Subconscient Education “A golden fire came in and burned Night’s heart;” Savitri-601 "Surely you could not believe that sadhana could be done without facing some difficulties. As your aspiration is sincere, whatever was in the subconscient standing in the way of the Divine Realisation, has come to the surface in order to be transformed. There is nothing there to make you sad or depressed — on the contrary you ought to rejoice at these occasions to make progress and never forget to lean for support and help on my love, force and blessings." The Mother TMCW/Vol-14/p-227 “No, as long as the world isn't changed, death doesn't matter in the least, and when the world is changed, there will be no more death, that's all. Or else it will be death for plants, death for animals, death for man (man as man), and for them, it will be a quite natural state, there won't be anything to feel sorry about...Death as it is understood, on the inner level, means the loss of consciousness. ...That would be the most the most dreadful and horrible thing, if it were possible... But it's not possible. If you have consciousness, it cannot be lost. Some things don't have consciousness yet, so little by little, little by little, they learn to have it; but the consciousness you have cannot be lost, that's not possible. All the deaths in the world cannot take it away from you, and that's why I smile – try, mon petit!... It's impossible.... Consciousness is something eternal. Consciousness is divine, consciousness is eternal, and NOTHING can destroy it... Appearances are another matter.... And it's only unconsciousness that's destroyed (meaning that there is an appearance of destruction), but not consciousness.... So then, all the drama – all the tragedy, all the horror, all the dread, all of it – is vital fabrication. Well, those who are God's warriors don't allow themselves to be affected by that. One smiles, "Yes, yes, you may put on a big show, we don't care; go ahead with the big show if you enjoy it." As for us, we know it's only a show – an ugly show, if you like, it's not pretty, but it's just a show.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/ December 10, 1965 Integral Subconscient Education: “Life in him learned its huge subconscient rear; The little fronts unlocked to the unseen Vasts; Her gulfs stood nude, her far transcendences Flamed in transparencies of crowded light.” Savitri-88 “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 was born, An alien wonder on her senseless breast.” Savitri-107 “In this slow ascension he must follow her pace Even from her faint and dim subconscious start: So only can earth’s last salvation come… Accepting subconscience, in dumb darkness’ reign A sojourner, she hoped not any more. There far away from Truth and luminous thought He saw the original seat, the separate birth Of the dethroned, deformed and suffering Power.” Savitri-135 “The troglodytes of the subconscious Mind, Ill-trained slow stammering interpreters Only of their small task’s routine aware And busy with the record in our cells, Concealed in the subliminal secrecies Mid an obscure occult machinery, Capture the mystic Morse whose measured lilt Transmits the messages of the cosmic Force. 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.” Savitri-161-162 “In all things she sought their slumbering mystic truth, The unspoken Word that inspires unconscious forms; She groped in his deeps for an invisible Law, Fumbled in the dim subconscient for his mind And strove to find a way for spirit to be.” Savitri-222 “He looked below, but all was dark and mute. A noise was heard, between, of thought and prayer, A strife, a labour without end or pause; A vain and ignorant seeking raised its voice.” Savitri-287 “A shadowy unity with a vanished past Treasured in an old-world frame was lurking there, Secret, unnoted by the illumined mind, And in subconscious whispers and in dream Still murmured at the mind’s and spirit’s choice.” Savitri-317 “A grisly company of maladies Come, licensed lodgers, into man’s bodily house, Purveyors of death and torturers of life. In the malignant hollows of the world, In its subconscient cavern-passages Ambushed they lie waiting their hour to leap, Surrounding with danger the sieged city of life: Admitted into the citadel of man’s days They mine his force and maim or suddenly kill. Ourselves within us lethal forces nurse; We make of our own enemies our guests:” Savitri-439 “Interned, submerged, hidden in Matter’s trance Awoke to itself the dreamer, sleeping Mind; It made a visible realm out of its dreams, It drew its shapes from the subconscient depths, Then turned to look upon the world it had made.” Savitri-443 “On a dim ocean of subconscient life A formless surface consciousness awoke:” Savitri-477 “Even in the tracts of sleep is scant repose; He mocks life’s steps in strange subconscient dreams, He strays in a subtle realm of symbol scenes, His night with thin-air visions and dim forms He packs or peoples with slight drifting shapes And only a moment spends in silent Self.” Savitri-479 “The Titan and the Fury and the Djinn Lie bound in the subconscient’s cavern pit And the Beast grovels in his antre den: Dire mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.” Savitri-480 “In the dim gleam of habit’s passages, In the subconscient’s darkling corridors All things are carried by the porter nerves And nothing checked by subterranean mind, Unstudied by the guardians of the doors And passed by a blind instinctive memory, The old gang dismissed, old cancelled passports serve. Nothing is wholly dead that once had lived; In dim tunnels of the world’s being and in ours The old rejected nature still survives; The corpses of its slain thoughts raise their heads And visit mind’s nocturnal walks in sleep, Its stifled impulses breathe and move and rise; All keeps a phantom immortality.” Savitri-483-484 “Across a perilous border line she passed Where Life dips into the subconscient dusk Or struggles from Matter into chaos of mind, Aswarm with elemental entities And fluttering shapes of vague half-bodied thought And crude beginnings of incontinent force.” Savitri-489-90 “Approaching loomed a giant head of Life Ungoverned by mind or soul, subconscient, vast. It tossed all power into a single drive, It made its power a might of dangerous seas.” Savitri-491 “All moods unlovely, evil and untrue Forsake their stations in fierce disarray And hide their shame in the subconscient’s dusk.” Savitri-531 “The dim subconscient’s incoherent hints Laid bare a meaning twisted, deep and strange, The bizarre secret of their fumbling speech, Their links with underlying reality.” Savitri-541 “Often our thoughts are finished cosmic wares Admitted by a silent office gate And passed through the subconscient’s galleries, Then issued in Time’s mart as private make.” Savitri-542 “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, She was thought and the passion of the world’s heart, She was the godhead hid in the heart of man, She was the climbing of his soul to God.” Savitri-557 “In inert Matter breathed a slumbering Life, In a subconscient Life Mind lay asleep; In waking Life it stretched its giant limbs To shake from it the torpor of its drowse; A senseless substance quivered into sense, The world’s heart commenced to beat, its eyes to see, In the crowded dumb vibrations of a brain Thought fumbled in a ring to find itself, Discovered speech and fed the new-born Word That bridged with spans of light the world’s ignorance.” Savitri-622 The Mother’s Consciousness is that which rests on the One and acts in the All, transcends All and denies none, sees all but lives for its transcendent task, becomes All and yet transcends the mystic whole, All-ruler and is ruled by none, transcends the Light and the Darkness and yet one with the Absolute, Eternal and All-knowing it suffers mortal birth and death and in Subconscient waits Her largest unfinished task. Our Subconscient is behind our waking awareness, a submerged consciousness below and in a way inferior, less organized and the lowest occult province of our nature. Its effect upon mind, life and body are automatic, uncalled, involuntary and not under our control. Our vital-physical part is not conscious of its own operations or has only a suppressed consciousness or no-consciousness like the plant on inchoate consciousness like the incipient animal. Most of the operations of the physical body are really subconscious to our mind and are not aware of its hidden operations. We are aware of a vitality working in the bodily substance, which is also for the most part subconscious to our mind and we can observe some of its movements and reactions. Some of the suppressed vital operations are forcible activation of disease¹⁵ and disorder rather than good health and regular rhythm, death is more poignant than the restoration of life, pain and pleasure and other nervous physical sensations are more natural than the self-existent bliss and they are not under control of waking Mind¹⁶ and waking Will. All this is possible because the body has a Subconscient consciousness of its own and counts in our total self-expression. Here in the Subconscient physical there is no organized self-consciousness, but only a sense of action and reaction, movement, impulse, desire, need, necessary activities imposed by nature, hunger, sense-instinct, insensibility, impressions of past events, habits, fixed mental and vital formations, fixed forms of character, thus originating and influencing many activities of our nature. And this inferior awareness is obscure, limited, automatic and sends them up by an occult process to the waking consciousness and do not depend upon mind’s perception and response. Men are ordinarily neither conscious of Superconscient above nor the Subconscient below ‘but by sadhana they can become aware’²⁶ of these subtle worlds. Other than this vital and physical substratum of Subconscient there is also something like true subconscious which is the Inconscient vibrating on the borders of consciousness, sending up its dark vibrations to be changed into conscious stuff, return of past chaotic habits to the surface consciousness, erupting perilous vibrations, untraceable motives and impulsions and perturbations of physical and vital mind and their regular visit in dream and waking state. Subconscient Education² is the extension of Supramental Education³ to alight the riches of the Subconscient cave and it is open towards the Self of the world through its world experience. The principle and power of perfection of Subconscient sheath are veiled in the lower mental Maya and wrapped up in a dark cover. Each thing in Nature, animate or inanimate is governed by the indwelling Vision and Power, to us Subconscient or Inconscient because we have lost mental contact with it but not unconscious to itself, rather profoundly and universally conscious in subliminal and Superconscient planes. So, each thing which seems to us subconscious, obeys the real idea of the divine Supermind within it. It is the self-aware Truth of being in which self-knowledge is inseparable from the self-existence. So, the Subconscient Self is the impeccable self-vision and the inevitable force of a sole and self-fulfilling Existence. By the pressure of Supramental Force²⁷ the Subconscient Self opens by which the Subconscient transformation becomes relatively profound, facile and easy. This transformation gives an extraordinary sensation, ‘all the disorder, all the ugliness, all the suffering, all the misery, all of that isn't true! It's not true, THAT is true.’⁴ ‘We must face integral life with all that it still entails in terms of ugliness, falsehood and cruelty, but while taking care to discover in ourselves the source of all goodness, all beauty, all light and all truth, in order to consciously put that source in contact with the world so it may transform it…That is infinitely more difficult than fleeing or closing one’s eyes so as not to see – but it is the only really effective way, the way of those who are truly strong and pure and capable of manifesting the Truth.’⁵ ‘On the moral level (that is to say, the level of attitudes, character, reactions), it’s very visible; even sometimes on the physical level: something suddenly disappears – as we had the experience when Sri Aurobindo would remove a pain (the Mother shows a hand of the subtle physical coming and taking away the pain), we would wonder ... "Ah!" Gone, vanished, like that. But it’s not constant, not general, it’s only to show it can be like that through the fact that it happens in one case or another – to show that things CAN be like that…’⁷ The Book-10 of Savitri is identified as The Book of Double Twilight. The first twilight is created by the invasion of fathomless Light above the head to the dark Subconscient plane below and the second twilight is created either by the invasion of darkness below to the bright Subconscient plane or by the invasion of fathomless Light below the feet through the opening of Subconscient and Inconscient Selves to dark Subconscient sheath. The Book-10, Canto-1 concentrates on Subconscient transformation⁶ by Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental invasion to a dark Subconscient sheath. They are identified as: Psychic invasion: “As when a goddess’ bosom dimly moves To first desire and her white soul transfigured , A glimmering Eden crossed by faery gleams, Trembles to expectation’s fiery wand, But nothing is familiar yet with bliss.” Savitri-604 “A comrade of the Ray and Mist and Flame, By a moon-bright face a brilliant moment drawn, Almost she seemed a thought mid floating thoughts, Seen hardly by a visionary mind Amid the white inward musings of the soul . Half-vanquished by the dream-happiness around, Awhile she moved on an enchantment’s soil, But still remained possessor of her soul.” Savitri-605-606 Spiritual Invasion: “Here in this seat of Darkness mute and lone, In the heart of everlasting Nothingness Light conquered now even by that feeble beam : Its faint infiltration drilled the blind deaf mass; Almost it changed into a glimmering sight That housed the phantom of an aureate Sun Whose orb pupilled the eye of Nothingness. Savitri-601 Supramental Invasion: “A golden fire came in and burned Night’s heart; Her dusky mindlessness began to dream; The Inconscient conscious grew, Night felt and thought.” Savitri-601 “Above, her spirit in its mighty trance Saw all, but lived for its transcendent task, Immutable like a fixed eternal star.” Savitri-606 ‘The subconscient in the ordinary man includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and also the secret body-consciousness.’⁹ The whole of humanity is now going through this Subconscient¹⁸ transformation unconsciously and few prepared vessels are going through this transformation consciously. Those who are open towards Subconscient¹⁹ transformation will feel all the time a Divine Force is entering the mind, vital, body, and Subconscient²⁰ sheaths in a very minuscule manner. When this descent of Divine force is strong enough to be felt as a higher body temperature of fever, then its outcome is a miracle in Subconscient²¹ sheath, resulting in some Divine manifestation. In the previous Cantos of the whole book, (1) we get the information that if our Psychic and Spiritual beings are open then beings of those higher planes will accompany us and assist us in our sadhana , involve in many creative actions, and call down divine energies. Integral Yoga identifies ten Selves and their opening activates affirmative Beings belonging to higher planes. (2) Similarly, through our untransformed nature, asuric beings or dark energies enter our system and do their destructive and pessimistic action both in waking and dream states.¹⁰ (3) We also get this information from Savitri that like our parents, some invisible beings pursue us in this birth and take care of us. Similarly, some beings accompany us from our previous births. So, we have to remember that neither this world, nor any creative action, nor any destructive action, nor any powers and personalities that are acting through us are our own. (4) Now, in this book-10, Canto-1, we get some new inputs that will assist in our Subconscient transformation action. It describes some invisible beings identified as ‘morning twilight of the gods’²⁸ who assist us in our sadhana and carry us from the twilight physical mind, twilight vital mind, and twilight intellect to complete and integral Divine Light, Wisdom, Delight, etc. Now we will concentrate on the character of these affirmative twilight beings. Their forms arise from our sleep and they justify the long night followed by a new dawn and a new birth of consciousness. These dreaming deities look beyond the visible things and fashion in their thoughts, ideal worlds. By their presence ‘the heaviness of eyeless dark’ have overpassed and all the sorrow of the night perished. He who wakes in this twilight world, finds his dreams true and all ran after light and joy and love. This twilight world is an atmosphere that cannot dare too much light, love and delight yet breathes strange ecstasy and anticipates deeply of delight. This twilight world is surrounded by vague fields, vague pastures, vague trees, vague scenes, vague cattle, vague spirits, vague melodies and vague ideal lands without a goal but having sweet memories, mighty measures of thought, far chanting of gods with low disturbing voices of desire. These twilight gods are fugitive beings and natural habitants of the Subconscient world and they have the capacity to assist an individual to find his soul. In that Subconscient sheath, nothing there was fixed or stayed for long, no mortal feet can take rest upon that soil, no breath of life lingered embodied there, no joy can dance for long period and no beauty can settle there. Yet in that Subconscient²² world, the memory of gladness ever repeats the same note, shapes are strangely consistent, the same thoughts are constant passers-by, all charms are renewed unendingly, waits always to hear the music like the recurrence of a haunting rhyme. Divine touches incessantly, the things that never seized for Subconscient²³ transformation. The Divine Light showers as a trail of disappearing star and each Divine touch faints the vessel and the promise of unrealised bliss is heard. Psychic being participates in this Subconscient transformation through its purity, adoration and subtle presence and their unaware, momentary and escaping thrill is experienced as much sweeter than any rapture known to earth and heaven. Now we will concentrate on the line: “Heaven ever young and earth too firm and old”⁸ This line also suggests that when we open ourselves towards Divine Forces, we become young and energetic and when we keep the door open towards dark Subconscient²⁴ and inconscient undivine energies we become old and weak. This also suggests the presence of heavenly beings for Subconscient transformation whose raptures of creation last too long; their affirmative bold formations are too absolute and are too intimate with eternal things. They stand up sculptured on the eternal hills and win immortality by perfect physical form. These heavenly beings are too pure, too great, too meaningful without shadow and without incertitude. Thus, a golden hem of bliss is experienced along with the gleaming shoulder of some godlike hope and flying feet of fine desires. These heavenly beings are visitors from the morning star, satisfied with the first perfection of Psychic opening. They mingle in a passion of pursuit and thrill with the spray of joy…. Savitri, Book-10, Canto-2 represents ‘The Gospel of Death and Vanity of the Ideal,’ which is a Soul slaying truth and his (Death's) ideal appears to be in vain in resolving world problems. This Canto-2 proposes that to remain satisfied with a brief touch of Divine Force is a moderate and escapist Spirituality which cannot transform Nature but to prepare for that Truth which slowly and constantly infiltrates into the material vessel, which alone can expedite Subconscient transformation and transform Nature. ‘But when all the body’s cells, even in their most subconscious reactions, will come to know what I myself know, that the Supreme alone exists, when they will know that, it will be good – not before.’¹¹ Death’s ideal accepts the later Vedantic doctrine of the Soul’s (Jivatma’s) union with Spirit (Paramatma) and refuges the ancient Vedantic doctrine of the Spirit’s reconciliation with Matter. This Canto is important from four points of view. Firstly, it gives more description of the twilight of Subconscient²⁵ world which must be approached through faint infiltration of Truth Light (Or ‘Threatened (falsehood) with this faint beam of wandering Truth’ Savitri-585) and not the mundane, moderate and later Vedantic escape from material problems; secondly , here Sri Aurobindo defines the Soul slaying human love through the symbolic representation of Death’s gospel; thirdly in this Canto, the Supreme word, Mahavakya, of Savitri book is revealed and lastly , this Mahavakya is extended further as ancient Vedantic Solution of the problem of life. 1: We find in Death God, the reconciliation of three-fold personalities, that of mundane perfection, of moderate Spirituality and of Later Vedantic Spirituality. These three demonstrate their escapist trend towards life and submission to death which is either accepted as Spirit’s recoil from Matter or accepted as passage to the supreme abode of Param Dham . The double doors of escape are ‘Death of his body Matter’s gate to peace’¹⁷ and ‘Death of his soul his last felicity.’¹⁷ Mundane Perfection: (Death said) “They have traced a journey that foresees no goal. Aimless man toils in an uncertain world, Lulled by inconstant pauses of his pain, Scourged like a beast by the infinite desire, Bound to the chariot of the dreadful gods.” Savitri-587 (Death said) “But Mind, a glorious traveller in the sky, Walks lamely on the earth with footsteps slow; Hardly he can mould the life’s rebellious stuff, Hardly can he hold the galloping hooves of sense:” Savitri-615 (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. But where is room for soul or place for God In the brute immensity of a machine?” Savitri-618 (Human love is) “A sweet secretion from the erotic glands Flattering and torturing the burning nerves, Love is a honey and poison in the breast Drunk by it as the nectar of the gods.” Saviti-618-19 “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) “How shalt thou bring the Everlasting here? There is no house for him in hurrying Time. Vainly thou seekst in Matter’s world an aim; No aim is there, only a will to be.” Savitri-644 Moderate Spirituality: (Death said) “In the Alone there is no room for love.” Savitri-608 (Death said) “If Satyavan had lived, love would have died; But Satyavan is dead and love shall live A little while in thy sad breast, until His face and body fade on memory’s wall Where other bodies, other faces come.” Savitri-610, (Death said) “And thou, go back alone to thy frail world:” Savitri-612 (Death said) “Accept the brief light that falls upon thy days;” Savitri-620 Death said to Para-prakriti Savitri: “What knowst thou of earth’s rich and changing life Who thinkst that one man dead all joy must cease? Hope not to be unhappy till the end: For grief dies soon in the tired human heart; Soon other guests (human admirers) the empty chambers fill.” Savitri-637, Death said to Para-prakriti Savitri : “Return and try thy soul! Soon shalt thou find appeased that other men (human admirers) On lavish earth have beauty, strength and truth, And when thou hast half forgotten, one of these Shall wind himself around thy heart that needs Some human answering heart against thy breast; For who, being mortal, can dwell glad alone? Then Satyavan shall glide into the past, (Satyavan is the symbol of Paramatma) A gentle memory pushed away from thee By new love and thy children’s tender hands, Till thou shalt wonder if thou lov’dst at all. Such is the life earth’s travail has conceived, A constant stream that never is the same.” Savitri-637-638, Death said to Para-prakriti Savitri : “This truth I know that Satyavan is dead And even thy sweetness cannot lure him back. No magic Truth can bring the dead to life, No power of earth cancel the thing once done, No joy of the heart can last surviving death, No bliss persuade the past to live again. But Life alone can solace the mute Void And fill with thought the emptiness of Time. Leave then thy dead, O Savitri, and live.” Savitri-655-656 Later Vedantic Spirituality: “I think Sri Aurobindo deliberately made this Death very vulgar to discourage all the Illusionists and Nirvanists. ”²⁰ The Mother (Death said) “If thou desirest immortality, Be then alone sufficient to thy soul: Live in thyself; forget the man thou lov’st. My last grand death shall rescue thee from life; Then shalt thou rise into thy unmoved source.” Savitri-594 (Death said) “Earth only is there and not some heavenly source. If heavens there are they are veiled in their own light, If a Truth eternal somewhere reigns unknown, It burns in a tremendous void of God; For truth shines far from the falsehoods of the world; How can the heavens come down to unhappy earth Or the eternal lodge in drifting time?” Savitri-609 (Death said) “The Avatars have lived and died in vain, Vain was the sage’s thought, the prophet’s voice; In vain is seen the shining upward Way. Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun; She loves her fall and no omnipotence Her mortal imperfections can erase, Force on man’s crooked ignorance Heaven’s straight line Or colonise a world of death with gods.” Savitri-609-610 (Death said) “Heaven’s hour adjourned flees into bodiless Time. Death saves thee from this and saves Satyavan: He now is safe, delivered from himself; He travels to silence and felicity. Call him not back to the treacheries of earth And the poor petty life of animal Man. In my vast tranquil spaces let him sleep” Savitri-611 (Death said) “Renounce, forgetting joy and hope and tears, Thy passionate nature in the bosom profound Of a happy Nothingness and worldless Calm, Delivered into my mysterious rest. One with my fathomless Nihil all forget.” Savitri-612 (Death said) “How canst thou force to wed two eternal foes? Irreconcilable in their embrace They cancel the glory of their pure extremes: An unhappy wedlock maims their stunted force. How shall thy will make one the true and false? Where Matter is all, there Spirit is a dream: If all are the Spirit, Matter is a lie, And who was the liar who forged the universe? The Real with the unreal cannot mate. He who would turn to God, must leave the world; He who would live in the Spirit, must give up life; He who has met the Self, renounces self.” Savitri-635 “In vain his heart lifts up its yearning prayer, Peopling with brilliant Gods the formless Void; Then disappointed to the Void he turns And in its happy nothingness asks release, The calm Nirvana of his dream of self:” Savitri-644 “His truth in human thinking cannot dwell: If thou desirest Truth, then still thy mind For ever, slain by the dumb unseen Light.” Savitri-646 “If heavens there are whose gates are shut to grief, There seek the joy thou couldst not find on earth; Or in the imperishable hemisphere Where Light is native and Delight is king And Spirit is the deathless ground of things, Choose thy high station, child of Eternity. If thou art Spirit and Nature is thy robe, Cast off thy garb and be thy naked self Immutable in its undying truth, Alone for ever in the mute Alone. Turn then to God, for him leave all behind; Forgetting love, forgetting Satyavan, Annul thyself in his immobile peace. O soul, drown in his still beatitude. For thou must die to thyself to reach God’s height:” Savitri-647 2: Soul slaying Human Love: As per our study like Arjuna of the Gita, Death has raised twenty-three questions and indirectly hints at a passage to immortality. From the Arjuna we learn the lesson of Jivatma’s union with Paramatma , similarly, from Death’s conversation with Savitri , we can learn the lesson of reconciliation of Perfect Spirit with imperfect Matter. A Soul slaying human love, a soul-slaying word and a soul-slaying momentary work can slay the Psychic being. This means human association, thought bound to three gunas and any action by the pressure of three gunas can veil the Psychic being. Whereas Divine Love, Divine descended overhead knowledge and Divine action by the pressure of Divine Will can save and activate the Psychic being. (Death said) “Thy mortal longing made for thee a soul. This angel in thy body thou callst love, Who shapes his wings from thy emotion’s hues, In a ferment of thy body has been born And with the body that housed it it must die. It is a passion of thy yearning cells, It is flesh that calls to flesh to serve its lust; It is thy mind that seeks an answering mind And dreams awhile that it has found its mate; It is thy life that asks a human prop To uphold its weakness lonely in the world Or feeds its hunger on another’s life.” Savitri-608 (Death said) “What is this love thy thought has deified, This sacred legend and immortal myth? It is a conscious yearning of thy flesh, It is a glorious burning of thy nerves, A rose of dream-splendour petalling thy mind, A great red rapture and torture of thy heart. A sudden transfiguration of thy days, It passes and the world is as before.” Savitri-610 (Death said) “If Satyavan had lived, love would have died; But Satyavan is dead and love shall live A little while in thy sad breast, until His face and body fade on memory’s wall Where other bodies, other faces come.” Savitri-610 (Death said) “Love cannot live by heavenly food alone, Only on sap of earth can it survive. For thy passion was a sensual want refined, A hunger of the body and the heart; Thy want can tire and cease or turn elsewhere. Or love may meet a dire and pitiless end By bitter treason, or wrath with cruel wounds Separate, or thy unsatisfied will to others Depart when first love’s joy lies stripped and slain: A dull indifference replaces fire Or an endearing habit imitates love: An outward and uneasy union lasts Or the routine of a life’s compromise:” Savitri-611 (Death said) “Two strive, constant associates without joy, Two egos straining in a single leash, Two minds divided by their jarring thoughts, Two spirits disjoined, for ever separate. Thus is the ideal falsified in man’s world; Trivial or sombre, disillusion comes, Life’s harsh reality stares at the soul:” Savitri-611 (Death said human love is) “A sweet secretion from the erotic glands Flattering and torturing the burning nerves, Love is a honey and poison in the breast Drunk by it as the nectar of the gods. Earth’s human wisdom is no great-browed power, And love no gleaming angel from the skies; If they aspire beyond earth’s dullard air, Arriving sunwards with frail waxen wings, How high could reach that forced unnatural flight? But not on earth can divine wisdom reign And not on earth can divine love be found; Heaven-born, only in heaven can they live; Or else there too perhaps they are shining dreams.” Savitri-618-619 3: Supreme Word of Savitri (Mahavakya): “If there is a yet happier greater god, Let him first wear the face of Satyavan And let his soul be one with him I love; So let him seek me that I may desire.” Savitri-614, A psychic being is identified as a greater God. That means if a Sadhaka has realised his Psychic Being in the heart centre, then his status is greater than Overmental God and he can call down Divine Love to earth and men. If he calls down Paramatma/ Purushottama/Supramental Purusha to the heart centre then he begins to wear the face of Satyavan and experiences static Divine union. With the prolongation of this union, dynamic Brahman/Paraprakriti/Supramental Mother comes down permanently to stay in the heart centre. Then heart centre becomes the meeting ground of Paramatma Satyavan and Paraprakriti Savitri and this dynamic union possesses material life and the cellular transformation begins the action. To Love and Possess equally Paramatma Satyavan and Paraprakriti Savitri in the heart centre is the supreme Word of Savitri and the extension of World transformation through the mighty descent of Divine Force. This is the condition of receiving Savitri’s comprehensive Divine Love. Here we divide this comprehensive Divine Love into four parts: Jivatma’s union with Paramatma (realisation of transcendent Divine) Jivatma’s union with Paraprakriti (Universalisation of Consciousness and beginning of individual transformation)) Parmatma’s union with Paraprakriti (beginning of cellular and world transformation.) Paraprakriti’s union with Aparaprakriti (Matter) (Subconscient transformation) When King Aswapati asked Savitri 'somewhere on the longing breast of earth, Thy unknown lover waits for thee the unknown,’ Savitri went across the world to meet her Lord. She met twelve types of liberated great Souls before meeting Satyavan but they were not fit to hold Savitri’s Comprehensive Divine Love. So, in order to hold Savitri’s comprehensive Divine Love, one has to ‘wear the face of Satyavan ’ or move the Consciousness comprehensively in all the above four ways. 4. Ancient Vedantic Spirituality as pursued by Savitri: In Savitri we find the personality of ancient Vedantic Seer. To become ancient Vedantist , a Sadhak has to realise the dynamic aspect of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Being. He can confront with Death and change his individual, collective and human destiny. (Savitri said) “Out of thy shadow give me back again Into earth’s flowering spaces Satyavan In the sweet transiency of human limbs To do with him my spirit’s burning will. I will bear with him the ancient Mother’s load, I will follow with him earth’s path that leads to God. Else shall the eternal spaces open to me, While round us strange horizons far recede, Travelling together the immense unknown. For I who have trod with him the tracts of Time, Can meet behind his steps whatever night Or unimaginable stupendous dawn Breaks on our spirits in the untrod Beyond. Wherever thou leadst his soul I shall pursue.” Savitri-590 (Savitri said) “A curse is laid on the pure joy of life: Delight, God’s sweetest sign and Beauty’s twin, Dreaded by aspiring saint and austere sage, Is shunned, a dangerous and ambiguous cheat, A specious trick of an infernal Power It tempts the soul to its self-hurt and fall.” Savitri-629 “Give me back Satyavan, my only lord. Thy thoughts are vacant to my soul that feels The deep eternal truth in transient things.” Savitri-637 “I am not bound by thought or sense or shape; I live in the glory of the Infinite, I am near to the Nameless and Unknowable, The Ineffable is now my household mate. But standing on Eternity’s luminous brink I have discovered that the world was He; I have met Spirit with spirit, Self with self, But I have loved too the body of my God. I have pursued him in his earthly form. A lonely freedom cannot satisfy A heart that has grown one with every heart: I am a deputy of the aspiring world, My spirit’s liberty I ask for all.” Savitri-649 Supreme Word of The Mother’s Agenda (Mahavakya ): The Mother’s Agenda is identified as a book of continuation of Sri Aurobindo’s unfinished Yoga of Self-perfection and after Sri Aurobindo’s departure the Mother was undergoing Subconscient transformation¹³ and cellular transformation experience. ‘Oh, it’s so easy to escape, so easy to say, ‘None of that concerns me. I belong to higher spheres, it doesn’t concern me.’…Anyway, it’s obvious that nobody has succeeded, so far not a single person– and I understand! I understand. When you find yourself face to face with it, you wonder, ‘How could anything possibly withstand this!’…My body was strongly built, solid, full of endurance – it had a tremendous energy, yet it’s beginning to feel that it isn’t easy.’¹² Subconscient and Inconscient transformation are identified as a very difficult and unending exercise to which one Avatara is not sufficient¹⁴ but successions of Avataras/Vibhutis must incarnate and descend to complete this great task of transformation. Thus, the Supreme word (Mahavakya ) of The Mother’s Agenda is identified as: “This (descent of Divine Force) has repeatedly been my experience lately, with a vision and a conviction, the conviction of an experience: the two vibrations (Truth vibration of Spirit and falsehood vibration of Matter) are like this (concomitant gesture indicating a superimposition and infiltration), all the time – all the time, all the time…May be the sense of wonder comes when the quantity that has infiltrated is large enough to be perceptible. But I have an impression – a very acute impression – that this phenomenon is going on all the time, all the time, everywhere, in a minuscule, infinitesimal way (gesture of a twinkling infiltration), and that in certain circumstances or conditions that are visible (visible to this vision: it's a sort of luminous swelling (of brain)– I can't explain), then, the mass of infiltration is sufficient to give the impression of a miracle. But otherwise, it's something going on all the time, all the time, all the time, continuously, (“A mystic slow transfiguration works.” Savitri-632) in the world (same twinkling gesture), like an infinitesimal amount of Falsehood replaced by Light ... Falsehood replaced by Light ... constantly…And this Vibration (which I feel and see) gives the feeling of a fire. That's probably what the Vedic Rishis translated as the "Flame" – in the human consciousness, in man, in Matter. They always spoke of a "Flame." It is indeed a vibration with the intensity of a higher fire… The body even felt several times, when the Work was very concentrated or condensed, that it is the equivalent of a fever.”² We find the supporting line of the above experience in Savitri : “Night felt assailed her heavy sombre reign; The splendour of some bright eternity Threatened with this faint beam of wandering Truth Her empire of the everlasting Nought.” Savitri-585 “Here in this seat of Darkness mute and lone, In the heart of everlasting Nothingness Light conquered now even by that feeble beam: Its faint infiltration drilled the blind deaf mass; Almost it changed into a glimmering sight That housed the phantom of an aureate Sun Whose orb pupilled the eye of Nothingness. A golden fire came in and burned Night’s heart; Her dusky mindlessness began to dream; The Inconscient conscious grew, Night felt and thought.” Savitri-601 “Her mind sat high pouring its golden beams, Her heart was a crowded temple of delight. A single lamp lit in perfection’s house, A bright pure image in a priestless shrine, Midst those encircling lives her spirit dwelt, Apart in herself until her hour of fate.” Savitri-368 Savitri was preparing to meet the hour of that fated day in which Satyavan would leave the earthly body and she was constantly accumulating Spiritual energy in the heart of her priestless shrine and that accumulated energy can drill the blind deaf mass of Subconscient sheath. OM TAT SAT References: 1: “Sri Aurobindo writes this about the chakra at the base of the spine: “The Muladhar is the centre of the physical consciousness proper, and all below in the body is the sheer physical, which as it goes downward becomes increasingly subconscient, but the real seat of the subconscient is below the body, as the real seat of the higher consciousness (superconscient) is above the body.” Bases of Yoga/ p. 133, 2: The Mother’s Agenda-25th March-1964, 3: “The supramental world exists in a permanent way, and I am there permanently in a supramental body. I had proof of this today when my earthly consciousness went there and consciously remained there between two and three o’clock in the afternoon: I now know that for the two worlds to join in a constant and conscious relationship what is missing is an intermediate zone between the existing physical world and the supramental world as it exists. This zone has yet to be built, both in the individual consciousness and in the objective world, and it is being built. When formerly I used to speak of the new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone. And similarly, when I am on ‘this’ side – that is, in the realm of the physical consciousness – and I see the supramental power, the supramental light and substance constantly permeating matter, I am seeing and participating in the construction of this zone.” The Mother’s Agenda/03.02.1958, 4: “What's interesting is to follow this sort of change in the consciousness of the cells: a lot of them still have a sense of wonder at the fact that the Truth exists. That's the form it takes: a sense of wonder. "Ah, so that's what it is!" A wonder. A wonder at the existence, the UNIQUE existence of the Lord – a joy! Such an intense joy and a childlike wonder, you know: "Oh, so it's really like that!" And this goes on in one part of the body after another, one group of cells after another. Truly charming. And then, when the mantra comes spontaneously, oh! An adoration: "It's like that, like that! That is true, THAT is true – all the disorder, all the ugliness, all the suffering, all the misery, all of that isn't true! It's not true, THAT is true." And not with words (words make it very small): with an extraordinary sensation, extraordinary! Then ... it's the beginning of that sort of glorious, marvelous life. It's still at the stage of wonder; that is, something unexpected in its sublimity.” The Mother’s Agenda-25.03.1967, 5: “If we consider that a child must only learn, know and be aware of what can keep him pure of all lower, crude, violent and degrading movements, then we should eliminate at one stroke the entire contact with the rest of mankind, beginning with all those accounts of wars, murders, conflicts and deceits that are called History; we should eliminate the present contact with family, parents and friends; and we should constantly control the child’s contact with all the vital impulses of his own being… This idea is what led to monastic life shut in a convent, or to ascetic life in the cave or the forest... This remedy has proved to be totally ineffective and has not pulled mankind out of its quagmire…According to Sri Aurobindo, the remedy is altogether different…We must face integral life with all that it still entails in terms of ugliness, falsehood and cruelty, but while taking care to discover in ourselves the source of all goodness, all beauty, all light and all truth, in order to consciously put that source in contact with the world so it may transform it…That is infinitely more difficult than fleeing or closing one’s eyes so as not to see – but it is the only really effective way, the way of those who are truly strong and pure and capable of manifesting the Truth.” The Mother’s Agenda-29.05.1968, 6: “Why, why is this world like this, why? Why all these horrors, why?... That’s how the body was this morning. And it has the impression – just as it has that very strong, very strong sensation of being within the Lord – it has the impression of what that leads to, of what is to come. And then, with TOTAL trust, total. But it doesn’t yet know…It’s all the time – constantly, unceasingly – all the time brought face to face with this experience that when you are like this (Mother tips two fingers on one side), that is, turned to the Divine, things work out miraculously – miraculously ...it’s unbelievable; and being like that (Mother tips two fingers on the other side) is enough for everything to be disgusting, to go wrong, to grate: a TINY LITTLE movement either of trusting opening, or of the ordinary consciousness (not at all a consciousness of revolt or negation, not at all: merely the ordinary consciousness, the consciousness of life as people have it – the ordinary consciousness), and it’s enough ... things become appalling; and then, like this (gesture in the other direction): miraculously marvelous. For microscopic, unimportant things, you understand, that is to say, for EVERYTHING – no question of "important" or "unimportant" things, nothing of that sort – for everything it becomes simply miraculous, yet it’s the same thing! In one case you are in pain, you suffer, you are miserable, you even fall ill, and in the other case And it’s the same thing…But it has reached the point where now the body is quite astounded that one can live the ordinary life with the ordinary consciousness and be contented! It finds that appalling, you know, appalling. And that way of living in chaos, ugliness, wickedness, selfishness, violence, oh ... and cruelty and all possible horrors, and of finding it all perfectly natural.... That’s when the body says to itself, "It must be ... it must have been necessary as a stage in the development, and it’s an effect of the Grace, so there’s nothing to say, there’s only to admire."…But it’s absolutely certain – absolutely certain – that if the world, if the creation were as it appears to be to this bodily consciousness as it now is, there would be only one thing to do – to blot it out! That’s obviously the explanation of, and justification for, all nihilistic religions and philosophies. It takes a thoroughly unconscious insensitiveness to be able to live happily and contentedly in this horror that is the world. And all this IS the Lord, and not only IS the Lord but is WITHIN the Lord; that is to say, it’s not as we imagine it – things that were driven away, rejected – not at all, not at all: all this is there… WITHIN the Lord. So there… You see, the body has this experience of being completely disorganized, of having a cold, a pain here, a pain there ... and when it’s in a certain attitude (we may call it an attitude, I don’t know), at any rate in a certain state of consciousness: vanished! All that no longer exists, there’s not a trace – there’s no cold anymore, no pain anymore, nothing anymore, it’s all gone! Though it’s ready to come back.... And not only gone (which would be a psychological phenomenon), but the CIRCUMSTANCES of people and things around CHANGE! They become different: in one case, everything is like that – stubborn, twisted – and in the other ...So as a matter of fact, the body’s advantage over the mind is that it understands very well (for it, it’s natural) that all that way of seeing and speaking is only a way of seeing and speaking; you may have the opposite way and it may be just as true, and yet another way would be quite true, and finally all that one says and thinks is only ... ways of seeing. The mind has difficulty with that, but the body knows it very well, very well. But ... Inexpressible.” The Mother’s Agenda-04.12.1968, 7: “The experience is repeated in every detail, every field, like a demonstration through fact. And it’s not a "long process" of transformation: it’s like something turning around all at once (Mother turns over two fingers), and instead of seeing ugliness, falsehood, horror, suffering and all that, the body suddenly lives in bliss. And all things have remained the same, nothing has changed, except the consciousness…So there remains the question (this is something ahead, it’s probably coming): how is the experience to express itself materially? ... For the body itself, it’s perfectly obvious: for, say, an hour, or two, or three, it suffered a lot, very miserable (not a moral suffering: a wholly physical suffering), then all of a sudden, brrff! all gone.... The body has apparently remained the same (Mother looks at her hands), in its appearance, but instead of an inner disorder that makes it suffer, everything is fine, and there’s a great peace, a great tranquillity – everything is fine. But that’s for ONE body – how does that act on others?... It’s beginning to perceive the possibility in other consciousnesses. On the moral level (that is to say, the level of attitudes, character, reactions), it’s very visible; even sometimes on the physical level: something suddenly disappears – as we had the experience when Sri Aurobindo would remove a pain (Mother shows a hand of the subtle physical coming and taking away the pain), we would wonder ... "Ah!" Gone, vanished, like that. But it’s not constant, not general, it’s only to show it can be like that through the fact that it happens in one case or another – to show that things CAN be like that…We might put it this way: the body has the sense of being shut inside something – shut in, yes – shut as if inside a box, but it can see through; it sees and can also have an action (though limited) THROUGH something that’s still there and which must disappear. That "something" gives a sense of imprisonment. How is it to disappear? ... That I don’t know yet…There must be found the relationship between the consciousness in ONE body and the consciousness of the whole. And the extent of the dependence, and the extent of the independence; that is, how far the body can be transformed in its consciousness (and, necessarily as a result, in its appearance), how it can be transformed without ... without the transformation of the whole – how far? And to what extent is the transformation of the whole necessary to the transformation of the body? That remains to be discovered.” The Mother’s Agenda-21.12.1968, 8: Savitri-603, 9: “The survival of the evil habits in sleep is easily explained and is a thing of common experience. It is a known psychological law that whatever is suppressed in the conscious mind remains in the subconscient being and recurs either in the waking state when the control is removed or else in sleep. Mental control by itself cannot eradicate anything entirely out of the being. The subconscient in the ordinary man includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and also the secret body- consciousness. In order to make a true and complete change, one has to make all these conscious, to see clearly what is still there and to reject them from one layer after another till they have been entirely thrown out from the personal experience. Even then, they may remain and come back on the being from the surrounding universal forces and it is only when no part of the consciousness makes any response to these forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete.” CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes-p-365, 10: “In the present case, of course, the body is always saying, ‘I am ready for everything – I will do anything at all’; yet I still can’t say that it has this. It’s trying to be completely ‘pure’ according to the spiritual concept – it doesn’t sense its separate personality. More and more, year after year, it has been striving to feel only the divine Presence, the divine Life, the divine Force and the divine Will, all within itself; and to feel that without them it is nothing, it doesn’t exist. This is fully realized in its consciousness (the conscious part). In the subconscient and inconscient, obviously... it is not realized otherwise, logically, it shouldn’t be ill…The whole disorder evidently originates from the subconscient and inconscient; all the more so as it came with various indications (sent by the hostile forces – but this can always be useful, provided you are careful) saying, ‘Yes, everything is going well in your higher centers, but...’(because the different points of attack have clearly followed the order of the centers). Four or five days ago, or maybe a week, before this latest difficulty occurred, I saw little beings coming out of the subconscient and saying, ‘Ah! Your legs haven’t had any trouble for a long time! It’s the turn of the lower centers!’ I swept it all away, of course, but....Taken this way, it could be an indication that all this needs ... a somewhat brutal preparation in order to be put in the necessary condition.” The Mother’s Agenda-11.02.1961, 11: “To realize what one has to realize, it is absolutely indispensable to be TOTALLY free of all ties with the ordinary, false consciousness common to material body-consciousness – the consciousness of the body-substance – deriving from the subconscient and the inconscient. This must not only be mastered (it has been mastered for a long time) – but there must be complete independence so that it no longer has the power to provoke any reaction at all. But we aren’t there yet, it’s still not like that, and as long as it isn’t, we are not on the safe side. But when all the body’s cells, even in their most subconscious reactions, will come to know what I myself know, that the Supreme alone exists, when they will know that, it will be good – not before.” The Mother’s Agenda-11.02.1961, 12: “Right in the subconscient, a subconscient ... oh, hopelessly weak and dull and ... (how to put it?) enslaved to a host of things – enslaved to EVERYTHING. It has been unfolding before me night after night, night after night, to show me. Last night, it was indescribable! It goes on and on – it seems to have no limits! Naturally, the body feels the effects of this, poor thing! It is the body’s subconscient, but it’s not personal – it is personal and not personal: it becomes personal only when it enters the body…You can’t imagine the accumulation of impressions recorded and stored in the subconscient, heaped one on top of another. Outwardly, you don’t even notice, the waking consciousness isn’t aware of it; but they come in, they keep on coming and coming, piling up ... hideous! …So we’ll see how long this is going to last. I understand why people have never tried to change it: stir up that quagmire? No! It takes a lot (laughing), a lot of courage! Oh, it’s so easy to escape, so easy to say, ‘None of that concerns me. I belong to higher spheres, it doesn’t concern me.’…Anyway, it’s obvious that nobody has succeeded, so far not a single person– and I understand! I understand. When you find yourself face to face with it, you wonder, ‘How could anything possibly withstand this!’…My body was strongly built, solid, full of endurance – it had a tremendous energy, yet it’s beginning to feel that it isn’t easy.” The Mother’s Agenda-18.02.1961, 13: “Yes. By acting from above, one can keep these things under control, hold them in place, prevent them from taking any unpleasant initiatives, but that’s not. To transform means to transform…Even mastery can be achieved – it’s quite easy to do from above. But for the transformation one must descend, and that is terrible.... Otherwise, the subconscient will never be transformed, it will remain as it is…One can even pose as a superman! (Mother laughs) But it remains like that (gesture in the air), it’s not the real thing. It’s not the new creation, it’s not the next step in terrestrial evolution…You might as well say, ‘Why are you in a hurry? Wait for Nature to do it.’ But Nature would take a few million years and in the process squander away a host of people and things. A few million years are unimportant to her – a passing breeze.” The Mother’s Agenda-18.02.1961, 14: “Yet the cells sense so perfectly that.... All the experiences in the subconscient at night are quite clear proofs that a ... a WORLD of things and vibrations is being cleaned out – all the vibrations opposed to the cellular transformation. But how can one poor little body do all that work! The body is quite aware of being a sort of accumulation and concentration of things (yet there is inevitably a selection – Mother laughs – because if everything had to be worked out in one center like this [her body] it would be ... it would be impossible!). Oh, if you knew how deeply and perfectly convinced these cells are, in all their groups and sub-groups, each one individually and within the whole, that everything is not only decreed but executed by the Divine, everything! They have a kind of constant awareness so filled with... a conscious faith in His infinite wisdom, even when there is what the ordinary consciousness calls suffering or pain. That’s not what it is for the cells – it’s something else! And the result is a state of ... yes, a state of peaceful combat. There is a sense of Peace, the vibration of Peace, and simultaneously an impression of being ... (how to put it?) on the alert, in constant combat. Taken all together it creates a rather odd situation….And within ... oh! It’s like waves, constantly, the equivalent of those nuances of color I was speaking about, waves of this joy of life, the joy of life rippling past, touching; but instead of being. At times, you see, the body is in a sort of equilibrium (what we, in our ordinary outer consciousness, call ‘equilibrium’ – that is, good health), and then this joy is constant, like swells on the sea (Mother shapes great waves): it seems to flow on behind everything; it comes and shows its face for a moment, then vanishes. In the very tiny things of life – yes, physical life – the joy of these things, the joy life contains, this luminous, special kind of vibration, rises up as if to remind us that it’s here; itis here, it mustn’t be forgotten, it’s here – but it’s kept down by this ... tension…Then, from time to time, everything seems to be on the edge of a precipice; the body doesn’t fall simply because it keeps its balance – but without this higher state of perfect faith, one would surely fall!” The Mother’s Agenda-14.03.1961, 15: “... outwardly, according to ordinary consciousness, I fell ill; but it’s stupid to speak this way – I did not fall ill! All possible difficulties in the body’s subconscient rose up en masse – it had to happen, and it surely happened to Sri Aurobindo, too. How well I understood! How well, indeed. And it’s no joke, you know! I had wondered why these difficulties had hounded him so ferociously – now I understand, because I am being attacked in the same relentless fashion.” The Mother’s Agenda-15.07.1961, 16: “A descent into the subconscient would not help us to explore this region, for it would plunge us into incoherence or into sleep or a dull trance or a comatose torpor. A mental scrutiny or insight can give us some indirect and constructive idea of these hidden activities; but it is only by drawing back into the subliminal or by ascending into the superconscient and from there looking down or extending ourselves into these obscure depths that we can become directly and totally aware and in control of the secrets of our subconscient physical, vital and mental nature. This awareness, this control are of the utmost importance. For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements. It sustains and reinforces all in us that clings most and refuses to change, our mechanical recurrences of unintelligent thought, our persistent obstinacies of feeling, sensation, impulse, propensity, our uncontrolled fixities of character. The animal in us, — the infernal also, — has its lair of retreat in the dense jungle of the subconscience. To penetrate there, to bring in light and establish a control, is indispensable for the completeness of any higher life, for any integral transformation of the nature.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine-763, 17: Savitri-635, 18: “It’s quite obvious that the Inconscient, the Subconscient and the semi-conscient are accidental; they are not a permanent part of the creation, so are bound to disappear, to be transformed…Years ago, when Sri Aurobindo and I descended together from plane to plane (or from mode of life to mode of life) and reached the Subconscient, we saw that it was no longer individual: it was terrestrial. The rest – the mind, the vital and of course the body – is individualized; but when you descend below this level, that’s no longer the case. There is indeed something between the conscious life of the body and this subconscious terrestrial life – elements are thrown out as a result of the action of individual consciousness upon the subconscious substance; this creates a kind of semiconsciousness, and that stays. For example, when people are told, ‘You have pushed your difficulty down into the subconscient and it will resurface,’ this does not refer to the general Subconscient, but to something individualized out of the Subconscient through the action of individual consciousness and remaining down there until it resurfaces. The process is, so to speak, interminable, even the personal part of it.” The Mother’s Agenda-02.08.1961, 19: “Most of the time in sleep, with very few exceptions, one is in contact with all that rises up from the subconscient: a cerebral subconscient, an emotive subconscient, a material subconscient; this is what produces ninety- nine percent of the dreams people have. Sometimes – usually – the mind goes wandering, but ninety-nine and a half percent of the time, one remembers nothing when it returns, because the link is not properly established… The purpose of sleep is to re-establish contact with the consciousness of Sachchidananda. But I don’t think one person in a hundred does so! They enter into unconsciousness far more than into Sachchidananda.” The Mother’s Agenda-05.08.1961, 20: “Yes, the Rishis give an absolutely living description of what you experience – and experience continually – as soon as you descend into the Subconscient: all these battles with the beings who conceal the Light and so on. I experienced these things continually at Tlemcen and again with Sri Aurobindo when we were doing the Work – it’s raging quite merrily even now!...As soon as you go down there, that’s what happens – you have to fight against all that is unwilling to change, all that dominates the world and does not want to change. ” The Mother’s Agenda-7.11.1961, 21: “The terminology used by Mother and Sri Aurobindo is distinct from the terminology of Western psychology. This is how Sri Aurobindo defines ‘inconscient’ and ‘subconscient’: ‘All upon earth is based on the Inconscient, as it is called, though it is not really inconscient at all, but rather a complete “sub”-conscience, a suppressed or involved consciousness, in which there is everything but nothing is formulated or expressed. The subconscient lies between this Inconscient and the conscious mind, life and body.’” (Cent. Ed., XXII, p. 354), 22: “I was saying to myself, "But what's the way to get out of here?" I concentrated, became conscious again of the divine Presence, but there was something telling me, "Nothing is responding, it's not working." It was horrible. "Nothing is responding, it's not working; it's not working, it can't change, nothing is responding; nothing is responding, it's not working." I was there like that, with two or three people. I sat down (some rooms were higher than others and it made a difference in level between the terraces), I sat down on a ledge, questioning intensely within, "What can I do? What can I do? What's the way? What can I do? Where's the lever?" I was trying to find the lever for changing it all. But I was unable to find it. Suddenly, from the room at the end a little old man came out, very old, who gave the impression of an attachment to old things; just the same (he was all blue), just the same when he arrived (it must be the symbol of an old method or an old discipline), I told him, "Ah, now that you are here, can you tell me the way out of this place? What's the way to get free, the way out?" That started him laughing: "No, no! There's no way, no way out, you must be content with what you have." Then he looked at that poor light above, which really didn't give much light at all, and he said (in a high-sounding tone): "But in the first place, I came to tell you that you must put out that sun! I don't want that dazzling sun here." Ah!... I thought, "That's what he calls a sun!" I was so disgusted that finally I woke up. Something pulled me out abruptly. But with such a strong impression – so strong – that I was gripped by anguish: "What can be done to change that?" The WAY, you see, the way was inadequate – inadequate. That was the anguish: "My own experience is inadequate, it has no effect THERE, so what's to be done? What's to be done? What can be done?" So that's how I was for hours this morning: "What's the way? What's the way? What's the way to change that darkness into light?"…It wasn't very cheering….I'm not giving you all the details, but all sorts of people were there, with all their plans, all their ideas; one would come (what I've just said was only at the end, but before that plenty of people had come) and say, "Oh, look how cleverly I've organized this!" Then another one would come with another plan, then they would confer among themselves, then ... It was just life, you see! A whole mental domain of life… And my experience did not REACH there; there was no contact, I was powerless. What little light that turned on because of my presence and was considered as a dazzling sun was to me a mere street lamp. It was painful…I thought, "Why? Why am I not happy and quiet here, too?" And something answered, "Because I want to change that." If I accepted it, I wouldn't even notice it; it's because I want to change that darkness. So then ... then there will be joy only when we have FOUND the way – and how to find it?. All the methods I use for the yoga and for transformation, all were useless, useless, useless, no action, no action, no effect, no effect.... I've never seen a place so unreceptive! No effect, none at all. And everybody VERY content with what he knew!...It is evidently a mental domain. A mental subconscient. But it's horrible… Horrible…Then in the morning, I asked myself, "What? Is there still a lot like that?" A world! A whole world, a mass of things. And that powerlessness in which you find yourself; which means that unless I am given the key, there is no way. That funny little old man, oh, he almost made me angry (I cannot get angry, but I was almost angry and that's what woke me up), I was indignant. "Aah, aah (Mother takes the old man's rasping tone), so you want to get out of here?! But no one gets out of this place! And why do you want to get out? ... There's no way to get out, can't you see that there's no getting out of here – and why do you want to get out?! ... Anyway, I came to tell you, I only came to tell you to put out that sun! That dazzling sun, you know!"…Well ....Those are my nights…So you get the feeling it will take centuries – centuries to change! Or else a catastrophe…Though even a catastrophe (Mother shakes her head negatively) it shakes it all up, then everything sinks back to the bottom…(silence) And I kept trying to go down…It must be to reach subconscient and inconscient depths. That's always what gives difficulties – an abyss…I haven't yet tried to take the plunge. So far, nothing ever pushed me to plunge down – several times I did find an unexpected way, but there was never the impulsion: "Too bad, I'll throw myself off."…I don't know why…(long silence) It is becoming increasingly positive – positive. And as if the problem were drawing closer and closer, growing more and more tight and stifling…(silence) It's perfectly obvious that people can live, that men can exist and live BECAUSE they are unconscious. If they were conscious, really conscious of the state they live in, it would be intolerable. And I can see that there is a very difficult period when you go from that unconsciousness (unconsciousness of the habit of living in that state) to a conscious vision of the state you live in. When you become totally conscious of things as they are – of what you are, of your condition– and when you do not yet have the power to get out, like last night, it's almost intolerable. And there was a very clear awareness, very precise, that it isn't a question of life or death: it doesn't depend on that sort of thing, which ultimately changes nothing but a wholly superficial appearance – that's not it! You know, people who are unhappy think, "Ah, a day will come when I'll die, and all my difficulties will be over" – they're simpletons! It won't be over at all, it will go on. It will go on until the time when they get out for good, that is, when they emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. It's the only way out: to emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. And you can die a thousand times, it won't get you out, it's perfectly useless – it just goes on. Sometimes, on the contrary, it drags you even further down…That's the thing…But if you know this too soon, there's something ... intolerable, intolerable. For a minute, it's really intolerable. If there weren't the inner faith to answer that there WILL be an end, that you WILL emerge ...It must require a tremendously powerful lever…I suppose people without solid heads become unhinged. Although truly, there is a remarkable Grace, because people are given a dose of experiences exactly according to their capacity. But this morning there was an hour ... an hour when I was absolutely conscious, absolutely conscious, and conscious of one single thing: the powerlessness – the powerlessness to get out of Ignorance. The will to get out of Ignorance and the powerlessness to do so. It gave me a whole hour of tension…When I woke up, the tension was such that my head was like a boiling kettle; so immediately, I said, "Lord, it's Your concern, not mine; it's not my business." And naturally, everything calmed down instantly.” The Mother’s Agenda-19.06.1963, 23: “I think ("I think," like the scientists' "it appears") I can announce that something is getting organized in the Subconscient – it's beginning to get organized – in the subconscient of individuals as well as in the general Subconscient. It's less unconscious (!) It's a bit more ... yes, a bit more conscious, reflective and organized – a very faint beginning of organization, very little, but a growth in consciousness; it isn't quite so unconscious any more. It's always the last part of the night that I spend there.... You remember that story of the supramental ship and how things were organized by the will, not by external means? Well, that's the action which is beginning to exist in the Subconscient…. No, no! It's not individuals as they know themselves – it is their subconscient. It is in the subconscient. The subconscient is a realm just as the material world is a realm – it's in the subconscient. There have been many efforts, concentrations, meditations, prayers to bring about the clarification and control of all those semiconscious reflexes that govern individuals – a great concentration on that point. And this experience seems to be the outcome. There are lots of things which people don't even take notice of in life (when they live an ordinary life, they don't take any notice), there's a whole field of things that are absolutely ... not quite unconscious, but certainly not conscious; they are reflexes – reflexes, reactions to stimuli, and so on – and also the response (a semiconscious, barely conscious response) to the pressure exerted from above by the Force, which people are totally unconscious of. It is the study of this question which is now in the works; I am very much occupied with it. A study of every second.... You see, there are different ways for the Lord to be present, it's very interesting (the difference isn't for Him, it's for us!), and it depends precisely on the amount of habitual reflex movements that take place almost outside our observation (generally completely outside it) And this question preoccupied me very, very much: the ways of feeling the Lord's Presence – the different ways. There is a way in which you feel it as something vague, but of which you are sure – you are always sure but the sensation is vague and a bit blurred – and at other times it is an acute Presence143 (Mother touches her face), very precise, in all that you do, all that you feel, all that you are. There is an entire range. And then if we follow the movement (gesture in stages, moving away), there are those who are so far away, so far, that they don't feel anything at all. This experience made me write something yesterday (but it has lasted several days), it came as the outcome of the work done, and yesterday I wrote it both in English and in French: "There is no other sin, no other vice than to be far from Thee." Then, the entire world, the universe, appeared to me in that light, and at every point (which takes up no space), at every point of the universe and throughout the universe, it's that way. Not that there are far and near places in the universe, that's not what I mean (it's beyond space), but there is a whole hierarchy of nearness, up to something that doesn't feel and doesn't know – it's not that it is outside, because nothing can be outside the Lord, but it is as if the extreme limit: so far away, so far, so far – absolutely black – that He seems not to reach there.” The Mother’s Agenda-07.12.1963, 24: “In our Yoga we mean by the subconscient that quite submerged part of our being in which there is no wakingly conscious and coherent thought, will or feeling or organised reaction, but which yet receives obscurely the impressions of all things and stores them up in itself and from it too all sorts of stimuli, of persistent habitual movements, crudely repeated or disguised in strange forms can surge up into dream or into the waking nature. For if these impressions rise up most in dream in an incoherent and disorganised manner, they can also and do rise up into our waking consciousness as a mechanical repetition of old thoughts, old mental, vital and physical habits or an obscure stimulus to sensations, actions, emotions which do not originate in or from our conscious thought or will and are even often opposed to its perceptions, choice or dictates. In the subconscient there is an obscure mind full of obstinate sanskaras, impressions, associations, fixed notions, habitual reactions formed by our past, an obscure vital full of the seeds of habitual desires, sensations and nervous reactions, a most obscure material which governs much that has to do with the condition of the body. It is largely responsible for our illnesses; chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body consciousness. But this subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I-216-217, 25: “The subconscious is the evolutionary basis in us, it is not the whole of our hidden nature, nor is it the whole origin of what we are. But things can rise from the subconscient and take shape in the conscious part and much of our smaller vital and physical instincts, movements, habits, character-forms has this source. There are three occult sources of our action — the superconscient, the subliminal, the subconscient, but of none of them are we in control or even aware. What we are aware of is the surface being which is only an instrumental arrangement. The source of all is the general Nature, — universal Nature individualising itself in each person; for this general Nature deposits certain habits of movement, personality, character, faculties, dispositions, tendencies in us, and that, whether formed now or before our birth, is what we usually call ourselves. A good deal of this is in habitual movement and use in our known conscious part on the surface, a great deal more is concealed in the other unknown three which are below or behind the surface. But what we are on the surface is being constantly set in motion, changed, developed or repeated by the waves of the general Nature coming in on us either directly or else indirectly through others, through circumstances, through various agencies or channels. Some of this flows straight into the conscious part and acts there, but our mind ignores its source, appropriates it and regards all that as its own; a part comes secretly into the subconscient or sinks into it and waits for an opportunity of rising up into the conscious surface; a good deal goes into the subliminal and may at any time come out — or may not, may rather rest there as unused matter. Part passes through and is rejected, thrown back or thrown out or spilt into the universal sea. Our nature is a constant activity of forces supplied to us out of which (or rather out of a small amount of it) we make what we will or can. What we make seems fixed and formed for good, but in reality it is all a play of forces, a flux, nothing fixed or stable; the appearance of stability is given by constant repetition and recurrence of the same vibrations and formations. That is why our nature can be changed in spite of Vivekananda’s saying and Horace’s adage and in spite of the conservative resistance of the subconscient, but it is a difficult job because the master mode of Nature is this obstinate repetition and recurrence. As for the things in our nature that are thrown away from us by rejection but come back, it depends on where you throw them. Very often there is a sort of procedure about it. The mind rejects its mentalities, the vital its vitalities, the physical its physicalities — these usually go back into the corresponding domain of general Nature. It all stays at first, when that happens, in the environmental consciousness which we carry about with us, by which we communicate with the outside Nature, and often it persistently rushes back from there — until it is so absolutely rejected, or thrown far away as it were, that it cannot return upon us any more. But when what the thinking and willing mind rejects is strongly supported by the vital, it leaves the mind indeed but sinks down into the vital, rages there and tries to rush up again and reoccupy the mind and compel or capture our mental acceptance. When the higher vital too — the heart or the larger vital dynamis rejects it, it sinks from there and takes refuge in the lower vital with its mass of small current movements that make up our daily littleness. When the lower vital too rejects it, it sinks into the physical consciousness and tries to stick by inertia or mechanical repetition. Rejected even from there it goes into the subconscient and comes up in dreams, in passivity, in extreme tamas. The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance. As for the waves that recur from the general Nature, it is the natural tendency of the inferior forces there to try and perpetuate their action in the individual, to rebuild what he has unbuilt of their deposits in him, so they return on him, often with an increased force, even with a stupendous violence, when they find their influence rejected. But they cannot last long once the environmental consciousness is cleared — unless the “Hostiles” take a hand. Even then they can indeed attack, but if the sadhak has established his position in the inner self, they can only attack and retire. It is true that we bring most of ourselves — or rather most of our predispositions, tendencies of reaction to the universal Nature — from past lives. Heredity only affects strongly the ex- ternal being; besides, all the effects of heredity are not accepted even there, only those that are in consonance with what we are to be or not preventive of it at least.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I-218-220, 26: “The subconscient is a concealed and unexpressed inarticulate consciousness which works below all our conscious physical activities. Just as what we call the superconscient is really a higher consciousness above from which things descend into the being, so the subconscient is below the body consciousness and things come up into the physical, the vital and the mind-nature from there. Just as the higher consciousness is superconscient to us and supports all our spiritual possibilities and nature, so the subconscient is the basis of our material being and supports all that comes up in the physical nature. Men are not ordinarily conscious of either of these planes of their own being, but by sadhana they can become aware. The subconscient retains the impressions of all our past experiences of life and they can come up from there in dream forms. Most dreams in ordinary sleep are formations made from subconscient impressions. The habit of strong recurrence of the same things in our physical consciousness, so that it is difficult to get rid of its habits, is largely due to a subconscient support. The subcon- scient is full of irrational habits. When things are rejected from all other parts of the nature, they go either into the environmental consciousness around us through which we communicate with others and with universal Nature and try to return from there or they sink into the sub- conscient and can come up from there even after lying long quiescent so that we think they are gone. When the physical consciousness is being changed, the chief resistance comes from the subconscient. It is constantly maintaining or bringing back the inertia, weakness, obscurity, lack of intelligence which afflict the physical mind and vital or the obscure fears, desires, angers, lusts of the physical vital, or the illnesses, dullnesses, pains, incapabilities to which the body-nature is prone. If light, strength, the Mother’s consciousness is brought down into the body it can penetrate the subconscient also and convert its obscurity and resistance. When something is erased from the subconscient so completely that it leaves no seed and thrown out of the circumconscient so completely that it can return no more, then only can we be sure that we have finished with it for ever.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I-220-221, 27: “But so long as this development takes place only on the highest level of our normal nature, we may have a reflected and limited image of perfection translated into the lower terms of the soul in mind, life and body, but not the possession of the divine perfection in the highest terms possible to us of the divine Idea and its Power. That is to be found beyond these lower principles in the supramental gnosis; therefore the next step of perfection will be the evolution of the mental into the gnostic being. This evolution is effected by a breaking beyond the mental limitation, a stride upward into the next higher plane or region of our being hidden from us at present by the shining lid of the mental reflections and a conversion of all that we are into the terms of this greater consciousness. In the gnosis itself, vijn˜a¯ na, there are several gradations which open at their highest into the full and infinite Ananda. The gnosis once effectively called into action will progressively take up all the terms of intelligence, will, sense- mind, heart, the vital and sensational being and translate them by a luminous and harmonising conversion into a unity of the truth, power and delight of a divine existence. It will lift into that light and force and convert into their own highest sense our whole intellectual, volitional, dynamic, ethical, aesthetic, sensational, vital and physical being. It has the power also of overcoming physical limitations and developing a more perfect and divinely instrumental body. Its light opens up the fields of the superconscient and darts its rays and pours its luminous flood into the subconscient and enlightens its obscure hints and withheld secrets. It admits us to a greater light of the Infinite than is reflected in the paler luminosity even of the highest mentality. While it perfects the individual soul and nature in the sense of a diviner existence and makes a full harmony of the diversities of our being, it founds all its action upon the Unity from which it proceeds and takes up everything into that Unity. Personality and impersonality, the two eternal aspects of existence, are made one by its action in the spiritual being and Nature body of the Purushottama.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-694, 28: Savitri-601, Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: "As we envisage it (Supramental), it must manifest in a few first and then spread, but it is not likely to sweep over the earth in a moment. It is not advisable to discuss too much what it will do and how it will do it, because these are things the Supermind itself will fix, acting out of that Divine Truth in it, and the mind must not try to fix for it grooves in which it will run. Naturally, the release from subconscient ignorance and from disease, duration of life at will, and a change in the functioning of the body must be among the ULTIMATE results of a supramental change; but the details of these things must be left for the supramental Energy to work out according to the truth of its own nature." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-288 “However, it’s not a personal subconscient, but a ... it’s more than the Ashram. For me, the Ashram is not a separate individuality – except in that vision the other day,’ which is what surprised me. It’s hardly that. Rather, it is still this Movement of everything, of everything that is included. So it’s like entering into the subconscient of the whole earth, and it takes on forms which are quite familiar images to me, but they are absolutely symbolic and very, very funny!” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-26.07.1960, "He must accept everything, but cling to nothing, be repelled by nothing however imperfect or however subversive of fixed notions, but also allow nothing to lay hold on him to the detriment of the free working of the Truth-Spirit. This equality of the intelligence is an essential condition for rising to the higher supramental and spiritual knowledge. " Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-718, "The discords of the worlds are God’s discords and it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of his supreme harmony , the summits and thrilled vastnesses of his transcendent and his cosmic Ananda ." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-382

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The Central Truth of the Synthesis of Yoga "Her life the altar, herself the sacrifice.” Savitri-473 "All true Truth of love and of the works of love the psychic being accepts in their place: but its flame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to higher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest Truth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the cross and placed upon the throne ; for the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns it into a stake of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-157 The Central Truth of The Synthesis of Yoga or The Book of Consecration “The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation.”⁵ Sri Aurobindo “My own experience is a super security, which can be really found only in union with the Supreme—nothing, nothing, nothing in the world can give you security, except this: union, identification with the Supreme.”¹⁷ The Mother Integral Yoga proposes a triple consecration supported and subordinated by the practice of triple rejection and triple equality of our volitional, intellectual and emotional parts through Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga, respectively for beginners. This will be extended to seven constituents of sacrificial energies, that of the Body, Life, Mind, Supermind, Bliss (Ananda ), Will (Chit) and essential Being (Sat ) whose regular action activates the right relation of existence with the Divine. Or this sacrificial action is offered for the wide-ranging perfection of the tamasic, rajasic, and sattwic minds. Sattwic mind is divided into three parts that of schoolman mind, the fixed mind, and the outer mind. Behind the Sattwic mind, subtle physical related with defeatist and negative energy of mother of seven sorrows, subtle vital related with mother of might, subtle mental related with mother of light. Behind and above Subliminal sheaths, there are the Psychic being, the Spiritual being and the Supramental being. This wide range perfection also includes perfection of Subconscient sheath, Inconscient Sheath and Bliss Sheath by activation of their respective Selves. This is a demand made on us by the Divine that we should turn our whole life into a conscious or unconscious sacrifice of all we cherish here or this is the law of sacrifice through utter obedience and submission at every minute and every second: “Lord I cannot do it, do it for me Lord, I cannot do it, do it for me...”¹² Every moment and every movement of our Being and Nature are to be resolved into continuous and devoted self-giving to the Eternal and His Shakti by rejecting Ignorance and the result of Ignorance. Sacrificial work with knowledge of the wheel of Works, evam pravartitam chakram ,²³ and without attachment leads to higher planes of Consciousness. This Yoga further recommends two methods, one of following the Vedantic method to arrive at the Tantric aim for beginners and the other of following the Tantric method to arrive at the Vedantic aim for those who are established in Spiritual Consciousness. It must be done with a right faith and true sincerity to ignite the Vedantic sacrifice, Purusha Yajna , consent and participation of Purusha , which makes us ‘one by identity in our inmost Being’¹⁰ and the Vedic sacrifice, Prakriti Yajna , consent and participation of Prakriti, which makes us ‘one in our Becomings’¹⁰ by resemblance to the Divine in our nature. Or the ‘surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to (1) the Divine (Known as Purusha Yajna ) and to (2) the Shakti (known as Prakriti Yajna ).’¹ The ‘great and complete and powerful sacrifice’¹⁴ through (1) adoration of Divine as Creator of existence, Monotheism,¹⁵ (2) adoration of Divine in the multitude of His creation, Polytheism,¹⁵ (3) adoration of Divine as Creatrix Mother, known as Occultism (Tantra ) and (4) adoration, self-giving, consecration offered by Creator and Creatrix Mother to Their Creation is the highest recognised form of sacrifice, which get equal importance and reverence in integral Yoga; where the first is marked as Purusha Yajna and the latter three are Prakriti Yajna . The Gita symbolically gives the relation between imperfect Matter and perfect Spirit through knowledge of the wheel of works. The Divine Will, known as Brahman, is created or manifested from indeterminable Chit . From Divine Will, two types of action are born, known as Divine action beyond the three Gunas , nistraigunya and undivine action of the three Gunas . From these two actions, Purusha Yajna or Vedantic Sacrifice of passive mind and Prakriti Yajna or Vedic sacrifice of active mind are born, respectively. The Vedantic Sacrifice of Apara-prakriti calls down ‘bright dews drip’ of Divine Force 'from the Immortal’s sky’²⁴ and Vedic sacrifice of Para-prakriti calls down vast rain of Divine Force or ‘sealike down pour of masses of a spontaneous knowledge’²⁶ ‘from heavenlier skies.’²⁵ From these double Sacrifices of Purusha and Prakriti Yajna , the rain of Divine Force is intensified towards material Nature and thus (subtle) Matter is purified, transformed, perfected, fulfilled and Divinised. This all existence and all creatures are born from (subtle) Matter, (subtle) food, anna, finds their fulfilment in the Brahman . Thus, the all-pervading Brahman Consciousness, Chit Shakti, penetrates and establishes in material Consciousness through ceaseless action, continuous movement of double sacrifice and rain of Divine Grace. Thus, there is an evolution of physical, vital and mental consciousness through conscious human creatures and they are purified, transformed and perfected by the invading Spirit’s rain. Subtle Matter retains its Divinity followed by the transformation of gross Matter and Divine Life becomes practicable. The Gita ²³ further confirms that he who is not aware of consecration and does not follow the above cycle of works extending from all-pervading Chit Shakti to gross Matter or does not have the knowledge of the wheel of works, evil is his being, sensual is his delight and his life is in vain. Or he does not reconcile Jnana Yoga of turning Intellect into the knowledge of the One Spirit, Bhakti Yoga of turning sense enjoyment towards Divine Love and Karma Yoga of transforming his life. The Vedantic Sacrifice: “…it is through self-giving or surrender of soul and nature to the Divine Being that we can attain to our highest self and supreme Reality, for it is the Divine Being who is that highest self and that supreme Reality, and we are self-existent and eternal only in his eternity and by his self-existence.”⁸ Sri Aurobindo “Sattwic men offer sacrifice to the gods, devan , without desire for the personal fruit, according to the right principle of Shastra and mind concentrated on the truth of things; the rajasic men offer sacrifice to the Yakshas (the keepers of wealth) and the Rakshasic forces, with a view to get the personal fruit, ambition and ostentation; the others, the tamasic men, offer their sacrifice to elemental powers, pretan , and grosser spirits, bhutaganan , without the right rule of the Shastra, without giving of food, without the mantra , without gifts, empty of faith.” The Gita-17.4, 11, 12, 13 The Vedantic sacrifice is the outcome of passive Mind, where Prakriti is silenced so that the Purusha, the Psychic being ascends and merges with the Ishwara, Spiritual being and subsequently Ishwara merges with the Brahman , Supramental being. This ascension of Consciousness is a climbing of our Soul from peak to peak and from each summit one looks up to the much that still has to be done. This causes the Divine Force, Overmental Shakti , Supramental Maya to descend into every part of the lower nature of mind, life and body and down to the deepest caves of Subconscient and Inconscient Nature. ‘A timeless Spirit was made the slave of the hour’⁴ and thus it became accountable to mutable Time or it is through self-giving or surrender of Soul to the Divine Being or ‘in this holocaust of the soul’¹⁹ or ‘She (Prakriti or Nature) surrendered to the service of the soul’⁹ that we must dynamise the highest Divine Shakti. The Synthesis of Yoga and The Life Divine are the books of Vedantic sacrifice where adoration is offered to the Divine as Purusha , Ishwara and Brahman through Karma, Jnana, Bhakti and Dhyana Yoga and hinted little about Vedic sacrifice which can be activated by any psycho-physical means, bahya avalambana . The integral Vedantic Sadhaka will limit his Spiritual experience around four central Secrets (1) of static Consciousness is identified as Brahman; (2) of this Jivatma is identified as part of Brahman ; (3) Purusha, Ishwara, Brahman are static aspect of Consciousness in ascending order and Prakriti, Shakti, Maya are the dynamic aspect of the descending Consciousness and (4) this Brahman is four footed that of Virata, waking Self, the objective state of being, Hiranyagarva, dream Self, the subjective state of being, Susupti , sleep Self, a massed consciousness and source of subjective objective being and Turiya , supreme Self, a Supracosmic state without subject and object. The Vedic Sacrifice ²¹ : - “…our surrender must be to the Divine Being through the Divine Mother: for it is towards or into the supreme Nature that our ascension has to take place and it can only be done by the supramental Shakti taking up our mentality and transforming it into her supramentality.”⁷ Sri Aurobindo “This was the double Vedic movement of the descent and birth of the gods in the human creature and the ascent of the human powers that struggle towards the divine knowledge, power and delight and climb into the godheads”¹¹ Sri Aurobindo Vedic sacrifice is the outcome of active illumined Mind, where Prakriti is agitated to create a rift in either of the lower minds, such as physical mind, sensory mind, emotional mind, intellectual mind etc or Prakriti and instrumental ego surrender to the Divine Shakti , the power of Ishwara. As a result, the higher Consciousness or Shakti first descends to successive layers of mind, life and body. Thus, the Prakriti is silenced and experiences the ascent of Consciousness through Purusha’s union with the Ishwara and subsequently union with the Brahman . ‘This experience of descent can take place as a result of the other two movements or automatically before either has happened, through a sudden rift in the lid or a percolation, a downpour or an influx. A light descends and touches or envelops or penetrates the lower being, the mind, the life or the body; or a presence or a power or a stream of knowledge pours in waves or currents, or there is a flood of bliss or a sudden ecstasy; the contact with the superconscient has been established. For such experiences repeat themselves till they become normal, familiar and well-understood, revelatory of their contents and their significance which may have at first been involved and wrapped into secrecy by the figure of the covering experience.’²⁸ ‘If the rift in the lid of mind is made, what happens is an opening of vision to something above us or a rising up towards it or a descent of its powers into our being.’³⁵ Alternatively, if we want to realise the highest status of Being then our surrender to the Divine Being must be done through surrender to the Shakti, the Divine Mother and only when our surrender to the Divine Shakti is absolute then we have the right to live in the Divine’s absolute Presence. ‘The Mother’ book proposes a Vedantic method of self-discipline in order to arrive at the Tantric aim, recognises great importance to Purusha Yajna , sacrifice of the Purusha , but still greater importance is directed towards more powerful Prakriti Yajna , ‘the holocaust of Prakriti , the sacrifice of the Divine Mother’² and ‘Her days became a luminous sacrifice.’³ In Savitri both the exercises Purusha and Prakriti Yajna are widely explored. This experience of Vedic Sacrifice can be pursued either in waking state or in sleep. In waking state, one experiences this descent of Shakti through Japa , loudly chanting Mantra , adoration of Shakti or ‘As one too great for him he worships her,’¹³ concentration on Shastra, collective gathering for creative purpose like songs, music, play, critical moment of winning or losing a game, Spiritual discourse, critical conscious hours in our individual and collective destiny. During ordinary sleep, when the physical and vital mind are active, then due to some subtle inner activity, the physical and vital mind break down, a rift is created and the descent of Divine force is experienced and normal sleep is transformed into waking trance. In the highest form of Prakriti Yajna , the Divine falls in deep love with His creation. Due to this absolute Love, He supports whatever she wants, does, thinks and wills and He is there everywhere, blissfully adoring all the confusion and distortion of His creation. “As one too great for him he (Divine) worships her (Creation or Nature); He adores her as his regent of desire...”¹⁶ As His joy is everywhere so nobody wants to leave this wonderful world. Through this sacrifice, He is restoring order, harmony and completeness of His manifestation. Similarly, the Creatrix Bliss Mother shall unveil herself and give herself to her creation. The Integral Vedic Sadhaka will limit his Spiritual experience around four Central Vedic truths that (1) of attainment of God, Light, Freedom, Bliss and Immortality which are far greater, higher and completer truth than the existing human understanding; (2) of recognition of this world which is an intermingling of truth and falsehood, joy and suffering, knowledge and ignorance, out of which pure truth, delight and wisdom are to be worked out by ascending the consciousness to the home of Satyam Ritam Brihat which is identified as the world of Great Heaven, Swar ; (3) of this world journey of life is the battlefield of Gods and their opponents, sons of Falsehood and Division, Asuras and with the aid of Gods, who represent higher planes of Consciousness, the powers of darkness or lower planes of consciousness are to be destroyed through inner sacrifice; so the Vedic Sadhaka will not limit his consecration offered to the Creatrix Mother only but also he will offer consecration to Her infinite variety of manifestation through contemplation of various Mantras , which later took the form of repetition of sacred word, ceaseless Japa and (4) of all teachings, the summit and supreme secret is identified as the ‘One Reality,’ the origin and source of existence and Divine can be entirely known by reconciling the One with endless variety of His manifested form or descent of the One into the manifested Many. How can Consecration begin?: “Its (Supreme Self) absence left the greatest actions dull, Its presence made the smallest seem divine .” Savitri-305 “This bright perfection of her inner state Poured overflowing into her outward scene, Made beautiful dull common natural things And action wonderful and time divine. Even the smallest meanest work became A sweet or glad and glorious sacrament, An offering to the self of the great world Or a service to the One in each and all.” Savitri-532 “The law of sacrifice travels in Nature towards its culmination in this complete and unreserved self-giving; it awakens the consciousness of one common self in the giver and the object of the sacrifice… Above all, the psychic being imposes on life the law of the sacrifice of all its works as an offering to the Divine and the Eternal. Life becomes a call to that which is beyond Life; its every smallest act enlarges with the sense of the Infinite .”⁶ Sri Aurobindo “All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. Our commonest or most grossly material actions must assume this sublimated character; when we eat, we should be conscious that we are giving our food to that Presence in us; it must be a sacred offering in a temple and the sense of a mere physical need or self-gratification must pass away from us. In any great labour, in any high discipline, in any difficult or noble enterprise, whether undertaken for ourselves, for others or for the race, it will no longer be possible to stop short at the idea of the race, of ourselves or of others. The thing we are doing must be consciously offered as a sacrifice of works, not to these, but either through them or directly to the One Godhead; the Divine Inhabitant who was hidden by these figures must be no longer hidden but ever present to our soul, our mind, our sense. The workings and results of our acts must be put in the hands of that One in the feeling that that Presence is the Infinite and Most High by whom alone our labour and our aspiration are possible. For in his being all takes place; for him all labour and aspiration are taken from us by Nature and offered on his altar. Even in those things in which Nature is herself very plainly the worker and we only the witnesses of her working and its containers and supporters, there should be the same constant memory and insistent consciousness of a work and of its divine Master. Our very inspiration and respiration, our very heart-beats can and must be made conscious in us as the living rhythm of the universal sacrifice .”²⁹ Sri Aurobindo “When the resolution has been taken, when you have decided that the whole of your life shall be given to the Divine, you have still at every moment to remember it and carry it out in all the details of your existence. You must feel at every step that you belong to the Divine; you must have the constant experience that, in whatever you think or do, it is always the Divine Consciousness that is acting through you. You have no longer anything that you can call your own; you feel everything as coming from the Divine, and you have to offer it back to its source. When you can realise that, then even the smallest thing to which you do not usually pay much attention or care, ceases to be trivial and insignificant ; it becomes full of meaning and it opens up a vast horizon beyond.”³⁰ The Mother “What is his (Sadhaka’s) method and his system? He has no method and every method. His system is a natural organisation of the highest processes and movements of which the nature is capable. Applying themselves even to the pettiest details and to the actions the most insignificant in their appearance with as much care and thoroughness as to the greatest, they in the end lift all into the Light and transform all. For in his Yoga there is nothing too small to be used and nothing too great to be attempted. As the servant and disciple of the Master has no business with pride or egoism because all is done for him from above, so also he has no right to despond because of his personal deficiencies or the stumblings of his nature. For the Force that works in him is impersonal—or superpersonal —and infinite.”³¹ Sri Aurobindo “It is evident, to begin with , that, even if such a discipline is begun without devotion, it leads straight and inevitably towards the highest devotion possible; for it must deepen naturally into the completest adoration imaginable, the most profound God-love. There is bound up with it a growing sense of the Divine in all things, a deepening communion with the Divine in all our thought, will and action and at every moment of our lives, a more and more moved consecration to the Divine of the totality of our being.”³² Sri Aurobindo “There has to be a preliminary stage of seeking and effort with a central offering or self-giving of the heart and soul and mind to the Highest and a later mediate stage of total conscious reliance on its greater Power aiding the personal endeavour; that integral reliance again must grow into a final complete abandonment of oneself in every part and every movement to the working of the higher Truth in the nature. The totality of this abandonment can only come if the psychic change has been complete or the spiritual transformation has reached a very high state of achievement. For it implies a giving up by the mind of all its moulds, ideas, mental formations, of all opinion, of all its habits of intellectual observation and judgment to be replaced first by an intuitive and then by an overmind or supramental functioning which inaugurates the action of a direct Truth-consciousness, Truth-sight, Truth-discernment, a new consciousness which is in all its ways quite foreign to our mind’s present nature.”³⁴ Sri Aurobindo Integral Yoga proposes that consecration can begin with the smallest and insignificant action; it can begin from little devotion and from a tiny wisdom and can be used as a means to call down the highest Supreme Energy. If we concentrate, contemplate and meditate on a tiny seed of wisdom for long years then it will emerge as a mighty banyan tree. The Bhagavad Gita proposes that in order to make the consecration true and sattwic, it must satisfy three conditions. Firstly, all consecrated action must be supported by ceaseless remembrance of the Divine either through concentration, contemplation and meditation on Mantra or through ceaseless Japa ; secondly, all consecrated action for the Divine must be motiveless by renouncing the fruit of action and lastly all objective action must be elevated to subjective world action in trance, K rishnakarmakrit, and directed for the well being of the race, Jagat hitaya , and it must be ‘virginally creative’³³ every moment, superseding the limitation of mind of engaging in ‘constructive action.’ Recapitulation: “A long, difficult stage of constant effort, energism, austerity of the personal will, tapasya, has ordinarily to be traversed before a more decisive stage can be reached in which a state of self-giving of all the being to the Supreme Being (Vedantic Sacrifice) and the Supreme Nature (Vedic Sacrifice) can become total and absolute.”⁴ Sri Aurobindo “Our sacrifice is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.”²² Sri Aurobindo So the Vedantic sacrifice is identified as an indispensable exercise of awakening the Spiritual Being or ‘first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve’¹⁸ supported and subordinated by still more powerful dispensable Vedic sacrifice of awakening the Psychic being or ‘Repeating the marvel of first descent.’²⁰ What the Vedantic Sadhaka achieves that of transformation of nature through passive silence, trance, Samadhi , subtle physical dream and Superconscient sleep; the same state a Vedic Sadhaka arrives through active silence and waking trance. The true waking Consciousness is defined as withdrawal from subjective Consciousness, which consists of subtle physical, subtle vital and subtle mental Consciousness, objective consciousness, which consists of surface physical, surface vital and surface mental Consciousness and massed Causal Consciousness or Supramental Consciousness and entry into superconscience superior to all Consciousness, Sachchidananda Consciousness. The first Spiritual experience of waking union that the Vedic Sadhaka will experience is when the individual Purusha enlarges its active experience. In order to bring down the highest Spiritual being into our waking life, there must be heightening, widening and integration of immense ranges of new Consciousness. When the surrender becomes complete, absolute and entire, either by complete dependence of creation on the Creator, the static Divine or by complete dependence of creation on the Creatrix Mother, the dynamic Divine, then the Divine cannot conceal Himself; the Unmanifest reflects His form and we could dare to clasp the body of the God and hold between our hands the World-Mother’s feet and rapt into eternity through descent of Her Timeless ray. Thus, for full transformation of life, permanent ascension of the Soul to the highest planes of Consciousness and permanent descent of the highest Shakti to lower Nature are indispensable. So, the double movement of ascent of Soul followed by descent of Shakti and descent of Shakti followed by ascent of Soul are the two complementary lessons that a Sadhaka of integral Yoga must learn, repeat and master throughout his life. And through this double movement, the reconciliation of Matter and Spirit is worked out and Matter shall gradually reveal the Spirit’s face. Thus, all life or our inner life that is linked with the triple time of past, present and future births and bodies becomes a conscious Yoga of consecration. Savitri and Consecration: “Here with the suddenness divine advents have, Repeating the marvel of the first descent, Changing to rapture the dull earthly round, Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death. Well might he find in her his perfect shrine. Since first the earth-being’s heavenward growth began , Through all the long ordeal of the race,” (Vedic sacrifice of Savitri) Savitri-14 “But first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve Out of the chasm from which our nature rose.” (Vedantic sacrifice) Savitri-171 “Here from a low and prone and listless ground The passion of the first ascent began ;” Savitri-503 “Even if he (Avatar) escapes the fiercest fires, Even if the world breaks not in, a drowning sea, Only by hard sacrifice is high heaven earned: He must face the fight, the pang who would conquer Hell.” Savitri-447 “Thy (common man) fate is a long sacrifice to the gods Till they have opened to thee thy secret self (Psychic Being) And made thee one with the indwelling God." (Psychic Being) Savitri-458 “He (King Aswapati) stood fulfilled on the world’s highest line Awaiting the ascent beyond the world , Awaiting the descent the world to save. ” (Vedantic sacrifice of the King where ascent of the Soul is followed by the descent of Shakti .) Savitri-319 “Thus in the silent chamber of her soul Cloistering her love to live with secret grief She dwelt like a dumb priest with hidden gods Unappeased by the wordless offering of her days, Lifting to them her sorrow like frankincense, Her life the altar, herself the sacrifice. ” Savitri-472-73 These double movements of Consecration which are hinted¹⁰ in The Synthesis of Yoga are elaborately developed in King Aswapati’s Yoga and Savitri’s Yoga . These movements provide additional input for the opening of energy Centres linking the Supramental Self of overhead Brahma randhra with the nether planes of the Inconscient Self. The seven energy Centres of traditional Schools of Yoga are extended in integral Yoga into ‘twelve energy centres’³⁷ of which two nether centres below the feet or below the Muladhara chakra , (Inconscient Self and Subconscient Self) and three overhead centres above the mystic Brahma randhra (Bliss Self, Chit and Sat) are opened in addition to the opening of existing seven Chakras. And how through these Chakras , the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental transformation are activated, are also revealed in Savitri . During Psychic and Spiritual transformation, the Consciousness does not move below the Muladhara Chakra and above the mystic Brahma randhra. It is only during the Supramental transformation, the Subconscient and Inconscient planes are ‘slowly transformed,’³⁶ and during this action, the importance of Vedic sacrifice³⁸ increases. If the deathless flame of Divine Love can enter in the passage of our work consecrated to the Divine, then hardness of the way diminishes, sweetness and joy is felt even during the period of difficulty and struggle and this surrender can be perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. All our life can be moulded into this cult, all action is done in the love of the Divine in the individual, in the universe and in the Transcendence. OM TAT SAT References: 1: The Mother-10, 2: “In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” Sri Aurobindo/The Mother/p-35, 3: Savitri-125, 4: Savitri-268, 4: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-963-64, 5: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-106, 6: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-108, 179, 7: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-371-72, 8: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-373, 9: Savitri-87, 10: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-134, 11: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-417, 12: The Mother’s Agenda-5/102, 13: Savitri-62, 14: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-165, 15: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-129, 16: Savitri-62, 17: The Mother’s Agenda-4/p-101, 18: Savitri-171, 19: Savitri-17, 20: Savitri-14, 21: “The absolute unmoving stillnesses Surrendered to the breath of mortal air,” Savitri-347 (Prakriti Yajna) 22: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-109, 23: “From Matter, anna, creatures come into being, from rain is the birth of Matter (food), from sacrifice comes into being the rain, sacrifice is born of work; work know to be born of Brahman (Divine Will), Brahman (Divine Will) is born of Immutable (Chit Shakti), therefore is the all-pervading Brahman Consciousness (Chit Shakti) is established in Matter by continuous sacrifice, nitya Yajna. He who follows not here this wheel of works, evam pravartitam chakram, thus set in movement, evil is his being, sensual is his delight, in vain, O Partha that man lives.” The Gita-3.14, 15, 16, 24: Savitri-104, 25: Savitri-284, 26: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-291, 27: “The formula OM, Tat, Sat, is the triple definition of the Brahman, by whom the Brahmanas, the Vedas and sacrifices were created of old. 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. With the pronunciation of Tat and without desire of fruit are performed the various acts of sacrifice, askesis and giving by the seekers of liberation. Sat means good and it means existence; likewise, O Partha, the word Sat is used in the sense of a good work (for all good works prepare the soul for the higher reality of our being). All firm abiding in sacrifice, giving and askesis and all works done with that central view, as sacrifice, as giving, as askesis, are Sat (for they build the basis for the highest truth of our spirit).” The Gita-17.23 to 27, “Om is the signature of the Lord.” The Mother/TMCW-15/p-33, 28: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-946, 29: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-111, 30: The Mother/28th April-1929/TMCW-3/p-23, TMCW-5/p-78, 31: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-61, 32: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-112, 33: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-637, 34: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-964, 35: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-944-945, 36: “This (descent of Divine Force) has repeatedly been my experience lately, with a vision and a conviction, the conviction of an experience: the two vibrations (Truth vibration of Spirit and falsehood vibration of Matter) are like this (concomitant gesture indicating a superimposition and infiltration), all the time – all the time, all the time…May be the sense of wonder comes when the quantity that has infiltrated is large enough to be perceptible. But I have an impression – a very acute impression – that this phenomenon is going on all the time, all the time, everywhere, in a minuscule, infinitesimal way (gesture of a twinkling infiltration), and that in certain circumstances or conditions that are visible (visible to this vision: it's a sort of luminous swelling (of brain)– I can't explain), then, the mass of infiltration is sufficient to give the impression of a miracle. But otherwise, it's something going on all the time, all the time, all the time, continuously, ("A mystic slow transfiguration works.” Savitri-632, or "Its faint infiltration drilled the blind deaf mass;" Savitri-601) in the world (same twinkling gesture), like an infinitesimal amount of Falsehood replaced by Light ... Falsehood replaced by Light ... constantly…And this Vibration (which I feel and see) gives the feeling of a fire. ("Threatened (falsehood) with this faint beam of wandering Truth" Savitri-585) That's probably what the Vedic Rishis translated as the "Flame" – in the human consciousness, in man, in Matter. They always spoke of a "Flame." It is indeed a vibration with the intensity of a higher fire… The body even felt several times, when the Work was very concentrated or condensed, that it is the equivalent of a fever.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-25th March-1964, 37: “The tantrics recognize seven chakras,’ I believe. Theon said he knew of more, specifically two below the body and three above. That is my experience as well – I know of twelve chakras. And really, the contact with the Divine Consciousness is there (Mother motions above the head), not here (at the top of the head). One must surge up above.” The Mother’s Agenda/October-11/1960, “There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say. They never spoke of ‘Supermind,’ but they said the same thing as the Vedas, that the world of Truth must incarnate on earth and create a new world. They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, ‘new heavens and a new earth,’ which is the same thing the Vedas speak of. Madame Theon had this experience and she gave me the indication (she didn’t actually teach me) of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into.... They used different words, another classification (I don’t remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after another. She was extremely ‘developed,’ you see – individualized, organized. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, describe it ... and so on, twelve times .” The Mother’s Agenda/November 7/1961, 38: "When the Kundalini meets the higher consciousness, as it ascends through the summit of the head, there is an opening to the higher superconscient reaches above the normal mind. It is by ascending through these in our consciousness and receiving a descent of their energies that it is possible ultimately to reach the supermind. This is the psycho-physical method which is elaborately systematised in the Tantra . In our Yoga it is not necessary to go through the systematised method, — for this psycho-physical process is only a part of the movement of the Yoga and it takes place spontaneously according to need by the force of the aspiration and the call for the workings of the Divine Power. As soon as there is an opening, the Divine Power descends and conducts the necessary working, does what is needed, each thing in its time, and the Yogic consciousness begins to be born in the sadhaka .” CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-420, "In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence. This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self- giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature’s all-comprehending absolute surrender. In the second stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine response to the Divine Force, but not to any other; and there will be as a result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above. In the last period there is no effort at all, no set method, no fixed sadhana; the place of endeavour and tapasya will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature. These are the natural successions of the action of the Yoga." CWSA-23/ The Synthesis of Yoga/p-87 "But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of yoga/p-218, Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: “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.” The Mother TMCW-3/Questions and Answers-1929-1931/p- 94, "In one chapter of The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that there is a state of consciousness in which all is from all eternity –everything, without exception, that is to be manifested here… Q:- In detail? In a certain state of consciousness (I no longer remember what he calls it—I think it’s in the ‘Yoga of Self-Perfection’), one is perfectly identified with the Supreme, not in his static but in his dynamic aspect, the state of becoming. In this state, everything is already there from all eternity, even though here it gives us the impression of a becoming. And Sri Aurobindo says that if you are capable of maintaining this state, then you know everything: all that has been, all that is and all that will be –in an absolutely simultaneous way. But you must have a firm head on your shoulders! Reading some of these chapters in ‘Self-Perfection,’ I thought it would be better if it didn’t fall into just anyone’s hands. Anyway, in this state the feeling of uncertainty completely disappears (he explains it very well)." The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/Vol.-2/p-170 “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.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-892, " "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

The Mundane Perfection "But only when we break through Matter’s wall In that spiritual vastness can we stand" Savitri-543 “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 "Life in its boundaries lingered satisfied With the small happiness of the body’s acts." Savitri-114 “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 ideals 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 the 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 imprisonment but an initial step towards discovering 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, and 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 recoiled 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 a 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 it 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. Recapitulation: "...the Divine of yesterday is only an apprentice to the Divine of tomorrow ..." The Mother The Mother's Agenda/October 8, 1956 “These (conversations of the Mother’s Agenda) are the first stammerings of a novice (The Mother felt Herself as a beginner in the path of the eternal unfolding of the Spirit).” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-6/322 “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, “We can learn things from a flower, an animal, a child, if we are eager to know always more, because there is only One Teacher in the world — the Supreme Lord, and He manifests through everything.” The Mother TMCW-12/On Education/p-129 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 God 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

"A few have dared the last supreme ascent And break through borders of blinding light above, Savitri-659 Integral Bliss Self Education “The gnostic soul is not bound any more than the divine demoniac by the petty conventions and proprieties of the normal human life or the narrow rules through which it makes some shift to accommodate itself with the perplexing dualities of the lower nature and tries to guide its steps among the seeming contradictions of the world, to avoid its numberless stumbling-blocks and to foot with gingerly care around its dangers and pitfalls. The gnostic supramental life is abnormal to us because it is free to all the hardihoods and audacious delights of a soul dealing fearlessly and even violently with Nature, but yet is it the very normality of the infinite and all governed by the law of the Truth in its exact unerring process. It obeys the law of a self-possessed Knowledge, Love, Delight in an innumerable Oneness. It seems abnormal only because its rhythm is not measurable by the faltering beats of the mind, but yet it steps in a wonderful and transcendent measure." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-503-504 Bliss Self Education “And sudden ecstasies from a world of bliss. It was a region of wonder and delight. All now his bright clairaudience could receive; A contact thrilled of mighty unknown things.” Savitri-31 "Tireless the heart’s adventure of delight, Endless the kingdoms of the Spirit’s bliss, Unnumbered tones struck from one harmony’s strings; Each to its wide-winged universal poise, Its fathomless feeling of the All in one, Brought notes of some perfection yet unseen, Its single retreat into Truth’s secrecies, Its happy sidelight on the Infinite." Savitri-97 “The Veil was there but not the Shadowy Wall; In forms not too remote from human grasp Some passion of the inviolate purity Broke through, a ray of the original Bliss.” Savitri-123 “Across the silence of the ultimate Calm, Out of a marvellous Transcendence’ core, A body of wonder and translucency As if a sweet mystic summary of her self Escaping into the original Bliss Had come enlarged out of eternity,” Savitri-312 “Bliss was the pure undying truth of things.” Savitri-324 “An all-revealing all-creating Bliss, Seeking for forms to manifest truths divine, Aligned in their significant mystery The gleams of the symbols of the Ineffable Blazoned like hues upon a colourless air On the white purity of the Witness Soul.” Savitri-326 “And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze.” Savitri-346 “Keeps ever new the thrill that made the world,” Savitri-351 “A spell to bring the Immortal’s bliss on earth,” Savitri-397 “A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss Has changed my heart and changed the earth around:” Saviti-408 “Her beating heart a remembrance of bliss.” Savitri-410 “His (Satyavan’s) eyes keep a memory from a world of bliss.” Savitri-430 “It (Savitri’s heart) can drink up the sea of All-Delight And never lose the white spiritual touch, The calm that broods in the deep Infinite.” Saviri-635 “The Bliss that made the world has fallen asleep.” Savitri-628 “Above was the brooding bliss of the Infinite,” Savitri-682 “The bliss that made the world in his body lived,” Savitri-682 “Know the thrilled bliss with which I (Divine) made the worlds.” Savitri-701 “You shall reveal to them the hidden eternities, The breath of infinitudes not yet revealed, Some rapture of the bliss that made the world, Some rush of the force of God’s omnipotence, Some beam of the omniscient Mystery.” Savitri-704 “Over wide earth brooded the infinite bliss.” Savitri-712 “Invaded by beauty’s universal revel Her being’s fibre reached out vibrating And claimed deep union with its outer selves, And on the heart’s chords made pure to seize all tones Heaven’s subtleties of touch unwearying forced More vivid raptures than earth’s life can bear. What would be suffering here, was fiery bliss.” Savitri-675 Bliss Self is identified as the fourth State ² of the Soul in Vedanta. The new Supramental race will manifest the Bliss Nature or his Bliss Sheath will be built strongly by right relation and union of Anandamaya Purusha with Anandamaya Kosha. A fully evolved Soul is rightly related with his multiple Selves through static and dynamic Divine union whose effect is the realisation of intense and illimitable Bliss Consciousness. The Bliss Soul will arrive at the realisation of Bliss oneness through the gates of sublimation of human love, expansion of universal love and its transformation into Divine Love and at its summit he will realise inconceivable beauty, sweetness and splendour. He will be united with the world through bliss Consciousness and there will be banished forever the sorrow, fear, hunger, pain, darkness and discord of our lower existence. Above the Supermind is the Bliss Self, Supreme Self, Turiya ² beyond, the omniscient and omnipotent repose, immobile silence, absolute, alone and the brooding bliss of the Infinite. Here, all powers are woven together in countless concord and harmonious meeting places of all the worlds. ¹ All Bliss, All Love and All Beautiful are the manifestation of the unmanifest Supreme Bliss Self. Bliss Soul: “Abandoning the dubious middle Way, (of Moderate Spirituality) A few shall glimpse the miraculous Origin (Few are Bliss Souls) And some shall feel in you (Savitri) the secret Force (Some are Gnostic Souls) And they shall turn to meet a nameless tread, Adventurers into a mightier Day.” Savitri-704 The Taittiriya Upanishad tells us that beyond Vijnanamaya Purusha there exists the Anandamaya Purusha . In Ananda , our Spirit will discover its highest Self, essential Consciousness and absolute Power of existence. The highest goal of a Gnostic Spirit is the bliss of absolute Infinities. In this ascension of Consciousness, the powers and personalities of the Gnostic Soul do not disappear but rather he undergoes a change and the Soul is carried up into reaches of his own supreme Bliss, last and absolute liberation and infinite perfection from which he descends into the intermediate Gnostic plane to link the creation of the lower hemisphere. Thus, one can experience boundless Ananda in material, vital, mental and Gnostic planes, but in the lower creation, this Ananda is diluted and ‘turns into a poor thinness wonderful to lower consciousness,’ ³ but it cannot be compared with its true and original intensity. A Bliss Soul transcends the Gnostic Soul in the sense that he does not suffer voluntary limitation or imposed circumstances and for him all are one equal being and one identical Spirit everywhere. He has no mansion of his own, aniketa , and accepts all the creation and things as his single and many mansion. All other Selves are realised as his own Bliss-self in action and essence. He is one in bliss-Consciousness with all the world play. He lives in the absolute truth of things which is deformed here in this material world by contrary phenomena. The Bliss Soul lives in every plane of our existence and fills them with its own light and power and delight. He is not ‘incapable of a world play or self-debarred from any expression of its glories.’ ⁴ The more he possesses this Ananda, all the rest are transformed into superior value and richer expression of the Real. The supreme Bliss Soul is neither attached to birth nor attached to non-birth, neither limits himself to manifestation, form and action nor limits himself to non-manifestation, neither moves by the desire of Knowledge nor harassed by the fear of Ignorance, neither despises ascent from lower plane to higher nor fears to descend from the highest Consciousness to material birth. The time for the arrival of Bliss Soul to earth’s atmosphere has not yet come or is very rare. ¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹¹⁰ OM TAT SAT References: 1: “My impression from the Veda is not the same as yours. You say that when they reached the heights they went into trance and then tried the other method. When I read the Veda at least what Sri Aurobindo translates for us, because otherwise I have no direct knowledge....But they say nothing about this…I know my own experience and I can speak of it in detail; and according to what Sri Aurobindo told me, it was the same for him – although he NEVER wrote of it anywhere. (Sri Aurobindo wrote in two places that his path and goal are same as the of the Mother…) But since it has been my experience, I naturally feel that it’s the simplest method… There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say. They never spoke of ‘Supermind,’ but they said the same thing as the Vedas, that the world of Truth must incarnate on earth and create a new world. They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, ‘new heavens and a new earth,’ which is the same thing the Vedas speak of. Madame Theon had this experience and she gave me the indication (she didn’t actually teach me) of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into.... They used different words, another classification (I don’t remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after another. She was extremely ‘developed,’ you see – individualized, organized. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, describe it ... and so on, twelve times… I learned to do the same thing, and with great dexterity; I could halt on any plane, do what I had to do there, move around freely, see, observe, and then speak about what I had seen. And my last stage, which Theon called ‘pathétisme,’ a very barbaric but very expressive word, bordered on the Formless – he sometimes used the Jewish terminology, calling the Supreme ‘The Formless.’ (From this last stage one passed to the Formless – there was no further body to leave behind, one was beyond all possible forms, even all thoughtforms.) In this domain [the last stage before the Formless] one experienced total unity – unity in something that was the essence of Love; Love was a manifestation more... ‘dense,’ he would always say (there were all sorts of different ‘densities’); and Love was a denser expression of That, the sense of perfect Unity – perfect unity, identity – with no longer any forms corresponding to those of the lower worlds. It was a Light! ... An almost immaculate white light, yet with something of a golden-rose in it (words are crude). This Light and this Experience were truly wonderful, inexpressible in words…Well, one time I was there (Theon used to warn against going beyond this domain, because he said you wouldn’t come back), but there I was, wanting to pass over to the other side, when – in a quite unexpected and astounding way – I found myself in the presence of the ‘principle,’ a principle of the human form. It didn’t resemble man as we are used to seeing him, but it was an upright form, standing just on the border between the world of forms and the Formless, like a kind of standard. At that time nobody had ever spoken to me about it and Madame Theon had never seen it – no one had ever seen or said anything. But I felt I was on the verge of discovering a secret… Afterwards, when I met Sri Aurobindo and talked to him about it, he told me, ‘It is surely the prototype of the supramental form.’ I saw it several times again, later on, and this proved to be true…But naturally, you understand, once the border has been crossed, there is no more ‘ascent’ and ‘descent’; you have the feeling of rising up only at the very start, while leaving the terrestrial consciousness and emerging into the higher mind. But once you have gone beyond that, there’s no notion of rising; there’s a sense, instead, of a sort of inner transformation…And from there I would redescend, re-entering my bodies one after another -there is a real feeling of re-entry; it actually produces friction… When one is on that highest height, the body is in a cataleptic state… I think I made this experiment in 1904, so when I arrived here it was all a work accomplished and a well-known domain; and when the question of finding the Supermind came up, I had only to resume an experience I was used to – I had learned to repeat it at will, through successive exteriorizations. It was a voluntary process…When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. ‘It’s strange,’ he said to me, ‘it’s an endless work! Nothing seems to get done – everything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again.’ Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: ‘It will be like that until we touch bottom.’ So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience ... how to put it? ... practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body – but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed…Then a strange thing happened. When we were in the Vital, my body suddenly became young again, as it had been when I was eighteen years old! ... There was a young man named Pearson, a disciple of Tagore, who had lived with me in Japan for four years; he returned to India, and when he came to see me in Pondicherry, he was stupefied. ‘What has happened to you!’ he exclaimed. He hardly recognized me. During that same period (it didn’t last very long, only a few months), I received some old photographs from France and Sri Aurobindo saw one of me at the age of eighteen. ‘There!’ he said, ‘That’s how you are now!’ I wore my hair differently, but otherwise I was eighteen all over again… This lasted for a few months. Then we descended into the Physical – and all the trouble began. But we didn’t stay in the Physical, we descended into the Subconscient and from the Subconscient to the Inconscient. That was how we worked. And it was only when I descended into the Inconscient that I found the Divine Presence – there, in the midst of Darkness. (Discovery of Inconscient Self)…It wasn’t the first time; when I was working with Theon at Tlemcen (the second time I was there), I descended into the total, unindividualized – that is, general – Inconscient (it was the time he wanted me to find the Mantra of Life). And there I suddenly found myself in front of something like a vault or a grotto (of course, it was only something ‘like’ that), and when it opened, I saw a Being of iridescent light reclining with his head on his hand, fast asleep. All the light around him was iridescent. When I told Theon what I was seeing, he said it was ‘the immanent God in the depths of the Inconscient,’ who through his radiations was slowly waking the Inconscient to Consciousness…But then a rather remarkable phenomenon occurred: when I looked at him, he woke up and opened his eyes, expressing the beginning of conscious, wakeful action… I have experienced the descent into the Inconscient many times (you remember, once you were there the day it happened – it had to do with divine Love); this experience of descending to the very bottom of the Inconscient and finding there the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence, under one form or another. it has happened quite frequently…. But I can’t say that my process is to descend there first, as you write. Rather, this can be the process only when you are ALREADY conscious and identified; then YOU DRAW DOWN the Force (as Sri Aurobindo says, ‘one makes it descend’) in order to transform. Then, with this action of transformation, one pushes [the Force into the depths, like a drill]. The Rishis’ description of what happens next is absolutely true: a formidable battle at each step. And it would seem impossible to wage that battle without having first experienced the junction above…That is my experience – I don’t say there can’t be others. I don’t know… One can realize the Divine in the Inconscient rather quickly (in fact, I think it can happen just as soon as one has found the Divine within). But does this give the power to TRANSFORM DIRECTLY? Does the direct junction between the supreme Consciousness and the Inconscient (because that is the experience) give the power to transform the Inconscient just like that, without any intermediary? I don’t think so. I simply haven’t had that experience. Could all these things I’ve been describing be happening now if I didn’t have all those experiences behind me? I don’t know, I can’t say…One thing is certain – as soon as one goes beyond the terrestrial atmosphere, beyond the higher mind’s ‘highest’ region, the sensation of ‘high’ and ‘low’ totally vanishes. There are no longer movements of ascent and descent, but (Mother turns her hand over) something like inner reversals… I think the problem arises only when you try to see and understand with the mental consciousness, even with the higher mind… I am telling you this because, as soon as I got your letter, I replied with what I’ll read to you now; then I was immediately faced with something I couldn’t formulate, the kind of thing that gives you the feeling of the unknown (all I knew was my own experience). So I did the usual thing – became ‘blank,’ turned towards the Truth; and I questioned Sri Aurobindo – and beyond – asking, if there were something to be known, that it be told to me. Then I dropped it, I paid no more attention. And only as I was coming here today was I told – I can’t really use the word ‘told,’ but anyway, what was communicated to me concerning your question was that the difference between the two processes [the Rishis’ and the present one] is purely subjective, depending upon the way the experience is registered. I don’t know if I can make myself clear.... There is ‘something’ which is the experience and which will be the Realization; and what appears to be a different, if not opposite, process is simply a subjective mental notation of one SINGLE experience. Do you follow?... That’s what I was told… Now I’m going to read you my reply – it’s the first reaction (when something comes, I stay immobile; then an initial reaction comes from above my head, but it’s only like the first answering chord, and if I remain attentive, other things follow; what I have just told you is what followed). My immediate written response is based upon my own experience as well as upon what Madame Theon told me and what Sri Aurobindo told me. (Mother reads:)….‘It is by rising to the summit of consciousness through a progressive ascent...’ (that’s what I meant just now by ‘leaving the body,’ but without going into details), ‘that one unites with the Supermind. But as soon as the union is achieved, one knows and one sees that the Supermind exists in the heart of the Inconscient as well. When one is in that state, there is neither high nor low. But GENERALLY,’ (I emphasized this to make it clear that I am not making an absolute assertion) ‘it is by REDESCENDING through the levels of the being with a supramentalized consciousness that one can accomplish the permanent transformation of physical nature.’ (This can be experienced in all sorts of ways, but what WE want and what Sri Aurobindo spoke of is a change that will never be revoked, that will persist, that will be as durable as the present terrestrial conditions. That is why I put ‘permanent.’) ‘There is no proof that the Rishis used another method, although, to effect this transformation (if they ever did) they must necessarily have fought their way through the powers of inconscience and obscurity.’…Yes, the Rishis give an absolutely living description of what you experience – and experience continually – as soon as you descend into the Subconscient: all these battles with the beings who conceal the Light and so on. I experienced these things continually at Tlemcen and again with Sri Aurobindo when we were doing the Work – it’s raging quite merrily even now!...As soon as you go down there, that’s what happens – you have to fight against all that is unwilling to change, all that dominates the world and does not want to change.” The Mother’s Agenda-07.11.1961, 2: “But, in spite of these figurative names of dream-state and sleep-state, the field of both these states of consciousness was clearly regarded as a field of reality no less than that of the waking state in which our movements of perceptive consciousness are a record or transcript of physical things and of our contacts with the physical universe. No doubt, all the three states can be classed as parts of an illusion, our experiences of them can be ranked together as constructions of an illusory consciousness, our waking state no less illusory than our dream state or sleep state, since the only true truth or real reality is the incommunicable Self or One-Existence (Atman, Adwaita) which is the fourth state of the Self described by the Vedanta. But it is equally possible to regard and rank them together as three different orders of one Reality or as three states of consciousness in which is embodied our contact with three different grades of self-experience and world-experience.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-443-44, 3: “But in the lower planes not only is it reached by a sort of dissolution into it of the pure mind or the life-sense or the physical awareness, but it is, as it were, itself diluted by the dissolved form of mind, life or matter, held in the dilution and turned into a poor thinness wonderful to the lower consciousness but not comparable to its true intensities.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-504, 4: “The Divine on the Ananda plane is not incapable of a world-play or self-debarred from any expression of its glories. On the contrary, as the Upanishad insists, the Ananda is the true creative principle.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-506 Image Credits Header image recreated with a custom colour palette, inspired by an image published on Mindworks (mindworks.org). "The idea of the supermind, the Truth-Consciousness is there in the Rig Veda according to Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation and in one or two passages of the Upanishads, but in the Upanishads it is there only in seed in the conception of the being of knowledge, vijnanamaya purusha , exceeding the mental, vital and physical being; in the Rig Veda the idea is there but in principle only, it is not developed and even the principle of it has disappeared from the Hindu tradition. It is these things among others that constitute the novelty of Sri Aurobindo’s message as compared with the Hindu tradition, the idea that the world is not either a creation of Maya or only a play, lıla, of the Divine, or a cycle of births in the ignorance from which we have to escape, but a field of manifestation in which there is a progressive evolution of the soul and the nature in Matter and from Matter through Life and Mind to what is beyond Mind till it reaches the complete revelation of Sachchidananda in life. It is this that is the basis of the Yoga and gives a new sense to life.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-444-445 "In the supramental consciousness, there are no problems — the problem is created by the division set up by the Mind. The Supramental sees the Truth as a single whole and everything falls into its place in that whole. The Supramental is also spiritual, but the old Yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence) absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-existence absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the supramental plane .” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-133-134 I

World Hindu Wisdom Meet 2014 "Thou shalt be attracted helplessly to all. Men seeing thee shall feel my hands of joy," Savitri-701 Sanatana Dharma “I regard the spiritual history of mankind and especially of India as a constant development of a divine purpose, not a book that is closed, the lines of which have to be constantly repeated. Even the Upanishads and the Gita were not final though everything may be there in seed… I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion new or old for humanity in the future. A way to be opened that is still blocked, not a religion to be founded, is my conception of the matter.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-411 The third lecture delivered by S.A. Maa Krishna at the World Hindu Wisdom Meet-2014 held at Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia on 17.04.2014: (This pilgrimage to Bali witnessed tremendous opening towards The Mother’s new Divinity, both by the Balinese Aspirants and the noble participants of World Hindu Wisdom Meet-2014 which is a continuation of its earlier World Hindu Summit Meet in 2012 and 2013 . The first-day session, 16.04.2014, began with the inauguration of S.A. Maa Krishna’s Book The Divine Bliss which focuses on the man’s possibility of ascending to the status of Integral Godhead through Divine Call and our Soul’s task in Integral Yoga is to reveal The Mother’s Power which is too great for earth, to live in Her Bliss which is too large for heaven, to open toward Her Light which is too intense for inconscient hell, to extricate Her Beauty which is too vast for physical consciousness and to possess Her Love which is too boundless. The second-day session, 17.04.2014 began with S.A. Maa Krishna’s recitation of the Hymn offered to Mother Durga in which Sri Aurobindo projected India as the noblest race destined to save the world by calling down the Divine Mother power, by whose appearance we can regain the lost Spiritual Teaching, inviolate Character, strength of Intuition, force of Austerity, power of Virginity and true liberating Integral Knowledge. She only can slay the dark enemy of Titan and Asura within and root out all obscurity without. Our earnest prayer is that may our entire life and all life of successive births and bodies become a ceaseless worship of the Mother and that all our actions are a continuous service dedicated to Her. May She descend and manifest physically upon this earth. The second-day session ended with S.A. Maa Krishna’s lecture representing The Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s world vision, world redemption and world transformation. She pointed out that this creation is to be wholly accepted and embraced as the manifestation of the Brahman . If the existing mind of most men is crippled; life is untaught and crude; if there exist brutal and evil activities, then they are to be accepted as incidents of the Divine’s vast and varied plot; His great and dangerous drama’s needed steps. We have to meet our Lord in the nescient sleep of shadow and the Night in the form of Subconscient Sheath and in the wakefulness of the stars and Sun symbolising Supramental Self and wait for the hour in which high meets the low. The emergence of Divine Life on earth is possible by the reconciliation of God’s Night below the feet and His fathomless Light above the head. Bali is long recognised as the land of peace, whose Soul has turned towards greater Spiritual Call and this auspicious World Hindu Wisdom Meet-2014 has opened enormous Spiritual possibilities for the children of Bali and its ardent seekers.) OM Manatha Sree Jagannatha Mad Guru Sree Jagad Guru Mad Atma Sarva Bhutatma Thasmai Sree Guruvae Namahah “Supreme Lord, Eternal Truth, let us obey Thee alone and live according to Truth.” OM Swastiastu Om Namo Bhagavateh Divine Amar Atman! My all Eternal Love and heartiest Pranams to you all, WORLD HINDU WISDOM MEET-2014 PROPOSAL “There are very few people who carry with them an atmosphere which irradiates joy, peace, confidence- it is very rare. But these are truly benefactors of humanity. They don’t need to open their mouth.” The Mother On this auspicious occasion of the noble and great World Hindu Parisad/World Hindu Wisdom Meet-2014, I propose the following abstracts not on behalf of me but on behalf of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo for world Spiritual movement and radical Divine change. All our human effort has a subordinate role and utility before the great mysterious infinitely superior Divine plan and wisdom which has worked out its faultless action since the beginning of this creation. We must hate none, despise none, be repelled by none, but rather to accept this existence as the body of the Brahman, where the Divine is little revealed in one or more revealed in another or veiled and wholly distorted in others for that which He intends to become something best in their form and to execute secret Divine plan in their recalcitrant nature. This spiritual experience extends to embracing Godhead in whatever disguise He approaches us. We must regard, obey and adhere to the law, guidelines, norms of traditional or ancient schools of Yoga in conformity with our highest objective Truth realization and proceed ahead with the other complementary discipline of constantly renovating and restating all truth and practice through fresh instreaming of Spiritual experiences. We propose to give secondary importance to the outward appearance of things and fellow creatures and deliver them from contradictory and hostile ideas and emotions and insists to lean on the primary importance of seeking the Soul and Divine in all. And we always preserve within us the inalienable sense of unity in the midst of infinite variation of potentiality and differences of all possible relations. A seeker of truth would under no circumstance set the power and knowledge in him against the power and knowledge in others or affirm himself as an ego striving against other egos. He is rightly related to the world by giving or contributing what is the best, the profoundest and the completest in him. All our actions of intermediate planes between the highest and the lowest are the intermingling of truth and falsehood, knowledge and ignorance, joy and suffering, from which pure truth, wisdom and delight have to be worked out. It further believes that the Truth of things that emerges out of the phenomenal world’s contradictions is an infinite Bliss and self-conscious Existence, the same everywhere, self-existent in all things, in all times and beyond Time, whose largest totality and most intense vibrations of activity can be entirely manifested through practice of Yoga and Spiritual discipline. The integral liberating Knowledge or “Sā Vidya Yā Vimuktaye ” insists on the unity and reality of all the manifestations of the Absolute and refuses to confine truth to any one aspect. It admits all the valid truths of all the Schools of thought by getting rid of their limitation and negation and reconciles these partial truths in the larger all-truth that fulfills our whole being entirely. This Wisdom proposes to turn all the individual problems, one sided view points, individual perfection, liberation, ananda and limitation imposed on Brahman out of partial Divine experiences into catholicity of the all vision of the Divine and he will be able to wait, learn, grow, integrate, synthesize and universalize all Deities, Teachers, Scriptures, Religions, developmental urges invented by Mother nature and weld them strongly to the One, the Ineffable and the Infinite and unifies many states of Consciousness at a time. Lastly, we aspire for the complete descent of the dynamic Divine Shakti or the Divine Mother through all Her attributes that of the Truth Supreme, Love Supreme, Delight Supreme, Knowledge Supreme, Beauty Supreme, Power Supreme, Life Supreme, Light Supreme, Silence Supreme, Peace Supreme, Word Supreme, Voice Supreme, Void Supreme, and entry into all the intermediate worlds or planes of Consciousness that exists between the Inconscient Matter and Sachchidananda. Though the UNKNOWABLE is not knowable by the finite mind or to our limited mental consciousness, it is not altogether and in every way unknowable; it is self-evident to an infinite Consciousness or a knowledge by Identity and the Spiritual Being within us can explore all the ranges of Consciousness from the darkest Inconscient plane to the highest plane of Sachchidananda to unravel the whole of the Unknowable and its complete Divine manifestation. OM TAT SAT Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Post Speech Thesis: Religion is considered great if behind every exoteric side of fixed faith, devotion, hope, symbol, ritual, ceremony and limiting dogmas there exists an esoteric side of inner Spiritual preparation, illumination and discovery of the mystery of the higher planes of existence. Its real motive is to train man’s mind, life and body for the emergence of an inner Spiritual Light and higher Consciousness. Integral Yoga accepts all ‘exoteric Religion’ as unconscious Yoga, the inferior stage and first approach of tardy evolution and insists on its subordination over esoteric Religion, which is a conscious Yoga of swift Spiritual evolution. We have to identify two forms of Spiritual evolution developed by Mother nature; the first is an esoteric movement of Consciousness, the Mystic approach of concentrated evolution and unfolding of endless Spiritual mysteries in secrecy and silence of a secured and isolated Spiritual Fortress; the second is an exoteric diffusive Religious approach of entering commerce with the world in transforming it; here the highest available Spiritual truth is generalised for the largest benefit of humanity. These two complementary movements of the subjective adventure of Self-concentration of Spirituality and subordinate action of the objective adventure of Self-expansion of Religion are effectively combined in integral Yoga. But in integral Yoga, Self-expansion is pursued primarily by movement of universal Consciousness and secondarily by the active mind of three Gunas or by psycho-physical machinery. Integral Yoga is considered safe and secure when the Self-expansion becomes a subordinate and outcome of self-concentration. In Religion, the Knowledge of the Self, World and God are relatively fixed and in Spirituality, they are constantly updated, relived, renewed and restated and their endless Truth is endlessly unfolded. Now it is time for humanity to search for that highest Spiritual Knowledge which gathers together, illumines, integralises and harmonises the essential truth of all available knowledge and finds the basic and justifying reason of the existence of four negations of Ignorance, Falsehood, Suffering and Death and cures them. This effort can begin with the thorough study of the evolution of the Spiritual history of the earth and must culminate with the realisation of that Vedantic Supreme Reality, which, being known, all is known, yasmin vijnate sarvam idam vijnatam . OM TAT SAT Download this WEB PAGE in PDF Format: Photo Gallery “Help men, but do not pauperise them of their energy; lead and instruct men, but see that their initiative and originality remain intact; take others into thyself, but give them in return the full godhead of their nature. He who can do this is the leader and the guru .” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-13/Essays in Philosophy and Yoga-p-208 “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, The Divine Bliss “For the greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him....For the seeker of the integral Yoga… will meet him (the Divine) in the faces of the Gods, his cosmic personalities supporting the World-Play, detect him behind the mask of the Vibhutis, embodied World-Forces or human Leaders, reverence and obey him in the Guru , worship him in the Avatar .” Sri Aurobindo CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-67, 130 Hymn to Mother Durga “It has always been said that to take disciples means to take upon yourself the difficulties of the disciples as well as your own. Of course, if the Guru does not identify himself with the disciple, does not take him into his own consciousness, keeps him outside and only gives him upadesa , leaving him to do the rest himself, then the chance of these effects is much diminished, made practically nil.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-197, “The ideal is that of humanity in God, of God in humanity, the ancient ideal of the sanatana dharma but applied as it has never been applied before to the problem of politics and the work of national revival. To realise that ideal, to impart it to the world is the mission of India. She has evolved a religion which embraces all that the heart, the brain, the practical faculty of man can desire but she has not yet applied it to the problems of modern politics. This therefore is the work which she has still to do before she can help humanity; the necessity of this mission is the justification for her resurgence, the great incentive of saving herself to save mankind is the native power which will give her the force, the strength, the vehemence which can alone enable her to realise her destiny... Spirituality is India’s only politics, the fulfilment of the Sanatan Dharma its only Swaraj. ” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-6-7/Vande Mataram/p-1017 CWSA-36/Autobiographical Note/p-170 Each Nation/Continent is having its Soul quality about which she must be aware. For example, Europe represents ‘material sincerity and honesty;’ Roman empire represents ‘efficiency and administrative organisation;’ Arabians represent ‘passionate and impulsive in Nature;’ India represents ‘ Spiritual heart centre of the world ; ’ France represents ‘clarity in intellect;’ Japan represents ‘wonderful and unexpected progress through Beauty;’ Germany represents ‘skill and inventiveness;’ Russia represents ‘brotherhood of man;’ United States of America represents ‘enthusiasm for adventure and practical organisation;’ China represents ‘inventive intellect with creative power and self-expansion;’ Ireland represents ‘fine psychic turn and quick intelligence and delicate imagination;’ Australia represents ‘emergence of new generous energy and enthusiasm;’ Israel represents ‘intellectuals with an exceptional will and sense of organisation;’ Ukraine represents ‘extraordinary Heroism and Nationalism.’

The Central Truth of The Life Divine "Although Light grows on earth and Night recedes, Yet till the evil is slain in its own home And Light invades the world’s inconscient base And perished has the adversary Force, He still must labour on, his work half done." Savitri-448 The Central Truth of The Divine Life Or The Book of Consciousness “A spiritual evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the indwelling spirit, is then the key-note, the central significant motive of the terrestrial existence .”¹ Sri Aurobindo “If consciousness is the central secret , life is the outward indication, the effective power of being in Matter; for it is that which liberates consciousness and gives it its form or embodiment of force and its effectuation in material act.”² Sri Aurobindo “But also the central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more authentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests, as well as in its own deeper spiritual empire.”¹⁷ Sri Aurobindo “For the gulf between mind and supermind has to be bridged, the closed passages opened and roads of ascent and descent created where there is now a void and a silence. This can be done only by the triple transformation to which we have already made a passing reference: there must first be the psychic change, the conversion of our whole present nature into a soul-instrumentation; on that or along with that there must be the spiritual change, the descent of a higher Light, Knowledge, Power, Force, Bliss, Purity into the whole being, even into the lowest recesses of the life and body, even into the darkness of our subconscience; last, there must supervene the supramental transmutation, — there must take place as the crowning movement the ascent into the supermind and the transforming descent of the supramental Consciousness into our entire being and nature.”⁸ Sri Aurobindo The central thought, the central secret and central truth of Integral Evolution is identified as Consciousness, which is the real creative Power, the universal Witness, the force of awareness, a play of Energy, an infinite, indivisible Existence moves out of its fundamental purity into the varied play of Force; for whom the world is a field and condition of Divine Life; life is the exterior and dynamic sign and index of that revelation and effectuation; all life is the fundamental poise of its own constituting Consciousness in possession both of unity and of diversity where the former contains and governs the latter; the physical, vital, mind, soul and Supermind are instruments of Consciousness; the accessories or subordinate energies of these instruments are identified as elements of Consciousness; following this line the individual Consciousness fulfils itself by that which is beyond his obscured and limited ego, beyond the thought and speech, a centre of the Divine Life and of the universal Consciousness embracing, utilising and transforming all individual determinations into the Divine harmony; universal Consciousness fulfils itself by variations of numberless individuals and not by suppressing the variations; the Transcendent Consciousness fulfils, contains, manifests, constitutes the cosmos and the individual by its own infinite harmonic varieties and it is the true truth and source of both the Individuality and the Cosmic Being. Consciousness or the power of Being is like the nave of a wheel works through the individual centre, with the Divine Life or transformed Becoming is its circumference, the wheel. The spokes, the radiating bars connecting the wheel and the nave are the instruments of Consciousness responsible for rightly relating the existence with the Supreme through change of consciousness and thus the evolutionary growth of life is accelerated. Consciousness: “An integral consciousness will become the basis of an entire harmonisation of life through the total transformation, unification, integration of the being and the nature…An integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature.”⁷ Sri Aurobindo “Consciousness is the breath that makes everything live.”¹⁴ The Mother The Highest Consciousness is an awareness of the Spirit by Identity, subordinated by the awareness of the Spirit by Inclusion of Psychic opening and Indwelling of Spiritual opening, which is the very stuff of the Spirit’s triple self-knowledge. We have two fundamental facts – a fact of pure Existence or Being and a fact of world existence or Becomings; to deny one or the other is to bring either narrow limitation to our Spiritual order or an incompetent and restricting physical life and to recognise the facts of Consciousness is to find out their true and fruitful relation. Consciousness is only a bridge of transition in which initially the Spirit becomes partially aware of itself and finally becomes the normal waking trance of luminous Superconscience. The extension of this consciousness can be satisfied by an inner enlargement from the individual consciousness into the cosmic existence and in the Transcendent Consciousness, both the individual and universal find its own fullness, freedom of reality and perfect harmonisation. Therefore, man’s importance in the world is recognised by the development of a comprehensive Consciousness in which Silence and cosmic Activity are reconciled and a transfiguration by a perfect self-discovery becomes possible. We must note that what we mean ordinarily by the superficial man6 is not the inner self, but only a sum of apparent continuous movement of consciousness-force concentrated on the surface in a certain stream of superficial workings or an unequal concentration of consciousness in which there is the beginning of self-division, which does all his works, thinks all his thoughts, feels all his emotions. Behind this stream of energy there is the whole sea of consciousness, the vast sea of Subliminal, Superconscient and Subconscient Self which is aware of the stream but of which the stream is unaware. Yet it is really the hidden sea and not the superficial stream which is doing all the action and the source of all his movement. Instruments of Consciousness: Consciousness is a self-aware force of existence whose middle term is Mind, below it, it sinks into Vital, Physical and Subconscient movements and above it, it rises to Subliminal, Spiritual and Supramental heights. This Consciousness is quite involved in Inconscient Matter, hesitating on the verge between involution and conscious evolution in the non-animal form of life, consciously evolving but greatly limited and hampered in the mind housed in the living body of man, destined to be fully evolved by awakening the Supermind in the embodied fully developed mental being and Nature. The phenomenon of Consciousness is certainly a Force, a formative movement of energies and all material forms are born out of meeting and mutual adaptation between unshaped forces. Subconscient consciousness is the Inconscient vibrating on the borders of consciousness, sending up its motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness; for surface consciousness is bound down to ego in all its activities and the first formation of egoistic consciousness is the dualities of life and death, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, truth and error, good and evil. The supraphysical plane of consciousness ³ is not governed by the law of Spiritual evolution and from this world, bright and dark forces cast their influence on the physical plane of existence. The enlargement of the superficially active surface consciousness is possible either by some kind of untaught effort and casual ill-ordered effect or by a scientific and well-regulated practice. The surface consciousness is having three appearances; firstly, the material consciousness is a submerged consciousness, self-oblivious, and is lost in the form but really obeys faultlessly the laws of Right and Truth fixed for it by the Divine Will concealed in its own superficial expressive action; this body consciousness is a patient servant and what it craves for is long life, good health, physical strength and comfortable easy life and the right action of the physical consciousness is distorted by the pressure of separative consciousness of physical mind; secondly, the vital consciousness is an emerging consciousness seen as an important part in animal life and intuitively evident in plant, it acts in the cells of the body for purposeful movements, automatic vital function and a process of the growth, activity, attraction, repulsion and decay of form to which our mind is a stranger; it has the same initial reactions of pleasure and pain, sleep and wakefulness as that of mental consciousness but different in constitution of its self-experience; thirdly, the mental consciousness is not the completely illumined consciousness emerged out of the obscuration of Matter but it is the emerged individual limited consciousness, aware of things and forces in their apparent division and opposition to each other but not in their real unity, reflects new ideas as facts of life, modifies comfortably the internal and the external existence of the being; delivers out of its imprisonment but it is not yet master of the act and form and is aware therefore only of a fragmentary movement of its own total progressive activities; it is a many-sided mental effort in order to arrive at an apprehensive knowledge. Apprehensive Consciousness, Prajnana, is a luminous mental activity in the body, sense mind and nerves unconsciously without any notice; it is active, formative of creative knowledge, originative, cognizant as the processor and witness of its own working; it is in its nature truth seeing, truth hearing and truth remembering; apprehensive active consciousness works as an energy throwing up knowledge and activity out of itself; an apprehensive passive consciousness does not act as an energy with absence of force of action; mental waking consciousness is only a small selection of the entire conscious being, it is a perceptive consciousness of waking state where the transcript of physical things and of our contacts with universe are recorded. If we develop our inner being, live more inwardly than most men do, then the balance is changed and a larger dream consciousness opens before us; our dreams can take on a subliminal and no longer a subconscious character and can assume a reality and significance; this is also subliminal consciousness, which is a witness to truth through truth vision, truth hearing, truth discernment, truth touch, truth thought and truth action and its testimony can be confirmed again and again in physical and objective field, it delivers us definitely from circumscription by the material and from the illusion of the obvious; on the border of subliminal consciousness there is Psychic Consciousness ,⁹ which can identify itself with other Souls, can enter into them, can realise its unity with them and this can take place in perfect waking state, observes all distinctions of objective world and exceeds them. Above it there is Spiritual Consciousness ,¹⁰ which is intrinsic, self-existent, more embracing, universal and transcendent, it can take up mind, life and body into its light and give them the immobile and featureless Divine touch; for it has a greater instrumentality of knowledge, a fountain of deeper light, power and will, an unlimited splendour and force of love, joy and beauty; its highest state is Overmind Consciousness , which can hold any number of seemingly fundamental oppositions together in a reconciling global vision. In Sleep Consciousness all the material and sensory experiences cease in the deeper trance when we enter into superconscience, no record from it or transcript of its contents can normally reach us; it is only by a special or an unusual development, in a supernormal condition or through a break or rift in our confined normality, that we can be on the surface conscious of the contacts or messages of the Superconscience. This Consciousness of the upper hemisphere, also known as the Supramental Truth Consciousness¹¹ is at once a total self-awareness and ordering self-knowledge of the Eternal and Infinite and a power of self-determination inherent in that self-awareness by which the One manifests the harmonies of its infinite potential multiplicity; its other name, the Gnostic Consciousness is that in which all contradictions are cancelled and fused into each other in a higher light of unified plasticity, self-knowledge and world-knowledge, instead of ego-insistence on personal ideas there would be a unifying sense of a common truth in many forms, a common self in many consciousness and bodies; it is extended as an original and ultimate Consciousness which is a power of unity in diversity, it is integral, all-accepting, all-embracing, all-discriminating, all-determining and an indivisible whole-vision. In this comprehensive Supramental Consciousness, it is equally possible to regard and rank waking, dream and sleep consciousness together as three different orders of one Reality or as three different grades of embodied contact of self-experience and world-experience. If we can develop a causal body or Supramental Sheath, which is not formed in most human beings, then this faculty will remain active in the conscious waking state. Beyond the Supramental Consciousness is the infinite Consciousness of Sachchidananda which must always find and achieve itself in the Divine Bliss, an Omnipresent Self-delight. This highest state of Consciousness of the Self is also called Turiya of pure existence and our absolute state of Being, with which it is difficult to have direct contact. Elements of Consciousness: There are some more terminologies through which the instruments of Consciousness are linked to the Divine Life and we have to understand all of them in relation to Consciousness. Ignorance is an unconsciousness, achiti , of the Truth and Right; it is the non-perceiving principle of our consciousness as opposed to the truth-perceiving conscious vision and knowledge; it can only come about as a subordinate phenomenon by some concentration of consciousness absorbed in a part knowledge or a part action of the being and excluding the rest from its awareness; this Ignorance is a frontal power of that all-consciousness which limits itself in certain field, within certain boundaries to a particular operation of knowledge, a particular mode of conscious working, and keeps back all the rest of its knowledge in waiting as a force behind it. Falsehood is a personal attachment to limited consciousness absorbed in part truth and a by-product of world movement. Its necessity becomes inevitable in the fragmentary evolution of Ignorance. Suffering , a great stumbling-block to understand the truth of the universe, is a failure of the consciousness in us to meet the shocks of existence, the incapacity to bear the touch of delight. Evil is a wrong consciousness governed by life ego. Death is a loss of consciousness or failure of consciousness to unite the cells of the body. It is a peaceful transition from one state of surface consciousness to another state of subtle consciousness and can destroy unconsciousness. All Death, Decay and Destruction are the outcome of the arrest of growth of consciousness or the distortion of consciousness. When one enters higher ranges of consciousness beyond mind, he experiences Divine action, creation and Ananda and when one enters lower ranges of consciousness below mind, he experiences undivine action, destruction and suffering. Tamas is the Sanskrit word for the principle and power of inertia of consciousness and the first born of inconscient force:²⁰ a less developed downward depressing consciousness, dull, obscure, sluggish, conservative, unwilling to enlarge itself, recalcitrant to new stimulus of Divine force, barks at all unfamiliar wisdom and light and incompetent in its play is said to be tamasic . Rajas is the principle and power of kinetic force of consciousness impelled by desire and instinct, an intermediate, slow-evolving consciousness, dynamic, possessive, ever restless, governed in its idea not by truth and light, passionate and active; it accepts enjoyment of desire as the ruling human motive. Sattwa is the principle of harmonious upward rising consciousness; a consciousness of limited light, relative freedom, inner satisfaction, happiness, balanced knowledge and eager to possess higher Divine faculties of limitless Wisdom, Love, Delight, Beauty and Silence. Ego is a practical construction of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us; this constant outer ego building is only a provisional device of the Consciousness-Force in things so that the secret individual, the spirit within, may establish a representative and instrumental formation of itself in physical nature; the individual ego is a pragmatic and effective fiction, a translation of the secret self into the terms of surface consciousness, or a subjective substitute for our true self in our surface experience; the limited ego is only an intermediate phenomenon of consciousness necessary for a certain line of development in Ignorance; the nature of the ego is a self-limitation of consciousness by a willed ignorance of the rest of its play and its exclusive absorption in one form, one combination of tendencies, one field of the movement of energies. Memory is only a process and utility of consciousness; it is also a poverty-stricken substitute for an integral direct abiding consciousness of self and a direct integral or global perception of things. Mind, life and body are different organisations and grades of one conscious force of Existence; they are inferior expressions of partial consciousness which strive to arrive in the mould of a varied evolution at that superior expression of itself already existent to the Beyond-Mind. Time experience varies with the variation of state of consciousness and Space is a category of consciousness which arranges the perception of phenomena. Reason is only a messenger, a representative or a shadow of a greater consciousness beyond itself. Mind is a degradation¹⁵ of Supramental Consciousness. (Mental) Maya is the inverse creative movement of the Divine Consciousness and (Supramental) Maya is the forward creative movement of the Eternal Consciousness. Yoga-Maya is the power of Supramental Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; it is a special movement of self-existent direct awareness of Knowledge and it brings to man the brilliant messages from the Unknown. Vision is an instrument of the Consciousness of the dream Self to approach and foresee the Divine action. All evolution is, in essence, a heightening of the force of consciousness in the manifest being so that it may be raised into the greater intensity of what is still unmanifest, from matter into life, from life into mind, from the mind into the Spirit. Nature is the unconscious God whose conscious part is the creative force of consciousness of the Being within us. Being, Purusha, is the conscious God working within Ignorance, is also the static status of the infinite Consciousness. Purusha is a consciousness that observes and can reserve its will power. (Apara) Prakriti is the dynamic state of finite surface consciousness acting within the boundary of three gunas. Prakriti is an energy full of the substance of consciousness that takes the form of knowledge, will and feeling. Para Prakriti, Shakti is the dynamic status of infinite indwelling and over-dwelling Consciousness. Soul is the inner consciousness that aspires to its own complete self-realisation and therefore always exceeds the individual formation of the moment. Brahman is integral and unifies many states of consciousness at a time and knows itself in all that exists. Divine Will is the potency of the power of consciousness applying itself to a work and a result. “If knowledge is the widest power of the consciousness and its function is to free and illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery.”¹⁶ Tapas is the concentration power of consciousness. Samjnana or Supramental Sens e is the contact of Consciousness with its object; its action is the result of extension and vibration of consciousness in a supra-ethereal ether of light, power and bliss. It can be directly aware of all things in all the planes of consciousness without the aid of a sense organ. Knowledge is a potency of Light and Consciousness that possesses the highest Truth in terms of direct perception and self-experience. Knowledge and Will are dual aspects of one Consciousness or the twin power of actions of Consciousness. Ananda is the very substance of Consciousness and is the outcome of the interaction of Knowledge and Will. Equality is that power of consciousness which brings into the whole of our Nature and Being the sense of eternal tranquillity of Self. Life evolves through growth of consciousness or a greater consciousness means greater life. Integral Education , a utilitarian aspect of Integral Yoga, proceeds ahead with effort, askesis and tapasya , which are defined as the concentration energy of Consciousness. Consciousness is the central Truth of Divine Life which is a self-aware force of existence extended from the Inconscient Sheath to the Bliss Sheath. By movement of Consciousness, fullness of Being, fullness of Consciousness and fullness of Life can be attained. Harmony is the inherent Nature of infinite Divine Consciousness and disharmony or limited harmony is the nature of the finite Consciousness of the three gunas . The Law that descends from Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Consciousness is known as Dharma . The Law that enters the human vessel from the tamasic and rajasic mind and from the surrounding world is known as Adharma . Vedantic Sraddha is the pouring down of Divine attributes of infinite Static consciousness into finite dynamic Consciousness of the three gunas through Purusha Yajna, Vedantic self-discipline. Vedic Sraddha is the pouring down of Divine attributes of infinite Dynamic Consciousness into finite dynamic consciousness of the three gunas by Prakriti Yajna . Sincerity is the concentration of finite dynamic Consciousness of the three gunas around the Psychic being. Exclusive concentration is a concentration of separative mental active consciousness absorbed in part knowledge or a part action of the being and excluding the rest from its awareness. Submission of finite dynamic consciousness to infinite static Consciousness is defined as (Vedantic) surrender. Integral Concentration of Consciousness, Tapas , is the inherent power of Consciousness Force. Submission of finite dynamic consciousness to infinite dynamic consciousness is defined as (Vedic) surrender . Equality is gained when the Consciousness goes beyond the finite consciousness of the three gunas. Renunciation is the rejection of finite dynamic consciousness represented by three gunas of apara-prakriti. 'Samyama is a process of pressure on the consciousness by which the secret Truth, the involved intuition is released…’¹³ The Divine Life:¹² “Our greater self of knowledge waits for us, A supreme light in the truth-conscious Vast: It sees from summits beyond thinking mind, It moves in a splendid air transcending life. It shall descend and make earth’s life divine.” Savitri-484 “If our souls could see and love and clasp God’s Truth, Its infinite radiance would seize our hearts, Our being in God’s image be remade And earthly life becomes the life divine.” Savitri-663 This world is real precisely because it consists of an observing consciousness and an objective reality and the world action cannot proceed without the witness because the universe exists only in or for the Consciousness that observes and has no independent reality. The individual can be a centre of the whole universal Consciousness and world transcending Consciousness superior to all cosmic existence and the form of the universe is occupied by the entire immanence of the Formless and Ineffable. So, to exist not as self of body only which is subject to death, desire and pain but to consider body as a minor outward arrangement of Self and an out-flowering of life by expansion and elevation of Consciousness is a first condition of the Divine life. The second condition⁴ of Divine Life is to transcend the ignorance, limitation and control of the surface formation of mind which is only a subordinate and instrument of Self. The third condition of the Divine life is to possess and govern the dynamic condition of becoming from an inner eternity of Being and its outcome is the Spiritual self-possession, self-mastery and the manifestation of Divine miracle. As the Consciousness turns more within all obstacles and resistances appear unreal, transient and extremely relative. Out of this living a fourth condition evolves which insists to withdraw from the absorption of material preoccupation, not by rejecting or neglecting life in the body but by a constant living on the inner and higher planes of Consciousness by an ascent and stepping back inward; both these movements are necessary in order to elevate life from the transient life from moment to moment into the eternal life of our immortal Consciousness. The fifth condition of Divine life is the widening of our range of Consciousness, field of action in time and a taking up and transcending of the existing state of our mental, vital and corporeal consciousness and consider them as the instrument and minor outward formation of the Self. Thus, in reality the world lives in us, thinks in us, formulates itself in us; but we imagine and misunderstand that it is we who live, think, formulate separately by ourselves and for ourselves and we claim the universal forces that act in us as our own. In the last condition of Divine living, the Consciousness is at once aware of the Law, Right and Truth of the Individual and All and the two become consciously harmonised in a mutual unity, One knowing itself as the Many and the Many knowing themselves as the One, life obeys the law of Unity and yet fulfils each thing in the diversity according to its proper rule and function; in this Divine Life all the individuals live at once as one conscious Being in many living Souls, one power of Consciousness in many minds, one joy of force in many lives, one reality of Delight fulfilling itself in many hearts and bodies. An integral evolution of Consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form reveals and manifests the indwelling Spirit is then the central significant motive of our terrestrial existence. Savitri and Supramental/Supreme Consciousness: “The All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance, The All-Blissful bore to be insensible.” Savitri-66-67 “The All-containing was contained in form, Oneness was carved into units measurable, The limitless built into a cosmic sum: Unending Space was beaten into a curve, Indivisible Time into small minutes cut, The infinitesimal massed to keep secure The mystery of the Formless cast into form.” Savitri-266-67 “A breadth of all-containing Consciousness Supported Being in a still embrace.” Savitri-271 “A great all-ruling Consciousness is there” Savitri-271 “A light was round him wide and absolute, A diamond purity of eternal sight; A consciousness lay still, devoid of forms, Free, wordless, uncoerced by sign or rule, For ever content with only being and bliss; A sheer existence lived in its own peace On the single spirit’s bare and infinite ground.” Savitri-297 “For one was there supreme behind the God. A Mother Might brooded upon the world; A Consciousness revealed its marvellous front Transcending all that is, denying none:" Savitri-313 “The one Consciousness that made the world was seen; All now was luminosity and force." Savitri-319 Consciousness is a yearning,⁵ an exploration, an action and a search through every movement, gesture and cry and it hunts in the Inconscient depths and Superconscient heights to find some lost felicity, missed sweetness and manifests itself as Knowledge and limiting that knowledge to such extent to create phenomena of Ignorance acting upon surface consciousness. We are in search of that single beginningless and endless Consciousness for whom this creation is a small incident, which mind cannot touch, speech cannot utter, thought cannot reveal; it has no home on earth and no centre in man and yet is the fount of creation, source and origin of all truth, all things thought and all action done. Delight is the original nature of Consciousness and its deepest form is manifested as Divine Love. This Love labours in the depths as established Consciousness which maintains a growing but firm light in the darkness of original Nescience and exults on the heights and its feet can walk in the naked hardest world. Savitri teaches us this lesson that if the highest Consciousness of Divine Love can be called down to the lowest plane of Inconscient, then the perishable stuff of our body can be transformed into immortal Divine Life and harmonise all the obscure forces of existence that surround and press upon the body. This inner movement of ascension and descent of Consciousness can be carried out by the support of Vedantic and Vedic action of Sacrifice and Faith and can be further intensified by the support of Divine Love. Through the movement of Consciousness, Divine Love can be activated which needs no hand to feel and clasp but this mighty vibration can destroy the falsity in human love and heighten the intimacy of Soul with Soul, which no human love can imagine. OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-856, 2: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1054, 3: CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-473, 4: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1062, 5: “A consciousness that yearned through every cry Of unexplored attraction and desire, It found and searched again the unsatisfied deeps Hunting as if in some deep secret heart To find some lost or missed felicity.” Savitri-674 “He (King) neared the still consciousness sustaining all.” Savitri-32, “The one Consciousness that made the world was seen;” Savitri-319, 6: “Yes, the ordinary consciousness is like an axis with everything revolving around it. An axis fixed somewhere, and everything revolves around it – that's the ordinary individual consciousness. And if the axis shifts, one feels lost. It's like a big axis (more or less big, it can also be tiny) planted straight up in time, with everything revolving around it. The consciousness may be more or less extended, more or less high, more or less strong, but it always turns on an axis. And now for me there is no more axis. ” The Mother's Agenda/14th July 1962, 7: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-753, CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-114, 8: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-924, "All the works of mind and intellect must be first heightened and widened, then illumined, lifted into the domain of a higher Intelligence, afterwards translated into workings of a greater non-mental Intuition, these again transformed into the dynamic outpourings of the Overmind radiance, and those transfigured into the full light and sovereignty of the supramental Gnosis. It is this that the evolution of consciousness in the world carries prefigured but latent in its seed and in the straining tense intention of its process; nor can that process, that evolution cease till it has evolved the instruments of a perfect in place of its now imperfect manifestation of the Spirit." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-149, 9: “The soul, the psychic entity , then manifests itself as the central being which upholds mind and life and body and supports all the other powers and functions of the Spirit; it takes up its greater function as the guide and ruler of the nature. A guidance, a governance begins from within which exposes every movement to the light of Truth, repels what is false, obscure, opposed to the divine realisation: every region of the being, every nook and corner of it, every movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposition, propensity, desire, habit of the conscious or subconscious physical, even the most concealed, camouflaged, mute, recondite, is lighted up with the unerring psychic light , their confusions dissipated, their tangles disentangled, their obscurities, deceptions, self-deceptions precisely indicated and removed; all is purified, set right, the whole nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-941, 10: “This, effected little by little or in a succession of great and swift definitive experiences, is the process of the spiritual transformation . It achieves itself and culminates in an upward ascent often repeated by which in the end the consciousness fixes itself on a higher plane and from there sees and governs the mind, life and body; it achieves itself also in an increasing descent of the powers of the higher consciousness and knowledge which become more and more the whole normal consciousness and knowledge. A light and power, a knowledge and force are felt which first take possession of the mind and remould it, afterwards of the life part and remould that, finally of the little physical consciousness and leave it no longer little but wide and plastic and even infinite. For this new consciousness has itself the nature of infinity: it brings to us the abiding spiritual sense and awareness of the infinite and eternal with a great largeness of the nature and a breaking down of its limitations; immortality becomes no longer a belief or an experience but a normal self-awareness; the close presence of the Divine Being, his rule of the world and of our self and natural members, his force working in us and everywhere, the peace of the infinite, the joy of the infinite are now concrete and constant in the being; in all sights and forms one sees the Eternal, the Reality, in all sounds one hears it, in all touches feels it; there is nothing else but its forms and personalities and manifestations; the joy or adoration of the heart, the embrace of all existence, the unity of the spirit are abiding realities.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-947, 11: “If the spirit could from the first dwell securely on the superior heights and deal with a blank and virgin stuff of mind and matter, a complete spiritual transformation might be rapid, even facile: but the actual process of Nature is more difficult, the logic of her movement more manifold, contorted, winding, comprehensive; she recognises all the data of the task she has set to herself and is not satisfied with a summary triumph over her own complexities. Every part of our being has to be taken in its own nature and character, with all the moulds and writings of the past still there in it: each minutest portion and movement must either be destroyed and replaced if it is unfit, or, if it is capable, transmuted into the truth of the higher being. If the psychic change is complete, this can be done by a painless process, though still the programme must be long and scrupulous and the progress deliberate; but otherwise one has to be satisfied with a partial result or, if one’s own scrupulousness of perfection or hunger of the spirit is insatiable, consent to a difficult, often painful and seemingly interminable action. For ordinarily the consciousness does not rise to the summits except in the highest moments; it remains on the mental level and receives descents from above, sometimes a single descent of some spiritual power that stays and moulds the being into something predominatingly spiritual, or a succession of descents bringing into it more and more of the spiritual status and dynamis: but unless one can live on the highest height reached, there cannot be the complete or more integral change .” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-948, 12: "As it is, the physical body is really only a very disfigured shadow of the eternal life of the Self, but this physical body is capable of a progressive development; the physical substance progresses through each individual formation, and one day it will be able to build a bridge between physical life as we know it and the supramental life that is to manifest." The Mother/ The Mother's Agenda/28.11.1958 “The only hope for the future is in a change of man’s consciousness and the change is bound to come....But it is left to men to decide if they will collaborate in this change or if it will have to be enforced upon them by the power of crushing circumstances... So, wake up and collaborate.” The Mother/ The Mother’s Agenda-Vol-5/p-46, “In my Yoga also I found myself moved to include both worlds in my purview, the spiritual and the material, and to try to establish the divine Consciousness and the divine Power in men’s hearts and in earthly life, not for personal salvation only but for a life divine here . This seems to me as spiritual an aim as any and the fact of this life taking up earthly pursuits and earthly things into its scope cannot, I believe, tarnish its spirituality or alter its Indian character. This at least has always been my view and experience of the reality and nature of the world and things and the Divine: it seemed to me as nearly as possible the integral truth about them and I have therefore spoken of the pursuit of it as the integral Yoga. Everyone is, of course, free to reject and disbelieve in this kind of integrality or to believe in the spiritual necessity of an entire other-worldliness excluding any kind of this-worldliness altogether, but that would make the exercise of my Yoga impossible. My Yoga can include indeed a full experience of the other worlds, the plane of the supreme Spirit and the other planes in between and their possible effects upon our life and material world ; but it will be quite possible to insist only on the realisation of the supreme Being or Ishwara even in one aspect, Shiva, Krishna as Lord of the world and Master of ourselves and our works or else the universal Sachchidananda , and attain to the essential results of this Yoga and afterwards to proceed from them to the integral results if one accepted the ideal of the divine life and this material world conquered by the Spirit. It is this view and experience of things and of the truth of existence that enabled me to write The Life Divin e and Savitri . ” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/p-375, 13: CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-308, 14: The Mother’s Agenda-29.06.1966, 15: “Man and the animal are both mentally conscious beings: but the animal is fixed in vital mind and mind-sense and cannot exceed its limitations, while man has received into his sense-mind the light of another principle, the intellect, which is really at once a reflection and a degradation of the supermind, a ray of gnosis seized by the sense-mentality and transformed by it into something other than its source: for it is agnostic like the sense- mind in which and for which it works, not gnostic; it seeks to lay hold on knowledge, because it does not possess it, it does not like supermind hold knowledge in itself as its natural prerogative. In other words, in each of these forms of existence the universal being has fixed its action of consciousness in a different principle or, as between man and animal, in the modification of a lower by a higher though still not a highest-grade principle.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-739, 16: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-149, 17: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-147, 18: “For, as a matter of fact, while the very keyword of the ideal creation is a plenary self-consciousness and self-possession in the infinite Soul and a perfect oneness, the keyword of the creation of which we have present experience is the very opposite; it is an original inconscience developing in life into a limited and divided self-consciousness, an original inert subjection to the drive of a blind self-existent Force developing in life into a struggle of the self-conscious being to possess himself and all things and to establish in the kingdom of this unseeing mechanic Force the reign of an enlightened Will and Knowledge.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-501-502 19: “It is consciousness and life that must be the keywords to what is being thus worked out in Time; for without them Matter and the world of Matter would be a meaningless phenomenon, a thing that has just happened by Chance or by an unconscious Necessity. But consciousness as it is, life as it is cannot be the whole secret; for both are very clearly something unfinished and still in process. In us consciousness is Mind, and our mind is ignorant and imperfect, an intermediate power that has grown and is still growing towards something beyond itself: there were lower levels of consciousness that came before it and out of which it arose, there must very evidently be higher levels to which it is itself arising. Before our thinking, reasoning, reflecting mind there was a consciousness unthinking but living and sentient, and before that there was the subconscious and the unconscious; after us or in our yet unevolved selves there is likely to be waiting a greater consciousness , self-luminous, not dependent on constructive thought: our imperfect and ignorant thought-mind is certainly not the last word of consciousness, its ultimate possibility. For the essence of consciousness is the power to be aware of itself and its objects, and in its true nature this power must be direct, self-fulfilled and complete : if it is in us indirect, incomplete, unfulfilled in its workings, dependent on constructed instruments, it is because consciousness here is emerging from an original veiling Inconscience and is yet burdened and enveloped with the first Nescience proper to the Inconscient; but it must have the power to emerge completely, its destiny must be to evolve into its own perfection which is its true nature. Its true nature is to be wholly aware of its objects, and of these objects the first is self, the being which is evolving its consciousness here, and the rest is what we see as not-self, — but if existence is indivisible, that too must in reality be self: the destiny of evolving consciousness must be, then, to become perfect in its awareness, entirely aware of self and all-aware. This perfect and natural condition of consciousness is to us a superconscience, a state which is beyond us and in which our mind, if suddenly transferred to it, could not at first function; but it is towards that superconscience that our conscious being must be evolving.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1052-1053, 20: “Buddhi , which is simply the determinative power that determines all inertly out of indeterminate inconscient Force, takes for us the form of intelligence and will. Manas, the inconscient force which seizes Nature’s discriminations by objective action and reaction and grasps at them by attraction, becomes sense-perception and desire, the two crude terms or degradations of intelligence and will, — becomes the sense-mind sensational, emotive, volitional in the lower sense of wish, hope, longing, passion, vital impulsion, all the deformations (vikara ) of will. The senses become the instruments of sense-mind, the perceptive five of our sense-knowledge, the active five of our impulsions and vital habits, mediators between the subjective and objective; the rest are the objects of our consciousness, visayas of the senses.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-97, “Therefore, since consciousness is always there even in an apparently inconscient Force, we must find a corresponding psychological power of these three modes which informs their more outward executive action. On their psychological side the three qualities may be defined, tamas as Nature’s power of nescience, rajas as her power of active seeking ignorance enlightened by desire and impulsion, sattwa as her power of possessing and harmonising knowledge.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-427, “But it is dominated by a huge force and impulsion of mute rajasic kinesis which drives it, even in and even by its dispersion and disintegration, to build and create and again by a sattwic ideative element in its apparently inconscient force which is always imposing a harmony and preservative order on the two opposite tendencies. Rajas, the principle of creative endeavour and motion and impulsion in Prakriti, kinesis, pravritti , so seen in Matter, appears more evidently as a conscious or half-conscious passion of seeking and desire and action in the dominant character of Life, — for that passion is the nature of all vital existence.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/428, “The old semi-Buddhistic , semi-Sankhya theory which saw only the Quiescent and nothing else in the world except a constant combination of the five elements (The Gita-18.14) and the three modes of inconscient Energy lighting up their false activity by the consciousness of the Quiescent in which it is reflected, is not the whole truth of the Brahman. We are not a mere mass of changing mind-stuff, life-stuff, body-stuff taking different forms of mind and life and body from birth to birth, so that at no time is there any real self or conscious reason of existence behind all the flux or none except that Quiescent who cares for none of these things. There is a real and stable power of our being behind the constant mutation of our mental, vital and physical personality, and this we have to know and preserve in order that the Infinite may manifest Himself through it according to His will in whatever range and for whatever purpose of His eternal cosmic activity.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-376 Download this file in PDF format: “There must grow up within us or there must manifest a consciousness more and more open to the deeper and the higher being, more and more laid bare to the cosmic Self and Power and to what comes down from the Transcendence, turned to a higher Peace, permeable to a greater light, force and ecstasy, a consciousness that exceeds the small personality and surpasses the limited light and experience of the surface mind, the limited force and aspiration of the normal life consciousness, the obscure and limited responsiveness of the body.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-938 "That’s another interesting point, because I was an outright atheist: till the age of twenty, the very idea of God made me furious. Therefore I had the most solid base – no imaginings, no mystic atavism ; my mother was very much an unbeliever and so was my father. So from the point of view of atavism it was very good: positivism, materialism. Only one thing: since I was very small, a will for perfection in any field whatever; a will for perfection and the sense of a limitless consciousness – no limits to one’s progress or to one’s power or to one’s scope. And that, since I was very small. But mentally, an absolute refusal to believe in a "God": I believed only in what I could touch and see. And the whole faculty for experiences was already there (they didn’t manifest because the time hadn’t come). Only, the sense of a Light here (gesture above the head), which began when I was very small, I was five, along with a will for perfection. A will for perfection: oh, whatever I did always had to be the best I could do. And then, a limitless consciousness. These two things. And my return to the Divine came about through Theon’s teaching, when I was told for the first time, "The Divine is within, there" (Mother strikes her breast). Then I felt at once, "Yes, this is it." Then I did all the work that’s taught to find Him again; and through here (gesture to the heart center) I went there (gesture of junction above with the Supreme). But outwardly, mentally, no religion – a horror of religions... And I see now that it was the most solid base possible for this experience : there was no danger of imaginings." The Mother The Mother's Agenda/March 26, 1966

The Ascetic's Fortress "Seeking heaven’s rest or the spirit’s worldless peace," Savitri-642 “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/Vol-3/p-271, “The vairagya of one who has tasted the world’s gifts or prizes but found them insufficient or, finally, tasteless and turns away towards a higher and more beautiful ideal or the vairagya of one who has done his part in life’s battles but seen that something greater is demanded of the soul, is perfectly helpful and a good gate to the Yoga. Also the sattwic vairagya which has learned what life is and turns to what is above and behind life. By the ascetic vairagya I mean that which denies life and world altogether and wants to disappear into the Indefinite and I object to it for those who come to this Yoga because it is incompatible with my aim which is to bring the Divine into life. But if one is satisfied with life as it is, then there is no reason to seek to bring the Divine into life, — so vairagya in the sense of dissatisfaction with life as it is is perfectly admissible and even in a certain sense indispensable for my Yoga. ” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-389 (The above passage suggests that one has to reject life as it is in every form because if we support any of the activities of ordinary life, we deprive ourselves of the possibility of Divine Life.) The Agenda of the Ascetics’ Fortress “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.”¹ Sri Aurobindo “In practice also the ascetic spirit is an indispensable element in human perfection and even its separate affirmation cannot be avoided so long as the race has not at the other end liberated its intellect and its vital habits from subjection to an always insistent animalism.”² Sri Aurobindo “This surrender may take the ascetic form, as when he leaves the ordinary life of men and devotes his days solely to prayer and praise and worship or to ecstatic meditation, gives up his personal possessions and becomes the monk or the mendicant whose one and only possession is the Divine, gives up all actions in life except those only which help or belong to the communion with the Divine and communion with other devotees, or at most keeps the doing from the secure fortress of the ascetic life of those services to men which seem peculiarly the outflowing of the divine nature of love, compassion and good.”³ Sri Aurobindo “It secured in India a society which lent itself to the preservation and the worship of spirituality, a country apart in which as in a fortress the highest spiritual ideal could maintain itself in its most absolute purity unoverpowered by the siege of the forces around it.”⁴ Sri Aurobindo “The child of immemorial ages, preserved by its vitality and truth into our modern times, it is now emerging from the secret schools and ascetic retreats in which it had taken refuge and is seeking its place in the future sum of living human powers and utilities.”⁵ Sri Aurobindo There is something in the composition of our Nature which goes beyond the first material need of humanity, of his entire preoccupation in the terrestrial needs, interests, desires, and ideals of the individual and the race. So the race cannot accept or follow for a long time to confine us entirely to a purely terrestrial way of living. So the formula of a beyond intellect Intuition and a feeling of a Soul and Spirit return upon us and end by their complete possession. The moderate Soul seeker satisfies this appetite by devoting to it in his leisure moments or exceptional hours or latter part of his life when age shall have dulled the enthusiasm of his earthly nature or he recognises it as something behind and above his normal Nature to which he can more or less imperfectly direct his natural being. The Ascetic turns to this supraterrestrial urge as the one and only aim and law of living by diminishing and mortifying as much as possible his earthly parts in the hope of developing his celestial Nature. This also includes prolonged fasting.³ ¹ There has been a period in which this ascetic view has gained momentum and a part of humanity dwindles between the imperfect moderate living, which cannot take a large Spiritual plunge and a sick ascetic longing for celestial living, which also cannot acquire in more than a few of its best pure and happy movements. Thus, in this transition, the law of evolutionary capacity is ignored and humanity misses a reconciling equation between the Matter and the Spirit, which must exist somewhere in the Divine dispensation of our Nature. Ascetics’ Fortress is the Divine Mother’s intermediate perfect shrine of collective living developed through the practice of traditional schools of Yoga. An Ascetic is a Soul who has taken retirement from the world and the Divine Mother chooses this state for Her brief felicitous hour in the world’s play of joy and strife and discloses some of Her mystic secrets, anchorite solitude, forests with their multitudinous chant, and the lurking doors of beauty, sweetness and surprise and masked divinity’s door. He is a stranger on the sorrowful roads of Time and immortal under the yoke of death and fate. An Ascetic is a Soul seeker who climbs above his mind and lives in the calm vastness of the One. It offers a severe noble atmosphere to work and thought and measured delight as steps to climb God’s far secret height. After this realisation, our life becomes a tranquil pilgrimage and we consider each year as a mile upon the heavenly way and each dawn opens into larger light, and waking and sleep are opportunities of Soul flowerings and so can we rise to the pure unvanquished Spirit of wide vesper calm, gentle as sky and soft as flower. Asceticism or rejection of material life is a temporary necessity and a short cut, not the true solution of the problem of existence for the ascending Soul, because material life seems so much the negation of all Spiritual existence. Practice of Integral Yoga begins²⁰ with the mind’s method of abstraction, which can be followed by the practice of one or many traditional schools of Yoga. The traditional system of Yoga gives exclusive importance to the rejection of one part of the lower nature to the exclusion of others and uses that as a lever to escape into the higher nature. Brotherhood of Saints: “The aim of religion may include a social change, but it is then a change brought about by the acceptance of a common religious ideal and way of consecrated living, a brotherhood of saints , a theocracy or the kingdom of God reflecting on earth the kingdom of heaven.”⁶ Sri Aurobindo “It is the divine love which so emerges that, extended in inward feeling to the Divine in man and all creatures in an active universal equality, will be more potent for the perfectibility of life and a more real instrument than the ineffective mental ideal of brotherhood can ever be.”⁷ Sri Aurobindo “Another possible conception akin to the religious solution is the guidance of society by men of spiritual attainment, the brotherhood or unity of all in the faith or in the discipline, the spiritualisation of life and society by taking up of the old machinery of life into such a unification or inventing a new machinery.”⁸ Sri Aurobindo Brotherhood can be divided into two parts as the brotherhood of Mind and brotherhood of the Spirit; firstly, its mental concept attained momentum in the French revolution which later took refuge in Indian asceticism and Russian Marxism as mere sympathy created by love and understanding of mental knowledge; secondly, brotherhood is a weak binding force invented by the mind and cannot hold the burden of Divine Love; thirdly it does not represent the original seven fold personalities of the Divine, which needs attention for integral human development, rather brotherhood is considered as a derivative of God’s original faculty of Fatherhood; fourthly, it was also observed from The Mother’s writings, that She gave the name of the physical mind or material mind as ‘big brother’ who has the capacity to turn nectar into poison and crystalline water into muddy water instantly. In integral Yoga, the mental brotherhood of mere sympathy is to be substituted by the fundamental Spiritual equality, or the realisation of unity of all, realisation of all as brother Soul for a Divine purpose. The significance of brotherhood is heightened in Spirit when the Supreme instructs Savitri not to ‘shrink from any brother soul’²¹ and Savitri’s extension of hope as ‘sister of thy soul’²² during the critical hour of escape of Satyavan’s death in the midst of all difficulties. We must arrive at conscious unity of brotherhood with sunshine and the sky and with our fellow beings and the fullness of this universal relation is established in Supermind. The Law of Renunciation or The Law of Tapasya -1: “In her illumined script, her fanciful Translation of God’s pure original text, He thinks to read the Scripture Wonderful, Hieratic key to unknown beatitudes.” Savitri-193 “He saw through depths that reinterpret all, Limited not now by the dull body’s eyes, New-found through an arch of clear discovery, This intimation of the world’s delight, This wonder of the divine Artist’s make Carved like a nectar-cup for thirsty gods, This breathing Scripture of the Eternal’s joy, This net of sweetness woven of aureate fire.” Savitri-372 The whole effort of Nature through Philosophy, Religion, Science, Spiritual and Occult Science attempts to get at the right data upon which it will be possible to resolve all problems of existence as satisfactorily as the best available knowledge. Integral Yoga excludes none of them but rather uncovers their central truth, central purpose, and central faith and welds them strongly to the harmony of their eternal Source. Integral Yoga accepts and recommends the practice of the traditional Shastra wholly to experience the basic Divine realisation of Jivatma's union with Paramatma , till integral Shastra and integral methods are evolved to experience comprehensive, all-inclusive and all the revelatory aspects of Divine realisations. The advantages of traditional Shastra are; firstly, the traditional teachings are supposed to be fixed, gives the name of the high roads of destination and the already explored directions and expresses the knowledge and experiences of many centuries systematised, organised, made attainable to the beginner; secondly, the ancient wisdoms of the East are all the right means of the basic truths or root Knowledge of all existence which ought to be the guiding principle of all Time; thirdly, the character of the higher states of the Soul and their greater worlds of Spiritual Nature are shadowed in the Gita, the Upanishad and the Veda in figures, hints and symbols and these can be utilised towards the ascension of the Soul from physical into vital, from the vital into the mental Purusha , from mental into Knowledge-Soul and from that Self of Knowledge into the bliss Purusha , thus, completing the Soul’s ascension; fourthly the Gita declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written truth, sabdabrahmativartate , beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, srotavyasya srutasya ca ; fifthly, Indian Spiritual writings lay stress upon the quality of the four-fold Soul force, chaturvarna, from which the four-fold action flows, and upon its truth, fearlessness, purity, love, compassion, benevolence, absence of will to hurt and opens the passage of actions of their free out flowing; sixthly, a sadhaka of Integral Yoga can include a good part of his development a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past; lastly, he will accept all the ancient disciplines as they rest upon eternal truths and he will give them an orientation in conformity with his integral aim of perfecting life, consciousness and Self. The disadvantage of traditional Shastra is that, firstly, if we turn always to few distinct truths, symbols or particular discipline into hard and fast dogmas then our Spirituality is arrested in infancy and deprives itself from entry into the science of the Infinite; secondly, a sadhaka of integral Yoga will use but cannot bind himself to any written truth as all written truth is a partial manifestation of the Infinite knowledge and endless Truth and he organises it anew for the present and future and the same problem is approached from a new starting point; thirdly, in traditional teaching all the lines of Yoga oppose and object against a new practice, the new Yogic teaching, the adoption of a new formula as it is not consistent with the fixed norms of Shastra ; so a Sadhaka of integral Yoga must be fully aware of the compelling cause of refusal of so many other schools of self-discipline to regard even the possibility of realising the new and difficult object of integral Yoga wholly; fourthly, there are certain traditional teachings in which Yoga can be used for self-indulgence and hurting others instead of self-conquest and doing of good of all creatures. In Integral Yoga, self-conquest is realised through rigorous self-control and doing good to all creatures is activated by the inner movement of universal Consciousness. The Shastra of integral Yoga recommends that ‘each man in this path has his own method of Yoga’¹¹ or ‘each man is able to follow his own path of Yoga;’¹² secondly, there are certain broad catholic norms common for all Sadhakas which enable us to construct a scientific method of synthetic Yoga and these must take as much as possible the form of general truths, general statements of principle, the most powerful broad directions of effort and development rather than a fixed system which has to be followed mechanically as a routine; thirdly, it provides further guideline that all written truth and practices cannot be too strictly formulated and it must be constantly renovated and revived by a fresh instreaming of Spiritual experience and descended overhead knowledge; fourthly integral Yoga authorises absolute freedom to each sadhaka to restate knowledge in new terms and new combinations²⁸ and since it not only seeks the Divine but also calls upon the Divine to unfold in human life, so the Shastra of integral Yoga must provide for an infinite liberty in the receptive human Soul to extend his unending Spiritual experience; fifthly, this Shastra ‘will not lend itself either to any predilection or distaste for any particular idea or truth, and refuse to be attached even to those ideas of which it is most certain or to lay on them such an undue stress as is likely to disturb the balance of truth and depreciate the values of other elements of a complete and perfect knowledge;’¹³ sixthly, all editing work of books intended to pursue integral Yoga must confirm its norm that emphasizes, “We must hate none, despise none, be repelled by none; for in all we have to see the One disguised or manifested at his pleasure. He is little revealed in one or more revealed in another or concealed and wholly distorted in others according to His will and His knowledge of what is best for that which He intends to become in form in them and to do in works in their nature;”¹⁴ seventhly, the Shastra of integral Yoga will integrate our fragmented personality and fragmented knowledge and discover unity and universalisation of all Deity, Guru , Avataras, Shastra and Teachings by uncovering their central truth, central faith and central dynamic force; it does not cut the roots of the Sciences, the Arts and the Life but to lift them out of their limitations, supply a new source of creative Spiritual power and illumination by which they can be carried more swiftly and profoundly towards their absolute light in knowledge and their yet undreamed possibilities and the most dynamic energy of content and form and practice; eighthly, it reminds us that the Spirit’s unending riches, opulences and splendours cannot be exhausted by all the inspired narrations, exulted writings of Seers and Saints of all Time and all the mental formulations of truth born out of exclusive concentration and higher formulations can break down under the test of new suggestions from the Infinite; ninthly the Shastra of an integral Yoga recommends that during this endeavour and tapasya the integral Yogi will transcend all effort, all self-discipline, all set method and it will be replaced by ‘natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected nature;’¹⁵ he will also transcend all set goals because the progress, the growth and expansion are identified as infinite and lastly in the final journey of the Soul’s infinity and freedom all outward standards are replaced or laid aside and there is left only a spontaneous and integral obedience to the Divine with whom he is in conscious union and a spontaneous action fulfilling the integral Spiritual truth of his Being and Nature. The Law of Renunciation or The Law of Tapasya -2: “A matted forest head invaded heaven As if a blue-throated ascetic peered From the stone fastness of his mountain cell Regarding the brief gladness of the days; His vast extended spirit couched behind.” Savitri-391 “The strong king-sages from their labour done, Freed from the warrior tension of their task, Came to her serene sessions in these wilds; The strife was over, the respite lay in front. Happy they lived with birds and beasts and flowers And sunlight and the rustle of the leaves, And heard the wild winds wandering in the night, Mused with the stars in their mute constant ranks, And lodged in the mornings as in azure tents, And with the glory of the noons were one.” Savitr-381 “I (Satyavan) sat with the forest sages in their trance: There poured awakening streams of diamond light, I glimpsed the presence of the One in all. But still there lacked the last transcendent power And Matter still slept empty of its Lord.” Savitri-405 “A curse is laid on the pure joy of life: Delight, God’s sweetest sign and Beauty’s twin, Dreaded by aspiring saint and austere sage, Is shunned, a dangerous and ambiguous cheat, A specious trick of an infernal Power It tempts the soul to its self-hurt and fall.” Savitri-629 All traditional Yoga aims at escape into higher Nature by rejection of lower Nature. Integral Yoga aims at the transformation of the lower Nature and its elevation into higher Nature by the descent of the Divine Shakti . Lower Nature is that which acts through limitation and division of the three gunas and is of the nature of Ignorance and culminates in the life of the ego. Higher nature is that which acts by unification and transcendence of limitation and is of the nature of Knowledge and culminates in the Life Divine. All traditional Yoga aims at individual liberation and perfection through great solitaries and after attaining it, we have the great spiritual Teachers who have liberated others. Integral Yoga aims at universalisation of the above realisation through ‘great dynamic Souls’¹⁶ who feel themselves stronger in the might of the Spirit than all the forces of material life and have thrown themselves upon the world, grappled with it in loving wrestle and striven to compel its consent to its own transfiguration. The condition in which all traditional Yoga proceeds is seclusion from ordinary activities, isolation from the mass through the garb of Sannyasin ; the condition in which integral Yoga proceeds by accepting and embracing this garb of the world, its problems and its difficulties and its complexities entirely where seclusion and isolation are a provisional necessity. The former culminates in renunciation of life because the ordinary mentalised human-animal life is either demoniac or Divine and undivine mixed whereas the latter culminates in the fulfilment of life, a life released, transformed and uplifted. The difficult and unavoidable task of integral Yoga differs from other world-shunning or heaven-seeking disciplines in the sense that it cannot afford to leave unsolved the problem of outward works of Life and ally it firmly to the divinities of Love and Knowledge. Hathayoga ²⁵ aims at the conquest of life and the body by combining the food sheath and the vital sheath, whose equilibrium is the foundation of all Nature’s workings in the human being. It aims at the supernormal perfection of physical life and its capacities, and goes beyond it into the domain of mental life. The whole aim of the Hathayoga is the fixed scientific processes to give to the Soul in the physical body the power, the light, the purity, the freedom, the ascending scales of Spiritual experience which would naturally be open to it, if it dwelt here in the subtle and the developed causal vehicle. The object of the Asana is to get rid of the restlessness imposed on the body and to force it to hold the Pranic energy instead of dissipating and squandering it. The object of Pranayama is to purify the nervous system, to circulate the life-energy through all the nerves without obstruction, disorder or irregularity, and to acquire a complete control of its functioning, so that the mind and will of the Soul inhabiting the body may be no longer subject to the body or life or their combined limitations. Rajayoga aims at the liberation and perfection of the mental being, the control of emotional and sensational life, and the mastery of the whole apparatus of thought and consciousness. It aims at a supernormal perfection and enlargement of the capacities of the mental life and goes beyond it into the Spiritual existence which withdraws into a subliminal plane at the back of our normal experiences without descending and possessing our whole outer existence. The object of Rajayoga is also to draw away the mind from the outward and the mental world into silent communion of Soul and unity with the Divine and it sometimes deviates from the main purpose to the practice and use of occult powers, siddhis . The object of self-discipline Yama of Rajayoga is to create a moral calm, a void of the passions, and so prepare for the death of rajasic egoism and the conquest of passions and desires in the human being. The object of self-discipline Niyamas of Rajayoga are equally a discipline of the mind by regular practices of which the highest is meditation on the Divine Being, and to create a sattwic calm, purity and preparation for concentration upon which the secure pursuance of the rest of the Yoga can be founded. The Karmayoga aims at the dedication of every human activity to the Supreme Will. It begins by the renunciation of all egoistic aim for our works, all pursuit of action for an interested aim or for the sake of a worldly result. By this renunciation, it so purifies the mind and the will that we become easily conscious of the great Universal Energy as the true doer of all our actions and the Lord of that Energy as their ruler and director with the individual as only a mask, an excuse, an instrument or, more positively, a conscious Divine centre of action, wisdom and love. The choice and direction of the act are more and more consciously left to the Supreme Will and this universal Energy. To That our works as well as the results of our works are finally abandoned. The object is the release of the Soul from its bondage to appearances and to the reaction of phenomenal activities. The traditional Jnana Yoga leads to the rejection of phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as creation of Maya , an illusion and the final emergence without return of the individual Soul in the Supreme. This Yoga begins²⁰ by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara , to arrive at right discrimination, viveka . The path of Integral Jnana Yoga aims at realisation and identification with the pure, unique, immutable and imperishable 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. The Bhaktiyoga, the path of Devotion, aims at the enjoyment of the supreme Love and Bliss and utilises normally the conception of the Supreme Lord in His personality as the Divine Lover and Enjoyer of the universe. The world is then realised as a play of the Lord, with our human life as its final stage, pursued through the different phases of self-concealment and self-revelation. This path, too, as ordinarily practiced, leads away from world-existence to absorption of another kind than the Monist’s in the Transcendent and Supra-cosmic. The Tantric system aims at liberation, full perfection and enjoyment of the Spiritual power, light and joy in human existence, and experience in which liberation and cosmic action and enjoyment are unified in a final overcoming of all oppositions and dissonances. The aim of Integral Yoga is to make the Spiritual life and its Spiritual experiences fully active and utilisable in the waking state, extending over all the functions of normal life. The perfection of the body, the highest results of Hathayoga and the perfection of the mind, the highest achievement of Rajayoga and the development of general physical and mental faculties and experiences attainable by humanity are also included in the scope of integral Yoga. Each school of Yoga selects their own gate of escape by turning certain activities of lower Nature towards the Divine. Hathayoga ² ⁵ selects the body and vital functioning, Rajayoga selects chitta, psychic prana, the triple path of Works, of Knowledge and of Love uses will, intellect and emotion as starting point and seeks by their conversion, to arrive at the liberating Truth. The Gita proposes rejection of five things that of desire, kama , attachment, sangam , ego, ahamkara , dualities dwanda and the three gunas as conditions of attaining liberation, mukti . The Tantric Yogin, instead of rejecting the lower Nature, confronts, seizes and conquers it. Integral Yoga, in its preliminary state, recommends renunciation of three things utterly, that of the desire, ego and attachment and with the Soul development, Tantric method can complement it. Man, in his effort at self-transcendence, has to seize on some one spring or some powerful leverage in the complicated and complex instrument of his nature; this spring or lever he touches in preference to others and uses it to set the human machine in motion towards the end he has in view. In his choice, it is always Nature that should be his guide. The lever action of Japa Yoga is physical mind; Hathayoga depends on the nervous system of vital mind; Rajayoga leans on purification of chitta ; Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga use will, intellect and emotion; Tantra disciplines desire as its most powerful leverage. The distinct character of man is that he is a mental being and not merely a vital creature and here Nature should turn at her highest and widest in him. Integral Yoga centres its consciousness on the Psychic being, the inner heart of deepest feeling and the Spiritual being, the highest mind of thought and light and will and uses either of them as our leverage to lift the nature wholly towards the Divine. With the opening of the Psychic and Spiritual being, the self-control becomes rigorous²³ and with the opening of the Supramental being, this self-control becomes absolute.²⁴ Each Schools of Yoga has its own method, processes of which Hathayogic is of psycho-physical science, Rajayogic is that of mental and psychic, its method is the stilling of the waves of consciousness, its manifold activities, cittvrutti , first, through a habitual replacing of the turbid rajasic activities by the quiet and luminous sattwic , then, by the stilling of all activities; the way of Karma Yoga is of Spiritual and Dynamic, the way of Jnana Yoga is that of Spiritual and Cognitive, the way of Bhakti Yoga is that of Spiritual, aesthetic and emotional, the method of Tantra is to raise nature in man into manifest power of Spirit and apply the intimate secrets of the Will-in-Power; the way of Tantric Dakshina marga is Nature in man liberating itself by right discrimination in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities and the Tantric Vama marga is the Nature in man liberating itself by a joyous acceptance in power and practice of its own energies, elements and potentialities; the method of Sankhya is that the Purusha learns not to identify himself with Prakriti. The Monist fixes his path on the exclusive knowledge; the Dualist or the partial Monist turns to the path of Devotion and directs us to shed the lower ego and material life. The method of Integral Yoga is Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental which is derived from the central principles of Vedantic school whose methods are in knowledge; it is either knowledge through discernment or knowledge of the heart expressed in love and faith or a knowledge in the will working out through action. The point of contact of the individual consciousness with the Divine decides the type of Yoga we practice. Yoga is the union of that which has become separated in the play of the universe with its own true self, origin and universality. This contact may take place at any point of the complex and intricately organised consciousness which we call our personality. It may be effected in the physical through the body; in the vital through the action of those functioning which determine the state and the experiences of our nervous being; through the mentality, whether by means of the emotional heart, the active will or the understanding mind, or more largely by a general conversion of the mental consciousness in all its activities. Tantra lays its hand firmly on many of the main springs of human quality, desire, action and it subjects them to an intensive discipline. Integral Yoga is accomplished through a direct awakening to the Universal or Transcendent Truth and Bliss by the conversion of the central ego in the mind. Its three progressive stages are that of (1) attempt of ego to enter contact with the Divine through personal effort, (2) laborious preparation and working of the Divine Force in the whole lower Nature to become higher Nature and (3) wholly blissful and rapid eventual transformation. Integral knowledge unifies Sachchidananda in all the manifest planes, whereas traditional knowledge admits this truth in theory but practically fails, as if oneness were not equal everywhere. It finds it in the unmanifest Absolute and rejects it in the manifestation; finds it purer in Impersonal than in Personal; complete in Nirguna and not so complete in Saguna ; satisfyingly present in the silent and inactive Brahman and not so satisfyingly present in the active Brahman . The Integral Yoga of knowledge makes no such division. It finds (1) the same absolute oneness in the Unmanifest and the Manifest (2) in the Impersonal and the Personal, (3) in Nirguna and Saguna , (4) in the infinite depths of universal silence and the infinite largeness of the universal action, (5) in the Purusha and Prakriti ; (6) in the Divine Presence and the works of the Divine Power and Knowledge; (7) in the eternal manifestness of the one Purusha and the constant manifestation of many Purushas ; (8) in the inalienable unity of Sachchidananda keeping constantly real to itself its own manifold oneness and in the apparent divisions of mind, life and body in which oneness is constantly, if secretly real and constantly seeks to be realised; (9) to possess Him and be possessed by Him in ourselves and in all things in the term of self-mastery, swarat and all-empire, samrat; (10) to enjoy Him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and power, of unity and difference. (11) For it, Personality and Impersonality are two wings of its Spiritual ascension. (12) All unity is to it an intense, pure and infinite realisation, all difference an abundant, rich and boundless realisation of the same Divine and Eternal Being. (13) All that is mystic, true and Divine behind polytheism and monotheism falls within the scope of its seeking. (14) It accepts all jarring sects, religions, science and philosophies as one of the faces of the Eternal Reality and discovers the One Truth that binds them together. All Religions and Yogic Schools in India use largely psycho-physical methods or external self-disciplines for inner development and depend more or less upon it for their practices. The secret power of Mantra, Japa, sacred syllable, name of the mystic formula is the central truth of all the complex psycho-physical Science and practice of which Rajayoga and Tantra give us a comprehensive method. These are preparatory objects of thought concentration, forms, and verbal formulas of thought, significant names, all of which have to be used by the mind and transcended. The mystic formula AUM represents the Brahman in three statuses, the Waking Self, the Dream Self, the Sleep Self and the whole potent sound rises to beyond the three states, the fourth of Turiya , of which all these are derivations of relative experience. The Self-disciplines of Integral Yoga ‘must be mainly spiritual and dependence on fixed psychic or psycho-physical process on large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action.’² ⁷ All traditional Yoga proceeds in its method by three principles of practice; first, purification , that is to say, the removal of all aberrations, disorders, obstructions brought about by the mixed and irregular action of the energy of being in our physical, vital, moral, aesthetic, emotional, ethical and intellectual mind; secondly, concentration, that is to say, the bringing to its full intensity and the mastered and self-directed employment of that energy of being in us for a definite end; thirdly, liberation , that is to say, the release of our being from the narrow and painful knots of the individualised energy in a false and limited play, which at present are the law of our bound nature. Concentration has two necessities, the first is the one pointed concentration by fixing the will and thought on the Eternal and Real by turning the mind from dispersed movement of thought, running after many branching desires, led away in the track of the senses and the outward mental response to the phenomena; secondly, the inner, hidden and higher truth can only be seized by an absolute concentration of the mind and will on its object and, once attained, to hold it habitually and securely unite oneself with it. Rajayogic concentration is divided into four stages; (1) it commences with the drawing both the mind and senses from outward things, (2) proceeds to the holding of the one object of concentration to the exclusion of all other ideas and mental activities, (3) then to the prolonged absorption of the mind in this object, finally, (4) to the complete ingoing of the consciousness by which it is lost to all outward mental activity in the oneness of Samadhi . The concentration of Integral Yoga is divided into three stages; 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 then use this power to transcend above all things, above all attributes, and become the pure and absolute Being. Recapitulation: “This, the final aim of the ascetic Yoga which refuses life, is evidently not our aim (aim of Integral Yoga). By alternative choice we can have an activity perfect enough in outward appearance along with an entire inner passivity, peace, mental silence, indifference and cessation of the emotions, absence of choice in the will.”⁹ Sri Aurobindo “India had three fortress of a communal life, the village community, the larger joint family and the order of the Sannyasins ; all these are broken or breaking with the stride of egoistic conceptions of social life; but is not this after all only the breaking of these imperfect moulds on the way to a larger and diviner communism?”¹⁰ Sri Aurobindo “The real Tyaga is action with a renunciation of desire and that too is the real Sannyasa . ”¹⁷ Sri Aurobindo “The liberated worker who has given up his works by the inner sannyasa to a greater Power is free from Karma . Action he will do, for some kind of action, less or more, small or great, is inevitable, natural, right for the embodied soul, — action is part of the divine law of living, it is the high dynamics of the spirit. The essence of renunciation, the true Tyaga , the true Sannyasa is not any rule of thumb of inaction but a disinterested soul, a selfless mind, the transition from ego to the free impersonal and spiritual nature. The spirit of this inner renunciation is the first mental condition of the highest culminating sattwic discipline.”¹⁸ Sri Aurobindo “The true Sannyasa of action is the reposing of all works on the Brahman . “He who, having abandoned attachment, acts reposing (or founding) his works on the Brahman , brahmanyadhya karmani, is not stained by sin even as water clings not to the lotus-leaf.” Therefore the Yogins first “do works with the body, mind, understanding, or even merely with the organs of action, abandoning attachment, for self-purification, sangam tyaktva atmasuddhaye . By abandoning attachment to the fruits of works the soul in union with Brahman attains to peace of rapt foundation in Brahman , but the soul not in union is attached to the fruit and bound by the action of desire.”¹ ⁹ Sri Aurobindo "Renunciation is the way to this perfection and the man who has thus inwardly renounced all is described by the Gita as the true Sannyasin ."²⁶ Sri Aurobindo The above message hints that before the pressure of a Supramental energy, all the intermediate creations of village community, large and small family life and ascetic unfulfilled life will break and it will pave the passage clear for the Divine collectivity where each individual inmate will have direct contact with the Divine. He will be related with other individuals of the same community only with the Divine Consciousness, Love, Beauty, Peace, Silence and Joy. Savitri epic projects³⁰ Mundane perfection, Moderate Spirituality, Illusionists and Nirvanists as escapists and their truth as 'soul slaying' and recognises ancient Vedantic doctrine, which can resolve all problems of existence and its truth as 'Soul saving.' If humanity aspires to attain the highest state of Godhead, then he has to come across the rigorous training of The Mother’s intermediate station of the Ascetics’ Retreat. The central Truth of ascetic living is identified as Concentration, samyama , and the increase of concentration is related with increase of consecration of a Divine centre. Thus, Ascetics’ Fortress can rightly confront the compromise of insistent animalism of mundane and moderate living and give way to consecrated Spirituality of the Divine Centre. The importance of the Ascetics’ Fortress and its indispensability in the world has to be realised in its own realm of conquest of the Divine by renunciation of all lower and divided consciousness. Apart from the traditional ascetic’s recoil from physical life there is another exaggeration of belittling and degradation of both the individual and the universe and there is a natural consequence of cessation of both cosmos and individuality by attainment of the Transcendent. He is disgusted with the mud of the Matter, revolted by the animal grossness of Life, impatient of the self-imprisoned narrowness and downward vision of Mind. Integral Yoga of unity of Brahman avoids these divisions. Here, an Integral Ascetic need not give up bodily and mental life to attain the Spiritual experiences and preservation of individual activities are consistent with his comprehension of Cosmic Consciousness and his attainment of the Transcendent and Supracosmic reality. Similarly he has to exceed the traditional ascetic’s limitation (1) of saintly inactivity by dynamisation of Divine will and realise God as the Doer of all action who demands action from all; (2) the traditional ascetic’s realisation of God’s bright shadow or brief illumination in sainthood’s brilliant cell is to be substituted by the direct contact with the Divine All; (3) the integral Ascetic will not reject the life of the world but attain the fullness of surrender by accepting, uplifting and transforming life; his realisation involves a complete and absolute recognition of his unity and oneness with man; (4) and he regards the world not as an invention of the devil or a self-delusion of the Soul, but as a partial manifestation of the Divine and he will realise the fullness of Divine Love by integrating the Personal and Impersonal aspects of the Divine. (5) Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "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."²⁹ The best and intense figure of sainthood clamped in rigid hieratic lines is not the ideal of an integral Ascetic and he enters a larger Psychic and Spiritual relation with World, Self and God, more deep and plastic in its essence, more wide and all-embracing action in its movements, awakens himself towards streams of diamond light, glimpses the presence of the One and the extension of his liberty and its results in others and ultimately complete generalisation in mankind would be the inevitable outcome as well as the broadest utility of his liberation and perfection. OM TAT SAT References: 1: SABCL-26/On Himself/p-130, 2: CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-27, 3: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-573-74, 4: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-28-29, 5: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-5, 6: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-617, 7: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-166, 8: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-1096, 9: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-403, 10: SABCL-17/The Hour of God/p-118, 11: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-46, 12: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-57, 13: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-315, 14: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-223, 15: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-87, 16: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-27, 17: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-494 , 18: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-497, 19: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-185, 20: “One must first find one’s soul, this is absolutely indispensable, and identify oneself with it. Later one can come to the transformation. Sri Aurobindo has written somewhere: “Our Yoga begins where the others end.” Usually yoga leads precisely to this identification, this union with the Divine — that is why it is called “yoga”. And when people reach this, well, they are at the end of their path and are satisfied. But Sri Aurobindo has written: we begin when they finish; you have found the Divine but instead of sitting down in contemplation and waiting for the Divine to take you out of your body which has become useless, on the contrary, with this consciousness you turn to the body and to life and begin the work of transformation — which is very hard labour. It’s here that he compares it with cutting one’s way through a virgin forest; because as nobody has done it before, one must make one’s path where there was none. But to try to do this without having the indispensable directive of the union with the Divine within, within one’s soul, is childishness.” TMCW-7/Questions and Answers-1955/p-350-351, 21: Savitri-701, 22: Savitri-720, 23: “Many times in his writings, particularly in The Synthesis of Yoga , Sri Aurobindo warns us against the imaginings of those who believe they can do sadhana without rigorous self-control and who heed all sorts of inspirations, which lead them to a dangerous imbalance where all their repressed, hidden, secret desires come out into the open under the pretence of liberation from ordinary conventions and ordinary reason.” The Mother's Centenary Works (second edition)/Vol-10/p-15, 24: "Nevertheless, there is somewhere an absolute control, a real Ishwara. He is aware of it and knows that if he can find it, he will enter into control, become not only the passive sanctioning witness and upholding soul of her will, but the free powerful user and determiner of her movements. But this control seems to belong to another poise than the mentality. Sometimes he finds himself using it, but as a channel or instrument; it comes to him from above. It is clear then that it is supramental, a power of the Spirit greater than mental being which he already knows himself to be at the summit and in the secret core of his conscious being. To enter into identity with that Spirit must then be his way to control and lordship. He can do it passively by a sort of reflection and receiving in his mental consciousness, but then he is only a mould, channel or instrument, not a possessor or participant in the power. He can arrive at identity by an absorption of his mentality in inner spiritual being, but then the conscious action ceases in a trance of identity. To be active master of the nature he must evidently rise to some higher supramental poise where there is possible not only a passive, but an active identity with the controlling spirit . To find the way of rising to this greater poise and be self-ruler, Swarat , is a condition of his perfection." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-637-638, 25: "There are successive curves, each second of which would have to be noted down; and in the course of one of these curves, something is suddenly found. For example, at the beginning of The Yoga of Self-Perfection, Sri Aurobindo reviews other yogas, beginning with Hatha Yoga. I had just translated this when I remembered Sri Aurobindo saying that Hatha Yoga was very effective but that it amounted to spending your whole life training your body, which is an enormous time and effort spent on something not essentially very interesting. Then I ‘looked’ at it and said to myself, ‘But after all,’ (I was looking at life as it is, as people ordinarily live it) ‘one spends at least 90% of one’s life merely to PRESERVE one’s body, to keep it going! All this attention and concentration on an instrument which is put to hardly any use.’ Anyway, I was looking at it with that attitude, when suddenly all the cells of my body responded, in such a spontaneous and WARM way.... How to say it? Something so ... so moving. They told me, ‘But it’s the Lord who is looking after Himself in us!’ Each one was saying: ‘But it’s the Lord who is looking after Himself in us!’" The Mother's Agenda/May 19, 1961, 26: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-530, 27: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-542, 28: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-56, 29: CWSA-36/Autobiographical Notes/p-222, "In The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that this idea of good and bad, of pure and impure, is a notion needed for action; but the purists, such as Chaitanya, Ramakrishna and others, do not agree. They do not agree that it is indispensable for action. They simply say: your acceptance of action as a necessary thing is contrary to your perception of the Divine in all things . (Q): How can the two be reconciled? I recall that once I tried to speak of this, but no one followed me, no one understood, so I did not insist. I left it open and never pursued it further, for they could not decipher anything or find any meaning in what I was saying. But now I could give a very simple answer: Let the Supreme do the work. It is He who has to progress, not you! (Q): Ramdas does not at all consider that the world as it is, is good. No, but I know all these people, I know them thoroughly! I know Chaitanya, Ramakrishna and Ramdas thoroughly. They are utterly familiar to me. It doesn’t bother them. These are people who live with a certain feeling, who have an entirely concrete experience and live in this experience, but they don’t care at all if their formation – they have not even crystallized it, they leave it like that, vague – contains things that are mutually contradictory, because, in appearance, they reconcile them. They do not raise any questions, they do not have the need for an absolutely clear vision; their feeling is absolutely clear, and that’s enough for them. Ramakrishna was like that; he said the most contradictory things without being bothered in the least, and they are all exactly and equally true...But this crystal clear vision Sri Aurobindo had, where everything is in its place, where contradictions no longer exist – they never soared to that height. This was the thing, this really crystalline, perfect supramental vision, even from the standpoint of understanding and knowledge. They never went that far." The Mother's Agenda/June 22, 1958, “Sri Aurobindo shows us that one can be an ascetic by preference and not out of abnegation (or renunciation); and so he makes us understand that to be a servant of the Lord and to act only according to His will is a far higher state than any personal choice , no matter how saintly it may seem.” The Mother/The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/Vol-10/p-300 30: “I think Sri Aurobindo deliberately made this Death very vulgar to discourage all the Illusionists and Nirvanists.” The Mother/The Mother’s Agenda-6/164, (Death said) “But Mind, a glorious traveller in the sky, Walks lamely on the earth with footsteps slow; Hardly he can mould the life’s rebellious stuff, Hardly can he hold the galloping hooves of sense:” Savitri-615 (Mundane personality of Death) Death said to Para-prakriti Savitri : “What knowst thou of earth’s rich and changing life Who thinkst that one man dead all joy must cease? Hope not to be unhappy till the end: For grief dies soon in the tired human heart; Soon other guests (human admirers) the empty chambers fill.” Savitri-637, (Moderate persanality of Death) (Death said) “If thou desirest immortality, Be then alone sufficient to thy soul: Live in thyself; forget the man thou lov’st. My last grand death shall rescue thee from life; Then shalt thou rise into thy unmoved source.” Savitri-594 (Ascetic personality of Death) 31: “Ascetic methods are things like repeated fasting , compelling yourself to endure the cold...in fact, to torture your body a little. This indeed gives you only a spiritual pride, nothing more. It masters nothing at all. It is infinitely easier. People do it because it is very easy, it is simple. Just because the pride is quite satisfied and the vanity can get puffed up, it becomes very easy. One makes a great demonstration of his ascetic virtues, and so considers himself an extremely important personage, that helps him to endure many things.” The Mother/TMCW/6/428-429, “Prolonged fasting may lead to an excitation of the nervous being which often brings vivid imaginations and hallucinations that are taken for true experiences; such fasting is frequently suggested by the vital Entities because it puts the consciousness into an unbalanced state which favours their designs. It is therefore discouraged here. The rule to be followed is that laid down by the Gita which says that “Yoga is not for one who eats too much or who does not eat”; a moderate use of food sufficient for the maintenance and health and strength of the body.” Sri Aurobindo/ CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I-575-576, “But fasting i s above all good for those who believe in it — as everything. When you have the faith that this will make you progress, is going to purify you, it does you good. If you don’t believe in it, it doesn’t do much, except that it makes you thin.” The Mother/TMCW-7/Questions and Answers-1955/p-62, “To make your sadhana depend upon not eating is to make a great mistake. When people fast like that, they get into an abnormal condition and can easily mistake imaginations and delusions for true experiences. Much fasting in the end weakens the nervous system. So you must drop this habit of not eating for days together. For Yoga it is a mistake to eat too much but a mistake also to eat nothing or too little. If you eat too much, you become heavy and tamasic; if you fast or eat too little, you excite the vital energies and finally overexcite them, but at the same time you weaken the body and the nerves; both are bad for sadhana. You should eat regularly a moderate but sufficient amount of food; it is only if there is illness or disturbance of digestion that a low diet or not eating sometimes becomes necessary, but fasting even for the purpose of resting the stomach should not last more than a day… For your sadhana you have to use, not outward means like this , but quietness, sincere peaceful aspiration, openness to the Mother.” CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-430-431, “The spiritual seeker often, like the Jain ascetics, seeks refuge in long and frequent fasts which lift him temporarily at least out of the clutch of the body’s demands and help him to feel in himself a pure vacancy of the wide rooms of the spirit. But all this is not liberation and the question may be raised whether, not only at first but always, the divine life also must submit to this necessity. But it could only deliver itself from it altogether if it could find out the way so to draw upon the universal energy that the energy would sustain not only the vital parts of our physicality but its constituent matter with no need of aid for sustenance from any outside substance of Matter. It is indeed possible even while fasting for very long periods to maintain the full energies and activities of the soul and mind and life, even those of the body, to remain wakeful but concentrated in Yoga all the time, or to think deeply and write day and night, to dispense with sleep, to walk eight hours a day, maintaining all these activities separately or together, and not feel any loss of strength, any fatigue, any kind of failure or decadence. At the end of the fast one can even resume at once taking the normal or even a greater than the normal amount of nourishment without any transition or precaution such as medical science enjoins, as if both the complete fasting and the feasting were natural conditions, alternating by an immediate and easy passage from one to the other, of a body already trained by a sort of initial transformation to be an instrument of the powers and activities of Yoga.” CWSA-13/ Essays in Philosophy and Yoga-544-545, Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: “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 Sri Aurobindo CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother-142-143 “A long, difficult stage of constant effort, energism, austerity of the personal will, tapasya has ordinarily to be traversed before a more decisive stage can be reached in which a state of self-giving of all the being to the Supreme and the Supreme Nature can become total and absolute.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-963-964 "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 The Mother's Centenary Works/Vol-7/p-402-403

Objective in Brief “The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man’s real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe... To discover the spiritual being in himself is the main business of the spiritual man and to help others towards the same evolution is his real service to the race; till that is done, an outward help can succour and alleviate, but nothing or very little more is possible... The growth of the god in man is man’s proper business ; the steadfast turning of this lower Asuric and Rakshasic into the divine nature is the carefully hidden meaning of human life. As this growth increases, the veil falls and the soul comes to see the greater significance of action and the real truth of existence. The eye opens to the Godhead in man, to the Godhead in the world; it sees inwardly and comes to know outwardly the infinite Spirit, the Imperishable from whom all existences originate and who exists in all and by him and in him all exist always. Therefore when this vision, this knowledge seizes on the soul, its whole life-aspiration becomes a surpassing love and fathomless adoration of the Divine and Infinite... This is what a true subjectivism teaches us, — first, that we are a higher self than our ego or our members, secondly, that we are in our life and being not only ourselves but all others; for there is a secret solidarity which our egoism may kick at and strive against, but from which we cannot escape. It is the old Indian discovery that our real “I” is a Supreme Being which is our true self and which it is our business to discover and consciously become and, secondly, that that Being is one in all, expressed in the individual and in the collectivity, and only by admitting and realising our unity with others can we entirely fulfil our true self-being.... The true business of man upon earth is to express in the type of humanity a growing image of the Divine; whether knowingly or unknowingly, it is to this end that Nature is working in him under the thick veil of her inner and outer processes.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-48 CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-917-918 CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-327 CWSA-25/The Human Cycle/p-47-48 CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p- 193 “This object (1: A discovery of the Divinity in oneself; 2: discovery of the Divinity in the world behind the appa rent denial; 3: a total discovery of the dynamism of some transcendent Eternal) of the integral Yoga must be accepted wholly by those who follow it, but the acceptance must not be in ignorance of the immense stumbling-blocks that lie in the way of the achievement; on the contrary we must be fully aware of the compelling cause of the refusal of so many other disciplines to regard even its possibility, much less its imperative character, as the true meaning of terrestrial existence.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-170 Man’s attraction towards world strengthens the knowledge of the Becoming, this terrestrial existence; attraction towards heaven strengthens the knowledge of our Source, the Supracosmic origin; attraction of heaven on earth strengthens the knowledge of the intermediate Supra-terrestrial link of subtle, Superconscient, Universal and Supramental plane and attraction towards His ecstatic oneness, order and harmony transforms Matter into image of the Spirit or material transfiguration , eliminating the permanent division between terrestrial, Supra-cosmic and Supra-terrestrial world or bridging the gulf between, the Creation and the Creator. It is true that the deficiencies of the above four institutions are to be rightly related to the total harmony of Existence. In the past, the above evolutionary synthesis had failed due to exaggeration and exclusive importance of either one or another school of thought and now a time has come in the recent development of integral Yoga, as another opportunity and a trying ground of equal importance and regard for all four schools of thought and their utmost Spiritual consummation. The secret truth behind the material existence of physical Science and the truth of pure devotion of all Religious movements are to be reconciled with the Ascetic affirmation of a pure Spiritual impulse. The Ascetic or Sannyasin aspiration upward to unite with the Divine is to be rightly and sufficiently related with the ancient Vedantic approach of descending movement of the Divine Shakti to embrace its manifestation. The ancient Vedantic quest to reconcile Matter and Spirit, One and Many in its comprehensiveness is to be sufficiently related with the Vedic representation of the Divine Mother, the daughter of the Sun, Savitri , who is concerned with the final aim of the Vedic discipline, Divine perfection of material life and physical Immortality of the mutable substance. Thus, earth life can be transformed into an ecstatic playfield of her Divine children. In Integral Spiritual Evolution, Supracosmic is accepted as a source, origin and support , the Supra-terrestrial or other intermediate world for a condition and connecting link of bridging the gulf between Supracosmic Source and the nether material life and the Terrestrial for its field and circumstance , and with human Body, 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. The whole aim of the evolution is the continuous enlargement of the existing human vessel. The force or energy that moves the stars and planets, the same force also moves our thoughts and actions. When this inrush of ‘energy is the highest in kind and the fullest in amount’³⁴ and works in a perfected human vessel, then he has attained the complete and utmost development. To this height all humanity is aspiring, knowingly or unknowingly. Mother Nature attempts through each individual formation to bridge the gulf between the existing material living and the future Supramental world. She attempted and reattempted this with her best Master Souls and succeeded with Sri Aurobindo . Now, after Mother Nature’s success in creating a single Sri Aurobindo , who is a symbol of the movement of comprehensive Consciousness, her next great and difficult task is ‘to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others.’²⁸ Now it is time for her to universalise her success, by providing the best surrounding atmosphere to the receptive human Souls with perfected minds and bodies who will be able initially to unveil the transcendent activities of the Spirit and finally hold and carry Sri Aurobindo’s Consciousness or the total consciousness of the Eternal by the simple formula though difficult to execute, that of initially living and experiencing all the norms of Integral Yoga, Dharma, and finally, the outer law is substituted by the inner plastic Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Law. This intensive evolution of the individual must be preoccupied in entirely changing the mind, life and body in conformity with the truth of the Spirit. This multiplication of total Consciousness of the Eternal may be understood in Sri Aurobindo's language, "The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha in external humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth may be repeated in the inner life of all human beings. "³³ After bridging the gulf between ordinary living and Supramental life, Mother Nature attempted again to experience the cellular transformation of her animal evolutionary form through The Mother’s body. This is another intermediate adventure which has opened for the race another possibility of physical change and a journey toward the ultimate adventure and victory of Spirit over Matter. The simple formula to repeat The Mother’s Cellular transformation experience or discovery of immortal principles concealed within the body's cells is to purify the physical substance to the extent of bearing the pressure of All Delight and the burden of the earth’s Inconscient negations. Or “The dire delight that could shatter mortal flesh,”³⁰ and “Almighty powers are shut in Nature’s cells.”³¹ The next difficult task of Mother Nature related to the multiplication of individual Cellular transformation may be understood in The Mother’s language, “If, for any reason this body (The Mother’s body) becomes unusable, the universal Mother will again start manifesting in hundreds of individualities according to their capacity and receptivity, each one being a partial manifestation of the Universal Consciousness .”²⁹ We may note the Mother's observation related to physical transformation, which is identified as one of the immediate difficult objectives of Integral Yoga. "When you follow the ascending path, the work is relatively easy. I had already covered this path by the beginning of the century and had established a constant relationship with the Supreme – That which is beyond the Personal and the gods and all the outward expressions of the Divine, but also beyond the Absolute Impersonal. It’s something you cannot describe; you must experience it. And this is what must be brought down into Matter. Such is the descending path, the one I began with Sri Aurobindo ; and there, the work is immense. The thing can still be brought down as far as the mental and vital planes (although Sri Aurobindo said that thousands of lifetimes would be needed merely to bring it down to the mental plane, unless one practiced a perfect surrender’). With Sri Aurobindo , we went down below Matter, right into the Subconscient and even into the Inconscient. But after the descent comes the transformation, and when you come down to the body, when you attempt to make it take one step forward – oh, not even a real step, just a little step! – everything starts grating; it’s like stepping on an anthill ... And yet the presence, the help of the supreme Mother, is there constantly; thus you realize that for ordinary men such a task is impossible, or else millions of lives would be needed – but in truth, unless the work is done for them and the sadhana of the body done for the entire earth consciousness, they will never achieve the physical transformation, or else it will be so remote that it is better not even to speak of it. But if they open themselves, if they give themselves over in an integral surrender, the work can be done for them – they have only to let it be done. The path is difficult. And yet this body is full of good will; it is filled with the psychic in every one of its cells. It’s like a child. The other day, it cried out quite spontaneously, ‘O my Sweet Lord, give me the time to realize You!’ It did not ask to hasten the process, it did not ask to lighten its work; it only asked for enough TIME to do the work. ‘Give me the time!’" (The Mother's Agenda/May 19, 1959) Now, most of humanity is suffering from the slavery of lower Nature and the slavery of ordinary action. So, first, very few should go beyond these two slaveries by ascending their consciousness to the Psychic, Spiritual and Universal planes and their Spiritual Influence should spread beyond the individual Soul Centre. Sri Aurobindo confirms, "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..."³² Thus, in the long run, the whole of humanity can be liberated and their life can be Divinised. OM TAT SAT The References of the above extraction are taken from the manuscript ‘The Integral Yoga and Sanatana Dharma ’ (Page-14, 136) THE PSYCHIC & SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION "The psychic and the spiritual opening with their experiences and consequences can lead away from life or to a Nirvana ; but they are here (in Integral Yoga) being considered solely as steps in a transformation of the nature. " Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-943 “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.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-951 “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 the ascending endeavour.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-242 "A purified mind and heart and a strong and fine psychical intuition may do much to protect from perversion and error, but even the most highly developed psychical consciousness cannot be absolutely safe unless the psychical is illumined and uplifted by a higher force than itself and touched and strengthened by the luminous intuitive mind and that again raised towards the supramental energy of the spirit." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-896 In our ancient tradition, a liberated Soul leaves the untransformed Nature as it is. Sri Aurobindo was absolutely against it. Regarding this, He had written the most ironic thing in His poem “THE SELF.”⁸ The Psychic Being and the Spiritual Being are the delegates of Supermind working from the heart centre and above the head, respectively. Both have the capacity to call down brief Supramental energy by their dynamic movement. It has been observed that there is wide misuse of the word ‘Supermind’¹ and ‘transformation of Nature’¹ by devotees and disciples in their writings and orations. This was not acceptable to Sri Aurobindo as they are related with the last perfection of integral Yoga and can be attained only after the long movement² of Consciousness between Psychic and Spiritual planes and after the universalisation of Psychic and Spiritual Consciousness. So, as we understand, an isolated individual transformation is not practicable. ‘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 .’³ ‘It would therefore be a waste of time and energy which should be devoted to the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible.’⁴ He further confirmed that at present, the Psychic and Spiritual transformation and perfection is possible ‘only by a small number of human beings .’⁵ What Sri Aurobindo proposes to them is, ‘one must first have the self-realisation, the full action of the spiritualised mind and heart, the psychic awakening, the liberation of the imprisoned consciousness, the purification and entire opening of the adhara. Do not think now of those ultimate things (Overmind, Supermind), but get first these foundations in the liberated nature.’⁶ ‘At present the necessity is to prepare the physical consciousness; for that a complete equality and peace and a complete dedication free from personal demand or desire in the physical and the lower vital parts is the thing to be established.’⁶ There are very few Sadhakas who are concerned with Supramental energy that The Mother and Sri Aurobindo intended to call down to earth’s atmosphere. Apart from it, most of the Ashramite Sadhakas ‘are seeking realisation through meditation, through love and worship or through activity and work.’⁷ In this Yoga, if a Sadhak will not learn the lesson sufficiently to transform the nature by movement of ascending and descending Psychic and Spiritual Consciousness, then he will have to be satisfied with partial intermittent Divine union. The vision of complete and constant Divine union through activation of the Supramentalised Psychic Self will remain as a distant and remote objective of integral Yoga. Spiritual life is for those who are not satisfied with life as it is. They enjoy Divine’s single protection by partial Psychic opening (“Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:” Savitri-211), double protection by full opening of Psychic being which can discover Ocean of Light above the head and bellow the feet (“Our life is entrenched between two rivers of Light,” Savitri-531) and multiple protection by opening all the ten Selves. (“It (dynamic Spirit) is within, below, without, above.” Savitri-98, "Heaven’s leaning down to embrace from all sides earth," Savitri-716) OM TAT SAT References: 1 (59 is the reference in the Manuscript): “Transformation is a word that I have brought in myself (like supermind) to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral Yoga. People are now taking them up and using them in senses which have nothing to do with the significance which I put into them…” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II/-p-403, CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-174, “The words supermind and supramental were first used by me, but since then people have taken up and are using the word supramental for anything above the mind.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-144, ‘It is a common mistake. Even the word supermind (which I invented) has been taken up by several people (writers in the Prabuddha Bharata and elsewhere) and applied generally to the spiritual consciousness.” CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-142-143, “People talk very lightly of the overmind and the supermind as if it were quite easy to enter into them and mistake inferior movements for the overmental or supramental, thereby confusing the Truth and delaying the progress of the sadhana .” CWSA-30/Letters on Yoga-III/p-408, "For if it is some inferior state that we thus mistake for the supermind, it lays us open to all the dangers we have seen to attend a presumptuous egoistic haste in our demand for achievement. If it is one of the higher states that we presume to be the highest, we may, though we achieve much, yet fall short of the greater, more perfect goal of our being; for we shall remain content with an approximation and the supreme transformation will escape us. Even the achievement of a complete inner liberation and a high spiritual consciousness is not that supreme transformation; for we may have that achievement, a status perfect in itself, in essence, and still our dynamic parts may in their instrumentation belong to an enlightened spiritualised mind and may be in consequence, like all mind, defective even in its greater power and knowledge, still subject to a partial or local obscuration or a limitation by the original circumscribing nescience." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-284, "If spiritual and supramental were the same thing, as you say my readers imagine, then all the sages and devotees and Yogis and sadhaks throughout the ages would have been supramental beings and all I have written about the supermind would be so much superfluous stuff, useless and otiose. Anybody who had spiritual experiences would then be a supramental being; the Asram would be chock-full of supramental beings and every other Asram in India also. Spiritual experiences can fix themselves in the inner consciousness and alter it, transform it, if you like; one can realise the Divine everywhere, the Self in all and all in the Self, the universal Shakti doing all things; one can feel merged in the Cosmic Self or full of ecstatic bhakti or Ananda. But one may and usually does still go on in the outer active parts of Nature thinking with the intellect or at best the intuitive mind, willing with a mental will, feeling joy and sorrow on the vital surface, undergoing physical afflictions and suffering the struggle of life in the body with death and disease. The change then only will be that the inner self will watch all that without getting disturbed or bewildered, with a perfect equality, taking it as an inevitable part of Nature, inevitable at least so long as one does not withdraw to the Self out of Nature. That is not the transformation I envisage. It is quite another power of knowledge, another kind of will, another luminous nature of emotion and aesthesis, another constitution of the physical consciousness that must come in by the supramental change." CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-273-274 2 (147): "There to reach and thence to bring down a supramental dynamism that can transform the Ignorance is the distant but imperative supreme goal of the integral Yoga." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-148, “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 (1) 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. (2) 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. (3) 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. (4) 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. (5) Then only the passage into supramental consciousness begins to become possible, (6) and even then there is a difficult ascent to make each stage of which is a separate arduous achievement.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-281-282, "It follows that the psychic and the spiritual transformation must be far advanced, even as complete as may be, before there can be any beginning of the third and consummating supramental change; for it is only by this double transmutation that the self-will of the Ignorance can be totally altered into a spiritual obedience to the remoulding truth and will of the greater Consciousness of the Infinite. A long, difficult stage of constant effort, energism, austerity of the personal will, tapasya , has ordinarily to be traversed before a more decisive stage can be reached in which a state of self-giving of all the being to the Supreme Being and the Supreme Nature can become total and absolute." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-963-964, "If (1) this first (Psychic) change establishing the being in the inner and larger, a Yogic in place of an ordinary consciousness has not been done, the greater transmutation is impossible. Moreover the individual must have sufficiently universalised himself, he must have recast his individual mind in the boundlessness of a cosmic mentality, enlarged and vivified his individual life into the immediate sense and direct experience of the dynamic motion of the universal life, opened up the communications of his body with the forces of universal Nature, before he can be capable of a change which transcends the present cosmic formulation and lifts him beyond the lower hemisphere of universality into a consciousness belonging to its spiritual upper hemisphere. (2) (second Spiritual change ) Besides he must have already become aware of what is now to him superconscient; he must be already a being conscious of the higher spiritual Light, Power, Knowledge, Ananda , penetrated by its descending influences, new-made by a spiritual change. It is possible for the spiritual opening to take place and its action to proceed before the psychic is far advanced or complete; for the spiritual influence from above can awaken, assist and complete the psychic transmutation: all that is necessary is that there should be a sufficient stress of the psychic entity for the spiritual higher overture to take place. But the third, the supramental change does not admit of any premature descent of the highest Light; for it can only commence when the supramental Force begins to act directly, and this it does not do if the nature is not ready. For there is too great a disparity between the power of the supreme Force and the capacity of the ordinary nature; the inferior nature would either be unable to bear or, bearing, unable to respond and receive or, receiving, unable to assimilate. Till Nature is ready, 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." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-965-966 3 (143): CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-622, “The individual must be the instrument and first field of the transformation; but an isolated individual transformation is not enough and may not be wholly feasible. Even when achieved, the individual change will have a permanent and cosmic significance only if the individual becomes a centre and a sign for the establishment of the supramental Consciousness-Force as an overtly operative power in the terrestrial workings of Nature, — in the same way in which thinking Mind has been established through the human evolution as an overtly operative power in Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti , a gnostic Nature. There must be an emergent supramental Consciousness- Force liberated and active within the terrestrial whole and an organised supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body, — for the body consciousness also must become sufficiently awake to be a fit instrument of the workings of the new supramental Force and its new order. Till then any intermediate change could be only partial or insecure; an overmind or intuitive instrumentation of Nature could be developed, but it would be a luminous formation imposed on a fundamental and environmental Inconscience. A supramental principle and its cosmic operation once established permanently on its own basis, the intervening powers of Overmind and spiritual Mind could found themselves securely upon it and reach their own perfection; they would become in the earth-existence a hierarchy of states of consciousness rising out of Mind and physical life to the supreme spiritual level.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-997-998, "A perfect self- expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence. This cannot be achieved if we have not grown conscious of the supreme Reality; for it is only by the touch of the Absolute that we can arrive at our own absolute. But neither can it be done to the exclusion of the cosmic Reality: we must become universal, for without an opening into universality the individual remains incomplete. The individual separating himself from the All to reach the Highest, loses himself in the supreme heights; including in himself the cosmic consciousness, he recovers his wholeness of self and still keeps his supreme gain of transcendence; he fulfils it and himself in the cosmic completeness. A realised unity of the transcendent, the universal and the individual is an indispensable condition for the fullness of the self-expressing spirit : for the universe is the field of its totality of self-expression, while it is through the individual that its evolutionary self-unfolding here comes to its acme." CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-706, " But this experience with X was really interesting. I learned many things that day, many things ... If you concentrate long enough on any one point, you discover the Infinite (and in his own experience he found the infinite), what could be called your own Infinite. But this is not what WE want, not this; what we want is the direct and integral contact between the manifested universe and the Infinite out of which this universe has emerged. So then it is no longer an individual or personal contact with the Infinite, it’s a total contact. And Sri Aurobindo insists on this, he says that it’s absolutely impossible to have the transformation (not the contact, but the supramental transformation) without becoming universalized – that is the first condition. You cannot become supramental before being universal. And to be universal means to accept everything, be everything, become everything – really to accept everything. And as for all those who are shut up in a system, even if it belongs to the highest regions of thought, it is not THAT." The Mother's Agenda/20.09.1960, "He must accept everything, but cling to nothing, be repelled by nothing however imperfect or however subversive of fixed notions, but also allow nothing to lay hold on him to the detriment of the free working of the Truth-Spirit. This equality of the intelligence is an essential condition for rising to the higher supramental and spiritual knowledge." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-718, 4 (133): "It is not intended to supramentalise humanity at large, but to establish the principle of the supramental consciousness in the earth-evolution. If that is done, all that is needed will be evolved by the supramental Power itself. It is not therefore important that the mission should be widespread. What is important is that the thing should be done at all in however small a number ; that is the only difficulty…It would therefore be a waste of time and energy which should be devoted to the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-288-290, “The questions about the supermind cannot be answered profitably now. Supermind cannot be described in terms that the mind will understand, because the terms will be mental and mind will understand them in a mental way and mental sense and miss their true import. It would therefore be a waste of time and energy which should be devoted to the preliminary work psychicisation and spiritualisation of the being and nature without which no supramentalisation is possible. Let the whole dynamic nature led by the psychic make itself full of the dynamic spiritual light, peace, purity, knowledge, force; let it afterwards get experience of the intermediate spiritual planes and know, feel and act in their sense; then it will be possible to speak last of the supramental transformation.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I-289-290, “Otherwise what will be ultimately accomplished is an achievement by the few initiating a new order of beings, while humanity will have passed sentence of unfitness on itself and may fall back into an evolutionary decline or a stationary immobility; for it is the constant up ward effort (of the few) that has kept humanity alive and maintained for it, Its plays in the front of creation.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-752, “All that [ideas such as “everything will soon be spiritualised”] is absurd. The descent of the supramental means only that the Power will be there in the earth consciousness as a living force just as the thinking mental and the higher mental are already there. But an animal cannot take advantage of the presence of the thinking mental Power or an undeveloped man of the presence of the higher mental Power — so too everybody will not be able to take advantage of the presence of the supramental Power. I have also often enough said that it will be at first for the few, not for the whole earth, — only there will be a growing influence of it on the earth life. ” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-290, "As for the conquest of death, it is only one of the sequelae of supramentalisation — and I am not aware that I have forsworn my views about the supramental descent. But I never said or thought that the supramental descent would automatically make everybody immortal. The supramental descent can only make the best conditions for anybody who can open to it then or thereafter attaining to the supramental consciousness and its consequences. But it would not dispense with the necessity of sadhana. If it did, the logical consequence would be that the whole earth, men, dogs and worms, would suddenly wake up to find themselves supramental. There would be no need of an Asram or of Yoga ." CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-312-313, "When external difficulties subside, when the body becomes passive and quiet, when it is not constantly demanding attention, then you can LIVE in this supramental consciousness and it does not seem so difficult; you feel it is so victorious in its essence that it will end all difficulties ." The Mother’s Agenda/ December 13, 1960, 5 (144): “The Psychic transformation and the first stages of the spiritual transformation are well within our conception; their perfection would be the perfection, wholeness, consummated unity of a knowledge and experience which is already part of things realised, though only by a small number of human beings. But the supramental change in its process carries us into less explored regions; it initiates a vision of heights of consciousness which have indeed been glimpsed and visited, but have yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-953, “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.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-351 6 (76): CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-p-413, CWSA-32/The Mother and Letters on the Mother/p-492, 7 (10): “There are very few among the sadhaks here who at all concern themselves with the supermind or know anything about it except as something which the Mother and I will bring down some day and establish here. Most are seeking realisation through meditation, through love and worship or through activity and work. Meditation and silence are not necessary for everyone; there are some, even among those spoken of by you and others as the most advanced sadhaks, who do their sadhana not through meditation, for which they have no turn, but through activity, work or creation supported or founded on love and bhakti . It is not the credo but the person who matters. We impose no credo; it is sufficient if there is an established and heart-felt relation between ourselves and the disciple.” CWSA-29/Letters on Yoga-II-p-210, “I may say generally that to bring down the supermind is my aim in the yoga or that to do that one has first to rise out of mind into overmind, but if on the strength of that, anybody and everybody began trying to pull down the supermind or force his way immediately out of mind into overmind, the result would be disaster.” CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother/p-349, 8: “No, it’s the old tradition – you step back from Nature and Nature does whatever she wants. It doesn’t concern you, you have no responsibility, ‘you are not that.’ It’s the old idea... Sri Aurobindo was completely against it. Somewhere he makes fun of a man who said he was the Supreme and that whatever he did, it wasn’t he himself doing it – and then he was angry when his meal was late! But of course it wasn’t him: the stomach-nature was angry!... It’s one of the most ironic things Sri Aurobindo has written.... I’ve known that and have always taken great care to avoid it, for it opens the door to all deformations. Lele was like that – Lele did the same thing: he behaved like a lout; he said it wasn’t himself, it was Nature – he had nothing to do with it. This is all very well, but still there’s a sort of affinity between your physical comportment and what you are inside, isn’t there?!... Sri Aurobindo didn’t accept this tradition at all.” The Mother’s Agenda/ June 20, 1961 Sri Aurobindo’s Poem "THE SELF" He said, “I am egoless, spiritual, free,” Then swore because his dinner was not ready. I asked him why. He said, “It is not me, But the belly’s hungry god who gets unsteady.” I asked him why. He said, “It is his play. I am unmoved within, desireless, pure. I care not what may happen day by day.” I questioned him, “Are you so very sure?” He answered, “I can understand your doubt. But to be free is all. It does not matter How you may kick and howl and rage and shout, Making a row over your daily platter. To be aware of self is liberty. Self I have got and, having self, am free.”” CWSA-2/Collected Poems/p-620 The References of the above extractions are taken from the manuscript ‘The Mother's Manifestation ’ (Page-267) Download this WEB PAGE as a PDF file: OBJECTIVE IN DETAIL "To be conscious of him (Divine) in all parts of our being and equally in all that the dividing mind sees as outside our being, is the consummation of the individual consciousness. To be possessed by him and possess him in ourselves and in all things is the term of all empire and mastery. To enjoy him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and of power, of unity and of difference is the happiness which the Jiva, the individual soul manifested in the world, is obscurely seeking. This is the entire definition of the aim of integral Yoga ..." Sri Aurobindo CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-63 THE DIVINE CENTRE “There must be, first, the effort towards at least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine; next , the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being; last , the utilisation of our transformed humanity as a divine centre in the world...It is when this identification and this self-merging are complete that the divine centre in the world is ready. Purified, liberated, plastic, illumined, it can begin to serve as a means for the direct action of a supreme Power in the larger Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth’s spiritual progression or its transformation.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-58 THE AGENDA OF COLLECTIVE LIVING “Therefore, whenever even a single soul is liberated, there is a tendency to an extension and even to an outburst of the same divine self-consciousness in other individual souls of our terrestrial humanity and, who knows?—perhaps even beyond the terrestrial consciousness.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-45, “We have to recognise once more that the individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual perfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God’s intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the liberation of others and of mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and universalise it in others." Sri Aurobindo CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-29 The Conditions of the Path: "The goal is not to lose oneself in the Divine Consciousness. The goal is to let the Divine Consciousness penetrate into Matter and transform it." The Mother The Mother's Centenary Works-15/Words of the Mother-III/p-84 “Then I thought: now, Sri Aurobindo , it is quite clear; for him, the goal was Perfection . Perfection not in the sense of a summit but of an all-inclusive totality in which everything is represented, has a place. And I saw that this Perfection would come—must come—in stages. He announced something the realisation of which will stretch over thousands of years. So it must come in stages.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda-4/p-101 “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 .” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-668-669 "But on the other hand incapacity of force is also an imperfection. Laxity and weakness, self-indulgence, a certain flabbiness and limpness or inert passivity of the psychical being are the last result of an emotional and psychic life in which energy and power of assertion have been quelled, discouraged or killed. Nor is it a total perfection to have only the strength that endures or to cultivate only a heart of love, charity, tolerance, mildness, meekness and forbearance. The other side of perfection is a self-contained and calm and unegoistic Rudra -power armed with psychic force, the energy of the strong heart which is capable of supporting without shrinking an insistent, an outwardly austere or even, where need is, a violent action. An unlimited light of energy, force, puissance harmonised with sweetness of heart and clarity, capable of being one with it in action, the lightning of Indra starting from the orb of the nectarous moon-rays of Soma is the double perfection . And these two things saumyatva, tejas , must base their presence and action on a firm equality of the temperament and of the psychical soul delivered from all crudity and all excess or defect of the heart’s light or the heart’s power." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-736-737

Public ati ons Integral Education is the utilitarian attribute of Integral Yoga which is neither a popular Religion nor a popular Yoga; so Education is accepted here as a field of rigorous self-control, samyama, and this central truth of seven-fold ceaseless concentration, nitya samyama, is utilised here as a means of arriving at the aim of Integral Perfection in successive births known as All Life and this whole life is accepted here as a small fragment of all Time of all Life. The first object of Integral Education is discovery of its true centre which must be always identified as the dynamic Soul, the Psychic being in the heart, the need of its growth and experience, its aspiration towards possession of pure power of Light, Love, Joy, Beauty, Wisdom and Harmony and elimination of all imperfection. All that helps this Soul growth, Mental, Vital and Physical Education are identified as its accessory or a subsidiary helpful process; by the pressure of Soul force these modern learning materials are lifted out of their limitations and carried more swiftly and profoundly to discover their Mighty Source, Subtle Mental, Subtle Vital and Subtle Physical Education; they subsequently are drawn towards the supreme Light in Knowledge, integral Completeness and their detailed and yet undreamed potentialities. The second object of Integral Education is the discovery of its second centre or second Soul, which is the discovery of the Spiritual Self above the head, a vast static and silent Self, enters into contact with greater immutable Reality beyond and pervading the universe; it is also a turning, conversion and transformation of our whole being through a large dynamic descent of Divine Light, Knowledge, Power, Bliss or other supernormal affirmative Energies into untransformed Nature. This Spiritual Self uncovers the passage to Cosmic Consciousness where the Matter is real to the Spirit and Spirit is real to the Matter and both find their true reconciliation through enlargement and universalisation of Subtle Mental, Subtle Vital and Subtle Physical Sheaths. After the prolonged movements between the above two Selves, the third object of Integral Education is traced by discovery of its third centre or third Soul, the discovery of a Supramental Self, Vijnanamaya Purusha, the limitless Consciousness in which the individual, the Cosmic and the Transcendent live eternally in each other; it has come for the adventure of the Soul lapsing into Inconscience and emerging out of its darkness and this adventure proceeds to capture all other sheaths without disturbing the poise which is kept firm from summit of Consciousness to its base; the experiencing Consciousness must preserve a calm balance, supreme harmony and a high Spiritual positivism. The fourth aim of Education is concentrated around a centre of Infinity, must be all-inclusive perfection directed to resolve all the problems of existence including the ultimate, lasting and permanent solutions and utilise the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Education towards transformation of human collectivity and a journey towards the discovery of the source of Ananda from which this whole creation is originated. The last aim of integral Education is the perfect self-expression of the Spirit in the material life of our terrestrial existence by purifying, perfecting and transforming the nether dark worlds through Subconscient and Inconscient Education or restoration of all-perfection of Sachchidananda Consciousness in the whole of humanity through activation and discovery of Subconscient and Inconscient Self. OM TAT SAT Savitri book asks a Sadhak to always remember the most adverse condition of Soul history, “This was the day when Satyavan must die.” (Savitri-10) Or “An absolute supernatural darkness falls on man sometimes when he draws near to God:” (Savitri-11) This remembrance helps him to utilise time and small habitation of space exclusively to accumulate Spiritual energy. Through opening and activation of Psychic and Spiritual Self, the capacity to do work, to gain knowledge, to love, to discern truth from falsehood multiplies and the fixed fate of doom can be confronted and changed to luminous Spiritual destiny. He meets the dynamic Divine Mother during the extreme adversity and it draws his life directly towards the Source of existence, overhead solution of the problem of existence and meets life ‘like a tree recovering from a wind.’ (Savitri-574) The message of Savitri is like a ‘sealed order’ (Savitri-72) or ‘fiery seal’ (Savitri-76) from the unknown immortal Light that has to be opened in addition to its invasion into the nether ‘drowsy seal’ (Savitri-84) and ‘inconscient seal’ (Savitri-108) for the concentration and expansion of an existing human vessel to hold the ever growing intensities of the Divine faculties. The Sadhak of this integral Yoga is like a Navigator exploring the ten inner Oceans and a Cosmologist exploring three surface worlds. His Soul has descended to earth as ‘scout and voyager from Eternity’ for world-adventure. The ‘secret mission’ which the Divine Mother insists is the adventure into obscure geographies of the three firm lands that of surface physical, surface vital, surface mental; explore and sail into the ten deep larger seas or inner oceans that of Inconscient, Subconscient, Subtle Physical, Subtle Vital, Subtle Mental, Psychic, Spiritual, Universal, Supramental and Bliss Ocean/Sheath, through thunder’s roar, windless hush, fog and mist where nothing more is seen; intended towards the discovery of ten Selves contained in the inmost core of above ten sheaths and through their huge working of Soul Forces, purify, transform, perfectly build the Immortal’s secret house of ten Sheaths enveloping and overlapping these ten Selves, and unwound and liberate the triple dominance and downward pull of untransformed surface physical, vital and mental domains, bringing the greatness of Spiritual dawn; this exercise will follow the great Mother’s directive to finally uncover the city of God with new body and mind and enshrine the Immortal in his glory’s house. Our Soul’s task in integral Yoga is to reveal Savitri’s Power which is too great for Earth, to live in her Bliss which is too large for Heaven, to open toward her Light which is too intense for Inconscient Hell, to extricate her Beauty which is too vast for Physical Consciousness and to possess her Love which is too boundless. A Psychic being is identified here as a greater God. That means if a Sadhak has realised his Psychic Being in the heart centre, then his status is greater than Overmental God and he can call down Divine Love to earth and men. If he calls down permanently Paramatma/Purushottama/Supramental Purusha to the heart centre then he begins to ‘wear the face of Satyavan’ (Savitri-614) and experiences static union of the Supreme Bliss Self. With the prolongation of this Divine union, dynamic Brahman/Paraprakriti/Supramental and Bliss Mother comes down permanently to stay in the heart centre. Then heart centre becomes the meeting ground of Paramatma Satyavan and Paraprakriti Savitri and this dynamic union possesses material life and the cellular transformation begins the action. To Love and Possess equally Paramatma Satyavan and Paraprakriti Savitri in the heart centre is the supreme Word of Savitri and this status is extended towards World transformation through the mighty descent of Divine Force. This is the condition put before a Sadhak of receiving Savitri’s comprehensive Divine Love. The moral message of Vyasadeva’s Savitri in Mahabharata is that if a woman has single-minded devotion towards her husband, then the divisible Consciousness of widowhood cannot touch her. The Spiritual message of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri is that if a Sadhak has brought down permanently the Supreme Self to heart centre, then his aim, joy, charm, glory and source of life are free from sorrow of widowhood. A Sadhak, who does not wear the face of Paramatma Satyavan within the heart centre has no issue, no charm and glory and his life is symbolically revealed as experiencing the sorrow of widowhood or 'Like love when the beloved's face is gone' (Savitri-306) or as Death God said to Savitri ‘Leave then thy dead (husband), O Savitri, and live.” (Savitri-656) To know and hold this origin of Existence, Supreme Self in the heart centre, is the most difficult Spiritual task before a Sadhak and The Mother confirms, “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) OM TAT SAT This book ‘The Bhagavad Gita and Integral Yoga’ is the utilitarian interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s book ‘Essays on the Gita’ which gives the message of strong Spirituality and the Mother hinted that this book is a gold mine. Our task here is to extract the gold (or the descent of Supreme Will, supreme Wisdom and supreme Love) from the limitless gold mines. In the Bhagavad Gita, the truth initiated and developed are identified as easier truth and the truth initiated and hinted (not developed) are identified as difficult truth and the former is experienced as Jivatma’s union with static Paramatma and the latter is experienced as Jivatma’s union with dynamic Paraprakriti. In Integral Yoga, this universalisation of Consciousness, is further extended as union between supreme Self and supreme Nature and Divine union between Supreme Nature, Para-prakriti and lower Nature, Apara-prakriti. The Gita lays maximum stress on the development of highest goal of the Supra-cosmic faculties, which will preoccupy man with his real business of opening the Supreme Self of becoming God, Brahmabhutah; ‘and if now personality seems to be narrow, fragmentary, restrictive, it is only because it has not opened to its source or flowered into its own divine truth and fullness packing itself with the universal and the infinite;” secondly it stresses on His universal Consciousness and opening of Cosmic Self, Vasudeva sarvam iti, in which all moves and acts and through this Divine extends His faculty of universal Divine action, good of all creatures, sarvabhuta-hite ratah; and holding together the race, lokasangraha, leading them towards right living, dharma, best standard; for the Lord declares, “it is my path that men follow in every way;” thirdly, it emphasizes on the acceptance of Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body, manusim tanumasritam; for He is the Immanent in all this existences as Kshara Purusha, Psychic being, ‘and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic.’ Fourthly, ‘man’s way to liberation and perfection lies through an increasing impersonality’ by opening of his Akshara Purusha, Spiritual Being above the head, which is identified as ‘the first Spiritual necessity’ of a seeker of Truth and fifthly, the Gita insists on the manifestation of Divine Nature, madbhava, in all things through intervention of four fold Soul force, chaturvarnyam maya sristam, four-fold Divine Shaktis, chatvaro manovastatha, sevenfold Integral Knowledge, maharsaya saptapurbe, and thus lastly the final object of this Yoga is then a self-completing union of Soul, Jiva, with the Purushottama through the formula ‘thou shalt first see all existences without exception in the Self, then in Me, atmani atho mayi,’ and of suffusion of Purushottama Consciousness into the manifested Divine nature, prakritim mamikam, svam prakritim, para prakriti. The Gita also reconciles the movements of Kshara, Akshara and Purushottama or reconciles the movements of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental planes, ‘atmani atmanam atmana.’ through which the Divine perfection can be attained. An earth-bound Soul moves the consciousness (first phase) between three modes of nature that of tamas, principle of inertia, rajas, principle of desire and action and sattwa, principle of limited knowledge, harmony and happiness. A seeker of Spiritual life, jijnasu, has to (second phase) increase his sattwic Nature by practice of self-control. Sattwic Nature is identified as passage to higher Spiritual life beyond the gunas. When the Psychic being in the heart experiences partial opening or Spiritual being above the head experiences partial opening through partial Divine union, the Consciousness (third phase) undulates between three gunas and trigunatita state beyond the modes of Nature. Then in the fourth phase of sadhana of Spiritual man the consciousness moves ceaselessly between waking trance of Psychic being/Kshara Purusha and non-waking Samadhi state of Spiritual being/Akshara Purusha. After long movement in these planes, in the fifth phase of Sadhana, the gulf between multiple subtle planes are bridged and the concentration power multiplies; in the last phase, the Consciousness moves between Supramental/Bliss Self and Subconscient/Inconscient Self. The ceaseless movement of Consciousness from highest plane to the lowest plane is the normal state of an integral Yogi and the beginning of his large universal action. An integral Sadhak will learn four lessons from the Gita. (1) Firstly, he learns to know extensively the nature and imperfection of the three Gunas and how to go beyond them by increasing Sattwic Nature. In integral Yoga, the sattwic nature is replaced with Equality and Psychic Consciousness. (2) Secondly, the perfection and extreme accumulation of fourfold Soul-forces, chaturvarna, and fourfold Spiritual forces, chatwaro manobastatha and their integration and reconciliation are felt indispensable to pursue Yoga of Self-perfection. These Soul forces and Spiritual forces he will carry with him to next successive births which is utilised as doing good of all creatures and world transformation. (3) Thirdly, the power of consecration has to be intensified through self-control or persistent rejection of lower Nature, which has to be practiced through a purified intellect. With the opening of the Psychic and Spiritual being, this self-control becomes rigorous and with the opening of the Supramental Self, self-control becomes absolute. Thus, one goes beyond the limitation of all distinctive dharmas, sarvadharman parityajya (The Gita-18.66) and surrender becomes comprehensive and he experiences comprehensive Divine union, samagram mam. (The Gita-7.1) (4) Lastly, in integral Yoga, the double escape, (1) escape from the problem of life and (2) escape from universal Divine action are renounced and in the Gita one Soul takes refuge in the supreme abode of param dham through these double escapes, which is known as Moksha. The Gita's negative sense of liberation, Mukti, is to become desireless, egoless, beyond the dualities, dwandatita, and beyond the three Gunas, nistreigunya. This is complemented in integral Yoga with a positive sense of freedom which is to be ‘(1) universal in Soul, (2) transcendentally one in spirit with God and (3) possession of the highest Divine Nature.’ This is Integral Yoga's Mokshya or Integral Liberation. OM TAT SAT Sri K. Anurakta is recognised as one of the flame-buoyant and foremost potential Sadhakas of integral Yoga. He has realised some rare Spiritual height to become a part of The Mother’s most difficult Subconscient transformation action and his difficult task was to climb one known peak of Consciousness to another unknown peak and as a result his capacity to bear world’s suffering and blow increased proportionately. He served the next purpose of elevating the general Consciousness of the race by pouring the Mother’s Love and Grace on the bereaved Souls and awakened in them the spark of living Psychic Fire and the Divine Bliss. Devotees gathered around him to dump all their earthly problems and Karma and he bore and relieved most of their sufferings, miseries and sorrows by identifying them with the Divine and yet remained established in a state of absolute calm, complete surrender and highest plane of Turiya for several years. In Savitri, this highest state beyond Supramental is described as ‘the brooding bliss of the Infinite’’ or ‘The bliss that made the world in his body lived.’ The change of his physical appearance of luminous body, jyotirmaya deha, Divine beauty, divya saundarya, and capacity of eternal Love, prema samarthya, confirms that he was firm in the Yoga of cellular transformation. He was at once an Ashramite in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, who had the responsibilities of increasing persistent zeal to become one and possess the Divine Mother and the Lord, utsaha, a Sadhaka, while exploring new vistas of ascending peaks of Consciousness felt the need of much more still to be done, bhuri kartvam and increasing his capacity to bear the earth’s burden through static Divine union, titikshya, a consecrated Child of resolving human problems in large scale through dynamic Divine union, sarvabhutahiteratah, and an integral Yogi of becoming a transparent channel of Divine’s vast ascent and descent, divya aroha and avaroha. OM TAT SAT This book partly fulfils Sri Aurobindo's requirement that those who will follow integral Yoga must have full account of earth's Spiritual history, its Spiritual rise and fall of Consciousness and also well informed about the limitations of all modern Knowledge and to create an opportunity to transform all unconsecrated mundane Knowledge into consecrated Spiritual Wisdom. This account will not exclude the recent Spiritual history of Integral Sadhakas, their Spiritual possibility in Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga and limitations and difficulties witnessed in transforming the tamasic, rajasic and sattvic mind. The editor of this book believes that apart from the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita, Sri Aurobindo’s principal Teaching, The Synthesis of Yoga is one of the best standards of the race. Its Teaching is so vast, catholic and impersonal that all can accept but only a few aspirant Souls can live it’s message which is the reconciliation of perfect Spirit with imperfect Matter. 'The Mother’s Manifestation’ book is a utilitarian interpretation of the book The Synthesis of Yoga. It insists on a Sadhaka of becoming accountable for his sadhana to his own Self, to the World and to the Divine in three stages. Firstly, he will trace a path of his own sadhana by constantly renewing, reshaping, reliving and restating the best written standard available to the race and by noting the full account of his human imperfection and Self-perfection. Secondly, during the concentration, contemplation and meditation of these formative truths extending over decades, he receives new overhead Divine Wisdom, Divine Will and Divine Love and the unending instrumental exercise of a Sadhaka is to learn this lesson of the Infinite which gets precedence over all other appetite and interest. Lastly, he will be a Divine Centre of the world by receiving the Divine energies, of holding them in the purified and transformed human vessel, of transmitting them to the surrounding world and of fulfilling the deficiencies of men. His Soul strength is weighed and augmented from his capacity for ceaseless action, ceaseless concentration to hold and transmit ceaseless Divine Love, Delight and Beauty and finally the capacity to remember the Divine uninterruptedly through ceaseless Japa. The perfect utilisation of the opportunities of integral Yoga is identified as to use the time and space exclusively for the ascent and descent of Consciousness and by this vertical movement through the assistance of the triple Yoga of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti, one arrives at the birth of experiencing Timeless Eternity and Spaceless Infinity and their manifestation through new birth of time and space. The Mother’s Consciousness is that which rests on the One and acts in all existence and this consciousness manifests on earth by penetrating into finite things, phenomena and forms to produce infinite harmony, freedom and perfection. OM TAT SAT This poetry book “Tattvamasi” is the "Song of Soul..." of S. A. Maa Krishna and parts aside the veil slightly to give a brief glimpse of her intense Sadhana and of her Soul’s triple union of the Divine in Supra-Physical, Supra-Terrestrial and Supra-Cosmic planes. The Seeker will be able to identify that all the personal relationships with the Divine as Play-mate, Friend, Master, Mother, Lover and Beloved have been experienced. In it stands the realisation of the Divine as the Impersonal and Absolute Brahman as well as the child in the lap of his Mother to the union with the Supreme as the Beloved. The poems voice the integral aspiration of the Soul within each of us and marks the journey to experience the Individual, Cosmic and Transcendent Divine that awaits us all as we plunge into the Yoga of the Lord Sri Aurobindo and the Divine Mother. To read, contemplate and meditate in the atmosphere of this book will allow the Sadhaka to be open to the transformative higher Consciousness of the Divine Mother that descends, purifies and spreads within all. “The Asram has nothing to do with Hindu religion or culture or any religion or nationality. The Truth of the Divine which is the spiritual reality behind all religions and the descent of the supramental which is not known to any religion are the sole things which will be the foundation of the work of the future.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-701, “The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. “It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.” The Mother TMCW-8/Questions and Answers-1956/p-126, The Mother further affirmed, in relation to her book carrying the Supramental Presence: “…any fool could read it like a story and feel perfectly satisfied – and he wouldn’t even notice it taking hold of him inside and changing him.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda/ December 20, 1961 And again: “When the Supramental manifests, an unequalled joy spreads over the earth.” The Mother TMCW-15/Words of the Mother-III/p-91 Religion and Spirituality are the husk and kernel of Sanatana Dharma respectively; the former develops by Self-diffusion and the latter by Self-concentration and both are reconciled and perfected in its single body. The victory of the Spirit is secured by generalisation of its highest truth in humanity. Similarly, the action of Sanatana Dharma can be secured and progressive when Self-expansion becomes a willing subordinate and conscious outcome of its Self-concentration. The wide and supple method of the evolutionary Nature must provide ample scope to preserve the true intention of all religious seeking; the development of Religion in India has witnessed that any number of religious formulations, cults and disciplines have been nurtured, allowed and even encouraged to subsist side by side and ‘each man was free to accept and follow his own Religion which is congenial to his thought, feeling, temperament and build of Nature.,’ (CWSA/22/The Life Divine/p-897) It would allow all to live as necessary to the whole or put each in its place in the whole or assign to each its field of realisation or of endeavour. A unity behind diversity and discord is the secret of the variety of human Religions, Sciences and Philosophies; for they all get at some image or some side clue, touch some portion of the one Truth or envisage any one of its countless aspects. All Religions are forms and fragments descended from the one eternal Religion, Sanatana Dharma or all Religion would be true as developments that converge on one eternal Religion, all philosophies of divergent viewpoints would be valid each in its own field as different aspects of a single Reality, all Sciences must be drawn irresistibly to merge with supreme Science. Unity of all the Religions is possible when each man is said to have his own Religion; he is not bound by any sect or restrict to any traditional form rather he will follow a free self-adaptation of his Nature in its relation with the Supreme. So the true purpose of Religion is to link the human with the Divine and in so doing sublimate the thought, life and the flesh to admit the Spirit’s law. It was felt necessary that man must approach God through an endless variety in order that he might come to know Him entirely. Integral Yoga proposes that the greatest unity of all Religion is possible through a most conscious individual when he is perfectly capable of every kind of Spiritual experience, embraces the whole universe in his Consciousness and possesses the highest Integral Knowledge. And he calls down the ultimate Divine Truth to elevate the things and creatures to their highest and widest Divine manifestation. Integral Yoga recommends that every thinking and living being should dwell in the Soul, the seat of Integral Knowledge, All Truth, the Eternal Veda, and Sanatana Dharma. No written truth—whether Shastra or Religion, however great its scope or influence—can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge and a fragmentary manifestation of the All Truth. Integral Yoga is initially an exclusive specialised path and finally an all-inclusive comprehensive self-discipline for the full satisfaction of the endless and limitless expansion and concentration of Sanatana Dharma. The evolution of the Spiritual history of earth has been thoroughly studied in integral Yoga and its clear and distinct hierarchies have been evolved which can be accepted as basis for the further development and Spiritual unfolding of the endless truth of Sanatana Dharma. Integral Yoga is identified as the crown of rich Aryan Culture of Sanatana Dharma where an integral Yogi emerges as a perfect Arya with triune realisation of the Brahman which is a Consciousness at once Transcendental, Universal and Individual. Integral Yoga recognises the teachings of Sanatana Dharma as great while it identifies its own Teachings as the best because it ‘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.’ (CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-485) In the Sanatana Dharma, the mighty Supramental Divine Presence is hinted as Vijnana, whereas in Integral Yoga this mighty Divine action is extensively developed and it further recognises this all-inclusive Supramental energy as accelerator of perfection and Divinisation of human race. Thus ‘no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga’ (CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-72) and ‘No limit can be fixed to this revolution; for it is in its nature an invasion by the Infinite.’ (CWSA-22/ The Life Divine/p-947) OM TAT SAT The above seven books offer sevenfold promises before the Lord. They are also the infrastructure and cradle of our long Spiritual pursuit and our immediate objective here is to accommodate in these books whatever fresh overhead wisdom has descended through concentration, contemplation and meditation of the existing written Truth. The wisdom of Integral Yoga is not an unchangeable fixed monument but it 'can be thus constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth constantly reshaped and developed in’ our inner thought and spiritual experience. It embraces all the knowledge of past Shastra and 'it seeks to organise it anew for the present and the future. ' The descent of wisdom from one plane necessitates change with the ascent of consciousness to still higher planes and if the descent of Truth and Light is from a very high impersonal and universal plane then ‘It lit the thoughts that glow through the centuries’ and the most foolish, 'the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.' Integral Yoga has identified that tracing one's own path through recorded revelations or Sruti is 'one of the four elements,' indispensable for the pursuance of sadhana of a twice-born Soul Sadhak . (Refer CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita-5, CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-56-57, Savitri-259, TMCW-8/Questions and Answers-1956/p-126, CWSA-18/Kena and other Upanishads/p-169.) Sri Aurobindo proposes a Yoga extending over thousands of years through the Spiritual rise and fall of life and consciousness. So the movement of ascending and descending Consciousness must begin with twice-born Souls and must continue this exercise further to bridge the multiple gulfs in different planes of Consciousness that lie between the highest Supreme Self and the nether Inconscient Sheath. The Truth that is hinted but not developed in the Gita, the Upanishads and the Vedas are extensively developed in Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. Our task is to concentrate on the highest hinted Truth of Integral Yoga while remaining perfectly aware of its highest developed Truth. Thus, we have to be participants of that endless growth by constantly renewing, updating and enlarging the existing vision of the World, the Self and the Divine. We have noted Sri Aurobindo's observation while publishing the book 'The Secrets of the Veda ': "The publication of The Secret of the Veda as it is does not enter into my intention. It was published in a great hurry and at a time when I had not studied the Rig Veda as a whole as well as I have since done. Whole chapters will have to be rewritten or written otherwise and a considerable labour gone through; moreover, it was never finished and considerable additions in order to make it complete are indispensable. (30 June 1949)" (CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-140) We also have to remember the Mother's warning, "everything that is published is debased, otherwise people don’t understand....That’s why I heartily detest publicity." (Refer the Mother's Agenda, September 8, 1965, May 7, 1966.) The above passage hints that translations and restatement of Spiritual documents should be utilised for sadhana through self-concentration rather than the motive of self-expansion through publication. This further indicates that all writing must be directed for the sole satisfaction of the Divine, for tracing one's own unique Spiritual path and it is an important means for the accumulation of Soul force through the highest Divine union. "But this practically means that there is an ideal, an eternal Dharma which religion, philosophy, ethics and all other powers in man that strive after truth and perfection are constantly endeavouring to embody in new statements of the science and art of the inner and outer life, a new Shastra ." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-478 Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format:

The Call in Detail "The Mighty Mother sits in lucent calm... The Love our hearts call down to heal all strife," Savitri-661 “And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga.”¹ Sri Aurobindo CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-72 “No limit can be fixed to this revolution; for it is in its nature an invasion by the Infinite. ”² Sri Aurobindo CWSA/22/ The Life Divine/p-947 “There are people who love adventure. It is these I call, and I tell them this : “I invite you to the great adventure.”... It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have done before us, for our adventure begins beyond that. It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the unforeseen events, the risks, the hazards it entails — a real adventure, whose goal is certain victory, but the road to which is unknown and must be traced out step by step in the unexplored. Something that has never been in this present universe and that will never be again in the same way. If that interests you... well, let us embark. What will happen to you tomorrow — I have no idea. One must put aside all that has been foreseen, all that has been devised, all that has been constructed, and then... set off walking into the unknown. And — come what may! There." The Mother The Mother's Centenary Works/Vol-9/page-152 The Call in Detail There is a higher plan of our Spiritual destiny which is the cause of our greater existence and holds the key of our ascending fate. The perfect Spirit is called out of the dense imperfect mortality and is nurtured, fostered and moulded in the Matter’s house by the influence of the sun-eyed Guardians of conscious Truth planes, Godheads of the unseen reality and men of Spiritual attainment. This material birth is a long transition of fourfold Soul adventure, self-evolution and illumination through which Nature ascends in the ladder and climbs to become the Spirit. Man arrives at greater perfection when he enlarges himself by opening his Nature towards all these four Soul powers. Thus, our life is at once (1) to know and grow into self-truth and self-knowledge, (2) to raise slow outer life energy and the surface consciousness into swift movement of Divine energy and Divine Consciousness, 'a struggle and battle of our will with ourselves and surrounding forces,' (3) a constant production, adaptation, application of ecstatic skill and harmony to material life and to lift the surface pleasure into Divine Delight of Being and (4) to live and act in a complete self-giving, sacrifice, service and elevate the surface lower Nature into Divine Nature. The ancient thoughts of India were conscious of these four-fold Spiritual turns, chaturvarna, ⁶ of active human personality and nature which precipitated as fixed mechanical function in the society of traditional ideal of Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shudra , whose full consummation and large Divine manifestation must be called down from the Universal and Transcendent plane by those who practice integral Yoga. A Sadhak 'opens his nature more and more into the rounded fullness and universal capacity of the fourfold spirit.' ³³ Brahmana or Soul of Self-knowledge and World-knowledge: The ancient Indian Teaching insists to regenerate ethical and Spiritual culture in all men and ‘their highest inner self are Brahmanas capable of the full (growth of) spirit and godhead.’²⁶ The study of Scriptures, calm self-control, purity, a way of truth-seeking and capture it for outward use, long-suffering, kindness, honesty, aversion to fault finding, the ceaseless quest for knowledge, freedom from prejudice, hard-won mind’s silence, sweet smiling quietude of life, constant practice of non-attachment towards son, wife and home, high thinking, pure living, heavenward flight through saintly inactivity, free from attachment to action and inaction, detachment of desire-mind and renunciation of its passion, raise the mental consciousness into clarity, fixing the mind in the central vision, nearing of Spiritual truth within by purified buddhi and ethical change in the outside surface life are the natural and spontaneous task of the traditional Brahmin Soul force. Thus, a traditional Brahmin lives a double life, Spiritual within or above and mental and material in outward active earthly living; thus he does not bridge the gulf between imperfect Matter and perfect Spirit. The exclusive nature of the Soul force of the ancient traditional Brahmin is extended and enlarged in integral Yoga to go beyond the partial views and egoistic motives of human ignorance and becomes the master of own kingdom of life, swarat, master over the surrounding world, samrat, the fullness of the divine union of Truth-Light, Brahma-yoga, Power and glory of Spiritual force, Brahma-tejas , comprehensive Knowledge, Brahma-varcas, perfection of Spiritual Law, Dharma , enlarge and raise the whole seeing and living of active consciousness by trance, Samadhi , the accomplished Brahminhood of the complete Brahmana and grows into impersonalised universal personality, sarva-bhutatma-bhutatma.(The Gita-5.7) The exclusive concentration, samyama , pursued by all traditional schools of Yoga is used as a temporary instrument for the beginners of integral Yoga and further extended and culminated as an all-receiving or all-inclusive concentration, samjnana . The perfection of Brahmana Soul-force is the treasure house of miraculous knowledge which is open to every kind of Revelation, intimate Vision, many-sided wideness of Spiritual Attainment, Inspiration, Intuition, Identity; opens us to Supramental Infinities, Largeness, unalterable Silence, absolute quietude and Solitude, impersonal Vastness, right Discrimination of Truth, unspoken great Word, shadow-less Love, original Delight of existence, self-defusing Peace and a reconciling Wisdom to perfect life. Its 'illimitable calm upholds all the illumination, movement, action as on some rock of ages, equal, unperturbed, unmoved, acyuta. '³³ An Integral Brahmin calls down the Divine Mother’s swift invasion of mightier Light, calm wideness, Truth of eternity, blaze of comprehensive wisdom, inevitable Word, tranquil benignity, sovereign and surpassing majesty and all ruling greatness to life’s closed and obscure room and transforms all triple lower mechanical energies of sattwa, rajas and tamas into energies of illumined Seer and subsequently to Supramental Nature, madbhava .⁷ Not by rejecting life and action but by accepting and uplifting them he will realise the supreme Self in his own being and subsequently in all beings and transform all mundane knowledge into activities of self-existent infinite Divine Consciousness. Thus God-Knowledge and World-Knowledge become two sides of one Transcendent seeking. She is the Maheswari aspect, the mediatrix universal Mother that draws her child to her arms to link earth consciousness with supreme Truth Consciousness and we adore her as Mother of all Godheads, ancient Mother, infinite Mother, a wonderful Mother of unnumbered species and an embodiment of mighty Mother. A force in her toiled since the beginning of creation to reverse destiny’s cold dead turn, forced to open the door of multiple Selves that are denied and closed and when the earth will be ready she shall again take birth in Time as last Avatara to vanquish Fate and Death and establish Truth’s victory. Kshatriya or Soul of Strength and Power: The heroism, high spirit ambition, strong helpfulness, armour of courage, resolution, ability, steadfastness in Yoga, giving, harmlessness, sword-like faith, forgiveness, leadership, lordship at all workings, Isvara-bhava , straightforwardness, gracious nobility, well-armed disciplined warrior and hunter of unknown and beautiful creation, a wrestler with destiny are the natural work of traditional Kshatriya Soul force. Thus a traditional Kshatriya is only the outward manifestation necessary to complete the urge of human perfection and he does not adventure much into higher planes of Consciousness and call down consciously their Divine energy to the limitation of tamasic, rajasic and sattwic Nature. These virtues of traditional Kshatriya are extended in integral Yoga to Divine fullness, calm mastery, self-possession, timeless purity, high plasticity towards change, forbidden to shrink from difficulties of life, opulence, expansion of Spiritual kingdom within and without and a faith and conviction that nothing can prevent a Sadhaka from discovering the Truth’s wide and golden path and in arriving at the end of integral Perfection. He has to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood, ignorance and suffering and manifest Divine Truth-movement in the spirit of a lion-like warrior and further extend them towards the conquest of the same adverse and inexhaustible dark forces in the world. The perfection of Kshatriya Soul-force is the severest austerity of tapas. This great action can unlock the doors of fate by adventure of Consciousness in ascending and descending order capturing ‘the last inviolate secret’⁹ Source and invasion of its large white Divine Presence to all the nether dark planes of existence. 'An absolute calm fearlessness of the free spirit, an infinite dynamic courage which no peril, limitation of possibility, wall of opposing force can deter from pursuing the work or aspiration imposed by the spirit, a high nobility of soul and will untouched by any littleness or baseness and moving with a certain greatness of step to spiritual victory or the success of the God-given work through whatever temporary defeat or obstacle, a spirit never depressed or cast down from faith and confidence in the power that works in the being, are the signs of this perfection.'³ ³ An Integral Kshatriya casts his transparent Soul upon the Divine Mother’s lap and calls down her sweet Presence of violent loving heart, intolerant flame, splendid strength, the irresistible white passion of her mighty Force. She leads his small beginning of Sadhana towards a mighty end, initially through slow mental evolution and finally towards complete enjoyment, possession and transformation of Nature of Divine Soul through swift Spiritual evolution; she fulfills Ananda with its most absolute intensities, drags knowledge towards conquering glories and shortens the long way of perfection. He reconciles the gentle soul of Love with the formidable need for Power; and fuses the Soul’s passive nature that lives satisfied with transcendent calm with the perfect activity of Divine worker and warrior. He shall possess God’s infinite Wisdom and King Idea which the dwarf mind cannot imagine and shall open God’s Supramental door which the heart of the mortal cannot dare. She is the Mahakali who holds her perennial child upon her knees and we meet her warrior mood, overwhelming turbulent will, terrible in love, sovereign gaze, all-seeing Power to trace its path, impetus swiftness, flaming silence of her heart of violent Love, her mind free from all twilight thought and her world-shaking force that can transform Time’s black dragon base of Inconscient Sheath and can trample the Nature’s Iron Law of Death. Her unerring golden Hand can lift our Being and Nature to unimaginable heights and calls down her infinite Ray. Her Timeless mighty action accomplishes centuries’ toil in a day and if she is allowed to intervene in her almighty strength, then in one moment she slays many longing desires, destroys all that are false and obscure, saves all that are pure and true and Divinises all Time and all Space. Vaisya or Soul of Mutuality and New Creation: The outward action of the traditional Vaisya Soul force is agriculture, cattle keeping, skillful devising intelligence, legal order, professional skill, commercial negotiation of self-interest, scientific, technical and utilitarian bent of mind, a power of giving, ample creative liberality, mutual helpfulness and the ecstatic skill in works. Thus, a traditional Vaisya does not feel the privilege to call down the highest planes of Bliss vibration to transform the recalcitrant lowest Nature. These traditional Vaisya faculties are extended in integral Yoga into a largeness of mutuality, a generous fullness of the relations of life, a lavish self-spending and return and ample interchange between existence and existence, a deathless sweetness chanting the unknown anthem of Soul, a full enjoyment and use of rhythm and balance of fruitful, aesthetic, beautiful and productive life. In this Yoga, one comes to see the Divine everywhere and in all equally and pours out the realisation of the Divine sweetness in all one’s inner activities and outward actions. All is supported by the primary force of emotional Divine union; for it is by Divine Love that the entire self-consecration and the entire self-possession are accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the Divine Delight which possesses the Spirit and its members. The perfection of Vaisya Soul-force is an efficient builder, organiser, free self-giving of Divine Beauty, Delight and Love to all, a subtle opulence, joy and gladness born of inner unification with chosen Divine destined Souls, discoverer of beauty’s golden path and fine rhythm of life. 'There comes too to fulfilment a large godhead, a soul-power of mutuality, a free self-spending and spending of gift and possession in the work to be done, lavished for the production, the creation, the achievement, the possession, gain, utilisable return, a skill that observes the law and adapts the relation and keeps the measure, a great taking into oneself from all beings and a free giving out of oneself to all, a divine commerce, a large enjoyment of the mutual delight of life.'³ ³ An Integral Vaisya calls down the Divine Mother’s deep, secret, vivid, wonderful and fine rhythm of beauty, healing touch of love, truth and delight, alchemist energy, sunlit sweetness and harmony, her intricate and subtle opulence, compelling attraction of beatitude, bound all the decreed Souls with her golden tie and captivating magic Grace. He does all action in the love of Divine and in love of the world and transforms all transient earthly emotional human relation into the joy of the All-Loving, the All-Blissful and the All-Beautiful. She is Mahalakshmi, whose worshiped feet have the power to heal the pain of life, breaks the seal of Ignorance to kindle rapturous Psychic fire, transforms earth’s floor into her sweetness’ home and one human moment is drawn towards all eternity. Her single glance makes the whole day marvellous; a strange new world peeps in her look; her clasp transforms all pain into ecstasy, fills our limbs with the rapture of things, lifts wisdom, strength and perfection to pinnacles of wonder, builds a golden passage to our heart and brings into life’s closed and obscured room a sense of Infinite Beauty and Harmony. Shudra or Soul of Works and Service: The ancient Indian Teaching insists ‘that all men are born in their lower nature as Shudras ’²⁶ and the well developed traditional Shudra has the instinct of toil and capacity of labour and service for maintenance of his existence, charity, absence of envy and pride, the gratification of his primal needs, self-indulgence of the instincts, unreflective obedience, imperfect worker and mechanical discharger of duty. His prayer is too weak to climb to the Supreme. The modern mind is attracted to create a purely productive and commercial society, ‘a Shudra society of labour, of the proletariate,’²⁷ preoccupied more and more with enjoyments of transient and short-lived nature. Their disproportionate increase is disturbing to social balance and stands as a danger to the survival of the human race. The limitation of a traditional Shudra is that he does not call down consciously the highest perfection of Sachchidananda Consciousness to his imperfect human Nature. In integral Yoga, these Shudra qualities are extended to the most necessary and beautiful elements of our greater perfection and the key to the much of the secret of highest Spiritual evolution. The full development of this Soul force is to become the architect of Immortality, an efficient builder, the power of motiveless consecrated service to others, personal will is converted to a single-minded Spiritual pursuit, a capacity for all kinds of Divine action demanded from an instrument, to obey and follow whatever great discipline and Spiritual Influence, a free identity and spontaneous harmony with the universal Divine Will, the love which consecrates service and asks for no return, a power for complete self-surrender and self-giving of what one does, thinks and feels. One can offer every detail of life’s manifestation and every incident of life’s movements as food for the inner sacrificial Fire. The perfection of Shudra Soul-force is the the entire renunciation of attachment, sangam tyaktwa, desire, kama, ego, ahamkaram , duality, dwanda , three modes of nature, gunas , initiation of work, sarbarambha parityagi , attachment to home and old association, aniketa. A perfection of faith, sraddha, is to be developed which believes that nothing done in us and around us is in vain and all things are accomplished when Divine Will takes up the burden of all life and all movement. 'And finally there comes to perfection the godhead, the soul-power of service, the universal love that lavishes itself without demand of return, the embrace that takes to itself the body of God in man and works for help and service, the abnegation that is ready to bear the yoke of the Master and make the life a free servitude to Him and under his direction to the claim and need of his creatures, the self-surrender of the whole being to the Master of our being and his work in the world.'³ ³ An Integral Shudra is not satisfied with his exclusive liberation, lonely freedom and solitary joy and asks the Divine Mother’s Light, Peace and Perfection for earth and men. He calls down her persistent, flawless and integral action, efficient technical knowledge, competent administrative skill, Truth of order, close and profound intimate knowledge, power of silence and quiet and exact perfection in all things. A vast surrender or wide self-giving is his only source of strength to confront Time and Space. While accepting all works of life, he is able to transform even the smallest and meanest work into glad and glorious golden sacrifice; a higher knowledge is applied to all the activities of existence to lift all common ordinary work into strange Divinity and in every simplest movement of will, action and thought he fills the Divine Presence and can bring her Divine oneness. His object in Arts and Crafts is not mere mental, vital and aesthetic gratification but to adore and manifest the Divine Artist everywhere. His aim and object in Science and Technology is not mechanical and mental manipulation of the energies and opulence of Nature but to enter into the processes and workings of the faultless Divine mysteries. He must always remember that he carries within him a fragment of integral Godhead and its total revelation in his bodily all-life is the inevitable consequence of his integral faith. She is Mahasaraswati and h er sacred voice is attuned with the harps of the perfect and rhythms of infinity, her sight breaks the transient sense to liberate the inner Godhead; her outstretched Hand of protection and ever-present help is extended over all life; she is the Mother of our longing Nature, the Mentor who insists even after repeated and prolonged failure, sister of our ascending Soul, comrade of our undying hope and golden Messenger to untransformed Nature. She claims from all Time her Will’s eternity overruling cosmic Law and manifestation of complete Godhead from passing and fleeting moments. For the fullness and perfect perfection of this blind struggling creation, she is ready for arduous labour, long-suffering and waits patiently for all eternity. All the above fourfold traditional personalities of ‘(1) Thought and knowledge, (2) war and government, (3) production and distribution, (4) labour and service’²⁵ are raised up to fullness and harmony in a traditional seeker of Truth and extended as 'a soul of knowledge, a soul of strength and of power, a soul of mutuality and interchange, a soul of works and service'²⁵ in a sane and perfected Society. Similarly, the perfection of all the above fourfold Soul personalities of (1) integral Truth destructive of falsehood, (2) adventure of Consciousness, (3) overhead descent of Love, Beauty and Delight and (4) skill in work are integrated in an integral seeker of Truth and extended its large manifestation in a Divine Centre, the Ashram. Traditional Yoga succeeds with the evolution of a strong Spiritual Being whereas integral Yoga succeeds with the evolution of a strong Spiritual Being subordinated by the evolution of a strong Mental Being; the former helps in building a Spiritual foundation and the latter helps in the integration of Being and Nature and reconciliation of Spirit with Matter. For example, one of the mind's roles, as hinted in Savitri , "The Inconscient could not read without man’s mind."³⁴ How the above four-fold traditional personalities are linked with each other for integration of being and Nature are as follows: ‘Through four soul-stages a man must pass before he can be perfect; first, as a Sudra, by service and obedience to tame the brute in his being; then, as a Vaishya to satisfy within the law of morality the lower man in him and evolve the higher man by getting the first taste of delight in well-doing to others than himself and his; then, as the Kshatriya , to be trained in those first qualities without which the pursuit of the Eternal is impossible, courage, strength, unconquerable tenacity and self-devotion to a great task; last, as the Brahmin, so to purify body & mind and nature that he may see the Eternal reflected in himself as in an unsoiled mirror. Having once seen God, man can have no further object in life than to reach and possess Him.’³¹ " And in the end to arrive at the divinest figure and most dynamic soul-power of this fourfold activity is a wide doorway to a swiftest and largest reality of the most high spiritual perfection. This we can do if we turn the action of the Swadharma into a worship of the inner Godhead, the universal Spirit, the transcendent Purushottama and, eventually, surrender the whole action into His hands, mayi sannyasya karmani .³⁶ Then, as we get beyond the limitation of the three gunas, so also do we get beyond the division of the fourfold law and beyond the limitation of all distinctive dharmas , sarvadharman parityajya . The Spirit takes up the individual into the universal Swabhava , perfects and unifies the fourfold soul of nature in us and does its self-determined works according to the divine will and the accomplished power of the godhead in the creature."³² ‘Every individual Jivatman must become the perfect Kshatriya before he can become the Brahmin .’² The ‘true Brahmin is samo manapamanayoh, he accepts indifferently worldly honour and dishonour and cares only for the truth and the right.’¹⁹ A Sadhaka of integral Yoga will pursue sadhana in four stages (1) that concentrates on the glories of the second new birth (material birth is considered as first birth, once born) of the Soul, a decisive and irreversible break in consciousness, twice-born, Dvija , (2) individual strong Soul power on the surface, Instrument, Yantra , (3) manifestation of special Divine Force from behind the veil, Emanation, Vibhuti, and (4) a Sadhaka can have the aspiration to become one, possess and hold together the dual Godhead, Avatara, in the heart. So, a Sadhaka of integral Yoga will be like Arjuna of the Gita and he will ascend the seven stairs of Consciousness that are of tamasic man, rajasic man, sattwic man, Dvija, Yantra, Vibhuti and Purushottam or Supramental Consciousness of Avatara . In a tamasic man inertia aspect of the three modes of Nature is strong. In a rajasic man desire and personal will to do action is strong. A sattwic man attains limited harmony, wisdom and happiness within three Gunas . In a Dvija , the Psychic and Spiritual being open intermittently and in him, the double evolution of Spirit and Intellect resume action. In a Yantra, the movement of consciousness between Psychic and Spiritual beings is established. In a Vibhuti, Psychic and Spiritual beings are universalised. And beyond it is the Consciousness of Avatar. Twice-born Soul, Dvija : ²⁰ The common initial object fixed for beginners of all traditional Yoga is the liberation of the Soul in the heart from Ignorance, the release of Spiritual being above the head and their union with the supreme Self and one life span seems to be sufficient to realise these objectives. This is further extended for the beginners of integral Yoga who are identified as ‘unconquerable pilgrim souls’¹⁴ in Spirit’s endless journey extending over many births and bodies. Their outstanding object of Yoga is the possession of mind, life and body by a hierarchy of higher Consciousness, to live without ego and enlargement of partial being and consciousness into complete being and comprehensive consciousness. They must reject the opposition of their own sceptical instrumental Nature and begin their long slow preparation with the faith that nothing can prevent them from overcoming the present imperfection and constantly filling them with more Spiritual experiences leading to this inevitable goal. They do not accept themselves as conscious creatures crawling on the globe with aimless circling, nor cling to half way resting place or half-found truth between Matter and Spirit, nor weeping earth, a senseless whirling around sun to serve a purposeless task in the grooves of Ignorance. Both the individual and the earth are an incomplete account of integral Truth and they have a mystic motive, a golden glorious Spiritual future, the Divine destiny and fulfilled happy completeness waiting for their ecstatic manifestation. Instrument, Yantra :²¹ The principal support of a Sadhaka of integral Yoga is equality, surrender and oneness by which he gets unchanging silence, eternal peace, immense calm, liberated purity and power of concentration. He does not permit any exulted abnormality, great excitation of power, over-eager to accomplish any work, impose any partial will, infra-rational and irrational movement of any kind and the experiencing Consciousness must preserve a calm balance, the sufficiently vigilant passive mind which is obedient to overhead guidance, an unfailing clarity, power of self-criticism, right discrimination, intellectual deliberation, a vivid perception, coordination, firm vision of things, pace of time must be respected, a sane grasp of facts, understands with sympathy the actuality of all energies behind the present appearance, a high Spiritual optimism, one pointed integral process with whole and many-sided progress and moves forward towards the unfurling of their Divine possibilities. He can have no dealings with weakness, selfishness, claim of violent personal will and motive of personal fame; a Divine strength and courage, a passivity of the mind calmly and strongly open to the high Spirit, a Divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would become in his continuous effort. He has the patience and courage to uncover the truth of existence, clarity and humility to admit the limitation of his existing knowledge, Spiritualised intelligence to develop an intermediate necessity of intuitive discrimination which dispels all darkness of understanding and dazzling confusion, Spirit’s deep quietude which can reunite existence and consciousness with the Divine Ananda, higher aspiration that can call down true knowledge, open-hearted to face and overcome the problem of integration, equal effort for Divine fulfillment of his volitional, emotional and intellectual parts and bringing in persistently the Psychic and Spiritual Light into recalcitrant parts of Nature. Accepting life and as per the capacity of his universalised body, he has to bear the great part of earth’s burden in addition to his own heavy burden of surface and Subconscient sheath. In the Spiritual harmony of existence, the greater he accepts and embraces the world’s problems, miseries and sufferings, the greater the Divine Grace that seeks to descend upon his vessel and he has the responsibility of manifesting and calling down the Divine Shakti much more than his existing individual capacity. The instrumental action of a Divine Worker culminates in an inner and not in an outer action, a Spiritual action and not giving up of physical works into the Brahman . When the works are reposed on the Brahman, brahmanyadhaya, ¹⁷ the personality of the instrumental doer ceases; though he does all works he does nothing; for he has consecrated the work, doership of work and fruits of work and his highest realisation is that the Divine becomes the action, the result of action and doer of the action. A perfect and integral Divine instrument is at once the receiver of overhead Wisdom and Light of Integral Jnana Yoga and "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."³⁰ His own personal will is tuned and identified with the Divine Will of Integral Karma Yoga and his heart becomes the centre of overflow of Divine Love, Delight and Beauty of Integral Bhakti Yoga . Emanation, Vibhuti : ²² Instead of isolation from mankind through the ochre robe of Sannyasin, which is a symbol of refusal of all compromise with falsehood and complete surrender of lower Nature, an integral Yogi wears the garb of the world and his robe is a radiating Light, Beauty and all-inclusive Love of which he is an emanation of ‘garb-less deity.’¹¹ In him the Soul and Nature reveal equal Divine Presence and Balance and fuse in a wide harmony which lives in God’s extreme perfection that can exist by an ever-extending scroll of the Infinite. Thus, he establishes a Spiritual consciousness in the Being followed by an extension of this Spirituality to all the parts of Nature. He can create what his Spirit has dreamed and his perfect action is the outcome of his perfect inner passivity. His dream of Beauty’s sunlit passage is realised in an eternal Love, Beauty and Delight, self-existent, all-pervading and equal behind all outer appearances; his dream of perfect Truth in the eternal variation of existence is invariable and is the secret of all change and goal of all wisdom; his dream of comprehensive Divine Action in the omnipotent and self-revealed Will is inherent forever in all things and all creatures and translates itself in the eternal rhythm of the world movement. Consciousness of the dual Avatara : ²³ “And it (Matter becoming conscious of the Spirit) will go on multiplying and intensifying until the entire universe becomes the total Avatar of the Supreme.”²⁸ The Mother The Lord will possess his universe only when the universe will have consciously become the Lord."³⁷ The Mother An Avatara is a special manifestation of Supreme, Parameswar, whereas a Vibhuti realises himself as 'as the child, the son of God, the Bhakta '³⁵ when his Psychic being is awake and 'as one centre of the multiple Divine'³ ⁵ when his Spiritual being is awake. A Sadhaka of integral Yoga must remember this distinction; 'for, otherwise, if there is the least vital egoism, one may begin to think of oneself as an Avatara …'³⁵ In the fourth stage, a Sadhaka realises the eternal and universal Self, an increasing manifestation of the Divine, the Ishwara in all his being, nature and action. Now he is constantly and uninterruptedly aware of the Divine Presence in him. The Divine is felt as the possessor of his Being and Nature, above him as the Ruler and Over-ruler of all the workings. All his consciousness becomes Divine Consciousness, all his knowledge becomes Divine Knowledge, all his will becomes Divine Will, all his feeling becomes Divine Love and all his action becomes Divine action. The distinction between Shakti and Ishwara begins to disappear in their sole Oneness, there is only the conscious Indwelling, Over-dwelling and Identity with the Divine. The Ignorance of the ego is entirely removed and there is only the eternal portion of the Self, amsa sanatana¹⁵ and he becomes a conscious centre of unity and freedom. He lives fulfilled in the complete Presence, Power and Joy of the Divine. His emanative identity uplifts to the Consciousness of the Supreme in His totality where his meeting of Shakti and Ishwara in Spiritual plane is further elevated as Maya and Brahman in the Supramental plane, Vijnana ; he emerges and establishes himself in holding together the dual Avatara consciousness of Para-Shakti and Purushottama state, assumes a human name and form and extends his greatest world action and Divine Lila .¹⁸ Such ascension of Consciousness is observed from the state of Vibhuti to the state of dual Avatara in King Aswapati’s following Spiritual experience: “There he beheld in their mighty union’s poise (a) The figure of deathless Two-in-One, (b) A single being in two bodies clasped, (c) A diarchy of two united souls, (d) Seated absorbed in deep creative joy; (e) Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.” (f) Savitri-295 (a: dual Avatar’s Divine union, b: symbol of Supramental Oneness, c: symbol of Spiritual Oneness, d: symbol of Psychic Oneness, e: symbol of Bliss Oneness, f: symbol of dual Avatara’s new creation and holding together the race.) Through these four stairs mankind can develop the capacity for indefinite ascending and descending movement of comprehensive Consciousness, ‘which will enable him progressively to manifest God in the body, --the universal Incarnation ’¹⁶ Or he ‘shall yet grow to supermind and spirit and become the Godhead in man who is aware of his true and integral self and the divine universality of his nature.’¹ Thus, the vision of universal incarnation of Godhead concealed in all humanity is revealed and realised in all life by Jivatma’s union and oneness with Paramatma, superseding Mother Nature’s earlier success of manifesting the individual Incarnation of Godhead in man. The eye of the spirit can see and mark out ‘the rising godhead of man in the great Vibhuti.’ ²⁴ The future ‘high task’ ¹² of integral Yoga is to call down the Supreme Lord and His magic Will in its entirety that can break down all established laws, all the limitations of mortal life instantly; search for that fire of Love which can bring the dead back to life; that Power which can cancel the things once done; that supreme Consciousness which can arrest the advance of time and slipping moments and that Bliss which can persuade the past perfect hours to live again with greater intensity. If we examine deeply into the problem of existence, we conclude that every physical law and resistance are nothing for Him. But this kind of comprehensive direct Divine intervention can take place only at the extreme limit of ascension and descent of Consciousness in a universalised subtle and causal body and all are pressed towards the very last second to reach an apex fire of Consciousness of world destiny where all is won and saved by dynamic Divine intervention or all is lost and destroyed by static Divine non-intervention or Divine’s witness state for the race. “And earth sink down with the weight of the Infinite.” Savitri-18 “Abolished were the scripts of destiny.” Savitri-82 “No silent peak is found where Time can rest.” Savitri-197 “A touch can alter the fixed front of Fate.” Savitri-256 “A new beginning flowers in word and laugh, A new charm brings back the old extreme delight:” Savitri-275 “A passion of the flesh becoming spirit,” Savitri-278 “And with one gesture change all future time.” Savitri-345 “A Magician’s formulas have made Matter’s laws… All here can change if the Magician choose.” Savitri-457 “All now is changed, yet all is still the same.” Savitri-719 The ‘mighty task ’³ of integral Yoga is to call down the entire truth and purity of Supreme Divine Love through immense, formidable and stupendous pulsation carrying the universe further in its manifestation, to heal all the painful vibration of life, deliver the mental, vital, physical love from their utter limitations and deficiencies to the extent of realisation of deathless Love with all unreality of mortality, disease, decay and accident and reveal to them their true abounding share of the universal intimacy and the oneness, the ascending ecstasy and the descending rapture. In the Supramental consciousness, the object of all transient emotion would be fully satisfied by embracing all contact of human relation in a purified flame Force. “The calm delight that weds one soul to all,” Savitri-6 “Proclaiming a panacea for all Time’s ills” Savitri-198 “Healed were all things that Time’s torn heart had made” Savitri-232 “Wrong could not come where all was light and love.” Savitri-314 “All-Love throb single in one human heart.” Savitri-345 “Loved all and spoke no word and made no sign,” Savitri-358 “They reached the one-self in all through boundless love.” Savitri-381 “He is still the godhead by which all can change.” Savitri-397 “All-love was hers and its one heavenly cord” Savitri-471 “He labours in the depths, exults on the heights; He shall remake thy universe, O Death.” Savitri-592 “And all is known and all is clasped by Love” Savitri-633 “The Love our hearts call down to heal all strife,” Savitri-661 The ‘enormous task ’⁴ of integral Yoga is to call down the Supreme relation of Sri Radha and Sri Krishna, the Mother and the Master of all life through Their Supramental Incarnation, Emanation and Instrumentation to the nether darkest land of Inconscient plane through prepared vessels and flooding the physical substance of Their manifestation, the Gopis, with intensest and completest Ananda , Love and Beauty. They have suffered human birth to bear the earth’s burden of million wounds with Their ‘imperishable eyes of veilless love.’⁸ “This whole wide world is only he and she.” Savitri-63 “The Two who are one are the secret of all power,” Savitri-63 “She burned in his sweet intolerable blaze.” Savitri-125 “He stood with her on meditating peaks … And saw her loose into infinity ” Savitri-191 “He is lost in her, she is his heaven here.” Savitri-275 “Their trance of bliss sustained the mobile world.” Savitri-295 “Her consciousness grew aware of him alone” Savitri-410 “The wedding of the eternal Lord and Spouse Took place again on earth in human forms:” Savitri-411 “A burning of two bodies in one flame.” Savitri-468 “And Krishna and Radha for ever entwined in bliss,” Savitri-525 “The Master and the Mother of all lives” Savitri-525 “Inscribe the long romance of Thee (Savitri) and Me (Supreme).” Savitri-699 “The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door,” Savitri-705 The highest secret and seemingly 'impossible task ’¹⁰ of integral Yoga is to call down Truth supreme which is identified as the ‘earth’s last salvation,’¹³ param siddhi, of integral Yoga by whose intervention the universal Subconscient and Inconscient sheath of the earth will be wholly transformed and illumined with Divine Light, Power and Bliss. All the forces of lower nature, nether dark adverse universal Subconscient and Inconscient sons of falsehood and mother of evil hostile forces will either suffer illumination of Divine transformation or will be destroyed by the pressure of the descending Divine Truth-Light. “It left mind’s distance from the Truth supreme” Savitri-44 “A greater power must come, a larger light. Although Light grows on earth and Night recedes, Yet till the evil is slain in its own home And Light invades the world’s inconscient base And perished has the adversary Force, He (last Avatar ) still must labour on, his work half done.” Savitri-448-49 “A supreme light in the truth-conscious Vast:” Savitri-484 "Beyond the earth, but meant for delivered earth, Wisdom and joy prepare their perfect crown; Truth superhuman calls to thinking man." Savitri-631 “A Truth supreme has forced the world to be;” Savitri-658 “Fragments of Truth supreme have lit his soul,” Savitri-659 “All-ruler, ruled by none, the Truth supreme,” Savitri-661 “The Truth supreme, vast and impersonal” Savitri-662 “O Death, if thou couldst touch the Truth supreme ” Savitri-663 “If Truth supreme transcends her shadow here” Savitri-663 "But when the hour of the Divine draws near The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time (as the last Avatar ) And God be born into the human clay In forms made ready by your human lives Then shall the Truth supreme be given to men:” Savitri-705 All the revelatory aspects of the Divine, myriad modes of His self-manifestation, and all the Soul’s greatest, highest and fullest Spiritual experiences must be called down as partial fulfillment of the unending, numerous and exhaustless riches and splendours of the Spirit. Then we are capable of integrating the Divine Call through absolute surrender that could dare to clasp the body of the Brahman and hold between our hands the World-Mother’s Feet and all contact of the world is experienced as His single touch in blissful equality. OM TAT SAT References: 1: CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-789, 2: CWSA-17/Isha Upanishad/p-195-196, 3: Savitri-460, 4: Savitri- 58, 5: The Gita-4.24, 6: The Gita-4.13, 7: The Gita-13.18, 10.6, 8: Savitri-677, 9: Savitri-311, 10: Savitri-177, 11: Savitri- 430, 12: Savitri- 366, 13: Savitri-135, 14: Savitri-683, 15: The Gita-15.7, 16: “We have the emergence of that Conscious Being in an involved and inevitably evolving Life, Mind and Supermind as the condition of our activities; for it is this evolution which has enabled man to appear in Matter and it is this evolution which will enable him progressively to manifest God in the body, — the universal Incarnation. ” CWSA-21/The Life Divine/p-64, “The man is not, when we look closely, himself alone, a rigidly separate self-existent individual, but humanity in a mind and body of itself; and humanity too is no rigidly separate self-existent species or genus, it is the All-existence, the universal Godhead figuring itself in the type of humanity; there it works out certain possibilities, develops, evolves, as we now say, certain powers of its manifestations.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-152-153, “The seed of Godhead sleeps in mortal hearts, The flower of Godhead grows on the world-tree: All shall discover God in self and things .” Savitri-446, "The two opposed each other with their eyes, Woman (Savitri) and universal god (Death God): around her," Savitri-574 "Her strength was founded on the cosmic mights; The universal Mother’s love was hers." Savitri-8 17: The Gita-5.10, 18: CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-770, 19: CWSA-18/Kena and other Upanishads/p-267, “Equal to friend and enemy, equal to honour and insult, mana-apamanoh , pleasure and pain, praise and blame, grief and happiness, heat and cold (to all that troubles with opposite affections the normal nature), silent, content and well-satisfied with anything and everything, not attached to person or thing, place or home, firm in mind (because it is constantly seated in the highest self and fixed for ever on the one divine object of his love and adoration), that man is dear to Me.” The Gita-12.18-19, 20: “In the ancient Indian distinction between the once born and the twice born (Dvija), it is to this material man that the former description can be applied. He does Nature’s inferior works; he assures the basis for her higher activities; but not to him easily are opened the glories of her second birth.” Sri Aurobindo/ CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-23, 21: “Men in the world have two lights, duty and principle; but he who has passed over to God, has done with both and replaced them by God’s will. If men abuse thee for this, care not, O divine instrument, but go on thy way like the wind or the sun fostering and destroying.” Sri Aurobindo/The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/Vol-10/p-285 22: “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.” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-374, " Men of a stronger force get more of the soul-power to the surface and develop what we call a strong or great personality, they have in them something of the Vibhuti as described by the Gita , vibhutimat sattvam srımad urjitam eva va, a higher power of being often touched with or sometimes full of some divine afflatus or more than ordinary manifestation of the Godhead which is indeed present in all, even in the weakest or most clouded living being, but here some special force of it begins to come out from behind the veil of the average humanity, and there is something beautiful, attractive, splendid or powerful in these exceptional persons which shines out in their personality, character, life and work." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-741 23: “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 consciousness.” The Mother/The Mother’s Centenary Works/13/p-32, 24: “Finally, it (the liberated man) sees the upward urge of the striving powers of the Will to be towards Godhead; it respects, welcomes, encourages all high manifestations of energy and quality, the flaming tongues of the Divinity, the mounting greatnesses of soul and mind and life in their intensities uplifted from the levels of the lower nature towards heights of luminous wisdom and knowledge, mighty power, strength, capacity, courage, heroism, benignant sweetness and ardour and grandeur of love and self-giving, preeminent virtue, noble action, captivating beauty and harmony, fine and godlike creation. The eye of the spirit sees and marks out the rising godhead of man in the great Vibhuti .” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-373-74, 25: "Thought and knowledge, war and government, production and distribution, labour and service were carefully differentiated functions of society, each assigned to those who were naturally called to it and providing the right means by which they could individually proceed towards their spiritual development and self-perfection." Sri Aurobindo/CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-50, "Each Jiva possesses in his spiritual nature these four sides , is a soul of knowledge, a soul of strength and of power, a soul of mutuality and interchange, a soul of works and service, but one side or other predominates in the action and expressive spirit and tinges the dealings of the soul with its embodied nature; it leads and gives its stamp to the other powers and uses them for the principal strain of action, tendency, experience." CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-523, "All action must be made in it part of the God-life, our acts of knowledge, our acts of power and production and creation, our acts of joy and beauty and the soul’s pleasure, our acts of will and endeavour and struggle and not our acts only of love and beneficent service. Its way to do these things will be not outward and mental, but inward and spiritual, and to that end it will bring into all activities, whatever they are, the spirit of divine love, the spirit of adoration and worship, the spirit of happiness in the Divine and in the beauty of the Divine so as to make all life a sacrifice of the works of the soul’s love to the Divine, its cult of the Master of its existence." CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-162, “At first, the higher Love and Truth will fulfil its movement in the sadhaka according to the essential law or way of his own nature. For that is the special aspect of the divine Nature, the particular power of the supreme Shakti , out of which his soul has emerged into the Play, not limited indeed by the forms of this law or way, for the soul is infinite. But still its stuff of nature bears that stamp, evolves fluently along those lines or turns around the spiral curves of that dominating influence. He will manifest the divine Truth-movement according to the temperament of the sage or the lion-like fighter or the lover and enjoyer or the worker and servant or in any combination of essential attributes (of fourfold Soul force replacing the three gunas) that may constitute the form given to his being by its own inner urge. It is this self-nature playing freely in his acts which men will see in him and not a conduct cut, chalked out, artificially regulated, by any lesser rule or by any law from outside.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-212-213 26: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-747, 27: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-523, 28: “The intervals separating these various incarnations seem to become shorter and shorter, as if, to the extent that Matter became more and more ready, the action could accelerate and become more and more rapid in its movement, more and more conscious too, more and more effective and decisive. And it will go on multiplying and intensifying until the entire universe becomes the total Avatar of the Supreme. ” The Mother’s Centenary Works (second edition)/Vol.9/p-333-334, 29: 28th March-1964, The Mother’s Agenda-5/100, 30: “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 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, 31: CWSA-17/Isha Upanishad/p-195, 32: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-524, 33: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-750-751, 34: Savitri-690, 35: “The phrase “central being” in our Yoga is usually applied to the portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. This central being has two forms — above, it is the Jivatman, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes, — below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides over it; the psychic being stands behind the manifestation in life and supports it…The natural attitude of the psychic being is to feel itself as the child, the son of God, the Bhakta ; it is a portion of the Divine, one in essence, but in the dynamics of the manifestation there is always even in identity a difference. The Jivatman, on the contrary, lives in the essence and can merge itself in identity with the Divine; but it too, the moment it presides over the dynamics of the manifestation, knows itself as one centre of the multiple Divine, not as the Parameshwara . It is important to remember this distinction ; for, otherwise, if there is the least vital egoism, one may begin to think of oneself as an Avatara…” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-61, “But still the Vibhuti is not the Avatar; otherwise Arjuna, Vyasa, Ushanas would be Avatars as well as Krishna, even if in a less degree of the power of Avatarhood. The divine quality is not enough; there must be the inner consciousness of the Lord and Self governing the human nature by his divine presence. The heightening of the power of the qualities is part of the becoming, bhutagrama, (The Gita-8.19, 9.8) an ascent in the ordinary manifestation; in the Avatar there is the special manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a form of individual humanity, atmanam srijami , (The Gita-4.7) and conscious not only behind the veil but in the outward nature. ” CWSA/19/Essays on the Gita/p-161 36: "Giving up thy works to Me, with thy consciousness founded in the Self, free from desire and egoism, fight delivered from the fever of thy soul." The Gita-3.30, 37: The Mother's Agenda/October 10, 1958, “The difficulty is that she seems to have only vairagya for worldly life without any knowledge or special call for this Yoga and this Yoga and the life here are quite different things from ordinary Yoga and ordinary Asrams . It is not a life of meditative retirement as elsewhere. Moreover it would be impossible for us to decide anything without seeing her and knowing at close hand what she is like. We are not just now for taking more inmates into the Asram except in a very few cases.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-556, “Reply that residence in the Asrama is only allowed to sadhakas who have been accepted into Sri Aurobindo’s path of Yoga, and not to all of them. This path is a special way of Yoga, difficult and different from others ; only those are accepted who have a special call to it.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-559, “All are not equally capable of practising Yoga and in Yoga itself some paths are more difficult than others. There are some who have a special call to a path; others have no call; though they may feel drawn to Yoga , it is to other disciplines that they must go. This path is especially difficult and even some of those admitted to it find great difficulty in following it. Therefore Sri Aurobindo is not willing to admit any new disciples unless he has reason to think that they have a special call for it or a special capacity.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-560-561

The Divine Call "Hearts touched by thy (Savitri's) love shall answer to my (Supreme Lord's) call," Savitri-701 “Two irrefutable signs prove that one is in relation with the Supramental : 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, “The capacities required to gain access to the supramental world . Capacity for indefinite expansion of consciousness on all planes including the material. Limitless plasticity, to be able to follow the movement of becoming. Perfect equality abolishing all possibility of ego reaction." THE MOTHER The Mother’s Agenda/January 12, 1962. “The Divinity mentioned by Sri Aurobindo is NOT A PERSON, but a condition to be shared and lived by all those who prepare themselves for it." THE MOTHER TMCW-15/Words of The Mother-III/p-104 "All he had been and all towards which he grew Must now be left behind or else transform Into a self of That which has no name." Savitri-307 “And actually, to do Sri Aurobindo’s work is to realize the Supramental on earth. So I began that work and, as a matter of fact, this was the only thing I asked of my body. I told it, ‘Now you shall set right everything which is out of order and gradually realize this intermediate supermanhood between man and the supramental being or, in other words, what I call the superman.’... And this is what I have been doing for the last eight years, and even much more during the past two years, since 1956. Now it is the work of each day, each minute.” The Mother The Mother’s Agenda- 10th May 1958 “When the Supramental manifests, an unequalled joy spreads over the earth.” The Mother TMCW-15/Words of the Mother-III/p-91 “It seems to me that the purpose of the Supramental Yoga is to dissipate ignorance from the entire cosmos and remove the darkness of earthly nature, in order to make the divine life possible.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-279-280 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, division, denial and leap away from the problem. 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 unregenerated Earth to find elsewhere his Divine substance. The speciality and superiority of integral Yoga over all the Religious and Yogic schools is that a fourth fundamental theory is sufficiently nurtured¹⁹ which is integration, synthesis, mutual indwelling and reconciliation of the above three Religious factors and it is by knowing each in its completeness that the three reconcile to become one in our total Consciousness and total Knowledge. It recognises the other subtle states of Matter or an ascending series of the Divine gradations of substance and through acceptance of this higher law of ascending and descending Consciousness, 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 Supraterrestrial or otherworldly for a condition and connecting link (for bridging the gulf between Suparacosmic and terrestrial Matter) and the cosmic and Terrestrial for its field and circumstance, and with human Mind, Life and Body for its nodus, turning point and dynamic mould into which Supreme existence can be poured in, initially intermittently and finally continuously for a higher and even highest perfection. In India, three types of Divines are generally adored. The first type of Divine belongs to Moderate Spirituality, who is identified as the giver of boons and curses. Devotees worship Him with rapt attention with the intention of getting favour¹⁵ from Him and leading an easy²¹ and comfortable life. He is aware in his mind of the Divine’s personal form and oblivious of His Impersonal Spiritual form; thus, he transforms the high truth of swift Spiritual evolution into the slow evolution of religious movement. The second type of Divine belongs to later Vedantists , Illusionists and Nirvanists, where Brahman is experienced as That, which, being known, all becomes unreal and an incomprehensible mystery or as the Kena Upanishad recognises, ‘That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore.”⁴ This adoration of the Impersonal Divine of Jnana Yoga/Sankhya is identified as the principal motive and passage for higher Spiritual life for developing Souls/traditional Sadhakas /beginners of integral Yoga, dvija. The third type of Divine belongs to Ancient Vedantists where Brahman is experienced as That which being known all is known and nothing is lost¹⁶ or Brahman is experienced as the triple formula of Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Self. (1) The Self is in all things, which is the basis of our Psychic individuality in the universal; (2) all things are within the Self, which is the basis of our Spiritual oneness in difference and (3) all things are made up of the stuff of the Self, which is the basis of our Supramental oneness with all. In this quest, a relation between Spirit and Matter is worked out and the force of Brahman penetrates into material life. In this trend, adoration of the Divine’s personal form (as Purushottama , Supramental Self) is identified as more important than His impersonal form (as Akshara Purusha , Spiritual Being). This subordination of Impersonal Divine to Personal Divine is the basis of Sadhana for a developed Soul¹ or Sadhaka of integral Yoga. Thus, Matter and Spirit get equal attention and importance and are reconciled. The Moderate and later Vedantic Spirituality are identified as escapist Spirituality¹³ and they cannot confront Death. In ancient Vedantic Spirituality, four fold Spiritual energy are accumulated which later confronts with four imperfections or negations of Matter that of Ignorance, Falsehood, Suffering and Death; these imperfections are purified, transformed and perfected into Knowledge, Truth, Delight and Immortality. During the hour of death and extreme adversity, the ancient Vedantists confront them, whereas Moderates submit before them and later Vedantists accept Death as a passage to Param Dham . The God of popular Religion is a Power who must do favours to the devotees; they always want something, demand something, expect to get something and their whole life is a perpetual bargain to satisfy their desire. Their idea of the Divine is something that knows little more than they do and is at their exclusive service. The Gita confirms² that those who adore the Divine to satisfy their desire do not experience movement in higher planes of consciousness. In Spiritual life, this conditional worship is transformed into self-offering, self-giving, and self-consecration of what one has, what one is, and what one will become. Pulling of the Divine Force²⁰ is replaced with offering of oneself to the Divine. The self-fulfilment by (1) sacrifice with Self-control, atma-samyama ,⁶ and rejection of lower Nature, vairagya ⁹ or (2) motiveless sacrificial work by renouncing the fruit of work, phala tyagam ,⁷ or (3) desiring nothing from the supreme Lover and His creation, anapekhya ,⁸ leads one to higher planes of Consciousness and these three fundamental truths are less easily grasped by bound souls. A religious man wants to take something from the Divine, pull the Divine Force out of impatience, while a Spiritual man wants to give himself to the Divine, and waits all infinity without hurry for the fulfilment of his Divine mission. "The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. "¹⁴ The basis of Spiritual life is an intense need to become one with the Divine, to melt in the Divine, and to disappear in the Divine. The aim of Spiritual and Supramental action is not miraculous realisations without lasting results filling the world with admiration but a frequent or constant natural miracle that alone effects a lasting transformation and by full mastery of constantly calling down of the luminous dynamic Divine Shakti one can face/solve all the problems of existence which is the logical, natural and inevitable consequence of intense aspiration, sincere endeavour and firm conviction. The Divinity visioned by Sri Aurobindo is an inherent all-pervading Consciousness-Force, ‘a half-veiled Manifestation present and near to us here in the universe’³ that does not reject but accepts and transcends the limitation of the personal God of popular Religion, which is a form restricted by his quality, representation, name, personality and is distinguished from all other Deities of other doctrines. The disadvantage of the gospel of personal extra-cosmic omnipotent Godhead who has created and governs this world in most of the religious schools is that this worship forms an unbridgeable gulf¹⁷ between God and man, Brahman and the world and the possibility of man ascending to the status of God becomes remote. The error created by man in his relation with God, a partial manifestation of the Divine, elevates an actual and practical differentiation in Being, Consciousness and Force into an essential division, confusion and ethical difficulty. If man has to ascend to the status of God, then he has to go beyond the paralysing division of the mind where Knowledge is not self-divided, Force is not self-divided, Being is not self-divided and there will be no idea clash with other ideas and no opposition of the will or force with other will or force. A Sadhak of integral Yoga has to realise Integral Godhead primarily as comprehensive Consciousness, Vijnana , the force of blissful Oneness, Harmony and Order, the harmonious invasion of 'fiery ocean of felicity ,'¹² Truth, and Light; secondarily as impersonal Spiritual truth of the multiple Divine Concentration, Jnana, and this Light has descended sea like into an evolutionary world of Cosmic Ignorance and tertiarily as apprehensive Consciousness, Prajnana, cosmic differentiation, mental adoration of personal aspect of monotheistic and polytheistic Deities, Brahman and an infinite multiplicity of ignorant and suffering beings unaware of the Self. The Divine or the Brahman of the East or the Absolute of the West has in its nature two sides or two terms of the Being, the fundamental Reality and the Becoming, an effectual Reality; it is only a pure infinite essence that can manifest in infinite ways. It is at once the supreme Person, the Being in its transcendental and cosmic Consciousness and Force, the Sachchidananda with infinite Quality and without any Quality, Saguna and Nirguna , Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent which informs, embraces and governs all existences, the Controller of all energies, the Conscious in all that is Conscient and Inconscient, the inhabitant of all souls, minds, hearts and bodies, the Ruler and Over-ruler of all works, the Seer and Overseer of all happenings, the Enjoyer of all Delight, the Creator who has built all things in His own being, the All Person of whom all beings are personalities; in His Consciousness-Force He is the Creatrix Divine Mother, a Power and Energy working out of the Being; in His Being He is the Creator Father of all that is; in His Beauty and Joy He is the All-Beloved and All-Lover; in His existence He is the Friend of all creature; in His dynamism of Will to light and vision and Will to power and works He is the Master of all action; in His wisdom of state of Knowledge and power of Knowledge, He is the All-Teacher; in His world play He is the Divine Playmate. The Unknowable is something to us supreme, wonderful and ineffable by our mind-created speech, which continually formulates itself to our consciousness and continually escapes from the formulation it has made; but even when we are most aware of it, we cannot describe it because our language and thought can deal only with the relative. The Absolute does not deny the truth of His own existence but is so infinitely expansive that no finite positive iti iti (It is this, it is that) and finite negative, neti neti (It is not this, it is not that) can be formulated which can exhaust It or bind It to the limitation of the definition. So, the Divine can be limited neither by formlessness nor by form, neither by unity nor by multiplicity, neither by immobile stable status of Self nor by dynamic mobility of Nature; it can be restricted neither by these illimitable attributes nor by our most affirmative experiences which exceed all definitions, nor even can it be expressed by our largest conception of original self-concentration of Sachchidananda. Though the Unknowable is not knowable by the finite mind or to our limited consciousness, it is not altogether and in every way unknowable; it is self-evident to an infinite Consciousness or a knowledge by Identity and the Spiritual Being within us can explore all the ranges of Consciousness from the dark Inconscient plane to the highest plane of Sachchidananda to unravel the whole of the Unknowable and its complete Divine manifestation. The human liberated Soul carries within him the triune Consciousness of the Individual, the Universal and the Transcendent, can alone work out at its critical turning point the movement of Divine self-manifestation which appears to us as involution and evolution of the impersonal Divine Consciousness between two terms of Ignorance and Knowledge. He is no longer considered as a subordinate or minor circumstance in the Divine Play or Lila of the Nara-Narayana , but one with the total movement of the Infinite, capable of incarnating Godhead Consciousness in himself. The individual Soul in Becoming arrives at Infinite Self-Knowledge and All-Knowledge when it knows the Supreme and Absolute as Bliss of Existence, Bliss of Consciousness and Bliss of Force or Will and possesses the Nature and Consciousness of the Transcendent and the Universal, the unity of One Being and all Beings and to live in that Knowledge and to transform his life by the evolution of seven-fold Power of Being (Brahman, the ancient Seers said is the Matter, is the Life, is the Mind, is the Supermind, Vijnana and is the triune glory of Sachchidananda ) is his Divine destiny. The main method or the indispensable self-disciplines of integral Yoga are derived from Ancient Vedanta (for example, the Isha, Taittiriya, Kena Upanishads etc) with comprehensive concentration as the principal instrument of sadhana , whereas the substitute methods or the dispensable self-disciplines of this Yoga are derived from the later Vedanta and the Tantra , where exclusive concentration is the chief instrument of Sadhana. The difference between the two Vedantic quests are that in the former two great formulas of existence, “One without a second”, ekamevadvitiyam ¹⁰ and “All this is the Brahman” , sarvam khalu idam brahma ¹¹ are successfully combined and hence Brahman is experienced as That which being known all is known, yasmin vijnate sarvam idam vijnatam ; whereas in the latter quest exclusive importance is given to the first formula of existence to the total exclusion of the second formula and hence Brahman is experienced as That, which being known, all becomes unreal and an incomprehensible mystery, (mental) Maya. The exclusive quest of later Vedanta was a departure from the comprehensive quest of the ancient Vedanta, and the vehement, impatient longing of the former to possess the Divine exclusively gave birth to the psycho-physical methods of sadhana , whereas in the latter, integral faith, patience and courage to search the truth equally in Matter and Spirit gave birth to Spiritual methods of sadhana . The disadvantages of psycho-physical methods are that they stress the rise of the six Kundalini chakras from below, where the physical presence of the guru is indispensable in order to avoid any Spiritual fall and lower formulations are used for higher Spiritual gain. A dependency on psycho-physical methods only is to subject oneself to outer nature leading towards mechanised living, artificially constructed unity, and ‘will bring in a limitation and subjection to Prakriti, '¹⁸’ which can give birth to tamasic i mpatience and rajasic ambition of the exclusive kind. But if it can be an efficient subordinate of the Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental methods, then it will be the most powerful of all means for physical transformation. Integral Yoga through Savitri book proposes a Sadhaka to attain the highest status of Jnana and Bhakti Yoga by becoming Karma Yogi or by performing consecrated action. It proposes to pursue sadhana or Karma Yoga in double seclusion. Seclusion from the enjoyment of the five sense organs and seclusion from the attraction of the outer world. Karma Yoga establishes a Sadhaka in kinghood of possession of inner and outer kingdom; Jnana Yoga establishes a Sadhaka in becoming an adventurer and pioneer of new Consciousness and of protecting the Kingdom or of guarding Truth’s diamond throne; Bhakti Yoga fulfils life of outer kingdom by manifestation of Beauty, Delight and Love. It enlarges the inner kingdom as the Divine 'Love’s golden wings have power to ’⁵ bridge the void in Consciousness; ‘The feet of love tread naked hardest '’⁵ Subconscient and Inconscient worlds; Love labours in the depths of Inconscient, 'exults on the heights'⁵ of Sachchidananda ’ to divinise life. After one is established in the above three Yogas, he reconciles them and out of the effort of reconciliation a fourth Yoga is born, known as Yoga of Self-perfection. This higher instrumentation is responsible for Subconscient, Inconscient and Cellular transformation action. These are identified as the highest Call of integral Yoga through which the Divine Contact in the material world is established. OM TAT SAT References: 1: “Arjuna said: Those seekers of Bhakti Yoga who thus by a constant union seek after Thy personal Form and those seekers of Jnana Yoga who seek after Thy unmanifest Immutable impersonal Form, which of them are greater Yoga? The Blessed Lord said those who are most united with Me and adore Me through constant union, emotional mind is settled in Me and are possessed of the supreme faith of Bhakti Yoga , I consider them to be the greatest Yogi.” The Gita-12.1, 2, 2: “The sacrifices offered with a view of getting personal fruit and benefit and also for ostentation, know that to be rajasic sacrifice.” (The Gita-17.12) “If one does work with attachment to the fruits of work then that sacrifice does not go to the Divine but to the ego, to Asura, Yakshas and Rakshasas .” (The Gita-17.4) “They who desire the fulfilment of the fruit of their works, siddhi , on earth sacrifice to Gods because by that sacrificial work without knowledge, one gets easy and swift result, khipram siddhirbhabati ,” (The Gita-4.12). " Therefore without attachment perform ever the work that is to be done (done for the sake of the world, lokasangraha , as is made clear immediately afterwards); for by doing work without attachment man attains to the highest." (The Gita-3.19) Sacrificial work with knowledge of the wheel of Works, evam pravartitam chakram, (The Gita-3.16) and without attachment leads to higher planes of Consciousness. “To walk on the path you must have a dauntless intrepidity, you must never turn back upon yourself with this mean, petty, weak, ugly movement that fear is…An indomitable courage, a perfect sincerity, a total self-giving to the extent that you do not calculate or bargain, you do not give with the idea of receiving, you do not offer yourself with the intention of being protected, you do not have a faith that needs proofs, — this is indispensable for advancing on the path, — this alone can shelter you against all dangers.” Words Of The Mother/Volume-15/P-190, 3: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-74, 4: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-72, "On the other hand, the weakness of a contemplative quietistic spirituality is that it arrives at this result by a too absolute abstraction and in the end it turns into a nothing or a fiction the human soul whose aspiration was yet all the time the whole sense of this attempt at union; for without the soul and its aspiration liberation and union could have no meaning. The little that this way of thinking recognises of his other powers of existence, it relegates to an inferior preliminary action which never arrives at any full or satisfying realisation in the Eternal and Infinite. Yet these things too which it restricts unduly, the potent will, the strong yearning of love, the positive light and all-embracing intuition of the conscious mental being are from the Divine, represent essential powers of him and must have some justification in their Source and some dynamic way of self-fulfilment in him." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-339-340, 5: Savitri-592, 6: The Gita-4.27, 7: The Gita-12.11, 12, 8: The Gita-12.16, “There is a love in which the emotion is turned towards the Divine in an increasing receptivity and growing union. What it receives from the Divine it pours out on others, but truly without demanding a return. If you are capable of that, then that is the highest and most satisfying way to love.” The Mother/(CWM-14, p. 122), “The true purpose of life —To live for the Divine, or to live for the Truth, or at least to live for one’s soul. And the true sincerity —To live for the Divine without expecting any benefit from Him in return.” TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-4, 9: The Gita-6.35, 13.8, 10: Chandogya Upanishad-6.2.1, 11: Chandogya Upanishad-3.14.1, 12: Savitri-237, 13: “To be was a prison, extinction the escape.” Savitri-288, (prison of Moderate Spirituality and extinction of Ascetic Spirituality) (Death said to Savitri) "Two only are the doors of man’s escape, Death of his body Matter’s gate to peace, Death of his soul his last felicity." Savitri-635, "Escape brings not the victory and the crown! Something thou cam’st to do from the Unknown, But nothing is finished and the world goes on Because only half God’s cosmic work is done. Only the everlasting No has neared And stared into thy eyes and killed thy heart: But where is the Lover’s everlasting Yes, And immortality in the secret heart, The voice that chants to the creator Fire," Savitri-310 "An exit is shown, a road of hard escape From the sorrow and the darkness and the chain; But how shall a few escaped release the world? The human mass lingers beneath the yoke. Escape, however high, redeems not life, Life that is left behind on a fallen earth. Escape cannot uplift the abandoned race Or bring to it victory and the reign of God. A greater power must come, a larger light." Savitri-448 14: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-335, 15: "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, "It may be asked how is that devotion high and noble, udara , which seeks God only for the worldly boons he can give or as a refuge in sorrow and suffering, and not the Divine for its own sake? Do not egoism, weakness, desire reign in such an adoration and does it not belong to the lower nature ? Moreover, where there is not knowledge, the devotee does not approach the Divine in his integral all-embracing truth, vasudevah sarvam iti , (The Gita-7.19) but constructs imperfect names and images of the Godhead which are only reflections of his own need, temperament and nature, and he worships them to help or appease his natural longings. He constructs for the Godhead the name and form of Indra or Agni, of Vishnu or Shiva, of a divinised Christ or Buddha , or else some composite of natural qualities, an indulgent God of love and mercy, or a severe God of righteousness and justice, or an awe-inspiring God of wrath and terror and flaming punishments, or some amalgam of any of these, and to that he raises his altars without and in his heart and mind and falls down before it to demand from it worldly good and joy or healing of his wounds or a sectarian sanction for an erring, dogmatic, intellectual, intolerent knowledge. All this up to a certain point is true enough. Very rare is the great soul who knows that Vasudeva the omnipresent Being is all that is, va sudevah. sarvam iti sa maha tma sudurlabhah . (The Gita-7.19) Men are led away by various outer desires which take from them the working of the inner knowledge, ka mais tais tair hri tajn a na h . (The Gita-7.20) Ignorant, they resort to other godheads, imperfect forms of the deity which correspond to their desire, prapadyante ’nyadevatah (The Gita-7.20) . Limited, they set up this or that rule and cult, tam tam niyamam asthaya , (The Gita-7.20) which satisfies the need of their nature. And in all this it is a compelling personal determination, it is this narrow need of their own nature that they follow and take for the highest truth, incapable yet of the infinite and its largeness. The Godhead in these forms gives them their desires if their faith is whole; but these fruits and gratifications are temporary and it is a petty intelligence and unformed reason which makes the pursuit of them its principle of religion and life. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-285-286, "But the weakness of the kinetic and the emotional religions is that they are too much absorbed in some divine Personality and in the divine values of the finite. And, even when they have a conception of the infinite Godhead, they do not give us the full satisfaction of knowledge because they do not follow it out into its most ultimate and supernal tendencies. These religions fall short of a complete absorption in the Eternal and the perfect union by identity, — and yet to that identity in some other way, if not in the abstractive, since there all oneness has its basis, the spirit that is in man must one day arrive." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-339, "The weakness of the human heart wants only fair and comforting truths or in their absence pleasant fables; it will not have the truth in its entirety because there there is much that is not clear and pleasant and comfortable, but hard to understand and harder to bear. The raw religionist, the superficial optimistic thinker, the sentimental idealist, the man at the mercy of his sensations and emotions agree in twisting away from the sterner conclusions, the harsher and fiercer aspects of universal existence." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-381, “It is difficult to acquire or to practise this faith and steadfastness on the rough and narrow path of Yoga because of the impatience of both heart and mind and the eager but soon faltering will of our rajasic nature. The vital nature of man hungers always for the fruit of its labour and, if the fruit appears to be denied or long delayed, he loses faith in the ideal and in the guidance. For his mind judges always by the appearance of things, since that is the first ingrained habit of the intellectual reason in which he so inordinately trusts. Nothing is easier for us than to accuse God in our hearts when we suffer long or stumble in the darkness or to abjure the ideal that we have set before us. For we say, “I have trusted to the Highest and I am betrayed into suffering and sin and error.” Or else, “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.” In such moments — and they are sometimes frequent and long — all the higher experience is forgotten and the heart concentrates itself in its own bitterness. It is in these dark passages that it is possible to fall for good or to turn back from the divine labour.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-244, "Sri Aurobindo is always there. At times he becomes very active, especially when people "pump" or pull or crush you under the weight of all their difficulties and all their desires. Then (these last few days have been like that), I might put it into the words he often used, but this is his attitude: "They accept the God only when they can crucify him." I find that so interesting, you know! They accept God – the Divine – only when they can crucify him. That is to say, they recognize the Divine in a body only if that body is fit to be crucified or tortured. And then, if things go wrong, "So he’s not divine!" He is not divine.... He always used to say, "The Divine takes care to veil himself so as not to crush them." And it’s true, I have noticed it: at times when the Force comes with really all its might, it’s terrible! Even for those who are most used to it, even for the most courageous ... it’s hard. So it’s always like that: it contains itself so as not to be ... unbearable." The Mother's Agenda-February 20, 1968, "I was looking at a problem....Basically, if you remove the veneer – the veneer of good manners – man admits the existence of the Divine only on condition that his sole occupation be to satisfy all of man’s needs and desires – it may be collective desires, even "planetary" desires as Y. would put it, but it boils down to that... And it’s like that especially, especially with the notion of a Divine who put on a body.... In fact, they found it quite natural that Christ should be crucified for their own salvation – I find it monstrous... I’ve always found it monstrous." The Mother's Agenda/June 8, 1968 16: "No God-knowledge can be integral, perfect or universally satisfying which leaves unfulfilled their absolute claim , no wisdom utterly wise which in its intolerant asceticism of search negates or in the pride of pure knowledge belittles the spiritual reality behind these ways of the Godhead... The greatness of the central thought of the Gita in which all its threads are gathered up and united, consists in the synthetic value of a conception which recognises the whole nature of the soul of man in the universe and validates by a large and wise unification its many-sided need of the supreme and infinite Truth, Power, Love, Being to which our humanity turns in its search for perfection and immortality and some highest joy and power and peace. There is a strong and wide endeavour towards a comprehensive spiritual view of God and man and universal existence. Not indeed that everything without any exception is seized in these eighteen chapters, no spiritual problem left for solution ; but still so large a scheme is laid out that we have only to fill in, to develop, to modify, to stress, to follow out points, to work out hint and illuminate adumbration in order to find a clue to any further claim of our intelligence and need of our spirit. The Gita itself does not evolve any quite novel solution out of its own questionings. To arrive at the comprehensiveness at which it aims, it goes back behind the great philosophical systems to the original Vedanta of the Upanishads; for there we have the widest and profoundest extant synthetic vision of spirit and man and cosmos. But what is in the Upanishads undeveloped to the intelligence because wrapped up in a luminous kernel of intuitive vision and symbolic utterance, the Gita brings out in the light of a later intellectual thinking and distinctive experience. " CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-340, 17: “For myself it was Ramakrishna who personally came & first turned me to this Yoga. Vivekananda in the Alipore jail gave me the foundations of that knowledge which is the basis of our sadhana. The error of the Mission is to keep too much to the forms of Ramakrishna & Vivekananda & not keep themselves open for new outpourings of their spirit, — the error of all “Churches” and organised religious bodies. ” CWSA-36/Autobiographical Note/p-177-178, “But I can tell you about my own experience. Until the age of about twenty-five, all I knew was the God of religions, God as men have created him, and I did not want him at any price. I denied his existence but with the certitude that if such a God did exist, I detested him …When I was about twenty-five I discovered the inner God and at the same time I learned that the God described by most Western religions is none other than the Great Adversary…When I came to India, in 1914, and became acquainted with Sri Aurobindo’s teaching, everything became very clear.” The Mother/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms-331-332, “That is precisely the distortion in the Western attitude as opposed to the attitude of the Gita. It is extremely difficult for the Western mind to understand in a living and concrete manner that everything is the Divine.” The Mother/TMCW-10/On Thoughts and Aphorisms/p-101, 18: "The Prana is not only a force for the action of physical and vital energy, but supports also the mental and spiritual action. Therefore the full and free working of the pranic shakti is required not only for the lower but still necessary use, but also for the free and full operation of mind and supermind and spirit in the instrumentality of our complex human nature. That is the main sense of the use of exercises of Pranayama for control of the vital force and its motions which is so important and indispensable a part of certain systems of Yoga. The same mastery must be got by the seeker of the integral Yoga; but he may arrive at it by other means and in any case he must not be dependent on any physical or breathing exercise for its possession and maintenance, for that will at once bring in a limitation and subjection to Prakriti . Her instrumentation has to be used flexibly by the Purusha, but not to be a fixed control on the Purusha . The necessity of the pranic force, however, remains and will be evident to our self-study and experience. It is in the Vedic image the steed and conveyance of the embodied mind and will, vahana . If it is full of strength and swiftness and a plenitude of all its powers, then the mind can go on the courses of its action with a plenary and unhampered movement. But if it is lame or soon tired or sluggish or weak, then an incapacity is laid on the effectuation of the will and activity of the mind. The same rule holds good of the supermind when it first comes into action. There are indeed states and activities in which the mind takes up the pranic shakti into itself and this dependence is not felt at all; but even then the force is there, though involved in the pure mental energy. The supermind, when it gets into full strength, can do pretty well what it likes with the pranic shakti , and we find that in the end this life power is transformed into the type of a supramentalised prana which is simply one motor power of that greater consciousness. But this belongs to a later stage of the siddhi of the Yoga." CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-733-734, 19: "The Asram has nothing to do with Hindu religion or culture or any religion or nationality. The Truth of the Divine which is the spiritual reality behind all religions and the descent of the supramental which is not known to any religion are the sole things which will be the foundation of the work of the future. ” Sri Aurobindo/CWSA-35/Letters on Himself and the Ashram/p-701, 20: "(Q) Mother, what is the difference between an ardent aspiration and a pulling down of force? (Ans:) It is the vital that pulls down and the psychic that aspires." TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-77, "There is certainly a great difference between calling and pulling — you can and must always call for help and the rest — the answer will be proportionate to your capacity of reception and assimilation. Pulling is a selfish movement that may bring down forces quite disproportionate to your capacities and thus are harmful." TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-77, 21: "But actually, to tell you the truth, I think your lives are so easy that you don’t exert yourselves very much! How many among you have truly an INTENSE need to find their psychic beings? To find out truly who they are? To find out what their roles are, why they are here? ... You just let yourselves drift. You even complain when things aren’t easy enough! You just take things as they come. And sometimes, should an aspiration arise in you and you encounter some difficulty in yourself, you say, ‘Oh, Mother is there! She’ll take care of it for me!’ And you think about something else." The Mother's Agenda/August 25, 1954, Download this WEB PAGE in PDF format: The Mother's Call “Are there not still million fights to wage?” Savitri-687 The Mind's Method of Abstraction "The buddhi dwelling always in this master idea (self-surrender) 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, The First Capacity of Mind: 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. The ultimate unity and absolute infinity are to its conscience of things abstract notions and unseizable quantities, not something that is real to its grasp, much less something that is alone real. The first difficulty of the mind is identified as its inability to hold at once the unity and multiplicity of the existence. The Third Capacity of Mind: To train the mind as pure, clear and passive reflector of the Divine is identified as an important exercise in integral Yoga. The intellect cannot be a sufficient guide in the search for spiritual truth and realization and yet it has to be utilised in the integral movement of our nature. The third difficulty of the mind is identified as realization of all this as Sachchidananda. The Second Capacity of Mind: 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. The second difficulty is that fear, desire and sorrow are recognized as diseases of the mind, born of its sense of division and limitation. The Fourth Capacity of Mind: The last gradation of thinking opens in us the pure ideative mind which lives disinterestedly in the truth of ideas for Divine action and Spiritual experience. The fourth difficulty is to unify without losing and integralise without rejecting. Read More The Sunlit and Golden Path Sun-lit Path: The pure in Soul can walk in Light. The Golden Path: Light re-enters life through multiple (ten) Selves. The Abysmal Night: Light re-enters Inconscient Night. The Double Twilight: The First Twilight is created due to the invasion of the Sea of Light above the head to the dark Subconscient Sheath and the Second Twilight is created due to the invasion of the Sea of Light of Inconscient and Subconscient Self below the Feet to the dark Subconscient Sheath. The Eternal Day: Permanent rise of consciousness to Sachchidananda plane of Everlasting Day. Earthly Return: Permanent descent of Sachchidananda consciousness through return to Subconscient and Inconscient Earth. Read More The Supramental Yoga “The conditions (of Supramental transformation) Sri Aurobindo gives in detail in The Synthesis of Yoga and in still greater detail in his last articles on the (book) Supramental Manifestation . So now it is only a question of realisation .” The Mother TMCW-8/The Questions and Answers-1956/p-322 It appears from Sri Aurobindo’s following writings that those whose intellect is Spiritualised or those who have practiced Buddhi Yoga of the Gita can draw direct benefit from Supramental energy, that is now active in the earth’s atmosphere, “All that [ideas such as “everything will soon be spiritualised”] is absurd. The descent of the supramental means only that the Power will be there in the earth consciousness as a living force just as the thinking mental and the higher mental are already there. But an animal cannot take advantage of the presence of the thinking mental Power or an undeveloped man of the presence of the higher mental Power — so too everybody will not be able to take advantage of the presence of the supramental Power. I have also often enough said that it will be at first for the few, not for the whole earth, — only there will be a growing influence of it on the earth life.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga-I/p-290 "Eventually their (purified intelligence and will, buddhya visuddhaya, The Gita-18.51) response can be opened up to the perfect discernings, intuitions, inspirations, revelations of the supermind and proceed by a more and more luminous and even infallible action. " Sri Aurobindo CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-655 "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." Sri Aurobindo CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-839 "It is only when mentality is overpassed and drops away into a passive silence that there can be the full disclosure and the sovereign and integral action of the supramental gnosis." Sri Aurobindo CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-861 "A true, sincere, spontaneous life, as in the supramental world, is a springing forth of things through the fact of conscious will, a power over substance that shapes this substance according to what we decide it should be. And he who has this power and this knowledge can obtain whatever he wants , whereas he who does not has no artificial means of getting what he desires." The Mother The Mother's Agenda/3.2.1958 "But that (Supramental) cannot work in him so long as his present mental, vital, physical being is not liberated from its actual inferior working (of the three Gunas). This purification is the first necessity." Sri Aurobindo CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-644-645, The First Character of this Supramental Change: is a complete reversal, a turning over, one might almost say, upside down of the whole activity… "In the kingdom of the Spirit’s power and light, As if one who arrived out of infinity’s womb He came new-born, infant and limitless And grew in the wisdom of the timeless Child; He was a vast that soon became a Sun." Savitri-301 The Second Character of the Supramental Change: is that the formation of the thought, will and delight can take place now wholly on the Supramental level and therefore there is initiated and reconciled an entirely luminous and effective Divine Will, Divine Wisdom and Divine Bliss or as hinted in Savitri “I am, I love, I see, I act, I will.” (Savitri-594) "The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen, When Light with a golden ecstasy fills his brain And the Eternal’s wisdom drives his choice And eternal Will seizes the mortal’s will.” Savitri-665 The Third Character of the Supramental Change: The third character of this action is the Brahmic consciousness and vision… “An invisible sunlight ran within her veins And flooded her brain with heavenly brilliances That woke a wider sight (Supramental vision) than earth could know.” Savitri-356 The Fourth Character of the Supramental Change: The final stage of the change will come when the Supermind occupies and Supramentalises the whole being and turns even the vital and physical sheaths into moulds of itself, responsive, subtle and instinctive with its powers. The man then becomes wholly Superman. This is at least the natural and integral process. "A divinising stream possessed his veins, His body’s cells awoke to spirit sense, Each nerve became a burning thread of joy: Tissue and flesh partook beatitude. Alight, the dun unplumbed subconscient caves Thrilled with the prescience of her longed-for tread And filled with flickering crests and praying tongues." Savitri-334 "A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell And take the charge of breath and speech and act And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns And every feeling a celestial thrill." Savitri-710 OM TAT SAT Read More The Mother's Yoga Our Relation with the Mother: The Mother book written by Sri Aurobindo gives a detailed account of a Spiritual or Impersonal Mother and hints briefly about the personal Psychic Mother and personal Supramental Mother. We enter direct relation with Her four dynamic Spiritual attributes after our Spiritual Being or Akshara Purusha above the head opens. The Mother’s Mission: The Mother’s mission on earth is to build our Soul and Nature into the Divine Truth, consistent with the decrees of the Supreme and draws us irresistibly towards the supreme ecstasies, the highest heights, the noblest aims and the largest vistas. Through union with the mediatrix, Spiritual Mother, fourfold Soul Forces are accumulated, which help confront the Inconscient negative energies, and these accumulated Soul Forces accompany us in successive births. Our Mission: The one and only purpose for which our life is destined is the Divine Work without all desire and self-regarding ego, all our life and not a part of life must be an offering to the Supreme and we must give ourselves completely without condition, demand and reservation and our only object in action shall be (1) to serve selflessly, (2) to receive inner growth, (3) to fulfil the Mother’s Divine Presence, (4) to become a manifesting instrument of the Divine Shakti in her works. The Starting Point of The Mother’s Yoga: The starting point of the Mother’s Yoga is identified as to detect first what is false or obscure in us and persistently reject it. If we support little false action and false thought then we lose not only the Divine’s Grace but also the Divine in every way and in its entirety. Our relationship with the Divine Mother is conditional. When we are open towards overhead Truth or Soul Saving Truth She is very close to us and when we are open towards falsehood or Soul Slaying Truth of three Gunas, She is very far from us. The Perfection Sought by Us: The perfection sought by us is to be one with Her in Her highest Spiritual and Universal action and to realise and possess the fullness of Her Shakti in our individual life. OM TAT SAT Read More The Mighty Mother's Playmate The First Condition of Becoming the Playmate: First one has to open one’s Soul in the heart or the Psychic being and dynamise four Divine Shaktis that of the Brahma Shakti of wisdom, Kshetra Shakti of Courage, Vaisya Shakti of Mutuality and Shudra Shakti of service and self-surrender. The Second Condition of Becoming the Playmate: Secondly one has to open the soul in the mind above the head, the spiritual being and dynamise four Divine Shaktis that of Maheshwari representing Wisdom, Mahakali, representing Power, Mahalakshmi representing Harmony and Mahasaraswti representing perfection in work. The Third Condition of Becoming the Playmate: Thirdly one has to open the soul in Supermind and dynamise four Supramental Divine Shaktis having the attributes of Truth Supreme, Power Supreme, Supreme Delight and Will Supreme. The Fourth Condition of Becoming the Playmate: One has to rise to the source of the Ananda and meet the Mother’s absolute power of Chit Shakti. Read More “There is no difference between the Mother’s path and mine; we have and have always had the same path, the path that leads to the supramental change and the divine realisation; not only at the end, but from the beginning they have been the same…The attempt to set up a division and opposition of this kind, putting the Mother on one side and myself on another and opposite or quite different side, has always been a trick of the forces of the Falsehood when they want to prevent a sadhaka from reaching the Truth. Dismiss all such falsehoods from your mind.” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother-81 “I wrote once before that these ideas about the separation between the Mother and myself and our paths being different or our goal different are quite erroneous. Our path is the same; our goal too is the same — the Supramental Divine .” Sri Aurobindo CWSA-32/The Mother with Letters on the Mother-81, The Mother's Teachings complements Sri Aurobindo's Teachings and The Mother's Yoga completes and fulfills Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. A thorough knowledge of The Mother’s Teachings preconditions a thorough knowledge of Sri Aurobindo. Similarly, a thorough knowledge of Sri Aurobindo’s Teachings preconditions a thorough knowledge of traditional Schools of Yoga and the subjective and objective knowledge of the whole Spiritual history of Earth. A thorough Spiritual knowledge of Their dual Divinities of a purified vessel dynamises limitless movements of ascending and descending Consciousness and an inflow of an incalculable quantum of continuous overhead Wisdom, Love, Light, Peace, Bliss, Force and Silence to earth's nether atmosphere.