April
12th - Readings from Questions
and Answers:
Quote from the
Synthesis of Yoga “His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is
drawing all things by their own path towards hid happy oneness” - Page
No. 77
A Sadhak asks The
Mother “All things are attracted by the Divine. Are the hostile forces also
attracted by the Divine?” Mother without doubt says that everything
will be attracted by Divine. There is an inner urge in every being to works its
way to the Divine.
But some choose
a direct path and some a labyrinthine path. Some choose to be a slave to the
habits and find pleasure in that though it gives painful knocks. Some will have
the illumination of greater paths to take account of the secret stuff of their
nature and its constituent and resultant motions and to create in it all a
divine centre and a true harmony and luminous order. Even the Asuras in our
Puranas were attracted to Divine Avatharas to get moksha from their evil deeds.
April 19th - Meditation on Savitri Book 9 Canto 2:
Here is a
beautiful summary from the “Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo” to
give our readers the full joy of Savitri’s dialogue with God of Death. – “The
Journey in Eternal Night and the Voice of the Darkness”.
All pause for a while on the edge of the dark Night. Then Savitri steps
forward to journey through that eternal Night. A mysterious terror closes on
her from all sides. Savitri vanishes into the dark. There is no path, no goal;
yet she moves on. She loses sight of the God of Death as well as of Satyavan.
But she does not lose heart; she continues to live and move.
Slowly a faint gleam appears. It throws the Night into a bolder relief.
The giant head of Nothingness tries to stifle the ray, but in vain. The light
prevails and Savitri recovers her lost self. Once again she hears the steps of
the god and out of the darkness, Satyavan shows as a luminous shade.
Then is heard the lethal voice of Death proclaiming that this dark
Night, this Nothingness is the end and the source of all. Where in this stark
emptiness is there place for life and love? The voice asks mockingly.
Savitri refuses to answer. She gazes into her soul and knows that she is
eternal. Then Death, the dire god, opposes her with his endless night and
calls:
Thou hast survived the void and
won a victory, but to what purpose? Thou cant only live for a little while
without Satyavan. Man is a fragile creature with death prowling round him in
all directions. The gods have burdened him with a mind and sown in his heart an
incurable unrest. He is the Cattle of the shepherd gods. If thou still hopest
to live, to love, return to the earth. But do not hope to win back Satyavan.
Still, that unique strength deserves a reward. Choose what left wilt, I shall
give.
Death is unmoved. He cries out scornfully:
Dost thou forget that thou art a
mere mortal? I, Death, have created all and I destroy all. I reward, I punish.
Flee back lest the Furies strike at thee.
But Savitri replies with equal scorn:
My God is not the God of thy
imagination. My God is Love that sweetly suffers all. To him who is
irresistible I have offered my life. He is supreme, he shall remake thy
universe, O Death.
For a while they journey in silence in that trackless night. Then again
Death speaks:
Wilt thou claim immortality, thou
who art but a sparkling ferment in life’s sunlit mire? Only I am eternal, I am the
Vast. I am He, there is no other God. Man has no other help than myself. I am
his final refuge. Even if there were a being witnessing all, sole and absolute,
neither Satyavan nor Savitri exists beside him. There is no Love there, nor
Time nor Space. Forget Satyavan, be thou alone and sufficient to thy soul till
I, Death, shall rescue thee from life.
Savitri replies:
O Death, thou reasonest, I do not
reason, I am, I love, I act, I will.
Death answers:
Know also. When thou wilt know,
then thou shalt cease to love and accept the impermanence of things.
Savitri replies:
Only when I have loved for ever,
shall I know. Love in me knows the unchanging truth behind all change. I know
the transcendent God above, the Lord of the universe, God the In dweller. I
know
my coming was a wave from God. I
know that man was born with a mind and heart to conquer thee.
Death does not answer again. Compelled by Savitri, the three glide
through the long fading night.
May 3rd - Readings from the book ‘Commentaries on Elements of Yoga’ by The Mother:
The Call and Fitness and the Foundation
Here The Mother answers the questions of
members in her Wednesday classes, when she read the passages from Elements of
Yoga.
The question asked: Mother, here it is
written: “In our Yoga our aim is to be united (with the Divine) in the physical
consciousness and the Supramental plane”; then, when the physical consciousness
is united with the Divine, does transformation follow?
In our Yoga, our aim is to be
united with the Divine in the physical consciousness and on the Supramental
plane. Then transformation will follow but not instantaneously.
Only if the Divine descends into the physical consciousness - or rather,
to put it more precisely, if the physical consciousness is totally receptive to
the Divine - naturally transformation ensues.
The transformation of the
body-consciousness will take place first and a progress in the mastery and
control of all movements of the body will come next. But what must happen
in the end is even the organs will be transformed, in the sense that they will
be replaced by centres of concentration of forces of different qualities and
kinds.
Aspiration in everyone, no matter
who it is, has the same power. But the effect of this aspiration is
different. This aspiration calls down an answer, and this answer, the
effect, which is the result of the aspiration, depends on each one, for it
depends upon his receptivity. Receptivity in turn depends upon sincerity
and humility. There is nothing that closes one up more than vanity.
But when one is very
self-satisfied, can one still aspire? One is not made all of a piece.
There is something in the being which can aspire. There is always
something in the being which is conscious exactly of what is not all right, at
times vaguely, imprecisely, but yet sufficiently conscious that still, after
all, one is not perfect, that things could be better than they are. That
part can aspire.
She also explains what is
activity and passivity in the Sadhana:
“Activity in aspiration” means
that your aspiration goes out from you and rises to the Divine.
Passivity means to get
inspiration with calm quietude for the Force to enter and then open yourself as
wide as possible to take in all that comes to you. And these can exist together
and can be felt whatever one is doing.
May 10th - Readings from the Questions and Answers:
Here the Mother
clears the doubts the disciples have when they read the Synthesis of Yoga page
100.
She explains
that we need not torture ourselves by painful ways to get rid of the disturbing
elements in us. Even Lord Krishna says that He is Indwelling sprit in every
being. And we should remain transparent for that Light to enter all our
feelings and thoughts. Self-immolation, austere self-mortification are like the
Titans of world that trouble and torture!
Gita doesn’t
talk of physical transformation. But Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga gives Integral
transformation wherein even the character undergoes a transformation. When the
bad elements are pushed out of our being there is a kind of pain, but we should
concentrate on the Divine Grace from above coming to liberate us than on the
well cherished qualities or “Swabhava” which we are holding on to. The divine joy
we experience is not like the ordinary pleasure, it is the inner joy that is
unalloyed.
-
Jayalakshmi
and Kiran
No comments:
Post a Comment