Guiding Light of The Month

O Lord, how ardently do I call and implore Thy love! Grant that my aspiration may be intense enough to awaken the same aspiration everywhere: oh, may good- ness, justice and peace reign as supreme masters, may ignorant egoism be overcome, darkness be suddenly illu- minated by Thy pure Light; may the blind see, the deaf hear, may Thy law be proclaimed in every place and, in a constantly progressive union, in an ever more perfect harmony, may all, like one single being, stretch out their arms towards Thee to identify themselves with Thee and manifest Thee upon earth. - The Mother

July - August Sunday Activities at the Centre - A glimpse

July 23rd and July 30th – Rig Veda and Savitri
Jared Quek is back with us with penetrating insights gained from his Rig Veda studies at Oxford as well as from the weekly meets at Sri Aurobindo Society in London. He has initiated a new delightful twist to our ‘Secrets of Veda’ sessions nudging us to comb passages of Savitri to unearth the hidden links to Rig Veda. We were presented with the Rig Veda Manadala 1, Sukta 1 on Agni, of course with one set of Sri Aurobindo’s translations among the 14 or so he had compiled; the same sheet also displayed a few passages from Savitri Book 2, Conto 12, ‘The Heavens of the Ideal’.

Agni-Fire-Flame takes on numerous significant roles such as the aspect of sacrifice, Divine Will, Chief Priest/controller/summoner/Protector/Supporter/ Enjoyer of the offerings and much, much more. Krishnamoorthy uncle read a short passage from Vishnu Sahasranamam and its translation closely reflecting these roles of Agni in Yagna (offering). In fact, Agni takes on Transcendal, Universal and Individual aspects.

“Agni is at once a fire of aspiration, a fire of purification, a fire of Tapasya, a fire of transformation” Sri Aurobindo

If we trace the origin of pure flame, we reach the heart of Divine Mother’s Love; this is explained by Mother with respect to the following lines from Savitri

“The great stars burn with my unceasing fire
And life and death are both its fuel made.
Life only was my blind attempt to love:
Earth saw my struggle, heaven my victory (Savitri, Book 10, Conto 3)

… it is the principle of Love that is transformed into flame and finally into light. It isn’t the princi­ple of Light that is transformed into flame when it materializes: it’s the flame that is transformed into light.

The great stars give light because they burn; they burn be­cause they are under the effect of Love… ” (Mother’s Agenda, Vol. 6, September 8, 1965, pp. 235-238)

Aswapaty also feels the flame discovery in the Divine Mother’s ‘House of the Spirit and the New Creation’  

“The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,
To feel was a flame-discovery of God” (Savitri, Book 3, Conto 3)

Coming back to the passages from ‘The Heavens of the Ideal’ Conto Jared presented, Aswapaty is continuing his journey on the “Mighty kingdoms of the Deathless Flame” with several references to the common Vedic imagery such as Sacrifice, ‘Altar Mind’, Priests, ‘Day and Dusk’, ‘Illumined Might’ (Hero Power or consciousness force), Ascending Force and the list continues.

We also discussed about the infinite possibilities and the complex nature of the experience of Divine delight; Jared highlighted that this experience aspect should not be confused with the multiple practical pathways which could be simple or complicated. The experiences of Vedic Rishis were not intellectual but powerful and concrete imagery of Transcendental powers. We were all encouraged to read the 14-page introduction to the Secret of Vedas by Sri Aurobindo in ‘The Doctrine of the Mysticshttp://saccs.org.in/texts/sriaurobindo/-sa-doctrine-mystics.php

We also tried to figure out some of the aspects of Savitri far beyond the view of Vedas. Savitri’s most powerful pose with the transcendental vision of Victorious Truth in front of the Lord of Death (Yama) came to mind. Krishna’s Vishwaroopa Darshan to Arjuna was Universal (Overmental) vision with both positive and negative aspects shown to address the developmental needs of  the vital Man; whereas, Savirti’s integral transcendental vision, as an incarnation of Divine Mother, sees no evil and considers even Death as her deputy God serving a Divine purpose – during the transition period until the immortal Super Man is born. It is the Marvel vision of Sarvam Brahma. Savitri transforms Yama into being of Light in the Everlasting Day. 

This reminds us of how Joss Brooks transformed the polluted Adayar river banks to a beautiful park in his own humble way (reference to July 14th slide show at our centre); negative is not opposite of positive; negative conceals what is missing to make our view whole.

Savitri is revealed as the Divine Flame and Divine Mother incarnation in infinite dimensions right from the Symbol of Dawn, through the birth and growth of flame of Quest and beyond victory over God of Death. Let us all spare some time to enjoy the five poises of Savitri as portrayed by Sri Aurobindo as alluded to during our discussions:
  1. The prophetic vision given by Mother as a Boon to Aswapaty’s Yoga
  2. As seen by Aswapaty’s subtle vision (Telepathy) when Savitri approaches him in the palace
  3. Narad’s Trikala Drishti when he sees Savitri on her return after meeting Satyavan
  4. An amalgamated earthly and overmental Divine vision in the Symbol of Dawn conto in the opening
  5. Transcendental vision beyond Lord Krishna's Vishwaroopa Darshan as the Divine Mother incarnation as detailed above
Similarly, the Savitri passages Jared presented from ‘The Heavens of the Ideal’ conto form just one out of the several views Aswapaty reveals during his mystic voyage on the world stairs; this part specifically reflects the traditional journey in timelessness aspiring towards heaven or moksha shunning the challenges of earthly life. The goal of our Integral Yoga is to make our earth a heaven calling for vertical unification of Superconscient with Subconscient and horizontal unification of Individual with the Universal. It emphasizes striving to go deeper within to release the involved forces and through triple transformation bring down the transcendental Shakti and Cosmic Prakriti powers to play ‘our role in the whole’ - bringing out knowledge out of ignorance, beauty out of chaos and dynamic delight out of pain/suffering. This process has been made simpler for us through the untiring sacrifices of Sri Aurobindo and Divine Mother in bringing down the Supramental Light, Force, Love and New Consciousness to our Earth. Our Psychic flame can guide our accelerated progress enabling double opening both below and above in us creating an Integral Flame (Agni) pathway to progress beyond the clutches of fate, time and even death.
“Without Agni the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity” Sri Aurobindo

August 6th – Reading from AIM: Mother and Sri Aurobindo on themselves
We read beautiful passages of Mother on Sri Aurobindo and Sri Aurobindo on the Mother. The key take away was:

"The Mother's consciousness and mine are the same, the one Divine Consciousness in two, because that is necessary for the play. Nothing can be done without her knowledge and force, without her consciousness- if anybody feels her consciousness, he should know that I am there behind it and if he feels me it is the same with hers. If a separation is made like that ( I leave aside the turns which their minds so strongly put upon these things), how can the Truth establish itself- for the Truth there is no such separation. " - Sri Aurobindo.

 August 13th - Questions and Answers 1956 by The Mother

The attendance was thin with just 6 members. Mr. Krishnamurthy randomly selected page 88 and the question to Sweet Mother appeared “What does Sri Aurobindo mean by ‘a self-dynamising meditation’?”

We discussed the aspect of ‘Sarvam Brahma’ and how He, The Supreme One seeks dynamic delight through the infinite Many; how we can play the role in the whole through the strings of our mind and song waves of our life both created out of the knowledge coming out of the occult clay of seeming ignorance.

We also touched on the Karma Yoga and Gnana Yoga aspects in relation to the dynamism of meditation and as to how each and every act can be traced to reveal Brahman, Divine Mother, Time-Space, Super Mind, Objective Truth, Subjective Truth, Mind, Life, Materialization and dynamic delight of the Divine.
Then we read the All revealing Mother’s answer. Self-Dynamising meditation is a meditation that has the power of transforming your being. It is a meditation which makes you progress, as opposed to static meditation which is immobile and relatively inert, and which changes nothing in your consciousness or in your way of being.

Generally, people don’t have a dynamic meditation. When they enter into meditation—or at least what they call meditation— they enter into a kind of immobility where nothing stirs, and they come out of it exactly as they went in, without any change either in their being or in their consciousness. And the more motionless it is, the happier they are. They could meditate in this way for eternities, it would never change anything either in the universe or in themselves. That is why Sri Aurobindo speaks of a dynamic meditation which is exactly the very opposite. It is a transforming meditation.
I think it is the aspiration that should be different, the attitude should be different. “Different way”—what do you mean by “way”—(laughing) the way of sitting?... Not that? The inner way?

Yes. But for each one it is different. I think the most important thing is to know why one meditates; this is what gives the quality of the meditation and makes it of one order or another.

You may meditate to open yourself to the divine Force, you may meditate to reject the ordinary consciousness, you may meditate to enter the depths of your being, you may meditate to learn how to give yourself integrally; you may meditate for all kinds of things. You may meditate to enter into peace and calm and silence—this is what people generally do, but without much success. But you may also meditate to receive the Force of transformation, to discover the points to be transformed, to trace out the line of progress. And then you may also meditate for very practical reasons: when you have a difficulty to clear up, a solution to find, when you want help in some action or other. You may meditate for that too.

I think everyone has his own mode of meditation. But if one wants the meditation to be dynamic, one must have an aspiration for progress and the meditation must be done to help and fulfil this aspiration for progress. Then it becomes dynamic.

- Ramadoss and Shailaja


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