3 March 2013: Readings on The Mother’s Writings and OM choir
This evening, we discussed a
while the process of introspection. Some experiences were shared spontaneously.
One was about how the same pattern of events seem to keep repeating in one’s
life till one dissolves that something that is a root cause of the events, or
rather, the kind of reaction one has towards events. Many voiced that they do
not make any New Year resolutions since these are never kept. There seemed to
be a common thread in the sharing that when one truly decides and does
something, it is a decision from within, to look at oneself and be oneself, as
one member pointed out. While events that happen in our lives propel us to
greater heights after repeated cycles, there is a way in yoga, and that is to
be constantly in a state of watching oneself, inside out. We did an exercise on
going within using the breath as a first step and some questions were read out
to help carry out some introspection on the state within. With this, Mother’s
quotation on self-observation and its need was read out. Then OM choir resumed
with some voice exercises and the evening culminated on a quiet note with some
meditation music.
10 March 2013: Talk by
Jared Quek- “The Psychic Transformation-Part 1”
The second Sunday is when we have
been having talks by Jared at the Centre. The topic this time was “The Psychic Transformation”. As always,
we were each given a handout with precious excerpts on this topic from ‘The Life Divine’. The first topic was “Contact with the Divine”. Considering
the main subject was to do with Psychic Transformation, “Contact with the Divine” seemed to be the best way to broach the
complex yet essential task of Transformation of the Psychic. It tells us about
how the psychic element in us will always tend to turn towards anything which
belongs to a higher Reality. In the next few paragraphs, we saw how best to
achieve the much-needed Contact with the Divine. This can be accomplished by
means of The Yoga of Knowledge, The Yoga of Love and The Yoga of Works. Each of
it comes with its own challenges and means to overcome the challenges, with the
single focus of achieving Contact with the Divine. This sparked off an
interesting discussion wherein some of us shared our own thoughts and ideas on
each of the Yogas and how we incorporate small steps in our daily lives to be
able to offer our Yoga to The Divine.
17 March 2013: Talk by
Jared Quek- “The Psychic Transformation -Part 2”
This being the Third Sunday, we
were to continue the talk on “The Psychic
Transformation”. Jared quickly summarised what was discussed the previous
Sunday for the benefit of people who were not present the previous Sunday. In
this day, we were to deal with the next topic—The Yoga of Works or Karma Yoga.
We had earlier (a few months ago) had a separate elaborate discussion on Karma
Yoga at the Centre. It emphasises on how important it is, to give our fullest
to any work we undertake, and how best to not have any attachment or the
expectation of any reward to the work we undertake. Sri Aurobindo, in ‘The Life Divine’, says: the more
powerful and many-side change in Nature is the appearance of a composite
perfection of the saint, the selfless worker and the man of spiritual
knowledge. After reading these powerful lines and having a wholesome idea about
the three types of Yoga, we delved into our next topic which was—The Entry into
the Inner Countries.
The lines under this topic throw
light on how important it is to not stand on the surface and try to transform
the Psychic in us, but instead, cease to be the surface and aspire to become
the inner Person, the Purusha. Only if the outer surface undergoes a tremendous
change, is it possible for such a huge transformation to penetrate into our
very being. And this outer change includes the change of poise, a quieting, a
purification and fine “mutation” of its substance. The usage of the all
powerful word “mutation” signifies how great the outer transformation must be
to even attempt anything greater.
After reading the excerpts and
discussing them, we sat down for our Closing Meditation.
- Preethi and Jayanthy
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