May 17th and 24th - Meditation on “SAVITRI” – Book 10, Canto 1, 2 and 3:
The Dream Twilight of the Ideal, The Gospel of
Death and Vanity of The Ideal, The Debate of Love and Death
We read the passages twice and shared our thoughts
on them.
Given here a summary for a better understanding of
the dialogue between Savitri and the God of Death.
Savitri's soul
continues to wrestle with Death and to ridicule his words of Reason. Death
challenges her to seek to know, for knowledge kills love. Quickly comes her
response that the Nature of Love gives birth to knowledge. Drifting along with
them as they move into the Land of Nought (book 10), we hear the debate
continue, hear them pit all the contraries of life against each other, and we
hear from Savitri the very reason of Death's existence.
Death peals forth a
long proclamation of how he cancels all life's golden truths. To his dangerous
music this warrior-maiden gives a picture of what her God of Love has done and
will yet accomplish, and dares Death to produce a greater God to captivate her
soul. Death sneeringly interprets her words as hallucinations of the mind and
gives an oration on the deceptions of mind and raises Unconsciousness as the
pinnacle of all.
Savitri answers in
Death's own words, calling him the dark browed sophist of the universe masking
divinity with his dance of death. She sings forth in glorious poetry the occult
miracle of God's wonders from a tiny seed; and then again in lines of majesty
power speaks of her assured triumph, of her love as stronger than his bonds of
death.
The Dark King still
trying to discourage her, ironically speaks of her fantasy of Truth, says that
Truth is hard as stone. Back and forth sparkle the words of the debate. Death
uses subtle reason and arms himself with all man's faltering searches, his
limiting spiritual goals, and exaggerated and imperfect understanding of Truth
to prove the futility of God's power, but Savitri, delivered of twilight
thoughts, with a heart of Truth, answers his lures.
Here Savitri chants
lyrics of Nature’s miracles, of the wonders of the Infinite and of the
limitless powers of a soul integrally surrendered to God.
Death, suspecting
her to be the Mother of the Gods embodied, challenges her to show a body of
living Truth, for has matter ever been able to hold Truth? Savitri tells Death
who he really is and warns him he will cease to be when he touches the embodied
Truth Supreme, and then reveals her being all one with God. Death, still
unconvinced, makes his last stand in support of his blind force and dares
Savitri to reveal the Power of the Divine, for many have Truth, but who has the
Power to radiate it?
Then is given a
picture of Savitri as she becomes transformed into a divine being with all her
chakras or lotuses of Power scintillating.
The most powerful
speech of all follows, and Savitri exhibits her living Power of Truth and
proves that death is needed no more. Death is shown gradually vanishing and
finally defeated, eaten by light.
Taken from, SAVITRI:
A Summary of Sri Aurobindo's Epic Poem
[Dr. Tyberg, who
prepared this summary of the poem, was the founder of the East-West Cultural
Center in Los Angeles and its guiding light for years until her passing in
1980. She is the author of several articles and two books on Sanskrit, First
Lessons in Sanskrit and Language of the Gods.]
May 31st - Readings from “More Vignettes of
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother” by Shyam
Kumari:
The book has 421
True Stories, the reminiscences of the devotees of their experiences with the
Mother and Sri Aurobindo. We picked up a few stories and reading them really
made us feel the vibrant presence of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
June
7th - Readings from The Mother’s Works, Questions and Answers, 1955:
A circle of
eight members gathered this evening for the reading of The Mother’s Question
and Answers, Vol. 7, entry for 3 August 1955. We studied three questions and
the answers to them, based on The Mother’s reading on, “Lights on Yoga –
Surrender and Opening”. The following are the three questions:
1. What is “the true life-activity”?
2. Sweet Mother, here Sri Aurobindo has said
“It is impossible.” Why? For You have said that nothing is impossible!
3. Sweet Mother, here Sri Aurobindo has said:
“If the inmost soul is awakened, if there is a new birth out of the mere
mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then this Yoga can
be done…” Why Has he said “the inmost soul”? Is there a superficial soul?
We all
appreciated The Mother’s point blank answers yet so succinctly and laboriously
explained to the questioning children. Pat came the answer to the first
question, without any further elaborations : “It is to express the
Divine”. In answer to the second question,
The Mother explains that in the larger scheme of space and time, there may be
nothing that is impossible. However, given a particular point in space and
time, conditions exists and nothing can happen if these given conditions are
not fulfilled and as such, something may be rendered possible or impossible,
accordingly. For the last question, The Mother offers that there is a
difference
between
experiencing the innermost or central soul or psychic being and a part of the
surface being influenced by the innermost being.
For greater clarity
and infinite benefit, the reader is requested to visit and contemplate on pages
258-260 of Questions and Answers, 1955, Vol. 7, published by Sri Aurobindo
Ashram Trust, 1979, 2003.
June 14th - Readings from The Mother’s
Works, Questions and Answers, 1956, on “Synthesis of Yoga”:
This evening ten
of us gathered at the center to read on the Mother’s responses to questions on
Sri Aurobindo’s “Synthesis of Yoga” posed to The Mother on the 11th
of January 1956. The series of questions we read were:
Mother,
“this craving life-force or desire-soul in us has to be accepted at first, but
only in order that it may be transformed” (Sri
Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 77). But even when
we understand that it is a desire and must be rejected, there are difficulties
in discerning if it is a desire leading us to the Divine or if it is purely
desire.
The
Mother: One deceives oneself only when one wants to deceive oneself. It is
very, very different.
But
within, one understands.
The
Mother: Good. Well, then that’s enough, if one understands somewhere, that’s
enough. Is that all? No questions?
Mother,
on January 6 you said, “Give all you are, all you have, nothing more is asked
of you but also nothing less.”
Yes.
What
is meant by “all you have” and “all you are”?
The
Mother’s succinct answer to this last question was: “… that each one is asked
to give what he has, that is, all his possessions whatever they may be, and
what he is, that is, all his potentialities — which corresponds to the
consecration of one’s life and the giving of all one’s possessions — and that
nothing more than this is asked. What you are, give that; what you have, give
that, and your gift will be perfect; from the spiritual point of view it will
be perfect. This does not depend upon the amount of wealth you have or the
number of capacities in your nature; it depends upon the perfection of your
gift, that is to say, on the totality of your gift.”
The Mother then
recounts an ancient story about a poor woman, the visitor and the half-eaten
mango. Do visit pages 14-16 of Questions and Answers, 1956, published by Sri
Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1984.
-
Jayalakshmi
and Jayanthy
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