her workings in and around it.’⁶ This paper proposes some series of Perfection/siddhi or provisional psycho-physical exercises or mental belief on faith, Sraddha , which is meant for educating one to begin, repeat subsequently and end each day with the revival of the highest aspiration of the Soul, towards God, Light, Freedom, Bliss and Immortality. With Spiritual realisation, our mental faith and ideas become concrete reality, living truth and dynamic power. In integral Yoga, it is defined that for beginners Vedantic method of self-discipline is indispensable and the Vedic method of self-discipline is indispensable after one is established in static union with the Divine; both methods are indispensable for developed Souls. If this understanding will not be given importance, then it will give birth to fear, impatience and doubt and one will be under the subjection of Nature. This suggestion is already there as hinted in the Gita where Arjuna was discouraged³⁶ to do Vedic sacrifice in the initial phase of the sadhana and encouraged³⁷ in the final stage of sadhana . The seven Indispensable Vedantic Faith or Faith in the static Divine: 1) The first indispensable faith is, “The Divine exists within, above and outside me and my meeting with Him everywhere cannot fail in this life. I want direct contact, Pratakhya, with Him and adore Him in all creatures and extend my infinite gratitude towards Him.” 2) The second indispensable faith is, “There is nothing worth living in my life without Him and He is the only inexhaustible source of all my delight, thought and action and the higher I project this aspiration, the greater the truth that seeks to descend upon me. So, my whole life and all life is a broadening of receptivity and constant prayer offered to Divine.” 3) The third indispensable faith is, “He has taken my full and total responsibility and His sure guidance and protection is present throughout in spite of many dangers, difficulties and failures. His failures are part of the act of His omniscient Omnipotence which knows the right time and circumstance for the incipience, the change of destiny, the immediate and the final results of all its cosmic undertakings.” 4) The fourth indispensable faith is, “He responds to my every call and even to my most external emotional call and gives me this conviction that all unforeseen events and apparent discords are parts of His illimitable secret plan and vast harmony.” 5) The fifth indispensable faith is, “What the Divine wills for me or decides for me is the best and faultless, the progress assured and victory inevitable; He leads me in the shortest possible path towards the ultimate goal in spite of my ignorance, misunderstanding, ego, revolt and cry. This belief can be further extended for His creation that what He decides or what He arranges everywhere all things rightly from the beginning of the creation, whether it seems good or evil to the mortal eye, only for the good and for the best, the Divine Will can work. The Creation exists, moves forward and whatever happens are preparing for far more complete, far more integral than we can imagine and see with the one side of things and are intended for the full satisfaction of the whole vision of the Creator. His Will must be worked out in the passage of time in spite of all evil that rises from the Inconscient sheath, all Ignorance with its obstinate strength, all stumbling of man’s personal will, deep folly of his mind and blind reluctance of his heart.”³⁸ I know ‘that whatever happens in the Divine Providence is for the best even though it may seem to the mind otherwise.’³⁴ 6) The sixth indispensable faith is, always we must repeat to the doubting intellect the promise of the Master of the Gita, “I will surely deliver you from all sin and evil; do not grieve.”¹¹ Or the promise of Savitri, “Yet still to ourselves we say rekindling faith, “Oh, surely one day he shall come to our cry, One day he shall create our life anew And utter the magic formula of peace And bring perfection to the scheme of things. One day he shall descend to life and earth, Leaving the secrecy of the eternal doors, Into a world that cries to him for help, And bring the truth that sets the spirit free, The joy that is the baptism of the soul, The strength that is the outstretched arm of Love. One day he shall lift his beauty’s dreadful veil, Impose delight on the world’s beating heart And bare his secret body of light and bliss.””¹² 7) The seventh indispensable faith is, “He is all Love, all Ananda, all Beauty, all Peace, all Knowledge and all Light and He is ready to pour these Divine attributes when called upon.” The Eight Indispensable Vedic Faith or Faith in the dynamic Shakti ¹⁸: “One day I shall behold my great sweet world Put off the dire disguises of the gods, Unveil from terror and disrobe from sin. Appeased we shall draw near our mother’s face, We shall cast our candid souls upon her lap; Then shall we clasp the ecstasy we chase, Then shall we shudder with the long-sought god, Then shall we find Heaven’s unexpected strain.” Savitri-613 In addition to Vedantic faith we can practice remembering some specialised form of faith or dispensable faith to remould some of our finest faculty. Once the indispensable faith establishes the Spiritual base, the practice of the dispensable faith helps to integrate it. So, the dispensable faith becomes indispensable and more profoundly, its necessity is felt in the difficult transformation action of integral Yoga. 1) ‘Faith is certainly a gift given to us by the Divine Grace. It is like a door suddenly opening upon an eternal truth, through which we can see it, almost touch it.’⁴ For Supramental descent, ‘An entire faith, opening, self-giving to the Mother are the one condition necessary throughout.’²² The first indispensable faith is, “If the faith and surrender are complete in all parts of the being then there can be no attack. If there is a strong central faith and surrender at all times, then there can be attacks but the attacks will have no chance of success.”²⁰ 2) When we suffer long or stumble in the darkness the sceptic mind murmurs, “I have trusted to the Highest and I am betrayed into suffering and sin and error.”¹⁴ So when doubt, depression, tamas and insincerity predominates over the nature then the mantra of repetition is, “Never mind, my aspiration will come back again. Meanwhile I know that The Mother is with me even when I do not feel Her, She will carry me through even the darkest period.”²⁴ ‘Even when you cannot aspire actively, keep yourself turned to the Mother for the help to come — that is the one thing to do always.’³² ‘What the psychic always feels is “What the Mother does is for the best”, and it accepts all with gladness. It is the vital part of the heart that is easily touched by the suggestions.’²³ 3) When all higher experience is forgotten and bitterness of life comes to the surface, the sceptic mind repeats, “I have staked my whole life on an idea which the stern facts of experience contradict and discourage. It would have been better to be as other men are who accept their limitations and walk on the firm ground of normal experience.”¹⁴ To all such suggestions of impurity, weakness, unfitness, turn back from Divine labour and Spiritual fall due to temporary defeat repeat the mantra, “I am a child of Immortality chosen by the Divine; I have but to be true to myself and Him --the victory is sure; even if I fell, I would rise again.”⁷ “Do not think whether people agree with you or do not agree with you or whether you are good or bad, but think only that “the Mother loves me and I am the Mother’s.” If you base your life on that thought, everything will soon become easy.”³⁹ 4) The rajasic and sattwic egoism are eliminated by concentration of the following mantra, “A Divine (Mother) Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate.”⁸ 5) To all suggestions of death, disease and accident, repeat the mantra , “No part of my being supports or dwell upon the disease of the body. All disease, all accidents and all death are a perfect illusion and non-existent to the true consciousness of the body.” Additionally, the promise of Savitri that she keeps her will to divinise the clay in spite of repeated failure, prolonged defeat and dead resistance. Always she drives the Souls to a new attempt of winning victory over death and fate, plants heaven’s delight in heart’s passionate mire, pours godhead’s seeking into a bare beast frame and hides immortality in the mask of death.¹³ 6) We must always persist unwearied to the last in the atmosphere of every contradicting event and disillusionment and adhere to the injunction of The Gita , “Yoga must be continually practised without yielding to any discouragement by difficulty or failure until the bliss of Nirvana is secured.”⁹ and for the Divine Shakti in man nothing is impossible. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Kena Upanishad , “That is the Divine Power of Brahman and not this which men here cherish and adore.”²⁵ 7) The seventh indispensable faith is, “A wise impersonality, a quiescent equality, a universality which sees all things as the manifestations of the Divine (Mother), the one Existence, is not angry, troubled, impatient with the way of things or on the other hand excited, over-eager and precipitate, but sees that the law must be obeyed and the pace of time respected, observes and understands with sympathy the actuality of things and beings, but looks also behind the present appearance to their inner significances and forward to the unrolling of their divine possibilities, is the first thing demanded of those who would do works as the perfect instruments of the Divine (Mother).”¹⁰ 8) The eighth indispensable faith is, “Divine is All and by the entire descent of His Shakti all the problems of existence can be resolved instantly. But for such a descent to be practicable, we have to enlarge the purity of the subtle and causal body indefinitely. It is only they who ascend in their consciousness to the luminous Source or enter the Spiritual experience of Origin of existence they only can avoid and overcome catastrophes²⁶ of all kinds and will stand in a golden glory.” Recapitulation: “Only were safe who kept God in their hearts: Courage their armour, faith their sword, they must walk, The hand ready to smite, the eye to scout, Casting a javelin regard in front, Heroes and soldiers of the army of Light.” Savitri-211 Happy are men anchored on fixed belief… Happiest who stand on faith as on a rock” Savitri-499 “There is one kind of faith demanded as indispensable by the integral Yoga and that may be described as (1) faith in God and the Shakti, (2) faith in the presence and power of the Divine in us and the world, (3) a faith that all in the world is the working of one divine Shakti, that (4) 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 (5) that by a 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.”⁵ Sri Aurobindo “— but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude much more certain than that two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have in the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal. It is only false ideas still casting their shadow on your mind that prevent you from having it. Push them aside for good and see this simple inner truth in a simple and straightforward way — the back of the difficulty will be broken.”²¹ Sri Aurobindo Once the centralised faith is established in the Divine, then an individual’s higher Spiritual life is decreed. Then this faith has to be integralised through psycho-physical exercise as stated above, followed by the Spiritual union of Ishwara and Ishwari and the Supramental union of Brahman and Maya. Once the faith is integralised then an individual’s Supramental destiny is decreed. After the centralised faith is established in the Divine, then the centralising thought shuns its former dividing nature and retains its power of Truth and Oneness and once the faith is integralised, then the reconciling wisdom is activated, which harmonises all the inarticulate murmur⁴¹ and disjointed mutterings of the Inconscient and unites Matter and Spirit. The utility and necessity of doubt²⁸ is felt at a certain stage of sadhana of integral Yoga because man in his ignorance and in his progressive labour towards knowledge, would remain obstinate in an ignorant belief and limited knowledge. Now, whatever new ideas seize us or are generated through our writings and expressions demand our credence but they are not without regard to their possible error, limitation, imperfection and influence of three gunas . So, all ideas and suggestions can be held in suspense until it is given their right place and luminous shape of truth through Psychic and Spiritual intervention and further strengthened and fulfilled by Supramental knowledge. This is what is confirmed in the Gita that through faith, sraddha, the knowledge of Psychic Being and Spiritual being are gained, sraddhavan labhate jnanam ³ and the innate Nature of Psychic Being and Spiritual being are made up of faith, shraddha mayoyam purusho .² The utility and necessity of doubt will cease to exist when ‘the foundation of equality is firmly established’³³ and ‘when the sun of the gnosis has risen.’³³ In integral Yoga, faith is utilised to remove two imperfections of sceptical doubt, samsaya, and narrow carping, asuya . Faith is identified as the pivot of all endeavour and action related with the increase²⁹ of means of sadhana such as (1) aspiration, (2) rejection of lower nature, (3) surrender and (4) sincerity. Faith further helps for (1) the perfection and surrender of the four fundamental Executrix Mother Powers or Soul powers of Brahma Shakti, Kshetra Shakti, Vaisya Shakti and Shudra Shakti , (2) the perfection and surrender of four instrumental nature, intellect, heart, vital and body, (3) perfection and dynamisation of four mediatrix Mother Powers or Spiritual powers that of Maheswari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati and finally (4) leading towards the dynamisation and culmination of four Creatrix Mother Powers or Supramental power that of Truth Supreme, Power Supreme, Supreme Delight and Will Supreme. OM TAT SAT References: - 1: “The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine. The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision.” Sri Aurobindo/ CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/72, ““Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all confidence and His own Hand will be there secretly leading me to Him by His own way and at His own time.” That is what you must keep as your constant mantra and it is besides the only logical and reasonable thing to do — for anything else is an irrational self-contradiction of the most glaring kind. Anything else one may doubt — whether the supermind will come down, whether this world can ever be anything but a field of struggle for the mass of men, — these can be rational doubts — but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude much more certain than that two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have in the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal. It is only false ideas still casting their shadow on your mind that prevent you from having it. Push them aside for good and see this simple inner truth in a simple and straightforward way — the back of the difficulty will be broken.” SABCL-23/Letters on Yoga/584-585, CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-97, “But if we desire to make the most of the opportunity that this life gives us, if we wish to respond adequately to the call we have received and to attain to the goal we have glimpsed, not merely advance a little towards it, it is essential that there should be an entire self-giving. The secret of success in Yoga is to regard it (goal is the Divine) not as one of the aims to be pursued in life, but as the one and only aim, not as an important part of life, but as the whole of life.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-71 2: “(1) The faith of each man takes the shape given to it by his stuff of being, O Bharata. (2) This Purusha, this soul in man, is, as it were, made of shraddha, a faith, a will to be a belief in itself and existence, and (3) whatever is that will, faith or constituting belief in him, he is that and that is he.” The Gita-17.3, 3: The Gita-4.39, 4: TMCW-9/Questions and answers-1957-1958/p-351, 5: “The perfect faith is an assent of the whole being to the truth seen by it or offered to its acceptance, and its central working is a faith of the soul in its own will to be and attain and become and its idea of self and things and its knowledge, of which the belief of the intellect, the heart’s consent and the desire of the life mind to possess and realise are the outward figures.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-771, “And yet faith is necessary throughout and at every step because it is a needed assent of the soul and without this assent there can be no progress. Our faith must first be abiding in the essential truth and principles of the Yoga, and even if this is clouded in the intellect, despondent in the heart, outwearied and exhausted by constant denial and failure in the desire of the vital mind, there must be something in the innermost soul which clings and returns to it, otherwise we may fall on the path or abandon it from weakness and inability to bear temporary defeat, disappointment, difficulty and peril. 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 . And even a blind and ignorant faith is a better possession than the sceptical doubt which turns its back on our spiritual possibilities or the constant carping of the narrow pettily critical uncreative intellect, asuya, which pursues our endeavour with a paralysing incertitude. The seeker of the integral Yoga must however conquer both these imperfections.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/773, “The Divine Grace and Power can do everything, but with the full assent of the sadhak . To learn to give that full assent is the whole meaning of the sadhana . It may take time either because of ideas in the mind, desires in the vital or inertia in the physical consciousness, but these things have to be and can be removed with the aid or by calling in the action of the Divine Force.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-171 6: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-781, 7: CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-p-99, “Keep firm faith in the victory of the Light and face with calm equanimity the resistances of Matter and human personality to their own transformation.” SABCL-23/Letters on Yoga-II-III-585, “They (faith, surrender and samata) have to be put into every part and atom of the being so that there may be no possibility of a contrary vibration anywhere.” SABCL-23/Letters on Yoga-II-III/p-584, 8: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-250, 9: The Gita-6.23, 10: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-700, 11: The Gita-18-66, 12: Savitri-200, 13: Savitri-354, 14: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-244, 15: The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/Vol-8/p-250, 16: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-481-482, 17: “And behind her (Shakti) is the Ishwara and faith in him is the most central thing in the sraddha of the integral Yoga. This faith we must have and develop to perfection that all things are the workings under the universal conditions of a supreme self-knowledge and wisdom, that nothing done in us or around us is in vain or without its appointed place and just significance, that all things are possible when the Ishwara as our supreme Self and Spirit takes up the action and that all that has been done before and all that he will do hereafter was and will be part of his infallible and foreseeing guidance and intended towards the fruition of our Yoga and our perfection and our life work.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-781, 18: “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 19: “This sraddha — the English word faith is inadequate to express it — is in reality an influence from the supreme Spirit (descending faith) and its light a message from our supramental being which is calling the lower nature to rise out of its petty present to a great self-becoming and self-exceeding.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/774, “What is meant by one’s own force? All force is cosmic and the individual is merely an instrument — a certain amount of the force may be stored in him, but that does not make it his own… There are certain possibilities in the way of the experience. First there is the faith, or sometimes a mental realisation and this of itself is enough to make one open to the Mother’s force so that it is always available at need or call. Even if one does not feel the Force coming, yet the results are there and visible. The next is when one feels oneself like an instrument and is aware of the Energy using it. A third is the contact with the Power above and its descent (spontaneous or at call) into the body — this is the more concrete way of having it, for one physically feels the Force working in one. Finally there is a state of awareness of close contact with the Mother (inward) which brings a similar result.” CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-202 20: CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-794, 21: CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-p-97, 22: CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-157, 23: CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-163, 24: CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-676, 25: Kena Upanishada-1.4, CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-72, CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-403, 26: “Strange feeling …Since last night, a strange impression that the Divine has become… (how to formulate it?) like a golden Force pressing down like this (gesture of pressure on the earth). They alone, who by their aspiration are able to pass through to the Divine Origin, will escape catastrophes… Only those who have an aspiration, a sincere and unconditional aspiration towards the Divine, only they will escape –they will stand in a golden glory.” The Mother’s Agenda-May 4, 1972, “... It presses down on Matter, to force it, to compel it to turn INWARDLY to the Divine – not an external flight (pointing above) but inwardly turning to the Divine. And the apparent outcome seems to be inevitable catastrophes. But along with this sense of inevitable catastrophe, there come solutions to situations or events that look simply miraculous…As if both extremes were becoming more extreme: the good getting better and the bad worse. Like that. And a stupendous Power PRESSING down on the world. Such is my impression.” The Mother’s Agenda/May 6, 1972, “Certain ideas of a more general, more extensive, more collective nature, as it were, are being worked out and are at work in the world. And the two go together: a greater and more total possibility of destruction and an inventiveness that unrestrainedly increases the possibility of catastrophe, a catastrophe that would be much more massive than it has ever been; and at the same time, the birth, or rather the manifestation, of much higher and more comprehensive ideas and wills which, when heard, will bring a vaster, more extensive, more complete and more perfect solution than before.” The Mother’s Agenda-June 1958, "For instance, the outcome of Distortion or of the vibration of distortion should naturally have been an accident or catastrophe, but if, within those vibrations, there is a consciousness that has the power to become aware of the Vibration of Truth and therefore manifest the Vibration of Truth, it can –it must –cancel the other vibration. Which would be translated, in the external phenomenon, by an intervention that would stop catastrophe… There is a growing feeling that the True is the only way to change the world; that all other process of slow transformation are always a tangent (you draw nearer and nearer but you never arrive) and the last step must be this --the substitution of the true vibration. " The Mother's Agenda, 24th March, 1964, "But even when you have the vision of the true thing, it’s RARELY wise to intervene. It becomes indispensable only if someone wants to do something that will necessarily end in a catastrophe. And even then (smiling), the intervention isn’t always very effective." The Mother’s Agenda-7/198-199, 27: “There are no conditions for receiving the influence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother except faith, an entire sincerity in following the spiritual path and a will and capacity to open oneself to the influence; but this capacity usually comes as the result of sincerity and faith.” CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-106, 28: “I don’t think that real faith is so very super abundant in this Asram. There are some who have it, but for the most part I have met not only doubt, but sharp criticism, constant questioning, much mockery of faith and spiritual experience, violent attacks on myself and the Mother — and that has been going on for the last fourteen years and more. Things are not so bad as they were, but there is plenty of it left still, and I do not think the time has come when the danger of an excessive faith is likely to take body.” 28 June 1934/CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-114, "The Divine holds our hand through all and if he seems to let us fall, it is only to raise us higher. This saving return we shall experience so often that the denials of doubt will become eventually impossible and, when (1) once the foundation of equality is firmly established and (2) still more when the sun of the gnosis has risen, doubt itself will pass away because its cause and utility have ended." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-775, 29: “There is no method in this Yoga except to concentrate, preferably in the heart, and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness; one can concentrate also in the head or between the eyebrows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is a beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.” CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother-217, 30: “Keep faith in your spiritual destiny, draw back from error and open more the psychic being to the direct guidance of the Mother’s light and power. If the central will is sincere, each recognition of a mistake can become a stepping-stone to a truer movement and a higher progress.” CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-228, 31: CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-5, 32: CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-294, 33: “The Divine holds our hand through all and if he seems to let us fall, it is only to raise us higher. This saving return we shall experience so often that the denials of doubt will become eventually impossible and, when once the foundation of equality is firmly established and still more when the sun of the gnosis has risen, doubt itself will pass away because its cause and utility have ended.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-775, 34: CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-528, 35: Savitri-73, 36: “The action of the three gunas is the subject-matter of the Veda ; but do thou become free from the triple guna , nistreigunya, O Arjuna ; without the dualities, ever based in the true being, without getting or having, possessed of the self, nityasattwastha or O Arjuna live with your ceaseless Psychic waking trance.” The Gita-2.45, 37: “Therefore at all times remember me and fight; for if thy mind and thy understanding are always fixed on and given up to Me, to Me thou shalt surely come.” The Gita-8.7, (Japa is identified as prakriti Yajna.)“He who continually remembers Me, thinking of none else, the Yogin, O Partha, who is in constant union with Me, finds Me easy to attain.” The Gita-8.14, “Worship given to the godhead, to the twice-born, to the spiritual guide, to the wise, cleanness, candid dealing, sexual purity and avoidance of killing and injury to others, are called the askesis of the body.” The Gita-17.14, “Therefore with the pronunciation of OM the acts of sacrifice, giving and askesis as laid down in the rules are always commenced by the knowers of the Brahman or Spiritual man.” The Gita-17.24, 38: Savitri-444, 39: CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-480, 40: CWSA-32/The Mother with letters on the Mother/p-26, 41: “…but the healing by faith in the cells is an actual fact and a law of Nature and has been demonstrated often enough even apart from Yoga. The way to get faith and everything else is to insist on having them and refuse to flag or despair or give up until one has them — it is the way by which everything has been got since this difficult world began to have thinking and aspiring creatures upon it. It is to open always, always to the Light and turn one’s back on the darkness. It is to refuse the voices that cry persistently, “You cannot, you shall not, you are incapable, you are the puppet of a dream” — for these are the enemy voices, they cut one off from the result that was coming by their strident clamour and then triumphantly point to the barrenness of result as a proof of their thesis. The difficulty of the endeavour is a known thing, but the difficult is not the impossible — it is the difficult that has always been accomplished and the conquest of difficulties makes up all that is valuable in the earth’s history. In the spiritual endeavour also it shall be so.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-100 Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: "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. At the same time this faith in oneself must be purified from all touch of rajasic egoism and spiritual pride. The sadhaka should keep as much as possible in his mind the idea that his strength is not his own in the egoistic sense but that of the divine universal Shakti and whatever is egoistic in his use of it must be a cause of limitation and in the end an obstacle. The power of the divine universal Shakti which is behind our aspiration is illimitable, and when it is rightly called upon it cannot fail to pour itself into us and to remove whatever incapacity and obstacle, now or later; for the times and durations of our struggle while they depend at first, instrumentally and in part, on the strength of our faith and our endeavour, are yet eventually in the hands of the wisely determining secret Spirit, alone the Master of the Yoga, the Ishwara . Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-779-780 “If we see unity everywhere, if we recognize that all comes by the divine will, see God in all, in our enemies or rather our opponents in the game of life as well as our friends, in the powers that oppose and resist us as well as the powers that favour and assist, in all energies and forces and happenings. And if besides we can feel that all is undivided from our self, all the world one with us within our universal being, then this attitude becomes much easier to the heart and mind. But even before we can attain or are firmly seated in that universal vision, we have by all the means in our power to insist on this receptive and active equality and calm. Even something of it, alpam api asya dharmasya, is a great step towards perfection; a first firmness in it is the beginning of liberated perfection; its completeness is the perfect assurance of a rapid progress in all the other members of perfection. For without it we can have no solid basis; and by the pronounced lack of it we shall be constantly falling back to the lower status of desire, ego, duality, ignorance.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-724

The Journal in Detail “For a knowledge from above begins to descend, frequently, constantly, then uninterruptedly, and to manifest in the mind’s quietude or silence;…”¹ Sri Aurobindo “That Self and Spirit cannot be expressed by the mind’s abstract generalisations; all the inspired descriptions of the seers and mystics cannot exhaust its contents and its splendours.”² Sri Aurobindo “Only those Scriptures, religions, philosophies which can be thus constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth constantly reshaped and developed in the inner thought and spiritual experience of a developing humanity, continue to be of living importance to mankind. The rest remain as monuments of the past, but have no actual force or vital impulse for the future.”³ Sri Aurobindo “…but when we advance in self-knowledge, we find that all our thought and will originate from above though formed in the mind and there first overtly active.”⁴ Sri Aurobindo “Truth is not a dogma that one can learn once and for all and impose as a rule. Truth is as infinite as the supreme Lord and It manifests every instant for those who are sincere and attentive. ”⁹ The Mother “For knowledge shall pour down in radiant streams And even darkened mind quiver with new life And kindle and burn with the Ideal’s fire And turn to escape from mortal ignorance.”⁶ Sri Aurobindo Journal in Detail A concentrated writing can be truly offered near the Divine if it remains free absolutely from all motives. It should be written for the sole satisfaction of the Divine, for the sole reception of the transcendent wisdom, for the sole opening towards the Word that can incarnate the highest Truth and a concentration on central thought and central Truth that can become Omnipotent. It can be made fit for the Divine offering if the writing is made perfect, even in its smallest external detail as well as the highest Spirit and Soul quality from which it has descended. So the first objective of The Descent is to restate the Spiritual experience and bridge the gulf between Sri Aurobindo’s early sadhana at Pondicherry and The Mother’s last cellular transformation experience which is a preliminary effort to accumulate Their vast Spiritual wealth from without and the utter need to live within, which is an atmosphere of Their Supreme Presence; its second objective is to concentrate, contemplate and meditate on the written Truth and constantly revise and heighten the already restated statements through fresh instreaming of overhead Spiritual experiences and Wisdom which is extended to overcome the human limitation of fragmentary knowledge in Ignorance, leading towards an integration of Knowledge; its third objective is to identify The Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s established and the most concentrated Spiritual experiences and find the possible means of purification to repeat those experiences which results in a revolution of our internal being and, through the internal movement of Consciousness our external life is perfected; its fourth objective is to establish a strong Spiritual foundation by Jivatma's union with Paramatma, which will serve as a platform for the development and consummation of Their highest hinted Spiritual experiences and utilise that base as lever action to escape into still unknown heights of Consciousness and call down the corresponding divine Light to penetrate into the untouched nether domain of dark Subconscient and Inconscient planes. So the writings of The Descent depend firstly on the Word that descends from above and is caught through large, subtle and plastic Idea which does not insist too much on rigid definition; secondly, it organises anew the highest and the best written wisdom already available on the earth through its past and present Spiritual experiences; thirdly, some of its writings are based on the construction of the mind which expresses partial and practical half light and half truth and waits till its constant element of falsity and twilight are replaced by the higher and wider Knowledge from within and above; fourthly, to mind Spiritual experiences of Individual, Cosmic and Transcendent Beings are intelligible as eternal hierarchies of powers of Consciousness and we cannot hope to describe adequately the visions of heights of Consciousness or experience of the mysteries Absolute in terms of negative or positive abstract mental language but can only hope to indicate, glimpse and hint it to the utmost power of our pure symbolic language which is ‘yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness;’⁵ fifthly, integral Yoga authorises ‘an absolute liberty’⁷ to enter new subjective Spiritual experience and reaffirm rightly all knowledge in new terms and new combinations; sixthly, Consciousness must be trained to move in between Subliminal, Psychic and Spiritual planes and through this movement corresponding Psychic and Spiritual Sheaths and adjacent subtle mental, subtle vital and subtle physical sheaths are purified, enlarged, transformed and perfected and writing/oration can be used as Prakriti-yajna, one of the important means for this movement of Divine Consciousness and descent of Divine Shakti; and lastly, it aims at elevating all writings towards the status of absolute Brahman through constant restatement extending over a long formative period of Sadhana and in this endless growth of impersonal and universal state there is no trace of negation, discord and division and one enters into exceedingly affirmative and uniting Consciousness with radically different ecstatic awareness of things. There can develop a Supramental envisaging of the universe whose each step and each action are dictated by an innate Spiritual vision, a comprehensive and exact penetration into the Truth of all and the Truth of each thing. Large and plastic ideas and speech can be expressed through the supreme effort of creative Consciousness in carrying those highest experiences to its farthest end and assist mankind towards the possession of the knowledge of God and the supreme Reality. The Descent can serve its true purpose when it can catch without ego, most of the secret threads of integral Yoga or seize the knowledge of the Unknowable directly, not by intellectual poor abstract understanding but by the discovery of another overhead language which is at once creatively metaphysical, revealingly poetic, substantially malleable and can pour down in a vivid plastic massiveness of flaming stream. A Sadhaka’s Spiritual life is secured through the complete union of the Soul with the universal and transcendent Divine and by fulfilment of the task of accountability in sadhana before his Self, World and Divine. His principal motive is to give Them (dual Divine) consecrated service and this slavehood to the Divine gives him the right to enter deep into Their Teachings. Their Teachings contain vast Truths of reconciling wisdom and Oneness whose wrong discrimination and misuse ¹¹ can make life asuric and a separative commerce⁸ with the world for some personal gain may become predominant. If he accumulates Their Spiritual opulence rightly without separate personal energy of ego, vidhipurbakam,¹⁰ then life will flower unimaginably with predominance of Silence, Truth, Plasticity, Consciousness and Love in his frontal nature and he will serve at once as passive Instrument of Divine Will and active Participant in the bliss of universal Divine action and the bliss of world transformation. OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA-22/The life Divine/p-946, 2: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-296, 3: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-5, 4: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-818, 5: CWSA-22/The life Divine/p-953, 6: Savitri-710, 7: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-56, 8: “The man of knowledge, the liberated soul offers on the contrary all his activities to the one eternal Godhead without any attachment to their fruit or to the satisfaction of his lower personal desires. He works for God, not for himself, for the universal welfare, for the Soul of the world and not for any particular object which is of his own personal creation or for any construction of his mental will or object of his vital longings, as a divine agent, not as a principal and separate profiteer in the world commerce . And this, it must be noted, is a thing that cannot be really done except in proportion as the mind arrives at equality, universality, wide impersonality, and a clear freedom from every disguise of the insistent ego: for without these things the claim to be thus acting is a pretension or an illusion.” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita-458, "At any rate in man it is the ego idea which chiefly supports the falsehood of a separative existence; to get rid of this idea; to dwell on the opposite idea of unity, of the one self, the one spirit, the one being of nature is therefore an effective remedy; but it is not by itself absolutely effective. For the ego, though it supports itself by this ego idea, aham-buddhi, finds its most powerful means for a certain obstinacy or passion of persistence in the normal action of the sense-mind, the prana and the body. To cast out of us the ego idea is not entirely possible or not entirely effective until these instruments have undergone purification ; for their action being persistently egoistic and separative, the buddhi is carried away by them, --as a boat by winds on the sea, (The Gita-2.67) says the Gita , --the knowledge in the intelligence is being constantly obscured or lost temporarily and has to be restored again, a very labour of Sisyphus. But if the lower instruments have been purified of egoistic desire, wish, will, egoistic passion, egoistic emotion and the buddhi itself of egoistic idea and preference, then the knowledge of the spiritual truth of oneness can find a firm foundation. Till then, the ego takes all sorts of subtle forms and we imagine ourselves to be free from it, when we are really acting as its instruments and all we have attained is a certain intellectual poise which is not the true spiritual liberation.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-677, 9: The Mother’s Agenda-22.03.1967, 10: “Even those who sacrifice to other godheads with devotion and faith, they also sacrifice to Me, O son of Kunti, though not according to the true law, avidhipurbakam .” The Gita-9.23, “The sacrifice not performed according to the right rule of the Shastra, vidhi-hina, without giving of food, without the mantra, without gifts, empty of faith, is said to be tamasic .” The Gita-17.13, " By works the Vedantins understood these religious works, the sacrificial system, the yajna , full of a careful order, vidhi , of exact and complicated rites, kriya-visesa-bahulam . But in Yoga works had a much wider significance. The Gita insists on this wider significance; in our conception of spiritual activity all works have to be included, sarva-karmani . At the same time it does not, like Buddhism , reject the idea of the sacrifice, it prefers to uplift and enlarge it. Yes, it says in effect, not only is sacrifice, yajna, the most important part of life, but all life, all works should be regarded as sacrifice, are yajna, though by the ignorant they are performed without the higher knowledge and by the most ignorant not in the true order, avidhi-purvakam. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-89, 11: "Very long ago (very long, a few years after Sri Aurobindo left), one night (because I was already seeing him), I saw him: I had gone to his place, and I found him sitting on a sort of bed … with a truss: three or four bandages like that on his body! (Mother laughs) So he called me and said (in English), “Look, Look what they’re doing with me! Look, they’re putting bandages all over me!” So I inquired-and found that they wanted to make cuts in his writings…. " The Mother/July-23/1969/Mother’s Agenda/Vol-10/P: 251-256, Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: “ The supramental word manifests inwardly with a light, a power, a rhythm of thought and a rhythm of inner sound that make it the natural and living body of the supramental thought and vision and it pours into the language, even though the same as that of mental speech, another than the limited intellectual, emotional or sensational significance. It is formed and heard in the intuitive mind or supermind and need not at first except in certain highly gifted souls come out easily into speech and writing, but that too can be freely done when the physical consciousness and its organs have been made ready, and this is a part of the needed fullness and power of the integral perfection.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-837

The Mother's Relics and Paduka “The crisis in which the Avatar appears, though apparent to the outward eye only as a crisis of events and great material changes, is always in its source and real meaning a crisis in the consciousness of humanity when it has to undergo some grand modification and effect some new development. For this action of change a divine force is needed; but the force varies always according to the power of consciousness which it embodies; hence the necessity of a divine consciousness manifesting in the mind and soul of humanity. Where, indeed, the change is mainly intellectual and practical, the intervention of the Avatar is not needed; there is a great uplifting of consciousness, a great manifestation of power in which men are for the time being exalted above their normal selves, and this surge of consciousness and power finds its wave-crests in certain exceptional individuals, vibhutis , whose action leading the general action is sufficient for the change intended… But when the crisis has a spiritual seed or intention, then a complete or a partial manifestation of the God-consciousness in a human mind and soul comes as its originator or leader. That is the Avatar .” Sri Aurobindo CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-168-169 Sri Aurobindo’s Sacred Relics The Supreme reveals in the Gita that He manifests again and again on the earth, not only for the restoration of Good by the destruction of Evil but for His Divine Birth of transformation of Nature and Soul through His Divine Action, Janma Karma Chamedivyam. ¹ Their³ arrival passage was made clear through a vision demonstrated to S.A. Maa Krishna, on 4th June-2011. In this vision, she was climbing alone a high mountain with long and wide stairs and was holding a golden big bucket of three feet high. She felt tired as it was heavy enough to lift, but she was holding it with two hands and climbing up the hill. On the top of the mountain, Sri Aurobindo was staying there and she saw the Young Sri Aurobindo , wearing the Dhoti , was coming down. After seeing Him she felt, He would come and help her in lifting up the bucket. But He came very silently and stood behind her. As she was holding a bucket, and it was not permitted to keep it on the ground, so she could not do Pranam to Him. After looking up the mountain, He called to one of His disciples and told him, “You take her to NILACHAL , I AM COMING.” After this, she felt a mighty power is helping her to climb up the mountain. His disciple took her to one place, the left side of the mountain, which is four stairs below the Sri Aurobindo’s abode on the mountain top. She went there for rest and waited for the Lord. After that, she got up. Years before (the year of 2005) there was a vision of Sri Krishna, who demonstrated the significance of each floor of the Sri Matriniketan Ashram’s main building. As per Him, the ground floor of the main building where there is a meditation hall is meant for The Mother’s action in the Psychic plane, its first floor is meant for Sri Aurobindo’s action in the Spiritual Plane and He, intended His wish to stay in its second floor. How He wanted to stay here was also demonstrated symbolically, He became a big statue of around fifteen feet high with a flute in His hand and after some time His image was transformed into the statue of Saraswati ² with Vina in her hand, signifying that His Divine Love is dynamising as Divine Action. A similar pictorial demonstration was repeated of how The Mother had possessed the ground floor and Sri Aurobindo had possessed the first floor. When The Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s sacred Relics were installed on Janmastami ,² 21.08.2011, on the second floor of the main building, it was a fulfillment of Sri Krishna’s promise. Their coming is an intensification of the Nara-Narayana Play and extension of Their Supramental Consciousness to hold and capture the whole earth of which the proposed project of Sri Matri (dhyana) Mandir is a symbolic representation. Thus a ground is prepared for the Supreme Mother and the Supreme Lord for Their entire Descent. On 3rd October, 2015, The Mother's Paduka was installed here and we received this Paduka from the Managing Trustee (Sri Manoj Dasgupta) of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry , on 4th August, 2015, from The Mother's room (first floor). A series of visions were recorded which paved the passage clear for installation of Their sacred Relics, Her auspicious Paduka and construction of Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir . OM TAT SAT References: 1: The Gita-4.9, 2: Incidentally The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were born on Sri Panchami and Janmashtami respectively in the Indian calendar. 3: Birth of Avatar described in Savitri: "All-knowing he accepts our darkened state, Divine, wears shapes of animal or man; Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time, Immortal, dallies with mortality." Savitri-66 “Our error crucifies Reality¹ To force its birth and divine body here, Compelling, incarnate in a human form¹ And breathing in limbs that one can touch and clasp, Its Knowledge to rescue an ancient Ignorance, Its saviour light the inconscient universe.” Savitri-170-171 (1: Avatar ) “Action¹ a ripple in the Infinite And² birth a gesture of Eternity”³ Savitri-200 (1: Divine Action, 2: Divine birth, 3: Janma karma cha me divyam : My birth and action are both Divine-The Gita-4.9) “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 “The mystery of God’s birth and acts remains Leaving unbroken the last chapter’s seal, 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,¹ Behind the gold eidolon of a Name.” Savitri-311 (1: Advent of last Avatar ) “It is finished, the dread mysterious sacrifice, Offered by God’s martyred body for the world; Gethsemane¹ and Calvary² are his lot, He carries the cross on which man’s soul is nailed;” Savitri-445 (1: Gethsemane: A garden where Jesus was betrayed. 2: Calvary: Hill top on which Lord Christ was crucified.) “ The sorrow of all living things shall come And knock at his¹ doors and live within his house;” Savitri-446 (1: Avatar’s) “Only if God assumes the human mind And puts on mortal ignorance for his cloak And makes himself the Dwarf with triple¹ stride, Can he² help man to grow into the God. ” Savitri-488 (1: three gunas , 2: Vamana Avatar ) “So man¹ evolving to divinest heights Colloques still with the animal and the Djinn; The human godhead with star-gazer eyes Lives still in one house with the primal beast. The high meets the low, all is a single plan.” Savitri-542 (1: Satyavan ) (Savitri said) “Who shall prohibit or hedge in his course, The wonderful, the charioteer, the swift? A traveller of the million roads of life, His steps familiar with the lights of heaven Tread without pain the sword-paved courts of hell; There he descends to edge eternal joy.” Savitri-591-92 "It is my path that men follow in every way," (The Gita-3.23) “The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door, Eternal supermind touch earthly Time. The superman shall wake in mortal man And manifest the hidden demigod Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force Revealing the secret deity in the cave. Then shall the earth be touched by the Supreme, His bright unveiled Transcendence shall illumine The mind and heart and force the life and act To interpret his inexpressible mystery In a heavenly alphabet of Divinity’s signs.” Savitri-705 download-1 download-2 download-3 download-4 download-5 download-6 download-7 “When in your heart and thought you will make no difference between Sri Aurobindo and me, when to think of Sri Aurobindo will be to think of me and to think of me will mean to think of Sri Aurobindo inevitably, when to see one will mean inevitably to see the other, like one and the same Person, - then you will know that you begin to be open to the supramental force and consciousne ss. ” The Mother The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-32 “The Supermind had descended long ago—very long ago—into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physica l. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light… As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he has called the Mind of Light got realised in me. ” The Mother 29 June 1953/The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-62-63 "And I saw for Sri Aurobindo (although he hadn't yet started this systematic transformation; but still, he was constantly pulling the supramental force down into his body), even in his case, it took five days to show the first slight sign of decomposition. I would have kept his body longer, but the government always meddles in other people's business, naturally, and they pestered me awfully, saying it was forbidden to keep a body so long and that we should ... So when the body began to (what's the word?) shrink – it was shrinking and contracting, that is, dehydrating – then we had to do it. He had had enough time to come out, since almost everything came into my body – almost everything that was material came into my body ." The Mother The Mother's Agenda/August 10, 1963

Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir The Temple of the Divine Descent Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir is the temple of adoration of the Divine Mother, not a religious centre of worship but rather a place where all outer aids are substituted by inner aids of concentration, meditation, silencing of the mind and inner adoration which are identified as indispensable method and second step¹ of integral Jnana and Bhakti Yoga . This is further extended as a Spiritual experience of Knowledge by identity and Bliss of union and dynamised as pouring down of Divine Knowledge and Love of the third and fourth steps and the last ascending Spiritual experience of integral Yoga is the highest oneness with the greatest possible depth and height of Consciousness, substituting the world as a temple ground and cry of the devotees for the clasp of God. A BRIEF HINT OF THE TEMPLE: Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir is a partially closed, many-petalled Lotus-shaped structure within a rectangular hall. The structure rests on twelve curved pillars surrounded with eighteen+six rectangular pillars. These rectangular pillars symbolise the twenty-four perfections ² (6x4) of integral Yoga. The twelve pillars form twelve petals or twelve attributes of the Divine Mother that converge into four petals or four Divine Shaktis and finally into a central petal or One Mother, Aditi , representing the perfection of The Mother’s Symbol. This temple also symbolically represents one of the last, the profoundest and the 'grand solution’³ of the opening of the Inconscient Self and calling down the Divine Mother seated in the Inconscient Self’s ‘many-petalled lotus-throne,’⁴ which is an Immobile Centre of many infinitudes, located by the side of Time’s Sea ‘in thousand-pillared temple.’⁴ There is a rectangular corridor, The Mother’s room and a library encircling this meditation hall. The Hall can accommodate approximately 250 devotees for meditation and concentration. The Temple height is 30 feet with an inside hall dimension of 44x50 feet size. A BRIEF HINT OF THE INTEGRAL YOGA: A Sadhaka’s Spiritual life is secured through the complete union of the Soul (Psychic Being) with the Divine. His primary motive is to give Them (dual Divine Consciousness) consecrated service without rest and earthly ease, which will establish him as a slave of all humanity and in the consciousness of the King Child with the extension of the inner and outer Kingdom. His secondary motive is to develop his own path of Yoga through concentration, contemplation and meditation of written Truth and its constant restatement and renovation which will establish him as a disciple of the Lord, Prophet, Pathfinder, Pioneer of new Consciousness and a student of Integral Education. His tertiary motive is to emerge as Lover of the Divine, lover of brother Souls and lover of all creatures and humanity. Thus, his Spiritual life is fulfilled by the emergence of triple overhead energies of Delight, Love and Beauty. Integral Yoga further insists a Sadhaka to remain aware of full account⁵ of his human imperfection. It has been identified that to remain satisfied with partial Divine union is a ‘maimed achievement’ ⁶ and he must strive for integration and perfection of his whole Being and Nature from a higher plane of Consciousness. This Yoga is primarily ‘Yoga of Self-perfection’ of developed Souls and secondarily Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga of developing and developed Souls. Out of these triple paths, integral Yoga is primarily Karma Yoga and secondarily the subordinate action of Jnana and Bhakti Yoga . Integration comes by the reconciliation of triple Yoga and practice of the fourth ‘Yoga of Self-perfection.’ The Consciousness in which an integral Yogi is established is primarily waking trance or entry into multiple subtle bodies/koshas in the waking state and secondarily dream trance, sleep trance and absolute trance of Turiya, ‘to which few can attain and from which not all can return’⁷ to the body. FUTURE VISION: Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir symbolically represents earth as half opened and half-closed aspirant lotus bud, who no longer spins unhelped in Space within the burden of existing Time extending towards Eternity and oblivious of its high and luminous Supreme destiny but it is also a living manifestation of Eternal and Infinite All-existence and it 'Knows that one high step might'⁸ liberate all. This view of accepting this earth as a world of sacrifice and enlargement of this life through sacrifice is further supported by our other view that the Divine Life is the culmination of an evolutionary process and using this phrase implies that our present life is undivine and imperfect. This apparent Earth has to retain her purity through her marriage with Eternity and sole dependency on the Supreme from above. This world is a growing image of Divine creation and it expresses a foreseen Truth, obeys a predetermining Will and realises an original formative self-vision. The existing Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir Project seems to be an ambitious mental construction and can wait for supreme creation related to the invisible descent of Spiritual Force precipitating as a perfect piece of material CREATION and manifestation. Form may be said to be the innate body and the inevitable self-revelation of the Formless. This construction is dependent neither on government machinery, local surroundings, human architects, or generous donors but on the Divine. Its objective is not only to gather together a few zealous aspirants to possess and be possessed by the Divine Beloved but to serve as a means to channel God’s Supreme Light for earth and man. This universal all-pervading Divine Force considers this earth not as a figment of conception in universal Mind but as a conscious birth that can act through the individual concentration to open another dimension of life in its widest and profoundest sense, shows the definite path to distant unknown wandering Souls, who emerge as new-born destined Divine Souls leading them towards their moderate, ascetic and extreme Spiritual fulfillment. Finally, this temple of light will be able to 'bring the glory here of the Absolute’s force,'⁹ serve as a means of enlarging the existing human limitation into 'Light too intense for thought and love too boundless'¹⁰ and can draw brief time into limitless Eternity. It can also become a cradle of a few twice-born Souls, Dvija, to pursue rightly regulated consecration through persistent and rigorous askesis. OM TAT SAT REFERENCES : 1. “But worship is only the first step on the path of devotion. Where external worship changes into (second step) the inner adoration, real Bhakti begins; (third step) that deepens into the intensity of divine love; (fourth step) that love leads to the joy of closeness passes into the bliss of union. Love too as well as knowledge brings us to (fifth step) a highest oneness and (sixth step) it gives to that oneness its greatest possible depth and intensity.” Sri Aurobindo/ CWSA-24/The Synthesis Of Yoga-549, 2. Twenty-four Concentrations of Divine Perfection are taken from sapta-chatustaya : Concentration of Fourfold Perfection of Equality: Samata, Shanti, Sukha and Hasya. Concentration of Fourfold Perfection of Body: Arogyam, Utthapana, Saundaryam, Vividhanandah . The concentration of Fourfold Perfection of Mind and Supermind: Jnanam, Trikala Dristi, Asta Siddhi and Samadhi . Concentration of Fourfold Perfection of Shakti: Viryam, Shaktih, Daivi Prakriti, Sraddha . Concentration of Fourfold Perfection of Action: Krishnah, Kali, Kamah, Karma . The concentration of Fourfold Perfection of Brahman: Sarvam Brahma, Anantam Brahmah, Jnanam Brahmah, Anandam Brahmah . 3. “The Inconscient found its heart of consciousness, The idea and feeling groping in Ignorance At last clutched passionately the body of Truth, The music born in Matter’s silences Plucked nude out of the Ineffable’s fathomlessness The meaning it had held but could not voice; The perfect rhythm now only sometimes dreamed An answer brought to the torn earth’s hungry need Rending the night that had concealed the Unknown, Giving to her her lost forgotten soul. A grand solution closed the long impasse In which the heights of mortal effort end.” Savitri-89-90, 4. “The Immanent shall be the witness God Watching on his many-petalled lotus-throne His actionless being and his silent might Ruling earth-nature by eternity’s law, A thinker waking the Inconscient’s world, An immobile centre of many infinitudes In his thousand-pillared temple by Time’s sea .” Savitri-706, 5. “But whatever his (Sadhaka) 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-631, 6. “A Yoga of works, a union with the Divine in our will and acts — and not only in knowledge and feeling — is then an indispensable, an inexpressibly important element of an integral Yoga. The conversion of our thought and feeling without a corresponding conversion of the spirit and body of our works would be a maimed achievement .” CWSA-23/The Synthesis Of Yoga-92, 7: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-395, 8: (Earth) “Knows that one high step might enfranchise all.” Savitri-371, 9: “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 10: “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 The revelation of Supramental Energy in the Inconscient Sheath is ‘a grand solution’ and a confirmation of the acceleration of the individual and universal transformation of nature. This discovery of Inconscient Self is also identified as ‘the last transcendent power’ where ‘Matter still slept empty of its Lord.’ Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir stands primarily as a symbol of this perfection where Divine force rushes into the body, life and mind from the farthest end of the feet and secondarily a symbol of all-pervading Overhead Supramental Energy capturing all the sheaths and can be approached from the two gates of head and feet or ‘Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light.’ (Refer Savitri-page- 90, 405, 531) “Powerful and prolonged penetration of the Supramental forces into the body, it was pressing to enter, from everywhere, but everywhere at the same time… it was not a current flowing in, it was an atmosphere penetrating from everywhere. It lasted for at least four to five hours.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda, August 28, 1968 "In her confirmed because transformed in her, Our life shall find in its fulfilled response Above , the boundless hushed beatitudes, Below, the wonder of the embrace divine." Savitri-315

Universal Education "If you concentrate long enough on any one point, you discover 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 The Mother's Agenda/20.09.1960, "There is another point. You sent a message about an “Aurobindo Math” which seemed to show you had caught the contagion which rages in Bengal. You must understand that my mission is not to create maths, ascetics and Sannyasis; but to call back the souls of the strong to the Lila of Krishna & Kali . That is my teaching, as you can see from the Review, and my name must never be connected with monastic forms or the monastic ideal. Every ascetic movement since the time of Buddha has left India weaker and for a very obvious reason. Renunciation of life is one thing, to make life itself, national, individual, world-life greater & more divine is another. You cannot enforce one ideal on the country without weakening the other. You cannot take away the best souls from life & yet leave life stronger & greater. Renunciation of ego, acceptance of God in life is the Yoga I teach, — no other renunciation." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-36/ Autobiographical Note/p-222, Universal Education: "The calm delight that weds one soul to all," Savitri-6 “The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.” Savitri-15 “As so he grew into his larger self, Humanity framed his movements less and less A greater being saw a greater world.” Savitri-26 “His 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 “A splendour of self-creation from the peaks, A transfiguration in the mystic depths, A happier cosmic working could begin And fashion the world-shape in him anew, God found in Nature, Nature fulfilled in God.” Savitri-36-37 “The universal strengths were linked with his; Filling earth’s smallness with their boundless breadths, He drew the energies that transmute an age.” Savitri-44-45 “These signs are native to a larger self That lives within us by ourselves unseen; Only sometimes a holier influence comes, A tide of mightier surgings bears our lives And a diviner Presence moves the soul; Or through the earthly coverings something breaks, A grace and beauty of spiritual light, The murmuring tongue of a celestial fire.” Savitri-48 “A many-miracled Consciousness unrolled Vast aim and process and unfettered norms, A larger Nature’s great familiar roads.” Savitri-91 “Images in a supernal consciousness Embodying the Unborn who never dies, The structured visions of the cosmic Self Alive with the touch of being’s eternity Looked at him like form-bound spiritual thoughts Figuring the movements of the Ineffable.” Savitri-96 “Trembling with the first faint thrills of a World-Soul.” Savitri-157 “Obeying the Eternal’s deep command They (King-children) have built in the material front of things This wide world-kindergarten of young souls Where the infant spirit learns through mind and sense To read the letters of the cosmic script And study the body of the cosmic self And search for the secret meaning of the whole.” Savtri-266 “The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read The unknown pathology of the Unique.” Savitri-269 “A Wisdom knows and guides the mysteried world; A Truth-gaze shapes its beings and events; A Word self-born upon creation’s heights, Voice of the Eternal in the temporal spheres, Prophet of the seeings of the Absolute, Sows the Idea’s significance in Form And from that seed the growths of Time arise.” Savitri-271 “In that high realm where no untruth can come, Where all are different and all is one, In the Impersonal’s ocean without shore The Person in the World-Spirit anchored rode; It thrilled with the mighty marchings of World-Force, Its acts were the comrades of God’s infinite peace.” Savitri-301 “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-323 “Mounting from mind’s last peaks to mate with gods, Making earth’s brilliant thoughts a springing-board To dive into the cosmic vastnesses,” Savitri-359 “Aware of the universal Self in all She turned to living hearts and human forms,” Savitri-362 “Her greater self lived sole, unclaimed, within.” Savitri-366 “We see beyond self’s walls our limitless self,” Savitri-485 “Across the threshold’s sleep she entered in And found herself amid great figures of gods Conscious in stone and living without breath, Watching with fixed regard the soul of man, Executive figures of the cosmic self, World-symbols of immutable potency.” Savitri-524 “This world is a vast unbroken totality, A deep solidarity joins its contrary powers; God’s summits look back on the mute Abyss.” Savitri-541 “Our consciousness is cosmic and immense, But only when we break through Matter’s wall In that spiritual vastness can we stand Where we can live the masters of our world And mind is only a means and body a tool.” Savitri-542-43 “An only centre now of consciousness, If centre could be where all seemed only space; No more shut in by body’s walls and gates Her being, a circle without circumference, Already now surpassed all cosmic bounds And more and more spread into infinity.” Savitri-554 “A Truth in which negation had no place, A being and a living consciousness, A stark and absolute Reality. There the unreal could not find a place, The sense of unreality was slain: There all was conscious, made of the Infinite, All had a substance of Eternity.” Savitri-555 “It was her self, it was the self of all, It was the reality of existing things, It was the consciousness of all that lived And felt and saw; it was Timelessness and Time, It was the Bliss of formlessness and form.” Savitri-555 “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.” Savtiri-556 “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 “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 “A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form And seen through a quivering ecstasy of light Discovers the bright face of the Bodiless, In the truth of a moment, in the moment’s soul Can sip the honey-wine of Eternity.” Savitri-662 “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.” Savitri-705 “If by some miracle of divine intervention all mankind at once could be raised to this level, we should have something on earth like the Golden Age of the traditions, Satya Yuga, the Age of Truth or true existence. For the sign of the Satya Yuga is that the Law is spontaneous and conscious in each creature and does its own works in a perfect harmony and freedom. Unity and universality, not separative division, would be the foundation of the consciousness of the race; love would be absolute; equality would be consistent with hierarchy and perfect in difference; absolute justice would be secured by the spontaneous action of the being in harmony with the truth of things and the truth of himself and others and therefore sure of true and right result; right reason, no longer mental but supramental, would be satisfied not by the observation of artificial standards but by the free automatic perception of right relations and their inevitable execution in the act. The quarrel between the individual and society or disastrous struggle between one community and another could not exist: the cosmic consciousness imbedded in embodied beings would assure a harmonious diversity in oneness.”² Sri Aurobindo Universal Education begins after the discovery of Universal Self, which lies above the Spiritual Self and below the Supramental Self. This is a dynamic state of Consciousness activated by long movement of Consciousness between the Psychic and Spiritual planes. Integral Yoga proposes that Universalised Consciousness is an indispensable condition¹ for experiencing the transformation of Nature and ascending into Supramental Consciousness. Also in universalised Consciousness, surrender and self-offering becomes complete and exclusive concentration is replaced with the faculty of Multiple-concentrations. Thus, one is able to pursue the triple Yoga of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti simultaneously and ceaselessly. Integral Yoga is neither a popular Religion⁵ nor a popular Yoga;⁶ so it does not encourage gathering together of people, lakasangraha , by activation of mind.⁸ Rather, it proposes that if an individual’s consciousness is universalised, then by the movement of his Spiritual Influence, distant unknown Souls will attain liberation. So, 'the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and universalize it in others.’³ After one is established in the Psychic plane, one can save oneself and the world. ⁹ This is what we understand as the lokasangraha of integral Yoga. ⁸ The Manifestation of Universal Consciousness through activation of Mahakali Force: “Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti , she creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces.”⁴ “Terrible is her (Mahakali) face to the Asura , dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man that is unwilling and she is severe to all that is obstinately ignorant and obscure; her wrath is immediate and dire against treachery and falsehood and malignity, ill-will is smitten at once by her scourge. Indifference, negligence and sloth in the divine work she cannot bear and she smites awake at once with sharp pain, if need be, the untimely slumberer and the loiterer.”⁴ “I wear the face of Kali when I kill, I trample the corpses of the demon hordes.” Savitri-509 “All reeled into a world of Kali’s dance.” Savitri-255 “I am Kali black and naked in the world,” Savitri-535 (Description of Sri Krishna changing into Mother Kali) “Changed in its shape, yet rapturously the same, It grew a woman’s dark and beautiful Like a mooned night with drifting star-gemmed clouds, A shadowy glory and a stormy depth, Turbulent in will and terrible in love.” Savitri-711 The Manifestation of Universal Consciousness in the Gita: “He who in action can see inaction and can see action still continuing in cessation from works, is the man of true reason and discernment among men; he is in Yoga and a many-sided universal worker (for the good of the world, for God in the world). The Gita-4.18, “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 a great Soul or integral Yogi is very rare.” The Gita-7.19 The Manifestation of Universal Consciousness in Savitri: Book-2, Canto-14 of the Savitri book, represents King Aswapati’s Spiritual experience of cosmic Self, which is identified as the dynamic state of the Spiritual being, all this existence is Brahman of the Gita (Vasudevah Sarvamiti) (The Gita-7.19), Para prakriti or the Divine Mother of Tantra . This is also identified as the preliminary stair of Supermind, where the World, Self and Divine are reconciled, home and training ground of dead Souls and one enters right relation with the world, fellow brothers and material things through direct contact with this higher consciousness. This is also the state of Consciousness, which is the outcome of Jivatma’s Divine union with the Para-prakriti, who holds together this whole universe, jagat dharayete (The Gita-7.5). In Cosmic consciousness, Matter and Spirit are reconciled and all negations of material life is Divinised by the universal Spirit’s touch. They are: “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 In this cosmic Consciousness, the King Aswapati was able to have direct personal contact with the supreme Lord and supreme Mother and Their dual relation, which uplifted the King’s consciousness to the status of Avatara . “There he (King Aswapati ) beheld in their mighty union’s poise The figure of the deathless Two-in-One, A single being in two bodies clasped, (Spiritual being) A diarchy of two united souls, (Psychic being) Seated absorbed in deep creative joy; (Supreme relation of dual Godhead) Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.” Savitri-295 The above experience reveals King’s universalised Spiritual Consciousness, universalised Psychic Consciousness, and Supramentalised Psychic Consciousness, where the heart centre becomes the meeting ground of the Supreme Self and the Supreme Mother and the bliss born out of that intense Divine union can hold this mutable untransformed world. The Book-7, Canto-7, reveals the arrival of Savitri's Cosmic Self, after opening of her Psychic and Spiritual Being. It confirms that both Paramatma Satyavan and Para prakriti Savitri’s main method of Yoga was Spiritual or “Her divine emptiness was their instrument.” (Savitri-553) or “An impersonal emptiness walked and spoke in her.’ (Savitri-552) In the previous Canto Savitri’s main method of Sadhana was also confirmed as Spiritual. Or “Annul thyself that only God may be.” (Savitri-538) Or “In a simple purity of emptiness Her mind knelt down before the unknowable.” (Savitri-522) "Assent to the emptiness of the Supreme That all in thee may reach its absolute." (Savitri-536) "Banish all thought from thee and be God’s void." (Savitri-537) This Canto confirms that Savitri had the knowledge of past, present and future birth known as All Life, about which her surrounding world was little aware: “They marvelled at her, for she seemed to know What they had only glimpsed at times afar.” Savitri-553 Its complementary line from the Gita: “The Blessed Lord said: Many are my lives that are past, and thine also, O Arjuna; all of them I know, but thou knowest not, O scourge of the foe.” The Gita-4.5 With the attainment of Cosmic Consciousness, the inner life changes but ‘daily human life,’ ‘outward body of the routine,’ ‘small unchanging works’ and ‘happy quiet of ascetic peace’ (Savitri-551) do not change. Cosmic consciousness is the dynamic state of the Divine where ‘living spirit’ clasps her body and in this state, Matter can reconcile with the Spirit and with the Spirit’s penetration into material life, Savitri experiences change in the form of purification, transformation and perfection in her outward life. She continues to pour her greatness, sweetness and light upon her surrounding little hermit world. In this Book-7, Canto-7 Savitri realised her cosmic Self which is identified as the second fundamental realization of integral Yoga. In this Consciousness Divine becomes dynamic and one lives in waking trance. First fundamental realisation: Brahma satya jagat mithya, Divine is Real and world is an Illusion; second fundamental realisation: the world which appears to be false is created from Brahman ; third fundamental realisation: Brahma satya jagat satya and Brahman consciousness can penetrate material life and Divinise life. The characteristics of the second fundamental realisation are: “Her being, a circle without circumference,” Savitri-554 “A spirit, a being saw created things And cast itself into unnumbered forms” Savitri-554-55 “A Truth in which negation had no place,” Savitri-555 “Her spirit saw the world as living God;” Savitri-556 In the earlier Cantos it is confirmed that those who have a Mission (aim of life) and have realised their Psychic beings, their life is fully protected by the Divine. Savitri had both the awareness of her aim and Psychic realisation. This Canto proposes that if a Spiritual being is made open, then also it ensures protection to life. These developments are as follows: “Heaven’s tranquil shield guarded the missioned child.” Savitri-16 (Spiritual opening) “Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:” Savitri-211(Psychic opening) “And Savitri’s life was glad, fulfilled like earth’s; She had found herself, she knew her being’s aim.” Savitri-532 (Psychic being’s awareness) “Something perhaps unfelt, unseen, unknown Guarded the body for its future work,” Savitri-552 (Spiritual opening) “Guarded behind its face of ignorance:” Savitri-556 (Spiritual opening) This Canto also hints that the attainment of Cosmic consciousness is also the beginning of Subconscient transformation. So the opening of higher Selves like Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Selves are utilised exclusively for purification, transformation and perfection of untransformed Nature. “She was a subconscient life of tree and flower, The outbreak of the honied buds of spring; She burned in the passion and splendour of the rose, She was the red heart of the passion-flower, The dream-white of the lotus in its pool. Out of subconscient life she climbed to mind,” Savitri-557 These are the hidden agenda of cosmic Consciousness, which are utilised for both self-concentration and self-expansion. OM TAT SAT References: 1: “To open oneself to the supracosmic Divine is an essential condition of this integral perfection; to unite oneself with the universal Divine is another essential condition. Here the Yoga of self-perfection coincides with the Yogas of knowledge, works and devotion; for it is impossible to change the human nature into the divine or to make it an instrument of the divine knowledge, will and joy of existence, unless there is a union with the supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss and a unity with its universal Self in all things and beings. A wholly separative possession of the divine nature by the human individual, as distinct from a self-withdrawn absorption in it, is not possible.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-622, “The individual must be the instrument and first field of the transformation; but an isolated individual transformation is not enough and may not be wholly feasible. Even when achieved, the individual change will have a permanent and cosmic significance only if the individual becomes a centre and a sign for the establishment of the supramental Consciousness-Force as an overtly operative power in the terrestrial workings of Nature, — in the same way in which thinking Mind has been established through the human evolution as an overtly operative power in Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti, a gnostic Nature. There must be an emergent supramental Consciousness-Force liberated and active within the terrestrial whole and an organised supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body, — for the body consciousness also must become sufficiently awake to be a fit instrument of the workings of the new supramental Force and its new order. Till then any intermediate change could be only partial or insecure; an overmind or intuitive instrumentation of Nature could be developed, but it would be a luminous formation imposed on a fundamental and environmental Inconscience. A supramental principle and its cosmic operation once established permanently on its own basis, the intervening powers of Overmind and spiritual Mind could found themselves securely upon it and reach their own perfection; they would become in the earth-existence a hierarchy of states of consciousness rising out of Mind and physical life to the supreme spiritual level.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-997-998, “A perfect self-expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence. This cannot be achieved if we have not grown conscious of the supreme Reality; for it is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. But neither can it be done to the exclusion of the cosmic Reality: we must become universal, for without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete. ” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-706, “No, you have to approach the problem from the other direction. Evolution begins with the Inconscient, complete Inconscience; and from this Inconscient a Subconscient gradually emerges – that is, a half or quarter-consciousness....There are two different things here. Consider life on earth (because the process is slightly different in the universe); earth-life begins with total Inconscience and little by little what was involved within it works out and changes this Inconscience into semi-consciousness or subconsciousness. At the same time, there is an individual working that awakens the INDIVIDUAL inconscient to an individual semiconsciousness, and here, of course, the individual has control although it’s not actually individualized because individualization begins with consciousness. The subconscient of plants or animals, for example, isn’t individualized; what we call an animal’s behavior doesn’t arise from individualization but from the genius of the species. Consequently, the individual subconscient is something already evolved out of the general Subconscient. But when one descends to accomplish a work of transformation -to bring Light into the different layers of life, for instance – one descends into a cosmic, terrestrial Subconscient, not an individual Subconscient. And the work of transformation is done within the whole – not through individualization, but through the opposite movement, through a sort of universalization. ” The Mother’s Agenda-2.8.1961, “Even Buddha said that if you have a vibration of desire, this vibration goes all around the terrestrial atmosphere. The opposite is what’s impossible! It’s impossible to separate yourself. You can have the idea of being separate, but you can’t be separate in reality. In fact, if you are trying to eliminate the Subconscient in yourself your movement must necessarily be general; it can’t be personal, you would never get anywhere… So it all keeps circling round and round in the earth’s atmosphere. But compared to the universe, the earth’s atmosphere is a very tiny thing. Well, all this keeps circling around within it. And in fact, because of the movement of evolution, there is a progress. The present Inconscient is not as unconscious as the initial Inconscient, and the present Subconscient is not as subconscious nor as generalized as it was at the beginning. This is the meaning of terrestrial evolution.” The Mother’s Agenda-02.08.1961, 2: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-206-207, 3: “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 universalize it in others. Therefore from a concrete view of human life in its threefold potentialities we come to the same conclusion that we had drawn from an observation of Nature in her general workings and the three steps of her evolution. And we begin to perceive a complete aim for the synthesis of Yoga.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-29, “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, 4: CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother-p-14, p-19, 5: “Buddhism only became a popular religion when Buddha had taken the place of the supreme Deity as an object of worship.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/556, “Emotionally, the first form which this turning takes must be that of adoration. In ordinary religion this adoration wears the form of external worship and that again develops a most external form of ceremonial worship. This element is ordinarily necessary because the mass of men live in their physical minds, cannot realise anything except by the force of a physical symbol and cannot feel that they are living anything except by the force of a physical action.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/572, “Buddha never said he was an Avatar of a Personal God but that he was the Buddha. It is the Hindus who made him an Avatar. If Buddha had looked upon himself as an Avatar at all, it would have been as an Avatar of the impersonal Truth.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I-500, “You must not confuse a religious teaching with a spiritual one. Religious teaching belongs to the past and halts progress. Spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future—it illumines the consciousness and prepares it for the future realisation. Spiritual teaching is above religions and strives towards a global Truth. It teaches us to enter into direct relations with the Divine.” 12th February 1972/The Mother/TMCW/12/On Education-120, “Why do men cling to a religion? Religions are based on creeds which are spiritual experiences brought down to a level where they become more easy to grasp, but at the cost of their integral purity and truth. The time of religions is over. We have entered the age of universal spirituality, of spiritual experience in its initial purity.” The Mother/14th October-1964/The Mother’s Agenda-5/237, “Yoga is not a matter of theory or dogma, like philosophy or popular religion, but a matter of experience. Its experience is that of a conscient universal and supracosmic Being with whom it brings us into union, and this conscious experience of union with the Invisible, always renewable and verifiable, is as valid as our conscious experience of a physical world and of visible bodies with whose invisible minds we daily communicate.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-555, “In the transformation of ordinary religious worship into the Yoga of pure Bhakti we see this development from the motived and interested worship of popular religion into a principle of motiveless and self-existent love. This last is in fact the touch-stone of the real Bhakti and shows whether we are really in the central way or are only upon one of the bypaths leading to it. We have to throw away the props of our weakness, the motives of the ego, the lures of our lower nature before we can deserve the divine union.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-553 ‘Buddhism only became a popular religion when Buddha had taken the place of the supreme Deity as an object of worship.’ CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-556, ‘Even popular religion is a sort of ignorant Yoga of devotion.’ CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-559, ‘The origin of this divine fear was crude enough in some of the primitive popular religions.’ CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-562, 6: “All that is popular Yoga. (The correspondent wrote, “It is said that if a disciple receives his Guru’s touch or grace, his main difficulties very often disappear.” ) The Guru’s touch or grace may open something, but the difficulties have always to be worked out still. What is true is that if there is complete surrender which implies the prominence of the psychic, these difficulties are no longer felt as a burden or obstacle but only as superficial imperfections which the working of the grace will remove.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-197, “You see, the faith of people is a superstition – it’s not faith, it’s superstition. Now there are more and more people who think they have faith, and they ask me ridiculous things! They have superstitions like. Someone brings me a child born with a deformed arm, and the superstition is that if I put my hand on the arm of the child, he’ll be healed.... Things like that. It’s completely stupid. That’s not Power! They need a little miracle, you know, at their level.” The Mother’s Agenda-8.05.1971, Sri Ramakrishna’s saying, “With the Guru’s grace all difficulties can disappear in a flash, even as agelong darkness does the moment you strike a match.” This is possible after long tapasya, “This “state of grace” is often prepared by a long tapasya or purification in which nothing decisive seems to happen, only touches or glimpses or passing experiences at the most, and it (decisive change) comes suddenly without warning.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-195, “"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. " CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-27, “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.” Sri Aurobindo/The Mother’s Agenda-8/175, 7: “Above, beginning with the center between the eyebrows, the work has been done for a long time. There it is blank. For ages upon ages upon ages, the union with the Supreme has been realized and is constant… Below this center is the body. And this body has indeed the concrete sensation of the Divine in each of its cells; but it needs to become universalized. That’s the work to be done, center by center. I understand now what Sri Aurobindo meant when he repeatedly insisted, ‘Widen yourself.’ All this must be universalized; it is the condition, the basis, for the Supramental to descend into the body… According to the ancient traditions, this universalization of the physical body was considered the supreme realization, but it is only a foundation, the base upon which the Supramental can come down without breaking everything.” The Mother’s Agenda/21.04.1959, 8: “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.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-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/TMCW14/Words of The Mother-II/p-277, "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 "And Savitri mingling in that glorious crowd, Yearning to the spiritual light they bore, Longed once to hasten like them to save God’s world; But she reined back the high passion in her heart; She knew that first she must discover her soul. Only who save themselves can others save." Savitri-501 “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 9: "To save the world from Ignorance she came." Savitri-250 "She only can save herself and save the world." Savitri-461 "One man’s perfection still can save the world." Savitri-531 "He who would save the world must share its pain." Savitri-537 "He who would save the world must be one with the world," Savitri-537 "I (Savitri) keep my will to save the world and man;" Savitri-692 Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: “To open oneself to the supracosmic Divine is an essential condition of this integral perfection; to unite oneself with the universal Divine is another essential condition. Here the Yoga of self-perfection coincides with the Yogas of knowledge, works and devotion; for it is impossible to change the human nature into the divine or to make it an instrument of the divine knowledge, will and joy of existence, unless there is a union with the supreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss and a unity with its universal Self in all things and beings. A wholly separative possession of the divine nature by the human individual, as distinct from a self-withdrawn absorption in it, is not possible.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-622, “The individual must be the instrument and first field of the transformation; but an isolated individual transformation is not enough and may not be wholly feasible. Even when achieved, the individual change will have a permanent and cosmic significance only if the individual becomes a centre and a sign for the establishment of the supramental Consciousness-Force as an overtly operative power in the terrestrial workings of Nature, — in the same way in which thinking Mind has been established through the human evolution as an overtly operative power in Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti, a gnostic Nature. There must be an emergent supramental Consciousness-Force liberated and active within the terrestrial whole and an organised supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body, — for the body consciousness also must become sufficiently awake to be a fit instrument of the workings of the new supramental Force and its new order. Till then any intermediate change could be only partial or insecure; an overmind or intuitive instrumentation of Nature could be developed, but it would be a luminous formation imposed on a fundamental and environmental Inconscience. A supramental principle and its cosmic operation once established permanently on its own basis, the intervening powers of Overmind and spiritual Mind could found themselves securely upon it and reach their own perfection; they would become in the earth-existence a hierarchy of states of consciousness rising out of Mind and physical life to the supreme spiritual level.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-997-998,

Odia Section “ତୁମେ ଯେତେବେଳେ ମନ ଏବଂ ହୃଦୟରେ ଶ୍ରୀ ଅରବିନ୍ଦ ଏବଂ ମୋ ମଧ୍ୟରେ କୌଣସି ପାର୍ଥକ୍ୟ ଦେଖିପାର ନାହିଁ, ଯେତେବେଳେ ଶ୍ରୀ ଅରବିନ୍ଦଙ୍କୁ ଚିନ୍ତା କରିବା ଅର୍ଥ ମୋତେ ଚିନ୍ତା କରିବା ଏବଂ ମୋତେ ଚିନ୍ତା କରିବା ଅର୍ଥ ନିଶ୍ଚିତ ଭାବରେ ଶ୍ରୀ ଅରବିନ୍ଦଙ୍କୁ ଚିନ୍ତା କରିବା, ଜଣଙ୍କ ମଧ୍ୟରେ ଅନ୍ୟ ଜଣଙ୍କୁ ନିଶ୍ଚିତ ଭାବରେ ଦର୍ଶନ କରିବା, ଯେପରି ଜଣେ ଏବଂ ସେହି ଗୋଟିଏ ଅଭିନ୍ନ (ଅବତାର) ବ୍ୟକ୍ତି, ତେବେ ତୁମେ ଜାଣିବ ଯେ ତୁମେ ଅତିମାନସ ଶକ୍ତି ଓ ଚେତନା ଆଡ଼କୁ ନିଜକୁ ଖୋଲି ଧରିବା ଆରମ୍ଭ କରିଛ। ” ଶ୍ରୀ ମା/ The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-32 “ଅତିମାନସ ବହୁ ପୂର୍ବରୁ, ବହୁ ପୂର୍ବରୁ ମନ ଭିତରକୁ ଅବତରଣ କରିଛି (ଶ୍ରୀ ମା ଆଲଜେରିଆ ଏବଂ ଶ୍ରୀ ଅରବିନ୍ଦ ଆଲିପୁର୍ ଜେଲରେ ଥିବା ସମୟରେ) ଏବଂ ଏପରିକି ପ୍ରାଣମଧ୍ୟକୁ ମଧ୍ୟ ଅବତରଣ କରିଛି (ପଣ୍ଡିଚେରୀରେ): ଏହି ଅତିମାନସ ଜଡ଼ ଜଗତରେ ମଧ୍ୟ ପରୋକ୍ଷ ଭାବରେ ଏହି ମଧ୍ୟବର୍ତ୍ତୀ ଜଗତ ଦେଇ କ୍ରିୟାଶୀଳ। ପ୍ରଶ୍ନ ହେଉଛି ଏହି ଅତିମାନସ କିପରି ଜଡ଼ମଧ୍ୟରେ ପ୍ରତ୍ୟକ୍ଷ ଭାବରେ କ୍ରିୟାଶୀଳ ହୋଇପାରିବ। ଶ୍ରୀ ଅରବିନ୍ଦଙ୍କ କହିବା ଅନୁସାରେ ଏହା ସମ୍ଭବ ହୋଇ ପାରନ୍ତା ଯଦି ତାମସିକ ମନ (physical mind) ଅତିମାନସ ଶକ୍ତିକୁ ଗ୍ରହଣ କରନ୍ତା: ଅତି ସ୍ଥୂଳ ଜଡ଼ମଧ୍ୟରେ ଅତିମାନସ ଶକ୍ତିର ପ୍ରତ୍ୟକ୍ଷ କ୍ରିୟାନିମନ୍ତେ ତାମସିକ ମନ ଯନ୍ତ୍ର ହୁଅନ୍ତା। ରୂପାନ୍ତରିତ ତାମସିକ ମନର (ଜପ ଦ୍ଵାରା ତାମସିକ ମନର ରୂପାନ୍ତର ସମ୍ଭବ) ଅତିମାନସକୁ ଧାରଣ କରିବାର ସାମର୍ଥ୍ୟକୁ ଶ୍ରୀ ଅରବିନ୍ଦ ଆଲୋକିତ ମନ (Mind of Light) ବୋଲି କହୁଥିଲେ।... ଶ୍ରୀ ଅରବିନ୍ଦ ସ୍ଥୂଳ ଦେହ ତ୍ୟାଗ କରୁକରୁ ମୋ (ଶ୍ରୀ ମା’ଙ୍କ) ମଧ୍ୟରେ ଏହି ଆଲୋକିତ ମନ ଉପଲବ୍ଧ ଏବଂ କ୍ରିଯାଶୀଳ ହୋଇଥିଲା। ଅର୍ଥାତ୍ ଅତିମାନସ ଶକ୍ତି ଏହି ସ୍ଥୂଳ ଶରୀର ମଧ୍ୟରେ ପ୍ରତ୍ୟକ୍ଷ ଭାବରେ କ୍ରିଯାଶୀଳ ହେଲା। ” ଶ୍ରୀ ମା/ The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-62-63 Spiritual Happiness The Bhagavad Gita (Odia) Power of Truth in Subconscient ଦିବ୍ୟ ସତ୍ୟ Supramentalised Life Energy ଦିବ୍ୟ ଜୀବନ Divine Love ଦିବ୍ୟ ପ୍ରେମ Intuitive Knowledge ଆରୋଜ୍ଞାନ -୧ Supramental Knowledge ଆରୋଜ୍ଞାନ - ୨ Love for the Divine ତତ୍ତ୍ଵମସି Harmony ଅସୀମଙ୍କ ଛନ୍ଦରେ ପରିବର୍ତ୍ତନଶୀଳ ଜଗତ Transformation କୋଷଗତ ରୂପାନ୍ତର The Future ପୃଥିବୀର ଭବିଷ୍ୟତ Body-consciousness undergoing the supramental transformation ଗୀତିନାଟ୍ୟ ସାବିତ୍ରୀ Concentration ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣାଙ୍ଗ ଶିକ୍ଷାର କେନ୍ଦ୍ରୀୟ ସତ୍ୟ Supramental Sun ଦିବ୍ୟ ଜୀବନର କେନ୍ଦ୍ରୀୟ ସତ୍ୟ Guru ଭାରତ ଜଗତର ଗୁରୁ ହେବା ବିଧିନିର୍ଦିଷ୍ଟ Supramental Light in the Subconscient Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir I-01.08.2022 First response of the Inconscient to the Divine Force Sri Matri Dhyana Mandir II-01.08.2022 Supramental beauty in the physical Sri Matridhyana Mandir-01.08.2024 Supramental Action श्री माँ की चेतना Supramental Action श्री माँ की चेतना Supramental Action श्री माँ की चेतना Supramental Action श्री माँ की चेतना “ଏହା କେବେ ଭୁଲିଯିବା ନାହିଁ ଯେ, ଆଶ୍ରମ ଭିତରେ ଓ ବାହାରେ, ଯଦି ତୁମେ ଏକ ସୁଖୀ ଜୀବନଯାପନ କରିବାକୁ ଚାହଁ, ତେବେ ତୁମକୁ ତୁମର ନିମ୍ନ ପ୍ରକୃତିର ପ୍ରଭୁ ହେବାକୁ ପଡିବ ଏବଂ ତୁମ କାମନା ଏବଂ ପ୍ରାଣିକ ଆବେଗକୁ ନିୟନ୍ତ୍ରଣ କରିବାକୁ ପଡିବ; ନଚେତ୍ ତୁମ ଦୁଃଖ ଏବଂ ଅସୁବିଧାର କୌଣସି ଅନ୍ତ ରହିବନାହିଁ।" ଶ୍ରୀ ମା The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-14/p-255 “ଆଶ୍ରମ କେବଳ ଯୋଗ ପାଇଁ ଏବଂ ଏକ ଆଧ୍ୟାତ୍ମିକ ଉଦ୍ଦେଶ୍ୟ ପାଇଁ ବିଦ୍ୟମାନ; ଏହା ଏକ ରାଜନୈତିକ କିମ୍ବା ସାମାଜିକ କିମ୍ବା ଧାର୍ମିକ ଅନୁଷ୍ଠାନ ନୁହେଁ ଏବଂ ଏହା ଏହି ସମସ୍ତ କାର୍ଯ୍ୟକଳାପରୁ ଦୂରେଇ ରହିଥାଏ, ଏହାର ଅସ୍ତିତ୍ୱ ପାଇଁ ଏହି ନିବାରଣ ନିହାତି ଆବଶ୍ୟକ| ଯଦି କୌଣସି ଆଶ୍ରମ ସଦସ୍ୟ ରାଜନୀତି, ପରିବାର ଓ ଧର୍ମ ସହିତ ଜଡ଼ିତ ହୁଅନ୍ତି, ଏହା ନିଜେ ଆଶ୍ରମ ପରିଚାଳନାକୁ କ୍ଷତି କରେ ଏବଂ ଏହାର କାର୍ଯ୍ୟକଳାପ ଯୁକ୍ତିଯୁକ୍ତ ମନେହୁଏନାହିଁ, ଏବଂ ଯଦି ସେହି ପ୍ରକାରର ପ୍ରଭାବ କିମ୍ବା ଆସକ୍ତି ଭାବନା ସୃଷ୍ଟି ହୁଏ, ତେବେ ଏହାର ପରିଣାମ ଗମ୍ଭୀର ଆଧ୍ୟାତ୍ମିକ ପତନ ହୋଇପାରେ |” ଶ୍ରୀ ଅରବିନ୍ଦ CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-690 “ଏହି ଆଶ୍ରମ ଯୋଗ ପାଇଁ ଉଦ୍ଦିଷ୍ଟ, ସଙ୍ଗୀତ ମନୋରଞ୍ଜନ କିମ୍ବା ଅନ୍ୟାନ୍ୟ ସାମାଜିକ କାର୍ଯ୍ୟକଳାପ ପାଇଁ ନୁହେଁ। ଯେଉଁମାନେ ଆଶ୍ରମରେ ରହୁଛନ୍ତି ସେମାନେ ନୀରବ ଏବଂ ଶବ୍ଦ ବିହୀନ ଭାବରେ ବଞ୍ଚିବା ପାଇଁ ଅନୁରୋଧ କରାଯାଏ ଏବଂ ଯଦି ସେମାନେ ନିଜେ ଧ୍ୟାନ କରିବାକୁ ସକ୍ଷମ ନୁହଁନ୍ତି, ତେବେ ସେମାନେ ଅନ୍ତତଃ ଅନ୍ୟମାନଙ୍କୁ ଧ୍ୟାନ କରିବା ପାଇଁ ଛାଡି ଦେବା ଆବଶ୍ୟକ।” ଶ୍ରୀ ମା , TMCW-13/Words of the Mother-I/p-116 “କୌଣସି ସାମାଜିକ କିମ୍ବା ପାରିବାରିକ କର୍ତ୍ତବ୍ୟ ତୁଳନାରେ ଈଶ୍ୱରଙ୍କ ପ୍ରତି କର୍ତ୍ତବ୍ୟ ଅଧିକ ପବିତ୍ର; ଏହା ଅଧିକ ପବିତ୍ର କାରଣ ମାନବର ସାମୂହିକ ଜୀବନ ଭିତରେ ଏହାକୁ ପ୍ରାୟ ସମ୍ପୂର୍ଣ୍ଣ ଭାବେ ଅଣଦେଖା କରାଯାଏ କିମ୍ବା ଭୁଲ ବୁଝାଯାଏ ।“ ଶ୍ରୀ ମା , TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-286 "ଜୀବାତ୍ମା ଭଗବାନଙ୍କ, ଏବଂ କେବଳ ଭଗବାନଙ୍କ ଆଜ୍ଞା ପାଳନ ଏବଂ ସେବା କରିବାକୁ ବାଧ୍ୟ। ଯଦି ଭଗବାନ୍ ଏହାକୁ ପରିବାର, ଦେଶ କିମ୍ବା ମାନବତା ପାଇଁ କାମ କରିବାକୁ ନିର୍ଦ୍ଦେଶ ଦିଅନ୍ତି, ତେବେ ଏହା ଠିକ୍ ଅଛି ଏବଂ ସେ ବନ୍ଧନଗ୍ରସ୍ତ ନ ହୋଇ ଏହା କରିପାରିବ... ଯଦି ଈଶ୍ଵରଙ୍କ ଠାରୁ ଆଦେଶ ଆସିନଥାଏ, ତେବେ ଏହି ବ୍ୟକ୍ତି ସକଳଙ୍କ ସେବା କରିବା କେବଳ ସାମାଜିକ ଏବଂ ନୈତିକ ପରମ୍ପରା ପାଳନ କରିବା ହୋଇଥାଏ।" ଶ୍ରୀ ମା 17 December 1969, The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/Vol-10/p-283 “ଏହି ଆଶ୍ରମର ହିନ୍ଦୁ ଧର୍ମ ଓ ସଂସ୍କୃତି କିମ୍ବା ଅନ୍ୟ ଧର୍ମ ଓ ଦେଶ ସହିତ କୌଣସି ସମ୍ପର୍କ ନାହିଁ| ପ୍ରତ୍ୟେକ ଧର୍ମର ପଛରେ ଥିବା ଆଧ୍ୟାତ୍ମିକ ବାସ୍ତବତା ହେଉଛି ଦିବ୍ୟ ସତ୍ୟ ଏବଂ ଏଠାରେ ଭବିଷ୍ୟତର ସକଳ କର୍ମର ଭିତ୍ତି ଭୂମି ହେଉଛି ଏକମାତ୍ର ଅତିମାନସ ଶକ୍ତିର ଅବତରଣ ଯାହା ଯେକୌଣସି ଧର୍ମ ନିମନ୍ତେ ଅଜଣା|” ଶ୍ରୀ ଅରବିନ୍ଦ CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-701 “ଆମେ ଏଠାରେ ସମସ୍ତ କାମନା ଓ ବାସନା ତ୍ୟାଗ କରି ଈଶ୍ଵରଙ୍କ ଆଡକୁ ମୁହାଁଇବା ଏବଂ ଈଶ୍ଵରଙ୍କ ପ୍ରତି ସଚେତନ ହେବା ପାଇଁ ଆସିଛୁ । ଆମ ଜୀବନରେ ଈଶ୍ଵରଙ୍କୁ ଅନୁଭବ କରିବା ଏବଂ ପ୍ରକାଶ କରିବା ହେଉଛି ପ୍ରକୃତ ମାର୍ଗ, ପଶୁବତ୍ ବିଲେଇ ଏବଂ କୁକୁର ପରି ଜୀବନ ବଞ୍ଚିବା ନୁହେଁ।” ଶ୍ରୀ ମା The Mother’s Agenda-30.03.1972

The Task of Integral Education "It may be said that from the very first days, even the first hours of his life, the child should undergo the first part of this programme as far as food, sleep, evacuation, etc. are concerned. If the child, from the very beginning of his existence, learns good habits, it will save him a good deal of trouble and inconvenience for the rest of his life; and besides, those who have the responsibility of caring for him during his first years will find their task very much easier ." The Mother TMCW-12/On Education/p-12 "The second idea arises from the fact that a fundamental change of character demands an almost complete mastery over the subconscient and a very rigorous disciplining of whatever comes up from the inconscient, which, in ordinary natures, expresses itself as the effects of atavism and of the environment in which one was born. Only an almost abnormal growth of consciousness and the constant help of Grace can achieve this Herculean task . That is why this task has rarely been attempted and many famous teachers have declared it to be unrealisable and chimerical. Yet it is not unrealisable. The transformation of character has in fact been realised by means of a clear-sighted discipline and a perseverance so obstinate that nothing, not even the most persistent failures, can discourage it." The Mother TMCW-12/On Education/p-19 The Task of Integral Education The task before Integral Education is to explore the multiple planes⁴ of consciousness and call down their influence on the objective surface world. Integral Education is the utilitarian aspect of Integral Yoga whose doctrine can be constantly relived, renewed and reshaped in the inner life of developing humanity. A Sadhak of integral Yoga is primarily⁷ a student of integral Education and secondarily a teacher who is accountable for his persuasion of learning to himself and world through the accumulation of the power of concentration in order to arrive initially at individual perfection and finally a contributary to the world perfection. As a teacher his appetite for learning must be more than the appetite of his students. This process of learning is identified as an adventure into the unknown multiple planes of consciousness which will continue through successive births known as all life and he will not be satisfied till all the lines of subjective and objective perfections are gathered together to experience endless growth, endless unfolding of Truth and endless total fulfilment. Similarly, a Sadhaka of integral Yoga is primarily preoccupied with Self-concentration and secondarily preoccupied with self-expansion where the latter is identified as the outcome of the rigorous self-disciplines of the former. Thus he primarily emerges as seven-fold indispensable self-concentration that of follower, seeker of truth, disciple, servant, slave, instrument and child of Their limitless Divine Consciousness and the Divine demands from him ‘subordination and service.’⁵ He secondarily experiences union with Divine’s sevenfold personality 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. And his tertiary objective culminates in becoming⁸ above self-expansive sevenfold Divine personalities. All objective research in the field of modern Science, Arts, Literature, Technology, Commerce and Economics can be reinforced by entry into subjective Research of the Soul, by discovering tenfold Selves and their interpenetration into tenfold Sheaths. We have to reconcile the full account of one-tenth ‘potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking’² with nine-tenth unlimited subjective Spiritual wisdom by constantly updating, renovating, renewing and regenerating the existing wisdom from tenfold Selves. Integral Education proposes that the greatest unity of all Science, all Religion, all Philosophy, and all Tradition are possible through a most conscious individual when he is perfectly capable of every kind of Material and Spiritual experience, embraces the whole universe in his cosmic Consciousness, possesses the highest Integral Knowledge³ and ‘gathers together all experience in the truth of a supreme and all-reconciling oneness.’¹ That ‘knowledge is likely to be the highest knowledge which illumines, integrates, harmonises the significance of all knowledge.’¹ And he calls down the ultimate Divine Truth and absolute Delight to elevate the things and creatures to their highest, profoundest and widest Divine manifestation. For him, ‘general and ultimate solution is likely to be the best which includes and accounts for all so that each truth of experience takes its place in the whole.’¹ The difficult task of integral Education is identified as opening of Psychic and Spiritual being through the gate of pure intellect and subsequently opening of Supramental being or ‘Ordinarily the supramental knowledge will be organised (1) first and with the most ease in the processes of pure thought and knowledge, jnana, (Purified intellect) because here the human mind has already the upward tendency and is the most free.’⁶ The more difficult task of integral Education is the transformation of three Gunas or ‘(2) Next and with less ease it (Supramental Knowledge) will be organised in the processes of applied thought and knowledge (tamasic, rajasic and sattwic mind ) because there the mind of man is at once most active and most bound and wedded to its inferior methods.’⁶ The triple chain of tamasic, rajasic and sattwic mind can be liberated by the pressure of higher Divine Force: “A greater Force than the earthly held his limbs, Huge workings bared his undiscovered sheaths, Strange energies wrought and screened tremendous hands Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed The heavenly wideness of a Godhead’s gaze.” Savitri-81-82 The most difficult task of integral Education is activation of triple time through opening of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Being and Spirit has the capacity to travel back and ahead of time covering all Time of all Life for the purpose of Subconscient and Inconscient transformation or ‘(3) 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, trikaladristi .’⁶ OM TAT SAT References: 1: “As in Science, so in metaphysical thought, that general and ultimate solution is likely to be the best which includes and accounts for all so that each truth of experience takes its place in the whole: that knowledge is likely to be the highest knowledge which illumines, integralises, harmonises the significance of all knowledge and accounts for, finds the basic and, one might almost say, the justifying reason of our ignorance and illusion while it cures them; this is the supreme experience which gathers together all experience in the truth of a supreme and all-reconciling oneness. Illusionism unifies by elimination; it deprives all knowledge and experience, except the one supreme merger, of reality and significance.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-485, 2: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-10, 3: “We realise now what the Upanishad meant when it spoke of Brahman as being both the Knowledge and the Ignorance and of the simultaneous knowledge of Brahman in both as the way to immortality. Knowledge is the inherent power of consciousness of the timeless, spaceless, unconditioned Self which shows itself in its essence as a unity of being; it is this consciousness that alone is real and complete knowledge because it is an eternal transcendence which is not only self-aware but holds in itself, manifests, originates, determines, knows the temporally eternal successions of the universe. Ignorance is the consciousness of being in the successions of Time, divided in its knowledge by dwelling in the moment, divided in its conception of self-being by dwelling in the divisions of Space and the relations of circumstance, self-prisoned in the multiple working of the unity. It is called the Ignorance because it has put behind it the knowledge of unity and by that very fact is unable to know truly or completely either itself or the world, either the transcendent or the universal reality. Living within the Ignorance, from moment to moment, from field to field, from relation to relation, the conscious soul stumbles on in the error of a fragmentary knowledge. It is not a nescience, but a view and experience of the reality which is partly true and partly false, as all knowledge must be which ignores the essence and sees only fugitive parts of the phenomenon. On the other hand, to be shut up in a featureless consciousness of unity, ignorant of the manifest Brahman, is described as itself also a blind darkness. In truth, neither is precisely darkness, but one is the dazzling by a concentrated Light, the other the illusive proportions of things seen in a dispersed, hazy and broken light, half mist, half seeing. The divine consciousness is not shut up in either, but holds the immutable One and the mutable Many in one eternal all-relating, all-uniting self-knowledge.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-524-25, 4: “This earth is not alone our teacher and nurse; The powers of all the worlds have entrance here.” Savitri-153, 5: “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, “Action is demanded of man by the Master of the world who is the master of all his works and whose world is a field of action, whether done through the ego and in the ignorance or partial light of limited human reason or initiated from a higher and more largely seeing plane of vision and motive.” Essays on the Gita/SABCL/Vol-13/P-436, “The Master of the worlds who in the Gita demands of his servant, the bhakta, to be nothing more in life than his instrument, makes this claim as the friend, the guide, the higher Self, and describes himself as the Lord of all the worlds who is the friend of all creatures, sarvalokamahesvaram suhrudam sarvabhutanam ; the two relations in fact must go together and neither can be perfect without the other.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-565, 6: "Ordinarily the supramental knowledge will be organised (1) first and with the most ease in the processes of pure thought and knowledge, jnana, (Purified intellect) because here the human mind has already the upward tendency and is the most free. (2) Next and with less ease it will be organised in the processes of applied thought and knowledge (tamasic, rajasic and sattwic mind) because there the mind of man is at once most active and most bound and wedded to its inferior methods. (3) 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, trikaladristi .” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-839, 7: “These (conversations of the Mother’s Agenda) are the first stammerings of a novice (The Mother felt Herself as beginner in the path of the eternal unfolding of the Spirit).”4 “It would be better to wait till we have reached the end (of The Mother’s Agenda), wouldn’t it?” The Mother/The Mother's Agenda/6/322, 7/104, “I am learning to work. I am only an apprentice, simply an apprentice – I am learning the trade!” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda/ May 1, 1958, 8: “(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, The Difficult Task of Integral Education “The psychic and the spiritual opening with their experiences and consequences can lead away from life or to a Nirvana (of traditional Yoga); but they are here (in Integral Yoga) being considered solely as steps in a transformation of the nature.”²¹ Sri Aurobindo “In men, says the Upanishad, the Self-Existent has cut the doors of consciousness outward, but a few turn the eye inward and it is these who see and know the Spirit and develop the spiritual being. Thus to look into ourselves and see and enter into ourselves and live within is the first necessity for transformation of nature and for the divine life.”¹⁶ Sri Aurobindo “The (Katha ) Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so set the doors of the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the appearances of things; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought and steady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality. To this turning of the eye inward psychological self observation and analysis is a great and effective introduction.”¹⁷ Sri Aurobindo “We find that it progresses towards a greater completeness in proportion as we arrive at two kinds of perfection; (1) first, a greater and greater detachment from the control of the lower suggestions; (2) secondly, an increasing discovery of a self-existent Being, Light, Power and Ananda which surpasses normal humanity…The movement of perfection is (1) away from all domination by the lower nature and (2) towards a pure and powerful reflection of the being, power, knowledge and delight of the Spirit and Self in the buddhi. The Yoga of self-perfection is to make this double movement as absolute as possible.”¹⁸ Sri Aurobindo “The universal and infinite consciousness can always seize on and surround the mind and it is when it does so with a certain continuity, frequency or persistence that the mind can most easily transform itself into the intuitive mentality and that again into the supramental movement.”¹⁹ Sri Aurobindo "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." ² ³ The Mother “And actually, to do Sri Aurobindo’s work is to realize the Supramental on earth.”²⁰ The Mother In order to collaborate the Divine Mother, the difficult task before an individual Soul seeker is to discover his Personal Psychic Being, saguna Brahman , in the heart and Impersonal Spiritual Being, Nirguna Brahman , above the head and transcend both of them to discover the still higher Transcendent Supramental Being. Psychic Science: Kshara Purusha or Psychic Being: “But the real soul, the real psychic entity which for the most part we see little of and only a small minority in mankind has developed, is an instrument of pure love, joy and the luminous reaching out to fusion and unity with God and our fellow-creatures. This psychic entity is covered up by the play of the mentalised Prana or desire-mind which we mistake for the soul; the emotional mind is unable to mirror the real soul in us, the Divine in our hearts, and is obliged instead to mirror the desire-mind.”¹² Sri Aurobindo “It is one of the decisive moments of the integral Yoga when this psychic being, liberated, brought out from the veil to the front, can pour the full flood of its divinations, seeings and impulsions on the mind, life and body of man and begins to prepare the upbuilding of divinity in the earthly nature.”¹⁵ Sri Aurobindo “All (the seven-fold personal) relations known to human personality are there in the soul’s contact with the Divine; but they rise towards superhuman levels and compel him towards a divine nature.”⁷ Sri Aurobindo “As the psychic change has to call in the spiritual to complete it, so the first spiritual change has to call in the supramental transformation to complete it.”¹³ Sri Aurobindo We generally live in apparent surface mind, apparent surface vital and apparent surface physical behind which there is large ocean of inner subtle mental, inner subtle vital and inner subtle physical sheaths which govern, control and transform our surface workings. Inside these sheaths there are truth mind, true vital and true physical being, the immutable and imperishable godhead has occupied those centres. Similarly, we have double Psychic entity, one is the apparent surface desire soul which works in our vital cravings, emotions, aesthetic faculty and mental seeking for power, knowledge and happiness and the other is our subliminal Psychic entity or our true Soul which is a pure power of light, love, joy and beauty. The subliminal mind in us is open to the universal knowledge of the cosmic Mind, the subliminal vital in us is open towards the universal force of cosmic Life, the subliminal physicality in us is open towards the universal force-formation of cosmic Matter. So also the subliminal Soul in us is open towards the universal Delight of the cosmic Soul. The surface Soul is cut off by egoistic wall of great thickness from true Soul and when the Divine delight tries to penetrate the surface Soul it becomes dwarfed, distorted or have to come in masked as their own opposites. The true Psychic Soul is the flame of the Godhead, always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness which obscures our outward life. It is the flame born out of the luminous Divine inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn the being towards the Knowledge of Self and the Divine, towards the supreme Truth, the supreme Good, the Divine heights and largeness; this is the inner light and voice of the mystic, the witness and the Guide. It is that which endures the pain and suffering and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay and corruption and an indestructible spark of the Divine. It is the individual Soul, the Chaitya Purusha, supporting Mind, Life and Body and standing behind the subtle mental, vital and physical being, watching and profiting by their development in us. This inmost Psychic entity puts forward a Psychic personality which flowers as the saint, the sage and the seer and it changes, grows and develops from life to life; for this is also the traveller from the birth to death and from death to birth and our nature parts are its manifold changing vesture. Initially it works indirectly through mind, life and body, since these parts have to be sufficiently developed as instruments of self-expression. The mental part in us recognises the imperfection as the law of life to which the Psychic being in us rejects. The Soul is dissatisfied towards earthly imperfection and aspires towards elimination of all imperfections from our nature; it is this which struggle in Ignorance and points always towards evolutionary perfection of Truth, Right, Beauty, Love and Harmony and all that is a Divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature. That is the law of our being which is a Divine dissatisfaction and a Divine aspiration with inherent Light of Power which unfolds gradually in the process of evolution from the hidden Reality of the spiritual secrecies. The real sign of finding a Psychic key is that to admit all works perfectly towards a Divine end and an elevation towards the Spiritual knowledge and power which will transform the law and phenomena of the external forms of our life nearer to a true image of Imperishable Spirit. It is right and reasonable to endure with equanimity towards all suffering and defects as immediate will of the God, an outcome of present transitional law of imperfection, a starting point, an opportunity for achieving higher status and the final will of the God is to transcend all evil and suffering, to transform all imperfection into perfection and to rise into higher law of the Divine Nature. It is the Psychic being which pushes to throw off the disguise of undivine life and reveal the Godhead in the manifest mind, life and body. The Psychic transformation is one necessary condition of the total and largest transformation of our existence. It can open to the hidden Diviner ranges of our being and receive and reflect their light and power and experience, but another, a Spiritual transformation from above is needed for us to possess our Self in its universality and transcendence. The Psychic transformation after rising into the Spiritual change has then to be completed, integralised, exceeded and uplifted by a Supramental transformation which lifts it to the summit of ascending endeavour. The fulfilment and integral completeness of our Psychic being comes by intervention of Supermind; for it is through the Supermind that the higher hemisphere is linked with the lower hemisphere. The Psychic being, uplifted by that Supramental Light and Force can unite itself with the original Delight of existence and overcomes the dualities of pain and pleasure and delivers us from all fear and shrinking of the mind life and body. Thus, through these Soul experiences our mind, life and body grow out of Inconscience towards the supreme Consciousness, out of the division of the Ignorance into the integralising Consciousness and Knowledge. If consciousness has become sufficiently Psychic, then the ascent of Consciousness is possible in the concentration of waking trance without the need of passive and unconscious trance. The ultimate mission of the Psychic being is to lose its individuality in its Source or it might return to the Source where there is no sense of separative Will and separative Power. Or a small nucleus, no bigger than the man’s thumb, in the mass of ignorant Nature enlarges itself to embrace the whole world with intimate communion of oneness or it may experience the most intense in beauty and rapture through imperishable union and oneness as the eternal Lover with the eternal Beloved. Still more Spiritual experiences are possible in our quest of self-finding driving us towards the last and entire consummation. The Gita hints that a desire Soul surrounds the true Soul or Psychic being. This Psychic Science is best developed in Savitri book and through it, Savitri, systematically unravels the Divine stationed in the heart by breaking the barrier of multiple layers of desire Soul and transcending the attraction of fine and subtle lure of multiple inner worlds which can enrich our life with intermediate opulence, glory and fame. “By the (true inner) self thou shouldst deliver the (surface desire) self, thou shouldst not depress and cast down the (surface desire) self (whether by self-indulgence or suppression); for the (true inner) self is the friend of the (surface desire) self and (surface desire) self is the enemy (if it is not in contact with the true inner self). To the man is his (true inner) self a friend in whom the (surface desire) self has been conquered by the (true inner) self, but to him who is not in possession of his (true inner) self, the (surface desire) self is as if an enemy and it acts as an enemy.” (The Gita-6.5, 6) 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 directly know and see; cast from our life the sense 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. Before finding Psychic being Savitri came across tenfold Desire Souls and was able to go beyond their lures in order to trace the Psychic being. We find some hint about it in Sri Aurobindo’s letter, “Even if there is much darkness — and this world is full of it and the physical nature of man also — yet a ray of the true Light can prevail eventually against a tenfold darkness. Believe that and cleave to (hold on to) it always.”²² Man’s house of life unfolds subtle worlds. There are occult shadows, tenebrous powers, dangerous forces, Titans, Fury, Goblins and Djinns who are inhabitant of life’s nether rooms of Subconscient pit. They touch all with perverting breath, discolour the walls of upper mind and invite instincts of forbidden joy. 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 the God’s fair world. Old rejected nature, slain thoughts, old longings and acts, dead passions live again to recur in sleep, dream and waking. She strove 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. Her vital godhead wakes within to lift the life to Supernal’s touch. Out of the dreadful press she dragged her will and fixed her thought on the Name Divine. Then all grew still, empty and free; a large deliverance and vast calm came and she moved awhile through a blank tranquillity of naked Light from the invisible sun. Then after silencing of the vital mind she met 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. Then journeying forward beyond the physical mind she reached a space where the schoolman mind has captured life’s large domain. There, her servant mind and sense governed the house. The Spirit’s almighty freedom was not there in reason’s small limiting ideals. The reason’s diplomatic balanced reign kept order and peace, disciplined beauty and harmonic smooth life and she lived in the closed adamant walls of law, ethic’s rule and fixed pillars of thought. Its rational religion dries the heart, meditation muses on a narrow seat, worship turns to an exclusive God, prays the God in the chapel whose doors are shut against the universe and offers a cold and flameless sacrifice. Then she arrived at the quiet country of fixed mind, fixed faith and ordered knowledge of apparent things. Mind claims to be the spirit, sole creator of the apparent world and the Soul and Spirit sees itself as form of mind and loses itself in the glory of the thought and reach the brilliant air flaming with thought’s supreme finality. The few are admitted 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, diamond of flawless bliss, bright contented world and lives as favourite of Heaven and Nature. Savitri did not want to stay there and came to a road thronged with an ardent crowd of outer mind where no mystic voice and Light can come. She mingled with the crowd and her mind hastened like them to save the God’s world and yearned for the Spiritual light they bore. She reined back the high passion of her heart as she knew that she must discover her Soul and only those who save themselves can save others. So by realising the hurrying time of the outer world she turns her eyes towards the eternal source to find the birth place of occult Fire. Savitri met three untransformed Soul forces or untransformed Psychic Sheaths of tamasic Compassion, rajasic Strength and sattwic Light, which limit her universal world action and high Mission and they are to be transformed into the Divine Nature or pure Divine Shakti reflecting the Psychic Being. These three untransformed Soul forces are present in all man to guide and help him bear the difficult journey of his life and evolution within a limited circle. Savitri came to a narrow path to tread the rare wounded pilgrim feet of the first ascent in inner mind and met the Mother of seven sorrows ,² the untransformed Soul force, who projected herself as pessimist and experienced the suffering of this creation wrongly. A patient prayer has risen in vain from her breast to change this great hard world of pain. She comes to share the suffering of this world, draws the children’s pangs into her breast. God has given 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. In her shoulders she weighs the yoke of Time, watched 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. Then Savitri recognised the Mother of seven sorrows , an incarnation of pity as first desire soul of tamasic force and passed ahead in her Spirit’s upward route. Next, she met the Mother of Might , an incarnation of some intermediate egoistic Power, the second desire Soul, the ambitious 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 the 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 mass falls back unsaved. She imitates the Overmental goddess who seems to be proud and strong as Durga , fair and fortunate as Laksmi, and wears the face of Kali when she kills. When the Mother of Might⁸ is transformed, hate, fear and weakness will no longer dwell in the human heart. Wisdom will be combined with power to give the sense of Omnipotence and Omniscience and all shall be might, bliss and happy force. Savitri still ascended to find her Soul’s upward route and arrived into a high and happy space, a wide tower of vision to see all, a clear and crystal light; there she met the Mother of Light, an incarnation of some intermediate sattwic wisdom, the third desire Soul whose mission is to lift the human Soul slowly towards the light through error and sin. She represents charity, silence, knowledge, peace, courage, a power that labours towards the best and her smile could persuade a dead lacerated heart to live again and feel the hands of calm sweetness. She brings strength and solace to man’s struggling life, a figure, imagination and dream of God, and draws harmony and peace of a higher sphere. She represents a limited charity, silence and knowledge in human life. She is the glad resignation of the Saint, indifferent courage to the wounds of Time, and the hero’s might that wrestles with death and fate. Man can be free from himself and live with God only when Eternity takes time by hand and infinity weds the finite’s thought. With her help the 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 intellect’s hard and rocky soil is difficult to transform by the pressure of the Divine force and the mind of the man restricts the flow of intuition’s ray. So she must nurse hunger for the Eternal in the human heart, and fill his yearning heart with heaven’s fire and bring down God into the life and body. One day the Mother of Light shall see the face of the Absolute, then shall the holy marriage between the Matter and Spirit be achieved and a Divinely transformed family will be born and there shall be light and peace in all the ten worlds or all the ten planes of Consciousness. Onward she moved seeking the mystic cave of the Soul. The mind abolished all its thought 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 the pure dreadful strength and wisdom. Across the threshold of sleep state she entered in the land with great figure 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 step 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 word and there, the 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 twin Godheads, God and Goddess, the Master and the Mother, the 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 is shone a deathless sun. A house was there and all is made of flame and light. And crossing the wall of doorless living fire where she suddenly met her Soul, the Psychic being. Through this Spiritual experience of Psychic being, the Supreme Mother or Supramental Mother has chosen to live permanently⁹ in her heart. This may be compared with the Gita’s Spiritual Experience of Purushottama Consciousness choosing permanently¹⁰ to reside in the heart Centre. Thus Savitri gives message of the complete union of Psychic Sheath with Supreme Mother, Para Prakriti and the Gita gives the message of complete union of Psychic being with Purushottama Consciousness. These two experiences culminate with the Spiritual experience of realising the dual Godhead in the heart centre as hinted in Savitri, “The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door, Eternal Supermind touch earthly Time.”¹¹ Spiritual Science: Akshara Purusha or Spiritual Being: “For the methods of the integral Yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psycho-physical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action.”⁴ Sri Aurobindo “…there must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualized 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.”⁵ Sri Aurobindo “It is not indeed possible, so long as we are compelled to use reason as our main support, for it to abdicate altogether in favour of an undeveloped or half-organised intuition; but it is imperative on us in a consideration of the Infinite and its being and action to enforce on our reason an utmost plasticity and open it to an awareness of the larger states and possibilities of that which we are striving to consider.”⁶ Sri Aurobindo Since integral Yoga foresees the Spiritual evolution of the race, it insists on the development of Spiritual being of the individual through a more difficult, complex, wholly powerful method of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga on the three lines together as a triple wheel of Soul-power. In Integral Evolution, the three Purushas , that of Body, Vital and Mind are brought to the front by silencing the Surface physical substance, surface vital and surface mind or by silencing the volition, emotion and intellect through rejection of lower desire and practice of equality and surrender through the above three methods of Yoga. Similarly it is possible to be aware of the Self of the body, Self of vital and Self of mind by separating the Prakriti from Purusha as per Sankhya doctrine; first to watch the activities of Prakriti as witness and then to withdraw support and become the Lord of Prakriti, thus Purusha pours down its Divinity on the Prakriti. During the continuation of all these activities of nature successively or together, it is possible to realise one’s inner being, the Psychic Purusha, who is behind the Annamaya Purusha , Pranamaya Purusha and Manamaya Purusha , and with the emergence of the Psychic being, Psychic transformation can resume its action. From the above exercises, one can also open concurrently to the Spiritual being above the head and can resume the Spiritual transformation of nature. But if the Mother-nature’s intention is a comprehensive Spiritual transformation, then the double evolution, that of (1) evolution of outward nature and (2) evolution of inner being, occult subliminal and Spiritual nature, is indispensable. This imposes three difficulties in unfolding the pure Spiritual consciousness; (1) for, first, the Spiritual emergence has to wait at each step of evolution for the instruments of mind, life and body to be ready; (2) secondly, as the Spiritual formation emerges it is inextricably mixed with the inferior powers, narrow motives and downward impulses of the instruments which hangs back and prevents farther evolution and (3) finally the very character of mind is exclusive and it compels the emerging Spiritual light and power to move by segments, to follow one or another line of Spiritual experience to the exclusion of the total Spiritual achievement. After the discovery of Psychic being the second Spiritual possibility is the discovery of the Spiritual being. The most ordinary result of this experience is the discovery of a vast static and silent Self which we feel as our real basic existence. Secondly, we realise of our extinction, a Nirvana both of our active being and of the sense of Self into a Reality that is indefinable and inexpressible. Thirdly, we can realise that this Self is not only our Spiritual being but the true self of all others or cosmic Self. Fourthly, it is possible to pass into some supreme, immobile and immutable status beyond the universe. Fifthly, there takes place a large dynamic descent of Light, Knowledge, Power, Bliss or other supernormal energies into untransformed Nature, and we can ascend too into higher regions of the Spirit where its immobile status is the foundation of those great and luminous energies, Shaktis. Sixthly, for the full Spiritual transformation, more is needed: a permanent ascension from the lower into the higher consciousness and an effectual permanent descent of the higher Shakti into the lower nature. And lastly, the highest achievement of Spiritual quest is the attainment of Overmind consciousness which is having three distinct character; firstly, it carries in itself the direct and masterful cognition of the cosmic truth by which we can hope to understand the original working of things, get some insight into the fundamental movement of the cosmic nature; secondly, mind and life of the individual being is in its nature a partial self-expression of the cosmic Being and both individual and cosmic Being are self-expression of the Transcendent Reality; thirdly, what we can in our nature receive, assimilate, formulate, the portion of the cosmic Being or of the Reality, can find shape in our mind, life and physical parts, an expression is in the terms of our own nature. The methods proposed for opening of Spiritual being are : (1) the method of detachment from the insistence of all mental and vital and physical claims and calls and impulses, (2) concentration in the heart, (3) austerity of personal will, tapasya , (4) self-purification. (5) There are obstinate difficulties in our being born of its evolutionary constitution, which militate against the Divine 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 functioning 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. Rejection of the old mind movements and life movements, rejection of the ego of desire, rejection of false needs and false habits, are all useful aids to this difficult passage. (6) The strongest and the most central way is to find all such or other methods on a self-offering and surrender of ourselves and of our parts of nature to the Divine Being, the Ishwara. All the parts of our being must assent and surrender to the law of Spiritual Truth; all have to learn to obey the government of the conscious Divine Power in the members. (7) A strict obedience to the wise and intuitive leading of a Guide is also normal and necessary for all the beginners of Yoga, except a few specially gifted seekers. (8) For a real transformation there must be (a) the Law of Participation or ascent of Purusha , (b) the Law of Descent or a direct and unveiled intervention from above; (c) the Law of Surrender or there would be necessary too a total submission and surrender of lower consciousness, (d) a cessation of its insistence, (e) a will in it for its separate law of action to be completely annulled by transformation. The Spiritual Consciousness initially may confine itself to a status of being separate from the action of our ignorant surface nature, observing and limiting itself to knowledge and developing a Spiritual sense and vision towards existence. For action it may depend on the physical, vital and mental instruments but it may also and usually does exercise a certain authority, governance, influence on thought, life movement, physical action, a purifying uplifting control compelling them to move in a higher and purer truth of themselves or receive the inspiration or command of greater Self, the Ishwara . The Spiritual being, once inwardly liberated, can lift mind to higher states of Consciousness and bring down Supramental Energy, Creation, Ananda and Action. Supramental Science: Purushottama or Uttama Purusha or Supramental Self: “It must also be kept in mind that the supramental change is difficult, distant and ultimate stage; it must be regarded as the end of a far-off vista; it cannot be and must not be turned into a first aim, a constantly envisaged goal or an immediate objective. For it can only come into the view of possibility after much arduous self-conquest and self-exceeding, at the end of many long and trying stages of difficult self-evolution of the nature. 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. 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. 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.”³ Sri Aurobindo Supramental Science evolves after Supermind gives its consent to descent into the mind and transforms it. As, for instance, Mind throws itself into various forms of mind-power, such as judgment, observation, memory, sympathy, proper to its own being, so must the Truth-consciousness or Supermind effect the relations by forces, faculties, functionings proper to Supramental being; otherwise, there would be no play of differentiation, no Supramental command of unity in diversity. It has to be kept in mind that Supramental change is a difficult, distant and ultimate stage of spiritual growth and it should not be turned into the first or immediate objective. Till Nature is ready through prolonged Psychic and Spiritual transformation, the Supramental Force has to act indirectly; it puts the intermediary powers of Overmind or Intuition in front, or it works through a modification of itself to which the already half-transformed being can be wholly or partially responsive. For there is too great a disparity between the power of the supreme Force and the capacity of the ordinary nature; (1) the inferior nature would either be unable to bear or, (2) bearing, unable to respond and receive or, (3) receiving, unable to assimilate. ‘It is only when we have already had experience of a higher intermediate consciousness that any terms attempting to describe Supramental being could convey a true meaning to our intelligence.’1 Other necessary condition for arriving at the Supermind are unification of the entire being by a breaking down of the wall between the inner and outer nature, a shifting of the position and centration of the consciousness from the outer to the inner self, a firm foundation on this new basis, a habitual action from this inner self and its will and vision and an opening up of the individual into the cosmic Consciousness. The stages through which one can ascend to Supermind are that one must first acquire inner Yogic consciousness by silencing the mind, life and body and changing the centre of living from surface to something within; next one has to go still deeper within to discover the one’s Psychic being and under its influence Psychicise the outer and inner nature; then afterwards or concurrently one can contact the Spiritual being above the head and experience the descent of Divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, Love, Beauty and Ananda etc., and the consciousness is to be universalised. When the Consciousness moves between Psychic and Spiritual plane for a long period then it is possible to enter Supramental consciousness. So Supermind must be established here on a basis of Knowledge growing into its own greater Light. But this cannot be so long as the Spiritual-mental being has not risen fully to Supermind and brought down its powers into terrestrial existence. Supramental method¹⁴ is not related with any support of outer aid rather here consciousness is pushed to experience the third reversal consciousness. First, the reversal of consciousness is experienced in Purusha-Prakriti union in the Ignorance, second reversal of consciousness is experienced in Ishwara-Shakti union in the Spiritual or Overmental plane; the third reversal of consciousness is experienced in the Brahman-Maya union in the Supramental plane and this reversal of Consciousness has universal repercussion. This 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. It asks a radically different awareness of things; even if they were seen or conceived by some enlightenment or opening of vision, another language than the poor abstract counters used by our mind would be needed to translate them into terms by which their reality could become at all sizeable by us. Isha Upanishad has given the hint that a bright golden lid has separated the Supramental world from the Overmental world, that lid has to be broken by the movement of Consciousness in order to enter the Supramental kingdom. For such action to be practicable one must learn the movement of Consciousness in both ascending and descending order and this ascension and descent of Consciousness integralises the whole being and widens the base, which means the capacity of subtle body, subtle mind and subtle vital increases considerably and prepares the ground of higher ascent. And those who are preoccupied with this movement of Consciousness in ascending and descending order can discover and pierce into the Supramental plane through successive stages of Consciousness and methods shall evolve, either one or many, are left in the hand of the Divine Shakti that has taken the whole responsibility of Sadhana. There are also certain reversals of Consciousness which need not wait for ascension in stages, but an evolutionary leap is experienced by bypassing all intermediate stages of development. In addition to it, there are also other movements of the Supramental experience without undergoing any consciously felt descent of Divine force. All these experiences develop methods, which are inner movements of Consciousness and are related to the activation of six or seven Occult centres as per Indian tradition or twelve occult centres as experienced by The Mother which are three more above the head and two more centres below the feet in addition to seven traditional centres. These twelve centres we identify as Sat, Chit, Ananda or Bliss Self, Supramental Self, Universal Self, Spiritual or higher Mental Self, Psychic Self, Truth mind, True vital, True physical, Subconscient Self and Inconscient Self. In Integral Yoga, higher two selves of Sat and Chit are not taken into consideration, as they are too far and remote from the present scope of development. All these ten Selves have their respective Sheaths or Koshas or subtle bodies, which develop, concretize and widen in the process of Spiritual evolution. One can have a Supramental transformation through any of the following experiences:- 1) One can unveil briefly, the Supramental Self and Bliss Self through ascension of Consciousness beyond the Spiritual Self and by dynamising their experiences corresponding descent of Forces to all the sheaths, including the last Inconscient sheath is witnessed. 2) By its pressure in addition to already opened Selves of Universal, Spiritual and Psychic, all other Selves begin to unveil themselves and the transformation or densification of respective sheaths are witnessed during their interpenetration. 3) Supramental force can invade and purify and densify the mental, vital, physical, Subconscient and inconscient sheaths by unveiling the Inconscient Self below the feet and the assimilation of force can also densify the formation of Universal, Spiritual and Psychic sheaths. This experience gives the sensation of Divine descent in the opposite direction, symbolised as feet. 4) As Supramental force is all-pervading and all-penetrating, present everywhere, so it can be activated by opening and Supramentalising any of the ten Selves and each Self can resume Supramental action in the respective sheath and the adjacent sheaths. The presence of the Supramental is there in every living being, on every level, in all things, and because it is there, the experience of Sachchidananda, of the pure Spiritual Existence and Consciousness, of the Delight of a Divine presence, closeness, contact can be acquired through the mind or the heart or the life-sense or even through the physical consciousness; if the inner doors are flung sufficiently open, the Light from the sanctuary can suffuse the nearest and the farthest chambers of the outer Being. 5) The necessary Supramental change can also be brought about by an Occult descent of the Spiritual force from above, in which the influx, the influence, the Spiritual consequence is felt, but the higher Source is unknown and ‘the actual feeling of a descent is not there.’ A Consciousness so touched may be so much uplifted that the being turns to an immediate union with the Self or with the Divine by departure from the evolution and, if that is sanctioned, no question of gradual steps or method intervenes, the rupture with Nature can be decisive. 6) Supramental force can work by activation of any one Self or more than one Self or all the ten Selves at a time. For such action of greater magnitude the subtle body or sheaths must be sufficiently transparent, pure and wide in order to hold the Divine nectar. 7) Psycho-physical exercises like ceaseless Japa, breathing exercises and cataleptic trance can be utilised to accelerate the already resumed experiences in these realms. OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA/22/The Life Divine/p-954, 2: Savitri-502 3: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-281-282, 4: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-542, 5: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-913, 6: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-345, 7: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-129, 8: Savitri-508, 9: “Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds To make this earthly tenement her house.” Savitri-528 10: “He is indivisible and the One, but seems to divide himself in forms and creatures and appears as all the separate existences. All things are eternally born from him, upborne in his eternity, taken eternally back into his oneness…He is the light of all lights and luminous beyond all the darkness of our ignorance. He is knowledge and the object of knowledge. He is seated in the hearts of all.” The Gita-13.17, 18, 11: Savitri-705, 12: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-351, 13: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-951. 14: “It is not in the separatively personal self or by its power that it sees and therefore it has not to be on guard against the element of personal error: that interferes only while a mental substratum or environing atmosphere yet remains and can still throw in its influence or while the Supermind is still acting by descent into the mind to change it. And the supramental method with error is to eliminate it, not by any other device, but by an increasing spontaneity of the supramental discrimination and a constant heightening of its own energy. The consciousness of Supermind is a cosmic consciousness and it is in this self of universal consciousness, in which the individual knower lives and with which he is more or less closely united, that it holds before him the object of knowledge.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 856-57 15: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-150, 16: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1064 17: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-303 18: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-668-69 19: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-824 20: The Mother’s Agenda-10th May, 1958, 21: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-943, 22: CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-102, 23: The Mother’s Agenda/ December 13, 1960, The More Difficult Task of Integral Education “Our passion heaves to wed the Eternal’s calm, Our dwarf-search mind t o meet the Omniscient’s light, Our helpless hearts to enshrine the Omnipotent’s force.” Savitri-58 “A greater Force than the earthly held his limbs, Huge workings bared his undiscovered sheaths, Strange energies wrought and screened tremendous hands Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed The heavenly wideness of a Godhead’s gaze.” Savitri-81-82 "The old adamantine vetoes stood no more: Overpowered were earth and Nature’s obsolete rule; (The law of tamasic, rajasic and sattwic mind) The python coils of the restricting Law Could not restrain the swift arisen God: Abolished were the scripts of destiny." Savitri-82-83 "This giant Ignorance, this dwarfish Life It can illumine with a prophet sight, Invoke the bacchic rapture, the Fury’s goad, In our body arouse the demon or the god, Call in the Omniscient and Omnipotent, Awake a forgotten Almightiness within.” Savitri-85 “A dwarf three-bodied trinity was her serf. First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb, (smallest is the physical mind.) A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl, A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds For ever stooped to hammer fact and form… A fiery spirit came, next of the three. A hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass, A rash Intelligence leaped down lion-maned From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds And with its dire edge eats at being’s heart… Of all these Powers the greatest was the last. Arriving late from a far plane of thought Into a packed irrational world of Chance Where all was grossly felt and blindly done, Yet the haphazard seemed the inevitable, Came Reason, the squat godhead artisan, To her narrow house upon a ridge in Time.” Savitri-245 to 249 “Above in a high breathless stratosphere, Overshadowing the dwarfish trinity , Lived, aspirants to a limitless Beyond, Captives of Space, walled by the limiting heavens, In the unceasing circuit of the hours Yearning for the straight paths of eternity, And from their high station looked down on this world Two sun-gaze Daemons witnessing all that is.” Savitri-258 “Only if God assumes the human mind And puts on mortal ignorance for his cloak And makes himself the Dwarf with triple stride , (Vamana Avatara ) Can he help man to grow into the God.” Savitri-488 (Death said) “All by Death’s mercy breathe and live awhile, All think and act by the Inconscient’s grace.” Savitri-616 “But the introvert of this distinction is also has not the inner life; he is not a seer of the true self and of inner things, but the small mental man who looks superficially inside himself and sees there not his spiritual self but his life-ego, his mind-ego and becomes unhealthily preoccupied with the movements of this little pitiful dwarf creature .” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1064, Sri Aurobindo “There is not any single entity, either on the earth or again in heaven among the gods, that is not subject to the workings of these three qualities (Gunas ), born of nature.” The Gita-18.40 “He has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, the mind material and nervous, the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of the body and the senses, and a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.”²⁷ Sri Aurobindo “But the whole difference between man and the animal is that the animal mind, as we know it, cannot get for one moment away from its origins, cannot break out from the covering, the close chrysalis which the bodily life has spun round the soul, and become something greater than its present self, a more free, magnificent and noble being; but in man mind reveals itself as a greater energy escaping from the restrictions of the vital and physical formula of being.”²⁸ Sri Aurobindo “As our physical instrumental mind has the illusion of the body, so this subconscious dynamic mind has the illusion of life. In that it is absorbed and concentrated, by that it is limited, with that it identifies its being. Here we do not yet get back to the meeting-place of mind and supermind and the point at which they originally separated.”²⁹ Sri Aurobindo “The transcendence of the three modes of Nature is the first condition, their transformation the decisive step of this change by which the Way of Works climbs out of the pit of narrowness of our darkened human nature into the unwalled wideness of the Truth and Light above us.”³⁰ Sri Aurobindo “In the light of gnosis the many mental idols, constructed principles and systems, conflicting ideals which man has created in all domains of his mind and life, could command no acceptance or reverence; only the truth, if any, which these specious images conceal, could have a chance of entry as elements of a harmony founded on a much wider basis.”³¹ Sri Aurobindo The action of three modes of nature,³² gunas, is identified in The Gita and Savitri as subjection to three asuras ⁸ and three dwarfs⁹ respectively and these modes are conscious of this life and oblivious of all life and bound to the perishable law of Death. ‘It is a triple stair that stumbles upward towards the divine light but cannot reach it.’⁵³ The Divine Mother’s rebel children are tamasic, rajasic and sattwic in Nature and all their action and thought process of impatience, error, limited knowledge, unconsciousness, ignorance, defect and evil wait for their Divine hour of transformation.⁴⁸ Most of the human beings act and think by the pressure of three gunas, physical mind, vital mind and sattwic mind and these three are Inconscient negative energies. ‘The mind moves under the limiting compulsion of the triple lower nature, it erects its standards in obedience to the tamasic, rajasic or at highest the sattwic qualities; but the destiny of the soul is a divine perfection and liberation and that can only be based in the freedom of our highest self, can only be found by passing through its vast impersonality and universality beyond mind into the integral light of the immeasurable Godhead and supreme Infinite who is beyond all dharmas .’¹⁵ A traditional Sadhaka , after realisation of Kshara, Akshara and Purushottama consciousness feels that this realisation cannot be reconciled⁶ with untransformed nature of 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 supreme abode of param dham through the passage of Purushottama state. In integral Yoga, after realisation of Kshara, Akshara and Purushottama consciousness or after realisation Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Being, a Sadhaka’s difficult task prohibits blissful enjoyment of the fruit of discovery of his triple Selves but begins of reconciling static Matter with dynamic Spirit and thus Divine Shakti pours into the material vessel and confronts with Subconscient dark forces, diseases, decay and death. His Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental purification, transformation and perfection resumes action from firmly established Psychic heart centre and from firmly established Karma Yoga where Divine Will, Knowledge and Love are perfectly reconciled. Limitations of Mind: “Impotent to share in Nature’s mystic tact, Inapt to feel the pulse and core of things, Our reason cannot sound life’s mighty sea And only counts its waves and scans its foam; It knows not whence these motions touch and pass, It sees not whither sweeps the hurrying flood: Only it (reason) strives to canalise its powers And hopes to turn its course to human ends:” Savitri-161 “Our mind lives far off from the authentic Light Catching at little fragments of the Truth In a small corner of infinity, Our lives are inlets of an ocean’s force.” Savitri-161 “Yet was this only a provisional scheme, A false appearance sketched by limiting sense, Mind’s insufficient self-discovery, An early attempt, a first experiment.” Savitri-167-68 “There is a deeper seeing from within And, when we have left these small purlieus of mind, A greater vision meets us on the heights In the luminous wideness of the spirit’s gaze. 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 “Our human thought, servant of Ignorance. An exile, labourer on this unsure globe Captured and driven in Life’s nescient grasp, Hampered by obscure cell and treacherous nerve, It dreams of happier states and nobler powers, The natural privilege of unfallen gods, Recalling still its old lost sovereignty.” Savitri-262 “In our thinking’s close and narrow lamp-lit house The vanity of our shut mortal mind Dreams that the chains of thought have made her ours; But only we play with our own brilliant bonds; Tying her down, it is ourselves we tie.” Savitri-276 “Afar from all that makes the measured world, Plunging to hidden eternities it withdrew Back from mind’s foaming surface to the Vasts Voiceless within us in omniscient sleep.” Savitri-320 “A mind impotent to reconcile heaven and earth And tied to Matter with a thousand bonds,” Savitri-338 “The mind of mortal man is led by words, His sight retires behind the walls of Thought And looks out only through half-opened doors.” Savitri-457 “This mind no silence knows nor dreamless sleep, In the incessant circling of its steps Thoughts tread for ever through the listening brain; It toils like a machine and cannot stop.” Savitri-478 "But when she came back to her self of thought, Once more she was a human thing on earth, A lump of Matter, a house of closed sight, A mind compelled to think out ignorance, A life-force pressed into a camp of works And the material world her limiting field." Savitri-488 “But for the mortal prisoned in outward mind All must present their passports at its door; Disguised they must don the official cap and mask Or pass as manufactures of the brain, Unknown their secret truth and hidden source.” Savitri-540 “This too she saw that all in outer mind Is made, not born, a product perishable, Forged in the body’s factory by earth-force. This mind is a dynamic small machine Producing ceaselessly, till it wears out, With raw material drawn from the outside world, The patterns sketched out by an artist God.” Savitri-541 “His mind is pent in circling boundaries: For mind is man, beyond thought he cannot soar. If he could leave his limits he would be safe:” Savitri-643 “For knowledge shall pour down in radiant streams And even darkened mind quiver with new life And kindle and burn with the Ideal’s fire And turn to escape from mortal ignorance.” Savitri-710 The lower mental faculty of Physical (tamasic) mind, Vital (rajasic) mind and Intellect (sattwic mind) are entirely absorbed, limited, obsessed and concentrated in the illusion and disintegration of body, death of life and falling back of mind into Inconscience respectively and they are identified as three dwarf and separatists who miserably restrict and long prevent our growing relation with the Supreme. There is a period of prolonged internal effort in which individual has to reject mental energies, heart’s emotion, vital desires and physical rigidity of lower nature and put themselves resolutely on the side of Divine truth and compel them to answer to the right influence. If we can educate, train, purify, transform and perfect these three faculties by surrender¹³ of lower to the higher Nature, then the capacity of our vessel can increase indefinitely to open, receive and hold the Divine Will, the Divine Love and the Divine Knowledge and their self-development is translated physically as imperishability of Matter, vitally as instinct of self-preservation and mentally as sense of immortality. Education of dwarf and pigmy Physical Mind: “Even his first steps broke our small earth-bounds And loitered in a vaster freer air.” Savitri-26 “An old pull of subconscious cords renews; It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights, Or a dull gravitation drags us down To the blind driven inertia of our base.” Savitri-34 “When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp, As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread Of one who steps unseen into his house. A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey, (Voice of the Divine) A Power into mind’s inner chamber steal, (A Spiritual Power) A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors And beauty conquer the resisting world, The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise, A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss And earth grow unexpectedly divine.” Savitri-55 “Even in the littleness of our mortal state, Even in this prison-house of outer form, A brilliant passage for the infallible Flame Is driven through gross walls of nerve and brain, A Splendour presses or a Power breaks through, Earth’s great dull barrier (physical mind) is removed awhile, The inconscient seal is lifted from our eyes And we grow vessels of creative might.” Savitri-108 “At its low extremity held difficult sway A mind that hardly saw and slowly found; Its nature to our earthly nature close And kin to our precarious mortal thought That looks from soil to sky and sky to soil But knows not the below nor the beyond, [Physical mind is not aware of the sea of Light above the head and below the feet.] It only sensed itself and outward things.” Savitri-239 “The slow process of a material mind Which serves the body it should rule and use And needs to lean upon an erring sense, Was born in that luminous obscurity.” Savitri-240 “A twilight sage whose shadow seems to him self,” Savitri-240 “One sees it (physical mind) circling faithful to its task, Tireless in an assigned tradition’s round; In decayed and crumbling offices of Time It keeps close guard in front of custom’s wall, Or in an ancient Night’s dim environs It dozes on a little courtyard’s stones And barks at every unfamiliar light As at a foe who would break up its home, A watch-dog of the spirit’s sense-railed house Against intruders from the Invisible, Nourished on scraps of life and Matter’s bones In its kennel of objective certitude.” Savitri-246 “But our dwarf will and cold pragmatic sense Admit not the celestial visitants:” Savitri-263 “In man a dim disturbing somewhat lives; (Physical and vital mind) It knows but turns away from divine Light Preferring the dark ignorance of the fall.” (Spiritual fall) Savitri-366 “His instrument the dim corporeal mind, Of celestial insight now forgetful grown, He seizes on some sign of outward charm To guide him mid the throng of Nature’s hints, Reads heavenly truths into earth’s semblances, Desires the image for the godhead’s sake, Divines the immortalities of form And takes the body for the sculptured soul.” Savitri-398 “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 “At the dim portal of the inner life That bars out from our depths the body’s mind And all that lives but by the body’s breath, She knocked and pressed against the ebony gate. The living portal groaned with sullen hinge: Heavily reluctant it (tamasic mind) complained inert Against the tyranny of the spirit’s touch.” Savitri-489 “But now a mightier danger’s front drew near: The press of bodily mind, the Inconscient’s brood Of aimless thought and will had fallen from her.” Savitri-491 “Her body’s thoughts climbed from her conscious limbs And carried their yearnings to its mystic crown Where Nature’s murmurs meet the Ineffable.” Savitri-540 “A sceptic facing Light with adamant No… It makes a cloud of the interpreting mind And intercepts the oracles of the Sun.” Savitri-626 "From the negative point of view – I mean the difficulties to be overcome – one of the most serious obstacles is that the ignorant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has discovered physically and materially (laws of the body, for example, its needs, its health, its nourishment, all those things – they have such a solid, compact, established and concrete reality that it appears absolutely unquestionable.). All this is an unquestionable reality to the consciousness, a reality that remains independent and absolute even in the face of the eternal divine Reality...Well, to be able to cure that, which of all the obstacles is the greatest (I mean the habit of putting spiritual life on one side and material life on the other, of acknowledging the right of material laws to exist), one must make a resolution never to legitimize any of these movements, at any cost. "⁵⁶ The Mother "But constantly (I make the problem more precise for the sake of clarity), there are constantly in the atmosphere, as I have always said, all the suggestions, all that atmosphere of the physical mind which is full of every possible stupidity. You have to be permanently on your guard and sweep it all away: "Go away, don't interfere. " The doctors' opinions, the example of other people, that whole ... really, that whole terrible muddle of Ignorance all around, which you have to drive back: "Don't meddle, mind your own business .""⁵⁸ The Mother " It is only love that can understand and get at the secrets of the Divine Working. The mind, the physical mind especially, is incapable of seeing correctly and yet it always wants to judge. It is only a true, sincere humility in the mind, allowing the psychic to rule the being, that can save human beings from ignorance and obscurity."⁵⁷ The Mother The normal waking state is dominated by the physical mind, which is the assured base, close to earthly nature, the first status of slow ascent and the lowest sub-plane of intellect, the starting point of the educational movement of that apparent material world. It contradicts³⁷ and opposes the vital mind by inertia, indolence and dullness and intellect by narrowness, precarious thought, ignorance and obscurity. The modern man strives to establish equilibrium between a fully active intellect, vital and body. The task of Integral Education is to link these three lower mental planes fully with the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental planes, which throw on the physical mind a transforming light that breaks conservative inertia, replaces its narrow thought-power and doubts by Knowledge and pours luminosity and Divine Consciousness into the very cells of the body. So those who want to escape from the defeatist domination of physical mind and its repetition of old familiar pessimist action, for them the centre of living must shift above the head, so that they can separate and disentangle lower habitual action of physical mind from the action of a clearer and more potent self-knowledge and pure Divine will. If they can think no longer from the brain but above and outside the head in the subtle body, then it is a clear indication that they have escaped from the limitation of the physical mind. Through trance,41 Samadhi, they can also enter dream and sleep Selves or consciousness corresponding to the subtle life-plane and the Supramental plane, free from the subjection and limitation of the physical mind. The trained physical mind is a passive field and instrument of greater force and light; it responds to every demand and need of the Spirit’s force and holds and assimilates every kind, variety and diversity of Spiritual experience. So, we must erase the settled imprint of the physical mind slowly by Divine Contact. Japa or repetition of Divine Word is a very good mechanical means of contradicting pessimism and entering Divine contact to which the cells of the body value a lot. The physical mind lives content with the common, known, old memories and loves to live with the past. It accepts the empiric fact of physical laws like gravity, disease and decay as settled law and does not see the occult, universal law behind them. It believes in no Divinity other than the narrow earth-bound gods, abhors transformation of Nature, distrustful of discovery of new worlds, fears the Unknowable as deadly abyss, shrinks from the adventure of Consciousness, loses its conviction of objective certitude and enters into an agnosticism which questions all its own standards of life and knowledge, doubts whether all this is real or else whether all, even if real, is not futile. It creates in him a habit of believing entirely the physical facts as the sole truth and of doubting or challenging all that does not come into accord with his own experience or his own scope of understanding or square with his own standard or sum of established knowledge. It affirms that an objective Reality is the only entire self-evident truth beyond question and an objective knowledge as the sole entirely reliable knowledge and constructs always its frail house of thought; it looks at only one side of existence, even only one province or district of existence, and leaves all the rest unexplained, without inherent reality, without significance and without integrality and whatever is not actual, not physical, not objective it regards as unreal or unrealised, and it can accept a thing as entirely real when it has succeeded in becoming actual, becoming a physical fact and becoming objective. The crude physical mind is a slave of a fixed mass of absolute rule and trades its gain to meet the moment’s call, moves from moment to brief moment, shuts into succession of moments, labours for an hour, so is the creator of impatience because it cannot tolerate and wait the Divine Mother’s eternal labour, for whom the present existing world which She has built is an interim report and half found truth in things, who works out the distorting Maya through wisdom which went forth since the beginning of creation. A breaking of our imprisonment in moment and a transcendence of limitation of sensation and subjection of physical mind is possible by evolving another state of consciousness and of vision and knowledge of triple time consciousness. The normal sleep⁴² is completely different from trance state and in the former physical mind is active in the dream which is an incoherent jumble of vague touches from the surface world, wandering phantasy of the reason, disordered associations from brain memory, widely distorted and mixed up confusedly with other dream elements and fantastic responses to any sensory touch of the surface vital world. Where trance is a subtle action of higher consciousness of dream self, free from immixture of physical and vital mentality, liberated from the bounds of surface consciousness and is open towards perennial source of pure inner sense. Physical mind rejects the thought process of logically discriminative and imaginative reason, its disturbances and its tensions and does not like any upliftment of Consciousness, Spiritual deliverance, descent of Divine force and ‘barks at every unfamiliar’³⁹ Superconscient light. Any ‘large or intense or continuous enjoyments’⁴⁰ are almost intolerable to the physical mind. It is formed under the pressure of difficulties, obstacles, suffering and struggle and does not believe that behind all the difficulties there is Divine Grace, behind all the failures there is success and ‘inability to look beyond its own apparent self-formation.’¹⁸ It treasures the changeless doctrine of negation, earthward look, disease, decay and death and obedient to the tyranny of gross matter. All inner and outer revolutions sink into physical mind’s inertia and in a new dress, the old habit resumes its guardian role. Fear, doubt and impatience are the original character and habit of the physical mind and bind one to the bodily consciousness. It always aspires for greater comfort,³⁶ constructed order, short-lived enjoyments, easily secured life and is oblivious of whole truth of existence. The education of physical mind needs very tangible and repeated Spiritual experience and it must break all its heavy smallness and asks giving up of its instincts, needs, blind conservative attachment, settled grooves of nature, doubt, disbeliefs in all that is beyond itself, its faith of inevitability of fixed functioning of mind, life and body. These are replaced by new power which establishes its own greater law and functioning in the form and force of Matter. By the pressure of the higher light even the Subconscient and Inconscient below the physical mind have to become conscient, susceptible to higher light,³⁸ no longer obstructive to fulfilling the creative action of the Consciousness force, but more and more a mould and basis of the Spiritual Force. The admission of such a radical change and the remoulding of the whole nature are possible by the full emergence and dominance of the Psychic and Spiritual fire and long working of their light and power on the parts of the nature. The Gita prescribes a new method of self-discipline through which the golden chain of three gunas can be broken. “It is to stand back in oneself from the action and the modes and observe this unsteady flux as the Witness seated above the surge of the forces of Nature. He is one who watches but is impartial and indifferent, aloof from them on their own level and in his native posture high above them. As they rise and fall in their waves, the Witness looks, observes, but neither accepts nor for the moment interferes with their course. First there must be the freedom of the impersonal Witness; afterwards there can be the control of the Master, the Ishwara .”⁷ The Synthesis of Yoga book proposes another method in addition to the Gita’s method, by which one can go beyond three gunas . “There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it (physical mind) whether (1) by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or (2) by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing element.’⁸ Or ‘as the calm of equality increases, deepens, becomes more essential and compact, ghana ,’⁴³ the influence of physical mind becomes weak and its appearance at the outer gates of mind ceases. “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.”⁵⁵ “…the ordinary activity of the physical mind which is full of ordinary habitual and constantly recurrent thoughts and is always busy with external objects and activities…the vital mind which is different, — for that is always occupied with emotions, passions, desires, reactions of all kinds to the contacts of life and the behaviour of others. The physical mind also can be responsive to these things but in a different way— its nature is less that of desire than of habitual activity, small common interests, pains and pleasures. If one tries to control or suppress it (physical mind), it becomes more active. To deal with this mind two things are necessary, (1) not so much to try to control or fight with or suppress it as to stand back from it: one looks at it and sees what it is but refuses to follow its thoughts or run about among the objects it pursues, remaining at the back of the mind quiet and separate; (2) to practice quietude and concentration in this separateness, until the habit of quiet takes hold of the physical mind and replaces the habit of these small activities. This of course takes time and can only come by practice…”¹⁰ “Tamas in the spiritual being becomes a divine calm, which is not an inertia and incapacity of action, but a perfect power, sakti, holding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to the law of calm even the most stupendous and enormous activity: rajas becomes a self-effecting initiating sheer Will of the spirit, which is not desire, endeavour, striving passion, but the same perfect power of being, sakti, capable of an infinite, imperturbable and blissful action. Sattwa becomes not the modified mental light, prakasa , but the self-existent light of the divine being, jyotih , which is the soul of the perfect power of being and illumines in their unity the divine quietude and the divine will of action.”⁹ " It is the result of the descent of the supramental substance into Matter. Only this substance – what it has put into physical Matter – could have made it possible. It is a new ferment. From the material standpoint, it removes from physical Matter its tamas, the heaviness of its unconsciousness, and from the psychological standpoint, its ignorance and its falsehood. Matter is subtilized. But it has surely come only as a first experience to show how it will be... It is truly a state of absolute omniscience and omnipotence in the body which changes all the vibrations around it... It is likely that the greatest resistance will be in the most conscious beings due to a lack of mental receptivity, due to the mind itself which wants things to continue (as Sri Aurobindo has written) according to its own mode of ignorance. So-called inert matter is much more easily responsive, much more – it does not resist. And I am convinced that among plants, for example, or among animals, the response will be much quicker than among men. It will be more difficult to act upon a very organized mind; beings who live in an entirely crystallized, organized mental consciousness are as hard as stone! It resists. According to my experience, what is unconscious will certainly follow more easily. It was a delight to see the water from the tap, the mouthwash in the bottle, the glass, the sponge – it all had such an air of joy and consent! There is much less ego, you see, it is not a conscious ego... The ego becomes more and more conscious and resistant as the being develops. Very primitive, very simple beings, little children will respond first, because they don’t have an organized ego. But these big people! People who have worked on themselves, who have mastered themselves, who are organized, who have an ego made of steel, it will be difficult for them... Unless they go beyond all this and have enough spiritual knowledge to be able to make the ego surrender ... in which case the realization will naturally be much greater – it will be more difficult to accomplish, but the result will be far more complete."⁵⁴ Education of muddy and deceptive Vital Mind: “A thought was there that planned, a will that strove, But for small aims within a narrow scope, Wasting unmeasured toil on transient things. It knew itself a creature of the mud; It asked no larger law, no loftier aim; It had no inward look, no upward gaze.” Savitri-149 “Only it hoped for greatness in its den And pleasure and victory in small fields of power And conquest of life-room for self and kin, An animal limited by its feeding-space. It knew not the Immortal in its house; It had no greater deeper cause to live.” Savitri-149 “A whisper falls into life’s inner ear And echoes from the dun subconscient caves, Speech leaps, thought quivers, the heart vibrates, the will Answers and tissue and nerve obey the call. Our lives translate these subtle intimacies; All is the commerce of a secret Power.” Savitri-162 “A thinking puppet is the mind of life: Its choice is the work of elemental strengths That know not their own birth and end and cause And glimpse not the immense intent they serve.” Savitri-162 “Insignificant architects of low-built lives And engineers of interest and desire, Out of crude earthiness and muddy thrills And coarse reactions of material nerve They build our huddled structures of self-will And the ill-lighted mansions of our thought, Or with the ego’s factories and marts Surround the beautiful temple of the soul.” Savitri-163 “All dulls down to convention and routine Or a fierce excitement brings him vivid joys: His days are tinged with the red hue of strife And lust’s hot glare and passion’s crimson stain; Battle and murder are his tribal game.” Savitri-165 “Its (rajasic mind’s) power could deform divinest things. A wind of sorrow breathed upon the world; All thought with falsehood was besieged, all act Stamped with defect or with frustration’s sign, All high attempt with failure or vain success, But none could know the reason of his fall.” Savitri-203 “Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire. A thousand shapes it wore, took numberless names: A need of multitude and uncertainty Pricks it for ever to pursue the One On countless roads across the vasts of Time Through circuits of unending difference. It burns all breasts with an ambiguous fire.” Savitri-247 “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-478-479 “There is a joy in all that meets the sense, A joy in all experience of the soul, A joy in evil and a joy in good, A joy in virtue and a joy in sin: Indifferent to the threat of Karmic law, Joy dares to grow upon forbidden soil, Its sap runs through the plant and flowers of Pain:” Savitri-630 “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.”⁵² The Mother “Rajas contributes our normal active nature with all its good and evil; when unchastened by a sufficient element of sattwa , it turns to egoism, self-will and violence, the perverse, obstinate or exaggerating action of the reason, prejudice, attachment to opinion, clinging to error, the subservience of the intelligence to our desires and preferences and not to the truth, the fanatic or the sectarian mind, self-will, pride, arrogance, selfishness, ambition, lust, greed, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, the egoisms of love, all the vices and passions, the exaggerations of the aesthesis, the morbidities and perversions of the sensational and vital being. Tamas in its own right produces the coarse, dull and ignorant type of human nature, rajas the vivid, restless, kinetic man, driven by the breath of action, passion and desire.”¹⁷ Sri Aurobindo The man’s vital mind is an instrument of desire, the troubled seed of things, which hunts after unrealised possibilities, burns all hearts with ambiguous fire, enlarges always passion and craving, creates dissatisfaction, an unrest, a seeking for something more than what life seems able to give it, a constant demand for more and always more, a quest for new worlds to conquer, an incessant drive towards an exceeding of the bounds of circumstance and a self-exceeding. It is not satisfied with physical and objective enjoyment only but seeks to a subjective, imaginative, a purely emotive satisfaction, enjoyment and pleasure, which are dependent on external things, external sense contacts and concerned with the practical, the immediately realizable and possible events, the habitual, the common and average. ‘Mostly however the constant recurrence of depression and despair or of doubt and revolt is due to a mental or vital formation which takes hold of the vital mind and makes it run round always in the same circle at the slightest provoking cause or even without cause. It is like an illness to which the body consents from habit and from belief in the illness even though it suffers from it, and once started the illness runs its habitual course unless it is cut short by some strong counteracting force. If once the body can withdraw its consent, the illness immediately or quickly ceases — that was the secret of the Coue´ system. So too if the vital mind withdraws its consent, refuses to be dominated by the habitual suggestions and the habitual movements, these recurrences of depression and despair can be made soon to cease. But it is not easy for this (vital) mind, once it has got into the habit of consent, even a quite passive and suffering and reluctant consent, to cancel the habit and get rid of the black circle. It can be done easily only when the mind refuses any longer to believe in the suggestions or accept the ideas or feelings that start the circle.’¹² Desire⁴⁹ is the outcome of incompleteness, of insufficiency and that of not yet sufficiently possessed or enjoyed which the being seeks for possession. It creates confusion, throws discord and brings impurity which is the whole evil of our psychological existence. If the vital mind is deprived of its natural urge of enjoyment, which is the whole object of desire then it recoils into subjection of physical mind and man would live like the animal, accepting his first actual physical life and its limits as his whole possibility, moving the material Nature’s established order and asking for nothing beyond it. The human emotions are governed by egoistic passion, self-satisfied perversions, blind instinctive affections, cruelty and beast wrath of violence,⁴⁵ a heart besieged and given over to lust, treachery and rapacity, little and narrow greed, mean pettiness of an obscure and fallen life-force, bottomless ingratitude and debased by slavery to any and every lower impulse. So, it is the mixture of the emotive heart and the sense bound hungering vital that creates a false desire Soul³³ which the reason and intellect in man rightly distrust and disbelieve; ‘for the nature of the vital mind is always to cloud the true mind’s perception and drive it towards action. Neither the vital mind nor the physical mind are things that have to be got rid of, but they must be quietened, purified, controlled and transformed. That will take place fully when the thinking mind becomes fully conscious and when the psychic comes forward and leads and governs both it and the vital and physical being.’¹¹ So, a great sincerity is asked of a Sadhaka while searching the true Soul through entry into the subliminal vital nature⁴⁴ which is an incurable pretender and actor. As the calm equality of the Soul increases and deepens, he is able and far advanced in entire elimination of falsity and dangerous crudity of life and becomes aware of the true inmost being, manifests true life in the power of Godhead and joy of Infinite. His vigilant eye must keep constant watch on deceits of ego and ambushes of misleading powers of Darkness and they often take the appearance of the divine form in order to capture the soul of a Sadhaka. The vital being must be trained to right enjoyment of life in obedience to the working of the Divine Will and get rid of all human craving and attachment. Similarly, heart must be trained to the right joy and laughter of the Soul in obedience to the working of the Divine Love and get rid of all wrong emotions of fear, wrath, hatred and lust. The vital mind or Psychic prana ³⁴ is baffled by life and frustrated or else dissatisfied with all its satisfactions, overtaken by a deep disgust and disappointment, finds that all is vanity and vexation of Spirit and is ready to reject life and existence as an unreality, all that it hunted after as an illusion, Maya . It flames violently towards the heaven but sinks engulfed into mire of hell; climbs above to drag down high truth into the Subconscient abyss but does not succeed; its brilliant forces rush towards muddy ends. The education of the vital mind asks giving up of its cherished desires,³⁵ falsity of senses, emotions, feelings, impulses, forceful mechanism of action and reaction and they will be replaced by a luminous, desireless, free and yet automatically self-determining pure sense, pure enjoyment,47 limitless passion and yearning for the Infinite force. Life must be an instrument of universal and impersonal knowledge, power, delight, love and beauty and fulfilled through its greater joy and strength. And finally, vital mind must be elevated to Supermind which is the native seat of all perfection. Education of purposeful and laborious Intellect: “A fearless will for knowledge dared to erase The lines of safety Reason draws that bar Mind’s soar, soul’s dive into the Infinite.” Savitri-26 “The mind learns and knows not, turning its back to truth; It studies surface laws by surface thought,… Adds purposeful figures to her purposeless sum,” Savitri-160 “Our mind lives far off from the authentic Light Catching at little fragments of the Truth” Savitri-161 “As long as intellect’s outward-gazing sight Serves earthy interest and creature joys, An incurable littleness pursues his days.” Savitri-164 “Transfigured were the fixed scheme of reasoning Thought.” Savitri-232 “In her high works of pure intelligence, In her withdrawal from the senses’ trap, There comes no breaking of the walls of mind, There leaps no rending flash of absolute power, There dawns no light of heavenly certitude.” Savitri-251 “In this small mould of infant mind and sense Desire is a child-heart’s cry crying for bliss, Our reason only a toys’ artificer, A rule-maker in a strange stumbling game. But she her dwarf aides knew whose confident sight A bounded prospect took for the far goal.” Savitri-257 “Reason cannot tear off that glimmering mask, Her efforts only make it glimmer more; In packets she ties up the Indivisible; Finding her hands too small to hold vast Truth She breaks up knowledge into alien parts Or peers through cloud-rack for a vanished sun:” Savitri-257 “Upraised the earth-mind to superhuman heights.” Savitri-360 “A mind daring heavenly experiment, Growing towards some largeness they felt near, Testing the unknown’s bound with eager touch They still were prisoned by their human grain: They could not keep up with her tireless step; Too small and eager for her large-paced will, Too narrow to look with the unborn Infinite’s gaze Their nature weary grew of things too great.” Savitri-363 “Attuned to Silence and to the world-rhyme, They loosened the knot of the imprisoning mind; Achieved was the wide untroubled witness gaze, Unsealed was Nature’s great spiritual eye; To the height of heights rose now their daily climb:” Savitri-481-82 “Thus slowly I (Mother of Light) lift man’s soul nearer the Light. But human mind clings to its ignorance And to its littleness the human heart And to its right to grief the earthly life.” Savitri-516 “There came into mind’s little frontal room Thoughts that enlarged our limited human range, Lifted the ideal’s half-quenched or sinking torch Or peered through the finite at the infinite.” Savitri-540 “Impersonal, signless, featureless, void of forms A blank pure consciousness had replaced the mind.” Savitri-545 “The mind develops into the mind of the sage, at first the high mental thinker, then the spiritual sage who has gone beyond the abstractions of thought to the beginnings of a direct experience.”¹⁹ Sri Aurobindo “The dharma of the sattwic man is the highest in the circle of the gunas; but that too is a limited view and a dwarfed standard. Its imperfect indications lead to a petty and relative perfection; temporarily satisfying to the enlightened personal ego, it is not founded either on the whole truth of the self or on the whole truth of Nature.”⁵ ⁹ Sri Aurobindo Supermind, mind, life and body are the four instruments which the Spirit uses for its manifestation in the workings of Nature. Supermind is Spiritual Consciousness acting as self-luminous Knowledge, Will and Delight. Mind is essentially the faculty of Supermind, which measures and limits and fixes a particular centre for cosmic movement and action and only very indirectly and partially illumined and it can look upward and receive the Supramental communication and passes it on to the other lower members. And since man is a mental being, so intellect is at least his most constant, normal and effective means for enlightening his Ignorance. The normal thought action of the mind is divided into a triple⁵ movement; (1) first and the lowest is the habitual thought mind whose ideas are based on the available data given by the senses and by surface experiences of nervous and emotional being and on the customary notions formed by the education and outward life and environment; it can think nothing as entirely true and all its formulations break down under the test of new suggestions from the infinite; (2) the second grade of thinking activity of the creative pragmatic mind which can link the truth of life and the truth of idea not yet manifested in life; the thinking mind finds its most clear, precise, effective principle of organisation and characteristic satisfaction in the reasoning and logical intelligence; a more precise and assured action of the intelligence will get rid of the superficiality of this ordinary method of the mind, test every step, scrutinize severely every conclusion, efficiently guard against error and reduce the mind’s action to a well-founded system, synthesis and order; (3) the last gradation of thinking opens in us the pure, subtle, flexible ideative outer mind which lives disinterestedly in the truth of idea for Divine action and yearns to bear the Spiritual Light and lives far from the ordinary mental habit which turns truth into purveyors of error and hurriedly carries light to suffering men and outer world. . The limitation of mind is that firstly, fear, desire and sorrow are recognised as diseases of the mind, born of its sense of division and limitation; it is an inveterate divider of the Indivisible and its observation and understanding is always incomplete, uncertain, relative, partial and inconclusive, and it’s out going action and creation is still more confused, narrow, inferior and imperfect; the error of practical reason is an excessive subjection to apparent facts of existence and makes life artificial and rationally mechanical, deprives it of its spontaneity and vitality, prevents the freedom and expansion of the Spirit and not courageous enough to carry the profounder facts of potentiality to their logical conclusion; secondly, mental activity is restricted to this life, limited in time, space, scope and form, life that is death, hunger and incapacity attempting to become life that is immortality, satisfied delight and omnipotence; so long as there is a mixed action and the mental constructions and imaginations are allowed to operate, this passivity of intuitive mind to the higher light, the truth light, cannot be complete or securely dominate and there cannot therefore be a firm organisation of the triple time knowledge; thirdly, mental consciousness is rescued from a sleep of Inconscience, subjected to the means it uses, limited by body and ego; it finds its relation negatively with others by various means of hostile contact and antipathy and positively by various means of uniting contact and sympathy; fourthly, mind seeks for the delight and the self-luminous Divine Consciousness and finds only the apparent negations of pleasure, pain, grief, indifference and the dualities which is again merely a certain trick of false reception of our divided mental being; it is not our true state at all but only a fragmentary formulation or discoloured spray of conscious-force tossed up by the infinite sea of our self-existence; fifthly, the veil or lid created by mind prevents the attainment and realization of the Divine; mind with its exclusive concentration cannot bridge the gulf between the passive and active Brahman and it builds a wall of non-communication between the two and puts itself away from the dynamic aspect of Consciousness; sixthly, mind is a power of ignorance and acts always partially and by limitation, it may even forget itself in a complete Inconscience, or Nescience, awaken from it to the ignorance of a partial knowledge and move from the ignorance towards a complete knowledge; and even if it arrived at integral knowledge, it would still be by a sort of putting together, a mental and intellectual arrangement, an artificial unity, a surface manipulation of things and not an essential and real oneness and not the spiritual change of consciousness; seventhly, mental truth is always an intellectual, emotional and sensational representation and not the direct truth, not the truth itself in its body and essence; eighthly, the mental man thinks and sees on the level of present life and is oblivious of past and future lives or all life; his main basis of knowledge is the present moment with a ill grasped glimpse into the past and blind look towards the future, he bases himself on actual appearance of outward things and oblivious of the vast domain of inner living; and ninthly, when the intellectual reason is applied to the disciplining of infra-rational life, it constantly forces on life a control, a measure, an artificial procrustean rule that succeeds either by hardening life or killing it or constrains it into rigid forms and conventions that ends by a revolt of life, a decay or disruption of systems and imprisons its capacity; or our nature is shaped rigidly by the practice of the ideals constructed by human mind and to limit ourselves by it is to restrict the growth of our larger Self; it is still more difficult for the reason to understand and handle with the suprarational life and the reason is lost in the largeness, subtlety, profundity and complexity of intuitive movement and guidance. And falsity of thought with all its mental constructions can be eliminated by intervention of greater felicity of Knowledge, Truth, Self and Nature. The advantage of progressive mind is that firstly, it aims at perfecting itself as well as the house in which it dwells and the means of life that it uses, and is capable of awaking by a progressive self-realisation to its own true nature as a form of the Spirit; secondly, the characteristic energy of pure Mind is change through self-enlargement and self-improvement and moves continually from a smaller and simpler to a larger and more complex perfection; thirdly, the fullness of mental life, the suppleness, plasticity, flexibility and wide capacity of intellect to open itself towards its Source, receive the light from above, the ordered richness of emotion and sensibility, largeness and harmonized action of the will are passages towards the development of more powerful faculties and higher life; the reason can become an intermediary between the Subconscient power of the Spirit organizing the life of the animal and the Superconscient power of the Spirit which becoming conscient can organize the existence and life of a spiritual Supermanhood; fourthly, mind can stand on the top as the leader of the journey towards the innermost door of consciousness through its functioning of gathering and reflection, meditation, fixed contemplation, the absorbed dwelling of the mind on its object; fifthly, it is not a seer of occult imperatives that necessitate the movement of creation but a half-light thrown from the Infinite, a half view taken for the whole, a pale refracted light idealized as the burning body of the Sun and its splendour; its idealized vision does not arrive at the essence of Being but it is only an inferior mode of Nature; sixthly, from ordinary point of view its knowledge is an intellectual appreciation of the facts of life, mind and matter and the laws that govern them and it is undertaken partly for the pure satisfaction of the intellect, partly for practical efficiency and is used in helping, saving and liberating or hurting, oppressing and destroying others; seventhly, 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, more inward influences, striving to enlarge itself and pressing against the concealed body of true gnosis; initially mind is satisfied with first Spiritual enlightenment, then afterwards it finds that to rest satisfied here would be to rest in partial knowledge and realises subsequently that it has to go on heightening and enlarging the consciousness indefinitely; eighthly, if its passage is through crooked ways of error, ignorance and falsehood still its impulse is disinterested truth seeking, truth finding and truth creation and finally its goal is always Integral Knowledge; ninthly, mind has to learn to awaken to the true seeking of the Soul veiled within itself, to the Reality from which all things hold their truth, to the Consciousness of which all consciousness are multiple entities, to the Power from which all get what force of being they have within them, to Delight to which all delight are partial figures. The first difficulty is that all action of mind is a derivation of secret Supermind and such a truth is diminished in scope, degraded into lower movement and even when it is widest and most complete, mental knowing is still an indirect knowledge; secondly, it is a habituated divider of the Indivisible and its whole nature is to dwell on one thing at a time to the exclusion of others or to stress it to the subordination of others. To train the mind as a pure, clear and passive reflector of the Divine is identified as an important exercise in Integral Education. So thirdly, the preliminary need is a right thought which can be effective and established by liberating oneself from the negative habit of sense-error, desire, old association, intellectual prejudgment, exclusiveness, systematizing and attachment to its own constructions and followed by positive opening towards vision, spiritual experience and realisation. The last difficulty of the mind is identified as its inability to hold at once the unity and multiplicity of the existence and realisation of all this as Sachchidananda is its great difficulty and its supreme difficulty is to unify without losing and integralise without rejecting. Mind indeed can never be a perfect instrument of the Spirit; a supreme self-expression is not possible in its movements because to separate, divide, limit is its very character and its nature is reflected, diluted and diffused or a narrowly intensive light and sets up willed barriers against higher faculties; it cannot give free admission to the vast and comprehensive self-existent luminosity and joy of the Spirit and all Truth’s infinities because by that it would lose itself in an un-reconciled variety, an undetermined immensity and would be unable to act and proceed to practical consequences and an effective creation. “If once it met the intense original Flame, An answering touch might shatter all measures made And earth sink down with the weight of the Infinite.” Savitri-18 “Awake not the immeasurable descent, Speak not my secret name to hostile Time; Man is too weak to bear the Infinite’s weight. Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth.” Savitri-335 At first, when the Supramental pressure falls on the unpurified mind a contrary phenomenon may for a time appear. That is due to several causes. First, there may be a disturbance, even a derangement created by impact of the greater hardly measurable power on an inferior consciousness which is not capable of responding to it organically or even perhaps of bearing the pressure; secondly, the very fact of the simultaneous and yet uncoordinated activity of two quite different forces, especially if the mind insists on its own way, if it tries obstinately or violently to profit by the Supermind instead of giving itself up to it and its purpose and acting as a transmitting channel, if it is not sufficiently passive and obedient to the higher guidance, may lead to a great excitation of power but also an increased disorder and obstructer of power and light that comes from above; there is a disparateness between the Supramental consciousness in which the Purusha now stands, thinks and wills and the mental, vital and physical consciousness through which he has to effectuate its light and knowledge; he lives and sees with an ideal consciousness, but he has yet in his lower self to make it entirely practical and effective; otherwise he can only act with a greater or less Spiritual effectiveness through an internal communication with others on the Spiritual level and on the higher mental level that is most easily affected by it, but the effect is diminished and is retarded by the inferiority or lack of the integral play of the being; this can only be remedied by the Supramental taking hold of and Supramentalising the mental, the vital and the physical consciousness, --transforming them, that is to say, into moulds of the Supramental nature; thirdly, mind can be qualified for the transmission of Supramental force much more easily if there is a previous Yogic preparation and long purification of lower nature, a passivity of the mind calmly and strongly open to the Spirit and reason’s plasticity towards all sides and all aspects of self-development; otherwise there will be much difficulty in getting rid of the discord or disparateness between the ideal Supramentality and the mental transmitting instruments, the mind channel, the heart, the sense, the nervous and the physical being. Lastly, King Aswapati was able to slay/transform the desire Soul represented by tamasic, rajasic and sattwic mind by elevating his consciousness to Bliss Self and dynamising it. “The soul’s ignorance (desire Soul) is slain but not the soul:” Savitri-311 “The covering Nescience was unmasked and slain;” Savitri-313, “To err no more was natural to mind; Wrong could not come where all was light and love.” Savitri-313-14 “All that denies (Supreme Love) must be torn out and slain And crushed the many longings (of desire) for whose sake We lose the One (Divine) for whom our lives were made.” Savitri-316 “Now other claims (of desire Soul) had hushed in him their cry:" Savitri-316, “All seemed to have perished that was undivine:” Savitri-318, “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,” Savitri-319 By the Pressure of Savitri’s Viswarupa, Death experienced following partial transformation of Nature: “A pressure of intolerable force Weighed on his (Death’s) 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, Recapitulation: “The Supermind had descended long ago—very long ago—into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light… As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he has called the Mind of Light got realised in me.”²⁰ The Mother 29 June 1953 “All strong natures have the rajasik active outgoing force in them and if that were sufficient to unfit for the Yoga, very few of us would have had a chance. As for the doubt of the physical mind as to whether the thing is possible, who has not had it? In my own case it pursued me years and years and it is only in the last two years (written on 16th April 1923) that the last shadow of doubt, not latterly of its theoretical feasibility, but of the practical certainty of its achievement in the present state of the world and of the human nature, entirely left me.”²¹ Sri Aurobindo “This is a difficult lesson to learn (rejection of revolt and impatience), but you must learn it. I do not find fault with you for taking long over it, I myself took full twelve years to learn it thoroughly, (written in the year1919) and even after I knew the principle well enough, it took me quite four years and more to master my lower nature in this respect. But you have the advantage of my experience and my help; you will be able to do it more rapidly, if you consciously and fully assist me, by not associating yourself with the enemy Desire; jahi kamam durasadam , remember that utterance of the Gita, it is a keyword of our Yoga.”⁵⁰ Sri Aurobindo “It was in 1910 that I had this sort of reversal of consciousness about which I spoke the other evening – that is, the first contact with the higher Divine – and it completely changed my life. From that moment on, I was conscious that all one does is the expression of the indwelling Divine Will. But it is the Divine Will AT THE VERY CENTER of oneself, although for a while there remained an activity in the physical mind. But this was stilled two or three days after I saw Sri Aurobindo for the first time in 1914, and it (physical mind) never started up again. Silence settled. And the consciousness was established above the head.”²⁶ The Mother “And it is part of any integral yoga: you discipline this physical mind. I have done it for more than sixty years.”⁵¹ The Mother “And this physical mind of which Sri Aurobindo said that it was an impossibility, that it was something that turns round and round and will always turn round and round, precisely without consciousness, like a kind of machine, that mind has been converted, has become silent, and in the silence it has received the inspiration of the Consciousness. And it has begun again to pray: the same prayers that were there before in the mind.”²² The Mother 22 November-1967 “It is only when the Supramental manifests in the body-mind that its presence can be permanent.”²³ Sri Aurobindo “It is only when, awaking from its immersion in Prakriti, it perceives its oneness with the One and its oneness with all existences that it can become free from these things and found its right relation to this executive world-Nature.”²⁴ Sri Aurobindo “But it is also possible to make this silence of the mind and ability to suspend the habits of the lower nature a first step towards the discovery of a superior formulation, a higher grade of the status and energy of our being and pass by an ascent and transformation into the supramental power of the spirit. And this may even, though with more difficulty, be done without resorting to the complete state of quietude of the normal mind by a persistent and progressive transformation of all the mental into their greater corresponding supramental powers and activities.”²⁵ Sri Aurobindo All human problems would move harmoniously to their right solution if physical mind, vital mind and intellect could act free from all impurity,46 perversion and intrusions of Subconscient and surrounding life energy and if that energy could be made to obey their right command, adesh, from subliminal and Subconscient plane. The task of integral Yoga is to link these three lower mental planes fully with the Supra-physical, Supra-vital and Supra-mental and to transform the physical sense organ of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch dominated by physical and vital mind into the nature of something subtler, freer, greater truth, more spiritually concrete substance and more plastic Subliminal, Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental sense which seem to be the most difficult task and if the last and lowest physical mind is transformed then it will be the greatest instrument for holding the Supramental in the Physical consciousness. OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA/21/ The Life Divine-429-30, 2: CWSA/22/The Life Divine-746, 3: CWSA/22/The Life Divine-800, 4: CWSA/22/The Life Divine-915-16, 5: “It is difficult for the human mind to combine rightly and harmonise these three movements of the intelligence. (1) The ordinary man lives mainly in the habitual, has a comparatively feeble action of the creative and pragmatic and experiences a great difficulty in using at all or entering into the movement of the pure ideative mentality. (2) The creative pragmatic mind is commonly too much preoccupied with its own motion to move freely and disinterestedly in the atmosphere of pure ideative order and on the other hand has often an insufficient grasp on the actualities imposed by the habitual mentality and the obstacles it imposes as also on other movements of pragmatic thought and action than that which it is itself interested in building. (3) The pure ideative mentality tends to construct abstract and arbitrary systems of truth, intellectual sections and ideative edifices, and either misses the pragmatic movement necessary to life and lives only or mainly in ideas, or cannot act with sufficient power and directness in the life field and is in danger of being divorced from or weak in the world of the practical and habitual mentality. An accommodation of some kind is made, but the tyranny of the predominant tendency interferes with the wholeness and unity of the thinking being. Mind fails to be assured master even of its own totality, because the secret of that totality lies beyond it in the free unity of the self, free and therefore capable of an infinite multiplicity and diversity, and in the Supramental power that can alone bring out in a natural perfection the organic multiple movement of the self’s unity.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-843-44 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: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-238, 8: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-314, “The problem appeared again to me very intensely when I read Sri Aurobindo’s The Yoga of Self-Perfection. I was confronted with a whole formidable world to be transformed – to transform what is already luminous is quite easy, but to transform that! ... ugh – this stuff of life, so low and so coarse, so ordinary ... it’s much more difficult.’ ” The Mother’s Agenda/ December 13, 1960, 9: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-689, 10: CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-30, 11: CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-358, 12: CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-365, 13: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-60, 14: “To the physical mind only the words and facts and acts of a man matter; to the inner mind it is the spiritual happenings in him that matter.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-479, 15: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-570, 16: “All strong natures have the rajasik active outgoing force in them and if that were sufficient to unfit for the Yoga, very few of us would have had a chance. As for the doubt of the physical mind as to whether the thing is possible, who has not had it? In my own case it pursued me years and years and it is only in the last two years (written on 16th April 1923) that the last shadow of doubt, not latterly of its theoretical feasibility, but of the practical certainty of its achievement in the present state of the world and of the human nature, entirely left me.” CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-360, 17: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-686 18: “This brings us another element of the ordinary conception of rebirth which is not acceptable, since it is an obvious error of the physical mind, --the idea of the soul itself as a limited personality which survives unchanged from one birth to another. This too simple and superficial idea of the soul and personality is born of the physical mind’s inability to look beyond its own apparent self-formation in this single existence. In its conception, what returns in the reincarnation must be not only the same spiritual being, the same psychic entity, but the same formation of nature that inhabited the body of the last birth; the body changes, the circumstances are different, but the form of the being, the mind, the character, the disposition, temperament, tendencies are same…” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-847-48 19: CWSA-22/ The Life Divine/p- 935, 20: The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-13/p-62-63, 21: CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-360, 22: The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-11/p-93, 23: TMCW-11/Notes on the Way/p-293, 24: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-100, 25: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-758-759, 26: “It was in 1910 that I had this sort of reversal of consciousness about which I spoke the other evening – that is, the first contact with the higher Divine – and it completely changed my life. From that moment on, I was conscious that all one does is the expression of the indwelling Divine Will. But it is the Divine Will AT THE VERY CENTER of oneself, although for a while there remained an activity in the physical mind. But this was stilled two or three days after I saw Sri Aurobindo for the first time in 1914, and it never started up again. Silence settled. And the consciousness was established above the head... In the first experience [of 1910], the consciousness was established in the psychic depths of the being, and from that poise issued the feeling of no longer doing anything but what the Divine wanted – it was the consciousness that the divine Will was all-powerful and that there was no longer any personal will, although there was still some mental activity and everything had to be made silent. In 1914, it was silenced, and the consciousness was established above the head. Here (the heart) and here (above the head), the connection is constant. Does one exclude the other? They exist simultaneously; it’s the same thing. When you start becoming truly conscious, you realize that it depends upon the kinds of activities you have to do. When you do a certain kind of work, it is in the heart that the Force gathers to radiate outwards, and when you do another kind of work, it is above the head that the Force concentrates to radiate outwards, but the two are not separate: the center of activity is here or there depending upon what you have to do.” The Mother’s Agenda-6.6.1958 27: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-12, 28: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-624, 29: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-181, 30: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-242, 31: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1103, 32: “He has in him not a single mentality, but a double and a triple, (1) the mind material (physical mind) and nervous (vital mind), (2) the pure intellectual mind which liberates itself from the illusions of body and senses, and (3) a divine mind above intellect which in its turn liberates itself from the imperfect modes of the logically discriminative and imaginative reason.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-12, “The true human existence, therefore, only begins when the intellectual mentality emerges out of the material (physical mind) and we begin more and more to live in the mind independent of the nervous and physical obsession and in the measure of that liberty are able to accept rightly and rightly to use the life and body.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-12, “The sign is that the fine and full equilibrium of vitality and matter, the sane, robust, long-lived human body is ordinarily found only in races or classes of men who reject the effort of thought, its disturbances, its tensions, or think only with the material mind (physical mind). Civilised man has yet to establish an equilibrium between the fully active mind and body; he does not normally possess it.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-13, “She has harmonized the bodily life with the material mind (physical mind), she is harmonizing it with the play of the intellectual mentality; for that, although it tends to a depression of the full animal and vital vigour, need not produce active disturbances.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-13, “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.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-23, 33: “Every fibre of the sense mind and basic consciousness is shot through with the action of the psychic prana, it is a nervous or vital and physical mentality. Even the buddhi and ego are overpowered by it, although they have the capacity of raising the mind beyond subjection to this vital, nervous and physical psychology. This combination creates in us the sensational desire soul which is the chief obstacle to a higher human as well as to the still greater divine perfection. Finally, above our present conscious mentality is a secret supermind which is the proper means and native seat of that perfection.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-647 “This nature of emotive mind as a reaction of chitta with a certain close dependence upon the nervous life sensations and the responses of the psychic prana is so characteristic that in some languages it is called chitta and prana, the heart, the life soul; it is indeed the most directly agitating and powerfully insistent action of the desire-soul which is the immixture of vital desire and responsive consciousness has created in us. And yet the true emotive soul, the real psyche in us, is not a desire-soul, but a soul of pure love and delight; but that, life the rest of our true being, can only emerge when the deformation created by the life of desire is removed from the surface and is no longer the characteristic action of our being. To get that done is a necessary part of our purification, liberation, perfection.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-649 “There are however two different kinds of action of these inner ranges of consciousness. (1) The first is a more outer and confused activity of the awakening subliminal mind and life which is clogged with and subject to the grosser desires and illusions of the mind and vital being and (2) vitiated in spite of its wider range of experience and powers and capacities by an enormous mass of error and deformations of the will and knowledge, full of false suggestions and images, false and distorted intuitions and inspirations and impulses, the latter often even depraved and perverse, and vitiated too by interference of the physical mind and its obscurities. This is an inferior activity to which clairvoyants, psychists, spiritists, occultists, seekers of powers and siddhis are very liable and to which all the warnings against the dangers and errors of this kind of seeking are more especially applicable. The seeker of spiritual perfection has to pass as quickly as possible, if he cannot altogether avoid, this zone of danger, and the safe rule here is to be attached to none of these things, but to make spiritual progress one’s sole real objective and to put no sure confidence in other things until the mind and life soul are purified and the light of the spirit and the supermind or at least of the spiritually illumined mind and soul are shed on these inner ranges of experience. For when the mind is tranquillised and purified and the pure psyche liberated from the insistence of the desire soul, these experiences are free from any serious danger, --except indeed that of limitation and a certain element of error which cannot be entirely eliminated so long as the soul experiences and acts on the mental level. For there is then a pure action of the true psychical consciousness and its powers, a reception of psychical experience pure in itself of the worse deformations, although subject to the limitations of the representing mind, and capable of a high spiritualization and light. The complete power and truth, however, can only come by the opening of the supermind and the supramentalizing of the mental and psychical experience.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-874-75, “Chitta, the basic consciousness, is largely subconscient; it has, open and hidden, two kinds of action, (1) one passive or receptive, (2) the other active or reactive and formative. As passive power it receives all impacts, even those of which the mind is unaware or to which it is inattentive, and it stores them in an immense reserve of passive subconscient memory on which the mind as an active memory can draw.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-647-48 34: “Still the proper action of the sensational mind is not emotion, but conscious nervous response and nervous feeling and affection, impulse of the use of physical sense and body for some action, conscious vital craving and desire. There is a side of receptive response, a side of dynamic reaction. These things get their proper normal use when the higher mind is not mechanically subject to them, but controls and regulates their action. But a still higher state is when they undergo a certain transformation by the conscious will of the spirit which gives its right and no longer its wrong and desire form of characteristic action to the psychic prana .” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-650 “The deformation which enters in and prevents the purity, is a form of vital craving; the grand deformation which the psychic prana contributes to our being, is desire. The root of desire is the vital craving to seize upon that which we feel we have not, it is the limited life’s instinct for possession and satisfaction. It creates the sense of want, --first the simpler vital craving of hunger, thirst, lust, then these psychical hungers, thirsts, lusts of the mind which are a much greater and more instant and pervading affliction of our being, the hunger which is infinite because it is the hunger of the infinite being, the thirst which is only temporarily lulled by satisfaction, but is in its nature insatiable. The psychic prana invades the sensational mind and brings into it the unquiet thirst of sensations, invades the dynamic mind with the lust of control, having, domination, success, fulfillment of every impulse, fills the emotional mind with the desire for the satisfaction of liking and disliking, for the wreaking of love and hate, brings the shrinkings and panics of fear and the strainings and disappointments of hope, imposes the tortures of grief and the brief fevers and excitements of joy, makes the intelligence and intelligent will the accomplices of all these things and turns them in their own kind into deformed and lame instruments, the will into a will of craving and the intelligence into a partial, a stumbling and an eager pursuer of limited, impatient, militant prejudgment and opinion. Desire is the root of all sorrow, disappointment, affliction, for though it has a feverish joy of pursuit and satisfaction, yet because it is always a straining of the being, it carries into its pursuit and its getting a labour, hunger, struggle, a rapid subjection to fatigue, a sense of limitation, dissatisfaction and early disappointment with all its gains, a ceaseless morbid stimulation, trouble, disquiet, asanti. To get rid of desire is one firm indispensable purification of the psychical prana, -- for so we can replace the soul of desire with its pervading immiscence in all our instruments by a mental soul of calm delight and its clear and limpid possession of ourselves and world and Nature which is the crystal basis of the mental life and its perfection.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-656-57 “The psychical prana interferes in all the higher operations to deform them, but its defect is itself due to its being interfered with and deformed by the nature of physical workings in the body (probably physical mind) which Life has evolved in its emergence from matter. It is that (physical mind) which has created the separation of the individual life in the body from the life of the universe and stamped on it the character of want, limitation, hunger, thirst, craving for what it has not, a long groping after enjoyment and a hampered and baffled need of possession. Easily regulated and limited in the purely physical order of things, it (physical mind) extends itself in the psychical prana immensely and becomes, as mind grows, a thing with difficulty limited, insatiable, irregular, a busy creator of disorder and disease. Moreover, the psychical prana leans on the physical life, limits itself by the nervous force of the physical being, limits there by the operations of the mind and becomes the link of its dependence on the body and its subjection to fatigue, incapacity, disease, disorder, insanity, the pettiness, the precariousness and even the possible dissolution of the workings of the physical mentality. Our mind instead of being a thing powerful in its own strength, a clear instrument of conscious spirit, free and able to control, use and perfect the life and body, appears in the result a mixed construction; it is a predominantly the physical mentality limited by its physical organs and subject to the demands and to the obstructions of the life in the body. This can only be got rid of by a sort of practical, inward psychological operation of analysis by which we become aware of the mentality as a separate power, isolate it (physical mind) for a free working, distinguish too the psychical and the physical prana and make them no longer a link for dependence, but a transmitting channel for the Idea and Will in the buddhi, obedient to its suggestions and commands; the prana then becomes a passive means of effectuation for mind’s direct control of the physical life. This control, however abnormal to our habitual poise of action, is not only possible,--it appears to some extent in the phenomena of hypnosis, though these are unhealthy abnormal, because there it is a foreign will which suggests and commands, --but must become the normal action when the higher Self within takes up the direct command of the whole being. This control can be exercised perfectly, however from the supramental level, for it is there that the true effective Idea and Will reside and the mental thought-mind, even spiritualised, is only a limited, though it may be made a very powerful deputy.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-657-58, 35: “Desire, it is thought, is the real motive power of human living and to cast it out would be to stop the springs of life, satisfaction of desire is man’s only enjoyment and to eliminate it would be to extinguish the impulse of life by a quietistic asceticism. But the real motive power of the life of the soul is Will; desire is only a deformation of will in the dominant bodily life and physical mind.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-658 “This desire is essential to the ordinary man; he cannot live or act as an individual without knotting up all his action into the service of some kind of lower or higher craving, preference or passion.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-675, “All immiscence of desire in the buddhi is an impurity. The intelligence coloured by desire is an impure intelligence and it distorts the Truth; the will coloured by desire is an impure will and it puts a stamp of distortion, pain and imperfection upon the soul’s activity. All immiscence of the emotions of the soul of desire is an impurity and similarly distorts both the knowledge and the action. All subjection of the buddhi to the sensations and impulses is an impurity. The thought and will have to stand back detached from desire, troubling emotion, distracting or mastering impulse and to act in their own right until they can discover a greater guide, a Will, Tapas or divine Shakti which will take the place of desire and mental will and impulse, an Ananda or pure delight of the spirit and an illumined spiritual knowledge which will express themselves in the action of that Shakti.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-669, “The seat of the ego is said to be in the buddhi; it is an ignorance of the discriminating mind and reason which discriminate wrongly and take the individuation of mind, life and body for a truth of separative existence and are turned away from the greater reconciling truth of the oneness of all existence. At any rate in man it is the ego idea which chiefly supports the falsehood of a separative existence; to get rid of this idea; to dwell on the opposite idea of unity, of the one self, the one spirit, the one being of nature is therefore an effective remedy; but it is not by itself absolutely effective. For the ego, though it supports itself by this ego idea, aham-buddhi, finds its most powerful means for a certain obstinacy or passion of persistence in the normal action of the sense-mind, the prana and the body. To cast out of us the ego idea is not entirely possible or not entirely effective until these instruments have undergone purification; for their action being persistently egoistic and separative, the buddhi is carried away by them, --as a boat by winds on the sea, says the Gita, --the knowledge in the intelligence is being constantly obscured or lost temporarily and has to be restored again, a very labour of Sisyphus. But if the lower instruments have been purified of egoistic desire, wish, will, egoistic passion, egoistic emotion and the buddhi itself of egoistic idea and preference, then the knowledge of the spiritual truth of oneness can find a firm foundation. Till then, the ego takes all sorts of subtle forms and we imagine ourselves to be free from it, when we are really acting as its instruments and all we have attained is a certain intellectual poise which is not the true spiritual liberation.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-677 36: “For Knowledge and Love are pure in their essence and become mixed and embarrassed, corrupted and degraded only when they enter into the ambiguous movement of the life forces and are seized by them for the outward life’s crude movements and obstinately inferior motives. Alone of the three powers Life or at least a certain predominant Will-in-Life has the appearance of something impure, accursed or fallen in its very essence. At its contact, wrapped in its dull sheaths or caught in its iridescent quagmires, the divinities themselves become common and muddy and hardly escape from being dragged downwards into its perversions and disastrously assimilated to the demon and Asura. A principle of dark and dull inertia is at its base; all are tied down by the body and its needs and desires to trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of small worthless functionings, needs, cares and occupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear the stamp of an ignorance that knows not its own why and whither. The physical mind of inertia believes in no divinity other than its own small earth-gods; it aspires perhaps to a greater comfort, order, pleasure, but asks for no uplifting and no spiritual deliverance.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-170-71, 37: “For tamas is a double principle; (1) it contradicts rajas by inertia, (2) it contradicts sattwa by narrowness, obscurity and ignorance and, if either is depressed, it pours in to occupy its place.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-237, 38: “The body conditioning the physical mind insists no longer on its tamasic inertia that repeats always the same ignorant movement: it becomes a passive field and instrument of a greater force and light, it responds to every demand of the spirit’s force, holds and supports every variety and intensity of new divine experience.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-240, “When we break out from ego and physical mind into the infinity of the spirit, we still see the world and others as the mind has accustomed us to see them, as name and forms; only in our new experience of the direct and superior reality of spirit, they lose that direct objective reality and that indirect subjective reality of their own which they had to the mind. they seem to be quite opposite of the truer reality we now experience; our mentality, stilled and indifferent, no longer strives to know and make real to itself those intermediate terms which exist in them as in us and the knowledge of which has for its utility to bridge over the gulf between the spiritual self and the objective phenomena of the world.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-442, “Equally, his consciousness is a mentality emerging in a body and in a sharply individualized life; it is therefore limited in its workings and capacities and dependent on bodily organs of no great competence and on a very restricted vital force; it is separated from the rest of cosmic mind and shut out from the thoughts of other mental beings whose inner workings are a sealed book to man’s physical mind except in so far as he can read them by the analogy of his own mentality and by their insufficient bodily signs and self-expressions. His consciousness is always falling back towards the inconscience in which a large part of it is always involved, his life towards death, his physical being towards disaggregation.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-450, 39: Savitri-246, 40: “Again, enjoyment of one kind or another being the whole object of desire, that must be the trend of the desire-world; but since wherever the soul is not free, --and it cannot be free when subject to desire, --there must be the negative as well as the positive of all its experience, this world contains not only the possibility of large or intense or continuous enjoyments almost inconceivable to the physical mind, but also the possibility of equally enormous sufferings. It is here therefore that there are situated the lowest heavens and all the hells with the tradition and imagination of which the human mind has lured and terrified itself since the earliest ages. All human imaginations indeed correspond to some reality or real possibility, though they may in themselves be a quite inaccurate representation or couched in too physical images and therefore inapt to express the truth of supraphysical realities.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-452-453, 41: “If we examine the phraseology of the old books, we shall find that the waking state is consciousness of the material universe which we normally possess in this embodied existence dominated by the physical mind. The dream state is the consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind, which to us, even when we get intimations of them, have not the same concrete reality as the things of the physical existence. The sleep-state is the 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 reflection we may receive in our dream or our waking or even, irrecoverably, in our sleep consciousness. This fourfold scale corresponds to the degree of the ladder of being by which we climb back towards the absolute Divine. Normally therefore we cannot get back from the physical mind to the higher planes or degrees of consciousness without receding from the waking state, without going in and away from it and losing touch with the material world. Hence to those who desire to have the experience of these higher degrees, trance becomes a desirable thing, a means of escape from the limitations of the physical mind and nature.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-520, “The siddhi or full accomplishment of this movement can only come when we are able to lift the centre of thought and conscious action above the physical brain and feel it going on in the subtle body. If we can feel ourselves thinking no longer with the brain but from above and outside the head in the subtle body, that is a sure physical sign of a release from the limitations of the physical mind, and though this will not be complete at once nor of itself bring the supramental action, for the subtle body is mental and not supramental, still it is a subtle and pure mentality and makes an easier communication with the supramental centres.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-805, 42: “There is a complete difference between Samadhi and normal sleep, between the dream-state of Yoga and the physical state of dream. The latter belongs to the physical mind; in the former the mind proper and subtle is at work liberated from the immixture of the physical mentality. The dreams of the physical mind are an incoherent jumble made up partly of responses to vague touches from the physical world round which the lower mind-faculties disconnected from the will and reason, the buddhi, weave a web of wandering phantasy, partly of disordered associations from the brain memory, partly of reflections from the soul travelling on the mental plane, reflections which are, ordinarily, received without intelligence, widely distorted in the reception and mixed up confusedly with the other dream elements, with brain memories and fantastic responses to any sensory touch from the physical world.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-521-522, 43: “But it loses its disturbing aspect of strong egoistic will, intolerant desire, obstinate liking. These appearances may remain for a while in a diminished form, but as the calm of equality increases, deepens, becomes more essential and compact, ghana, they disappear, cease to colour the mental and vital substance or occur only as touches on the most external physical mind, are unable to penetrate within, and at last even that recurrence, that appearance at the outer gates of mind ceases.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-724-725, “The soul flows into whatever moulds of intellectual, ethical, aesthetic, dynamic, vital and physical mind and type the developing nature takes and can act only in the way this formed Prakriti lays on it and move in its narrow groove or relative wider circle.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-741 44: “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 45 “The arrogant ignorance of the human mind and its self-satisfied perversions and presumptuous errors, the pride and vanity and ambition, the cruelty and tyranny of beast wrath and violence, the selfishness and baseness and hypocrisy and treachery and vile meanness, the lust and greed and rapacity, the jealousy, envy and bottomless ingratitude that disfigure the earth-nature are the natural children of this indispensable but strong and dangerous turn of Nature.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-234, “The wise are not always or wholly wise, the intelligent are intelligent only in patches; the saint suppresses in himself many unsaintly movements and the evil are not entirely evil: the dullest has his unexpressed or unused and undeveloped capacities, the most timorous his moments or his way of courage, the helpless and the weakling a latent part of strength in his nature.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-235 46: “We have to take a wider psychological view of the primary forces of our nature. We have to distinguish the formed parts of our being, find out their basic defect of impurity or wrong action and correct that, sure that the rest will then come right naturally. We have not to doctor symptoms of impurity, or that only secondarily, as a minor help, --but to strike at its roots after a deeper diagnosis. We then find that there are two forms of impurity which are at the root of the whole confusion. (1) One is a defect born of the nature of our past evolution, which has been a nature of separative ignorance; this defect is a radically wrong and ignorant form given to proper action of each part of our instrumental being. (2) The other impurity is born of the successive process of an evolution, where life emerges in and depends on body, mind emerges in and depends on life in the body, supermind emerges in and lends itself to instead of governing mind, soul itself is apparent only as a circumstance of the bodily life of the mental being and veils up the spirit in the lower imperfections. This second defect of our nature is caused by this dependence of the higher on the lower parts; it is an immixture of functions by which the impure working of the lower instrument gets into the characteristic action of higher function and gives to it an added imperfection of embarrassment, wrong direction and confusion.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-645-46, “All impurity is a confusion of working, a departure from the dharma, the just and inherently right action of things which in that right action are pure and helpful to our perfection and this departure is usually the result of an ignorant confusion of dharmas in which the function lends itself to the demand of other tendencies than those which are properly its own.” CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-312, “The first cause of impurity in the understanding is the intermiscence of desire in the thinking functions, and desire itself is an impurity of the Will involved in the vital and emotional parts of our being. When the vital and emotional desires interfere with the pure will-to-know, the thought function becomes subservient to them, pursues ends other than those proper to itself and its perceptions are clogged and deranged. The understanding must lift itself beyond the siege of desire and emotion and, in order that it may have perfect immunity, it must get the vital parts and the emotions themselves purified. The will to enjoy is proper to the vital being but not the choice or the reaching after the enjoyment which must be determined and acquired by higher functions; therefore the vital being must be trained to accept whatever gain or enjoyment comes to it in the right functioning of life in obedience to the working of the divine Will and to rid itself of craving and attachment. Similarly the heart must be freed from subjection to the cravings of the life-principle and the senses and thus rid itself of the false emotions of fear, wrath, hatred, lust, etc. which constitute the chief impurity of the heart.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-313 47: “Thus the proper function of the life, the vital force, is enjoyment and possession, both of them perfectly legitimate, because the Spirit created the world for Ananda, enjoyment and possession of the many by the One, of the One by the many and of the many too by the many; but, --this is an instance of the first kind of defect, -- (1) the separative ignorance gives to it the wrong form of desire and craving which vitiates the whole enjoyment and possession and imposes on it its opposites, want and suffering. (2) Again, because mind is entangled in life from which it evolves, this desire and craving get into the action of the mental will and knowledge; that makes the will a will of craving, a force of desire instead of a rational will and a discerning force of intelligent effectuation, and it distorts the judgment and reason so that we judge and reason according to our desires and prepossessions and not with the disinterested impartiality of a pure judgment and the rectitude of a reason which seeks only to distinguish truth and understand rightly the objects of its workings. That is an example of immixture. These two kinds of defect, (1) wrong form of action and (2) illegitimate mixture of action, are not limited to these signal instances, but belong to each instrument and to each combination of their functionings. They pervade the whole economy of our nature. They are fundamental defects of our lower instrumental nature, and if we can set them right, we shall get our instrumental being into a state of purity, enjoy the clarity of a pure will, a pure heart of emotion, a pure enjoyment of our vitality, a pure body. That will be a preliminary, a human perfection, but it can be made the basis and open out in its effort of self-attainment into the greater, the divine perfection.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-646 48: “The way of integral knowledge supposes that we are intended to arrive at an integral self-fulfilment and the only thing that is to be eliminated is our unconsciousness, the Ignorance and the results of Ignorance. Eliminate the falsity of the being which figures as the ego; then our true being can manifest in us. Eliminate the falsity of the life which figures as mere vital craving and the mechanical round of our corporeal existence; our true life in the power of the Godhead and the joy of the Infinite will appear. Eliminate the falsity of the senses with their subjection to material shows and to dual sensations; there is a greater sense in us that can open through these to the Divine in things and divinely reply to it. Eliminate the falsity of the heart with its turbid passions and desires and its dual emotions; a deeper heart in us can open with its divine love for all creatures and its infinite passion and yearning for the responses of the Infinite. Eliminate the falsity of thought with its imperfect mental constructions, its arrogant assertions and denials, its limited and exclusive concentrations; a greater felicity of knowledge is behind that can open to the true Truth of God and the soul and Nature and the universe.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-291-92 49: “Desire is at once (1) the motive of our actions, (2) our lever of accomplishment and (3) the bane of our existence. If our sense-mind, emotional mind, thought mind could act free from the intrusions and importations of the life-energy, if that energy could be made to obey their right action instead of imposing its own yoke on our existence, all human problems would move harmoniously to their right solution. The proper function of the life-energy is to do what it is bidden by the divine principle in us, to reach to and enjoy what is given to it by that indwelling Divine and not the desire at all.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-350-51, 50: CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-229, 51: The Mother’s Agenda /August-31/1965, 52: TMCW-12/On Education/p-133, 53: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-544, 54: The Mother's Agenda/June 6, 1958, 55: CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-189, 56: The Mother's Agenda/01.05.1958, 57: - The Mother/TMCW/Vol-14/p-343, 58: The Mother's Agenda/July 27, 1963, 59: CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita-544, The Most Difficult Task of Integral Education “Her task no ending knows; she serves no aim But labours driven by a nameless Will That came from some unknowable formless Vast. This is her secret and impossible task To catch the boundless in a net of birth, To cast the spirit into the physical form, To lend speech and thought to the ineffable ; She is pushed to reveal the ever Unmanifest. Yet by her skill the impossible has been done:” Savitri-177 “(1) 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. (2) 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. (3) 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, trikaladristi. ”¹ Sri Aurobindo “But it is also possible to make this silence of the mind and ability to suspend the habits of the lower nature a first step towards the discovery of a superior formulation, a higher grade of the status and energy of our being and pass by an ascent and transformation into the supramental power of the spirit. And this may even, though with more difficulty, be done without resorting to the complete state of quietude of the normal mind by a persistent and progressive transformation of all the mental into their greater corresponding supramental powers and activities.”⁹ Sri Aurobindo "There are two things in every human being: (1) what comes from the past and has persisted because it is formed and conscious, and (2) then all that dark, unconscious mass, really muddy, that is added in every new life. Then the other thing gets into that and finds itself imprisoned, you know—adulterated and imprisoned—and generally it takes more than half one’s life to emerge from that entanglement…. That discovery I made at the age of about fifteen or sixteen, or seventeen. I began to see clearly all the “gifts” (if we can call them that) that came from father, mother, parents, grandparents, education, people who looked after me, that whole mudhole , as it were, into which you fall headfirst. And then, the quality of the vibration, the quality of the sensation, of the so-called “thoughts” (which aren’t thoughts, but are almost automatic mental reflexes of sorts) and of the feelings (if you can call them feelings: they are kinds of reactions to the milieu and to all that comes from outside)—it all swarms, swarms like worms in the mud."¹¹ The Mother The relatively easier task of a Supramental man and difficult task of mental men is permanent ascent of Consciousness to highest Sachchidananda state; his more difficult task is permanent descent of highest Sachchidananda Consciousness to physical life and earth and liberating the material vessel from the influence of tamasic, rajasic and sattwic mind; his most difficult task is the penetration of this highest Consciousness to triple time extending from beginning of creation of Subconscient plane to the period of complete Divinisation of earth life in Superconscient plane, known as All Life. Spirit has the capacity to travel ahead and back of All Time; it has the capacity of illumine the dark and twilight corners of past births and it has capacity to travel forward thousand years ahead and call down all the future Spiritual possibilities to present moment. Thus, the pace of evolution is accelerated. So to lay bare the obscurity of past of this birth and of previous many births before a Superconscient Light is identified as the most difficult task. “A secret spirit in the Inconscient’s sleep, A shapeless Energy, a voiceless Word, He (Inconscient Self) was here before the elements could emerge, Before there was light of mind (sattwic mind) or life could breathe.” Savitri-60 “All the deep cosmic murmur falling still, He (King Aswapati) lives in the hush before the world was born, His soul left naked to the timeless One.” Savitri-80 “Thus fallen, inconscient, frustrate, dense, inert, Sunk into inanimate and torpid drowse Earth lay, a drudge of sleep, forced to create By a subconscient yearning memory Left from a happiness dead before she (earth) was born, An alien wonder on her senseless breast.” Savitri-107 “Here mingling in man’s heart their tones and hues Have woven his being’s mutable design, His life a forward-rippling stream in Time, His nature’s constant fixed mobility, His soul a moving picture’s changeful film, His cosmos-chaos of personality.” Savitri-122 “It (Mystic Presence) 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.” Savitri-138-139 “Instinct was formed; in memory’s crowded sleep The past lived on as in a bottomless sea: Inverting into half-thought the quickened sense She felt around for truth with fumbling hands, Clutched to her the little she could reach and seize And put aside in her subconscient cave.” Savitri-145-146 “All once perceived and lived was far away; Himself was to himself his only scene.” Savitri-297 “A vast subliminal is man’s measureless part. The dim Subconscient is his cavern base. Abolished vainly in the walks of Time Our past lives still in our unconscious selves And by the weight of its hidden influences Is shaped our future’s self-discovery.” Savitri-483 “His (Avatar’s) 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, Arcturus and Belphegor grains of fire Circling in a corner of its boundless self, The world’s destruction a small transient storm In the calm infinity it has become.” Savitri-537 “This independent (Soul), once a power supreme, Self-born before the universe was made, Accepting cosmos, binds himself Nature’s serf Till he becomes her freedman — or God’s slave.” Savitri-542 “In her beginningless infinity Through her soul’s reaches unconfined she gazed; She saw the undying fountains of her life, She knew herself eternal without birth.” Savitri-586 “She climbs to the summits where the unborn Idea Remembering the future that must be Looks down upon the works of labouring Force, Immutable above the world it made.” Savitri-632 The special privilege of an integral Yogi or the most difficult task of a Supramental man is to experience Subconscient transformation and its preliminary experiences are the purification of the past by the Spirit traveling backward. Through this journey, he will discover ‘the secret code of the history of the world’⁷ and ‘the cosmic past.’⁸ He will also travel a thousand years ahead in Superconscient plane and calls all the future possibilities to the present moment. A few such Spiritual experiences are hinted at in Savitri: - “Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back, Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate, Back to the labour and stress of mortal days, Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.” Savitri-9 “Her mind moved in a many-imaged past” Savitri-11 “Her witness spirit stood reviewing Time.” Savitri-11 “She must disrupt, dislodge by her soul’s force Her past, a block on the Immortal’s road, Make a rased ground and shape anew her fate.” Savitri-12 “For him mind’s limiting firmament ceased above. In the griffin forefront of the Night and Day A gap was rent in the all-concealing vault (of King Aswapati); The conscious ends of being went rolling back: The landmarks of the little person fell, The island ego joined its continent…. All the grey inhibitions were torn off And broken the intellect’s hard and lustrous lid; Truth unpartitioned found immense sky-room;” Savitri-25, “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 “A fire that seemed the body of a god Consumed the limiting figures of the past” Savitri-81 “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 “A mighty Hand then rolls the mind’s firmaments back” Savitri-154 “Transmuted are past suffering’s memories” Savitri-193 “Our being must move eternally through Time; Death helps us not, vain is the hope to cease; A secret Will compels us to endure… Our souls are dragged as with a hidden leash, Carried from birth to birth, from world to world, Our acts prolong after the body’s fall The old perpetual journey without pause.” Savitri-197 “There is no end of seeking and of birth, There is no end of dying and return; The life that wins its aim asks greater aims, The life that fails and dies must live again; Till it has found itself it cannot cease. All must be done for which life and death were made.” Savitri-200 “There (Subconscient sheath) waiting its hour the future lay unknown, There is the record of the vanished stars.” Savitri-231 “An insect crawl preludes our glorious flight; Our human state cradles the future god, Our mortal frailty an immortal force.” Savitri-240 “As far as its self-winged air-planes could fly, Visiting the future in great brilliant raids It reconnoitred vistas of dream-fate.” Savitri-259 “Our spirits break free from their environment; The future brings its face of miracle near, Its godhead looks at us with present eyes; Acts deemed impossible grow natural; We feel the hero’s immortality; The courage and the strength death cannot touch Awake in limbs that are mortal, hearts that fail; We move by the rapid impulse of a will That scorns the tardy trudge of mortal time.” Savitri-262 “Awaiting us on the Ideal’s peaks Or guarded in our secret self unseen Yet flashed sometimes across the awakened soul, Hide from our lives their greatness, beauty, power. Our present feels sometimes their regal touch, Our future strives towards their luminous thrones:” Savitri-263 “Untired of sameness and untired of change, Endlessly she unrolled her moving act,” Savitri-328 “Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God Movements and moments of a mortal will, Pack with the eternal might one human hour And with one gesture change all future time.” Savitri-345 “They felt a larger future meet their walk; She held their hands, she chose for them their paths:” Savitri-364 “Some lost to the person and his strip of thought In a motionless ocean of impersonal Power, Sat mighty, visioned with the Infinite’s light, Or, comrades of the everlasting Will, Surveyed the plan of past and future Time.” Savitri-384 “He met in her regard his future’s gaze,” Savitri-396 “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 “Then down the narrow path where their lives had met He led and showed to her her future world, Love’s refuge and corner of happy solitude. At the path’s end through a green cleft in the trees She saw a clustering line of hermit-roofs And looked now first on her heart’s future home, The thatch that covered the life of Satyavan.” Savitri-411 “The future’s road is hid from mortal sight: He moves towards a veiled and secret face. To light one step in front is all his hope And only for a little strength he asks To meet the riddle of his shrouded fate.” Savitri-425 “And Narad slowly answered to the queen: “What help is in prevision to the driven? Safe doors cry opening near, the doomed pass on. A future knowledge is an added pain, A torturing burden and a fruitless light On the enormous scene that Fate has built.” Savitri-426-427 “A growing register of calamities Is the past’s account, the future’s book of Fate:” Savitri-440 “Carrying the world’s future on her lonely breast,” Savitri-461, “The past receded and the future neared: Far now behind lay Madra’s spacious halls,” Savitri-466 “A dream disclosed to her the cosmic past, The crypt-seed and the mystic origins, The shadowy beginnings of world-fate:” Savitri-477 “All the world’s possibilities in man Are waiting as the tree waits in its seed: His past lives in him; it drives his future’s pace; His present’s acts fashion his coming fate.” Savitri-482 “Abolished vainly in the walks of Time Our past lives still in our unconscious selves And by the weight of its hidden influences Is shaped our future’s self-discovery.” Savitri-483 “Our dead past round our future’s ankles clings And drags back the new nature’s glorious stride,” Savitri-483 “The occult seeker into the open came: He heard the far and touched the intangible, He gazed into the future and the unseen; He used the powers earth-instruments cannot use, A pastime made of the impossible; He caught up fragments of the Omniscient’s thought, He scattered formulas of omnipotence.” Savitri-486, “The beings of the subtle realms appeared (Savitri met forces of Subliminal planes) And scenes concealed behind our earthly scene; She saw the life of remote continents And distance deafened not to voices far; She felt the movements crossing unknown minds; The past’s events occurred before her eyes.” (Spirit travelling backward.) Savitri-541 “So she beheld the many births of thought, If births can be of what eternal is; For the Eternal’s powers are like himself, Timeless in the Timeless, in Time ever born.” Savitri-541 “An impersonal emptiness walked and spoke in her, Something perhaps unfelt, unseen, unknown Guarded the body for its future work, Or Nature moved in her old stream of force.” Savitri-552 “The rock-gate’s heavy walls were left behind; As if through passages of receding time Present and past into the Timeless lapsed; Arrested upon dim adventure’s brink, The future ended drowned in nothingness.” Savitri-582-583 “All things the past has made and slain were there, Its lost forgotten forms that once had lived, And all the present loves as new-revealed And all the hopes the future brings had failed Already, caught and spent in efforts vain, Repeated fruitlessly age after age.” Savitri-643 “Her spirit the unending future felt And lived with all the unbeginning past.” Savitri-716 The mind cannot travel back¹⁰ and ahead of the Present time. The traveling back of the Spirit is the swift illumination and transformation of life’s dark and obscure rooms. It will not only memorise the past events of this life and purify them but also travel back to past successive lives in which all the past negative energies/memories/events are stored preventing any Spiritual adventure ahead. These are his immediate task¹² of Subconscient purification and transformation. This Subconscient change proceeds back with King Aswapati who ‘lives in the hush before the world was born,’³ and repeats with Satyavan, who as the ‘day bringer must walk in darkest night’⁴ and must ‘Know itself older than the birth of Time.’4 King Aswapati proceeds ahead in Superconscient world and ‘foresees the coming god’² in the worm, These going backward of the Spirit to the beginning of creation and forward to the end of perfect creation are Timeless Spirit’s capacity to manifest Divine Life in all Time. Thus, All Life becomes conscious Yoga of Nature. OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-839, “in one chapter of The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that there is a state of consciousness in which all is from all eternity – everything, without exception, that is to be manifested here....In a certain state of consciousness (I no longer remember what he calls it – I think it’s in the ‘Yoga of Self-Perfection’), one is perfectly identified with the Supreme, not in his static but in his dynamic aspect, the state of becoming. In this state, everything is already there from all eternity, even though here it gives us the impression of a becoming. And Sri Aurobindo says that if you are capable of maintaining this state, then you know everything: all that has been, all that is and all that will be – in an absolutely simultaneous way…But you must have a firm head on your shoulders! Reading some of these chapters in ‘Self-Perfection,’ I thought it would be better if it didn’t fall into just anyone’s hands…Anyway, in this state the feeling of uncertainty completely disappears (he explains it very well).” The Mother’s Agenda/18.04.1961, “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. 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/p-892, “Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth’s memory.” TMCW-3/Questions and Answers-1929-1931/p- 94, "Sri Aurobindo wrote somewhere, I don’t remember in what connection, that in certain state of consciousness one had the power to CHANGE THE PAST. I found that very striking... Because it’s an experience I’ve had several times, and with all this work I am doing now, I understand better. You see, what seems to be perpetuated or preserved isn’t individuals: it’s states of consciousness—states of consciousness. Those states of consciousness manifest through many individuals and many different lives, and those states of consciousness are what progress towards a more and more luminous perfection. There are now, at present, all kinds of “categories” of states of consciousness that come one upon another in order to be put in contact with the Truth, the Light, the perfect Consciousness, and at the same time they have retained a sort of imprint (like a memory) of the moments when they manifested.... There is a big work of transformation of the material states of consciousness going on: the states of consciousness nearest to the Inconscient, the most material states of consciousness. They come like that [to present themselves to Mother], with one or two examples of their previous manifestation (perhaps even their first emergence from the Inconscient), and then I see the transition (along with what has transformed them, changed them or even simply altered them through successive manifestations), the transition up to the point when they are now presented before the supreme Consciousness for the final transformation. This is a perpetual work, so to speak, because, interestingly, it’s a work I can go on doing while seeing people…" The Mother’s Agenda-7/p-243-244, "I am just finishing The Synthesis of Yoga, and what Sri Aurobindo says (in 'Towards the Supramental Time Vision) is exactly what has happened to me throughout my life. And he explains how you can still make mistakes as long as you are not supramentalized. Sri Aurobindo describes all the ways by which images are sent to you – and they are not always images or reflections of the truth of things past, present or future; there are also all the images that come from human mental formations and all the various things that want to be considered. It is very, very interesting. And interestingly enough, in these few pages I have found a description of the work I have spent my whole life doing, trying to SIFT out all we see.... I can only be sure of something once a certain type of picture comes, and then the whole world could tell me, ‘But things didn’t happen like that’; I would reply, ‘Sorry, but I see it.’ And that type of picture is certain, for I have studied it, I have studied their differences in quality and the texture of the pictures. It is very interesting." The Mother/The Mother's Agenda/11.10.1960, “Two irrefutable signs prove that one is in relation with the Supramental: (1) A perfect and constant equality: To be perfect, the equality must be invariable and spontaneous, effortless, towards all circumstances, all happenings, all contacts, material or psychological, irrespective of their character and impact. (2) An absolute certainty in the knowledge: The absolute and indisputable certainty of an infallible knowledge through identity." THE MOTHER/TMCW-15/Words of The Mother-III/p-102 2: Savitri-23, 3: Savitri-80, 4: Savitri-537, 5: “It must be noted however that if our knowledge of the present were not limited by our dependence on the physical mind and sense, this result would not be altogether inevitable. If we could be aware of all the present, all the action of physical, vital, mental energies at work in the moment, it is conceivable that we would be able to see their past too involved in them and their latent future or at least to proceed from present to past and future knowledge. And under certain conditions this might create a sense of real and ever present time continuity, a living in the behind and the front as well as the immediate, and a step farther might carry us into an ever present sense of our existence in infinite time and in our timeless self, and its manifestation in eternal time might then become real to us and also we might feel the timeless Self behind the worlds and the reality of his eternal world manifestation. In any case the possibility of another kind of time consciousness than we have at present and of a triple time knowledge rests upon the possibility of developing another consciousness than that proper to the physical mind and sense and breaking our imprisonment in the moment and in the mind of ignorance with its limitation to sensation, memory, inference and conjecture.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-890, " In a certain state of consciousness (I no longer remember what he calls it – I think it’s in the ‘Yoga of Self-Perfection’), one is perfectly identified with the Supreme, not in his static but in his dynamic aspect, the state of becoming. In this state, everything is already there from all eternity, even though here it gives us the impression of a becoming. And Sri Aurobindo says that if you are capable of maintaining this state, then you know everything: all that has been, all that is and all that will be – in an absolutely simultaneous way... But you must have a firm head on your shoulders! Reading some of these chapters in ‘Self-Perfection,’ I thought it would be better if it didn’t fall into just anyone’s hands... Anyway, in this state the feeling of uncertainty completely disappears (he explains it very well)." The Mother's Agenda/April 18, 1961, 6: “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/p-839, 7: Savitri-74, 8: Savitri-477, 9: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-758-759, 10: “The more organised the being, the more consciously lasting it becomes. We can say in a general way that each person brings into his present life the consequences of his previous lives, without, however, preserving the memory of these lives. Apart from a few very rare exceptions, only when you are united with your psychic being and become fully conscious of it do you obtain, at the same time, the memory of past lives, which the psychic preserves in its consciousness.” The Mother/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms/p-97, "From a documentary standpoint, my nights are getting quite interesting. In the Yoga of Self-Perfection, Sri Aurobindo describes precisely this state you reach in which all things assume meaning and a quality of inner significance, clarification of various points, and help. From this point of view, my nights have become extraordinary. I see infinitely more things than I saw before. Before, it was very limited to a personal contact with people. Now ... In my nights, each thing and each person has the appearance, the gesture, the word or the action that describes EXACTLY his condition. It’s becoming quite interesting" The Mother's Agenda/October 2, 1960, 11: The Mother’s Agenda-4/p-383-386, 12: "And the habit of constantly complaining about difficulties, oh, how futile, useless all that seemed—a waste of time. We waste our time protesting against what mustn’t be—we just shouldn’t think about it! We shouldn’t be conscious of it, that’s all! It should be outside the consciousness; when we are able to have a purely luminous consciousness, this perfectly harmonious, luminous, benevolent consciousness…free, ultimately, from all that we drag along from a difficult past... That’s it : the power to free oneself from past, not to drag that behind forever—to surge into the light…and stay there." The Mother’s Agenda-7/p-273, Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: PSYCHIC EDUCATION "In our Yoga (Integral 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.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-350-351 SPIRITUAL EDUCATION "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." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-27 SUPRAMENTAL EDUCATION “There is one divine Force which acts in the universe and in the individual and is also beyond the individual and the universe. The Mother stands for all these, but She is working here in the body to bring down something not yet expressed in this material world so as to transform life here—it is so that you should regard her as the Divine Shakti working here for that purpose.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/-p-50 "Austerity is usually confused with self-mortification, and when someone speaks of austerities, we think of the discipline of the ascetic who, in order to avoid the arduous task of spiritualising the physical, vital and mental life, declares it incapable of transformation and casts it away ruthlessly as a useless encumbrance, as a bondage and an impediment to all spiritual progress, in any case as something incorrigible, as a load that has to be borne more or less cheerfully until Nature, or divine Grace, delivers you from it by death. At best, life on earth is a field for progress and one should take advantage of it as best one can in order to reach as soon as possible the degree of perfection which will put an end to the ordeal by making it unnecessary." The Mother The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-12/p-48 "In work too there is an austerity. It consists in not having any preferences and in doing everything one does with interest. For one who wants to grow in self-perfection, there are no great or small tasks , none that are important or unimportant; all are equally useful for one who aspires for progress and self-mastery... Whatever occupation or task falls to your lot , you must do it with a will to progress; whatever one does, one must not only do it as best one can but strive to do it better and better in a constant effort for perfection. In this way everything without exception becomes interesting, from the most material chore to the most artistic and intellectual work. The scope for progress is infinite and can be applied to the smallest thing. " The Mother The Mother’s Centenary Works/Vol-12/p-53