November- December Sunday Activities at the Centre - A glimpse

Month of November – A self-dynamising meditation

Through the Savitri session on November 26^th, we attempted to integrate most of the key events of the month. We fondly recalled the mantric recitation of the Symbol of Dawn canto by Mr. Kiran Sule while hosting us for brunch after our Nov 3^rd first Sunday morning walk. We meditated on The Mother’s explanation for the Savitri’s opening line

It was the hour before the Gods awake

“There is an ancient tradition which describes the creation as done by some first emanations of the Supreme Mother, which were four emanations. In the sense and the feeling of their supreme Power, they cut connection with their Origin and became independent. And then, these emanations, being separated from their origin, entered into darkness.

The first was Consciousness, Consciousness in Light,

and by cutting Himself from His Origin He went

down and down towards Unconsciousness.
The second was Bliss and turned into Suffering.
The third was Truth and turned into Falsehood.
The fourth one was Life and turned into Death.

This happened after they came down into the vital level. When this was seen, it was decided that some second emanations would be made to repair the mistake of the first; and the second emanations were the Gods. This first line refers to the condition of the world before the Gods were born. Sri Aurobindo says, “It was the hour before the Gods awake.” – Mother’s Explanation

This formed the base for linking to our meditations of November 17^th, Mother’s Mahasamadhi day and November 24^th, Siddhi day. As the second emanations progressed with their mission, matter began to slowly reveal its involved life and mind. Until the emergence of mental choice, our earth was a paradise as fondly recalled by The Mother (this is with reference to our meditation on Mother’s answer to the question ‘Is it true that there was an earthly paradise? Why was man driven out of it?’ on Nov 17^th.

“According to what I remember, there was certainly a moment in earth’s history when there existed a kind of earthly paradise, in the sense that it was a perfectly harmonious and natural life; that is to say, the manifestation of the mind was in accord, was still in complete accord with the ascending march of Nature and totally harmonious, without perversion or distortion. This was the first stage of mind’s manifestation in material forms.

How long did it last? It is difficult to say. But for man, it was a life that was like a kind of outflowering of animal life. I have a memory of a life in which the body was perfectly adapted to its natural environment and the climate adapted to the needs of the body, the body to the needs of the climate. Life was wholly spontaneous and natural, just as a more luminous and more conscious animal life would be; but there were none of the complications and distortions that the mind brought in later in the course of its development. I have the memory of that life—I had it, I relived it when I became conscious of the life of the earth as a whole.

But I cannot say how long it lasted nor what area it covered. I do not know. I can only remember the condition, the state, what material Nature was like, what the human form and the human consciousness were like at that time and this kind of harmony with all the other elements on earth—harmony with animal life, and such a great harmony with plant life. There was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use the things of Nature, of the properties of plants, of fruits and everything vegetable Nature could provide. No aggressiveness, no fear, no contradictions nor frictions and no perversions at all — the mind was pure, simple, luminous, uncomplicated.

It is only with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, when the mind began to develop in itself, for itself, that all the complications and distortions began. So that the story of Genesis which seems so childish contains some truth.

And the symbol of the tree of knowledge represents the kind of knowledge which is no longer divine, the material knowledge that comes from the sense of division and which started spoiling everything. How long did this period last? Because in my memory too it was like an almost immortal life, and it seems that it was an accident of evolution that made it necessary for forms to disintegrate... for progress. So, I cannot say how long it lasted.

And it was... it was something so simple, so luminous, so harmonious, beyond all our preoccupations— precisely beyond all these preoccupations with time and place. It was a spontaneous, extremely beautiful life, and so close to Nature, like a natural flowering of the animal life. And there were no oppositions, no contradictions, or anything like that — everything happened in the best way possible. (Silence)

Repeatedly, in different circumstances, several times, I have had the same memory. It was not exactly the same scene or the same images, because it was not something that I saw, it was a life that I was living. For some time, by night or by day, in a certain state of trance I went back to a life that I had lived and had the full consciousness that it was the outflowering of the human form on earth—the first human forms capable of embodying the divine Being. It was that.

It was the first time I could manifest in an earthly form, in a particular form, in an individual form —not a “general” life but an individual form—that is to say, the first time that the Being above and the being below were joined by the mentalisation of this material substance. I lived this several times, but always in similar surroundings and with a very similar feeling of such joyful simplicity, without complexity, without problems, without all these questions; there was nothing, absolutely nothing of the kind! It was an outflowering of the joy of living, simply that, in universal love and harmony— flowers, minerals, animals: all were in harmony.

The Mother, On thoughts and aphorisms, pp.88-94

Our mental ego divides, limits and decides creating contradictions and conflicts. Evolution for Sri Aurobindo is the dissolution of the ego and the self-discovery followed by the growth of the inner psychic flame. Competition represents ego and cooperation the psychic. Love, Beauty and Delight are so near and yet so far. Our Master pleads for

• Reconciliation of every possible opposites or different aspects; at the peak of this journey is the reconciliation of Being and non-Being and this opens us to the very source of THE INFINITE – THE ABSOLUTE as well as to the 
• The integration of
• Matter and Spirit
• Universe and the Individual
• Mind and Vital
• One and the Many

We explored the Savitri Book 3 (The Book of The Divine Mother) - Canto 3, “The House of the Spirit and The New Creation” using the Huta paintings and The Mother’s voice. We had a rare glimpse – just for a moment- of the reconciliation alluded to above – The New Creation experienced by our Master and The Mother.

The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,

To feel was a flame-discovery of God,

All mind was a single harp of many strings,

All life a song of many meeting lives;

For worlds were many, but the Self was one.

This knowledge now was made a cosmos’ seed:

This seed was cased in the safety of the Light,

It needed not a sheath of Ignorance.

Then from the trance of that tremendous clasp

And from the throbbings of that single Heart

And from the naked Spirit’s victory

A new and marvellous creation rose.

We also momentarily experienced again the Overmental ecstasy of the November 24^th Siddhi day meditation as we rejoiced further passages

None was apart, none lived for himself alone,

Each lived for God in him and God in all,

Each soleness inexpressibly held the whole.

In these new worlds projected he became

A portion of the universal gaze,

A station of the all-inhabiting light,

A ripple on a single sea of peace.

A mystery drama of divine delight,

A living poem of world-ecstasy,

A kakemono of significant forms,

A coiled perspective of developing scenes,

A brilliant chase of self-revealing shapes,

An ardent hunt of soul looking for soul,

A seeking and a finding as of gods.

We also recalled the reading on the November 17^th and 19^th from ‘The Mother’ by Georges Van Vrekhem, pp.357-359:

“Then what happened on that fateful 17 November 1973? The best way to understand it may be a smile: the pupation of the caterpillar into a butterfly. When the time comes, the caterpillar spins itself into a cocoon. In this cocoon the pupation takes place, a miraculous transformation into a completely different being: a butterfly.

Can one say that the caterpillar dies in the cocoon? Transformation is not death, it is a change into something else. The butterfly has originated in the caterpillar, from the caterpillar. In a way, the butterfly contains the essence of the caterpillar within itself, and the dried up ‘residue’ in the cocoon is what has to be discarded.

The human body of the Mother existed in the world of the humans. As her Yoga progressed, that body belonged less and less to this world — except for the residue in the cells. It was impossible for this residue to transcend the world of the humans. In the meantime, the supramental transformation, the supramental pupation was taking place. The butterfly — the prototype of the supramental body in the Mother—came into existence. She signaled its presence several times in the course of the final years and eventually perceived and described it in 1972.

On 17 November 1973, the Mother laid down her residual human body while she continued to exist forever in a body consisting of a supramental substance. The supramental substance as worked out by the Mother is a material substance— otherwise the earthly evolution would then have no meaning— though it is composed of a substance more refined than the Matter known to us. Generally speaking, the gross Matter of our Mother the Earth is still in the process of transformation. This process is now in an advanced stage thanks to the avataric Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. When gross Matter will have become sufficiently subtle and receptive, i.e. transformed, the mature souls, ready and waiting in their soul world, will descend and incarnate in it. The formation of their bodies will be moulded by the existence of the Mother’s supramental body, the prototype of the new species.”

We rejoiced the link to the Savitri passage below:

There Matter is the Spirit’s firm density,

An artistry of glad outwardness of self,

A treasure-house of lasting images

Where sense can build a world of pure delight:

The home of a perpetual happiness,

It lodged the hours as in a pleasant inn.

The senses there were outlets of the soul;

Even the youngest child-thought of the mind

Incarnated some touch of highest things.

There substance was a resonant harp of self,

A net for the constant lightnings of the spirit,

A magnet power of love’s intensity

Whose yearning throb and adoration’s cry

Drew God’s approaches close, sweet, wonderful.

Sri Aurobindo, enlightened by the Divine voice and light of Vivekananda, conceptualized, perceived and experienced through his senses the triple transformation; he has gifted them to the world respectively through ‘The Life Divine’, ‘Synthesis of Yoga’ and ‘Savitri’. Mother, joining our Master in this adventure, spearheaded the Yoga of Physical Transformation and continues to guide us through her Supramental Body – The Prototype of the new species. They have gone through the very tough paths, in order to simplify the whole yoga for us. Receptivity, sincerity, opening and surrender from our part can accelerate our progress on the path of the Life Divine.

December 10^th and 17^th – The future poetry

It was a Divine Will for enhanced delight that must have prompted Jared to initiate our exploration of The Future Poetry work of our Master. We commenced meditating on Jared’s carefully chosen sections in the Chapter II ‘The Essence of Poetry’ and Chapter III ‘Rhythm and Movement’.

Sri Aurobindo explores the grand possibility of poetry - the discovery of a closer approximation to what we might call the mantra in poetry, that rhythmic speech which, as the Veda puts it, rises at once from the heart of the seer and from the distant home of the Truth, — the discovery of the Word, the Divine movement, the form of thought proper to the reality. It is accomplished through the stress of soul-vison (Soul-idea, soul of emotion for the delight of the soul and embodied Truth of life or Truth of Nature) behind the surface view of words; it is a spiritual excitement of rhythmic voyage of self-discovery among the magic islands of form and name in the inner and outer worlds. It is the greater Truth and its delight and beauty it is seeking. It is true joy for ever with beauty which is truth and Truth-beauty supporting each other in ever increasing fashion.

There is perhaps a truth in the Vedic idea that the Spirit of creation framed all the movements of the world by chandas (The study of poetic metres and verse in Sanskrit), in certain fixed rhythms of the formative Word, and it is because they are faithful to the cosmic metres that the basic world-movements unchangingly endure. A balanced harmony maintained by a system of subtle recurrences is the foundation of immortality in created things, and metrical movement is nothing else than creative sound grown conscious of this secret of its own powers.

We were delighted exploring the rhythm, the imagery, the ideas and the spiritual power packed in some of the sample passages of Savitri. It is still a long way for us to comprehend our Master’s Savitri Mantra – The poetic expression of the deepest spiritual reality through the unison of the highest intensities of the Rhythm, the Style and the Soul’s vision of Truth; however, every step we take is an infinite delight exposing every time some of the subtle and immaterial elements even to the experienced devotee – truly packed with infinite possibilities in infinite dimensions as Brahma who is Sarvam, Anantam, Gnanam and Anandam

Ramadoss