October 2016 Walk Review

Experience the Divine Beauty amid Nature:

“The mountains in their anchorite solitude

The forests with their multitudinous chant

Disclosed to her the masked divinity’s doors” (Savitri Book 4 canto 4)

Divine Mother gave extreme importance to Nature's pristine beauty, untouched by human hands and artificial accessories. She used to go boating and walking, accompanied by a few devotees along the fields in Ashram Lake estate in early years. Fortunate were the flora and fauna there to experience Her Divine touch. She symbolically renames more than 500 species of flowers.

Auroville was the most arid and dusty land without the least possible  greenery during 1960s and by arduous dedicated work, it is turned now into the most verdant location covered with the foliage of thousands of trees including the rarest species of them surviving despite the adverse climatic conditions and water shortage there. The ancient Rishis of India and people reaching Vanaprasta phase (post retirement) of life preferred to live in sylvan hermitages along mountain valleys or the banks of rivers and lakes, because of their being most favourable spots from health perspective and conducive for the growth of inner faculties leading to spiritual realization. Therefore, Rigveda describes:

"Nature's beauty is an art of God. Let us feel the touch of God's invisible hands in everything beautiful. By the first touch of His hand rivers throb and ripple. When He smiles the sun shines, the moon glimmers, the stars twinkle, the flowers bloom. By the first rays of the rising sun, the universe is stirred; the shining gold is sprinkled on the smiling buds of rose; the fragrant air is filled with sweet melodies of singing birds, the dawn is the dream of God's creative fancy."  ( English  Translation is by Gita Press publication) (Rig Veda (1.6.3) describing Purusha manifesting in Prakriti)

SAS Singapore conducts monthly Nature Walks

Singapore reserves 50% of its very limited land resource for greenery and preserves the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, the only primitive forest in south East Asia yet retaining its position as the most developed commercial hub of Asia. Much greater credit goes for building the beautiful tourist attraction, Gardens by the Bay on the costliest prime central district with high budget allocation. The world's rarest species of plants are protected here with the most modern state of art botanical techniques amid the most aesthetic masterpieces by the world's greatest artists and sculptors.  

In this beautiful city, SAS Singapore is conducting Nature walks uninterrupted since several decades, even in the most unfavourable weather conditions, is possible only by the ardent aspiration and devotion of its members. This reminds me of the days spent in Ashram where no activity would be stopped or postponed due to external environmental conditions and several times we used to have 24 Nov balcony Darshan of Divine Mother holding umbrellas and fully drenched while standing in the street below.

On 2nd Oct, Nature walk No 375 was conducted in the exotic 'Gardens by the Bay South’ with approximately 12 participants assembling at 8:00 AM adjacent to the Visitor's centre. After completing the routine exercises, we began strolling slowly for 1.5 hour admiring the beautiful ambience. The main topic of friendly discussion among us was about the incapacity of several countries not developing such parks, even though they are highly blessed with extensive Natural resources.

Musical offering at Shashilal Kashyapji's place

Many members arrived directly at the host's residence. The program as per our practice, begins with meditation and wishing members celebrating their birth and marriage anniversaries in that particular month. With love for beauty and music permeating all over, the entire family welcomed each guest smilingly resembling the traditional Indian custom of 'Adhitidevo Bhava'. A most sumptuous Indian brunch with a wide variety of snacks tempting to the palate and the melodious musical recital, a total feast for the ears by three generations of the joint family, are most awaited annual occasions for SAS. The strings of love for music tightly bind the family into one single harmonious note and in spite of residing in Singapore, they have preserved with care the traditional Indian customs and sense of artistic decorations all around the house.

Initiating the musical offering, the grandparents, Shashilal Kashyapji and Urmilji, the made for each other, who have completed 55 years of conjugal togetherness, sang a duet and a few popular Ragas. Subsequently, their son Praveen and daughter in law Ramni continued with devotional Bhajans, accompanied by professional Tabla and Harmonium players and concluded with the famous Raghupati Raghava wherein the entire audience joined in chorus to elevate the atmosphere. Finally their smart grandson Amit, an award winner with extraordinary talent in BeatBox, had rendered the gathering to become youthful and entertained the audience with his rare musical presentation. This year, the cake cutting function was to specially celebrate the 80th birth anniversary of Shashilal Kashyapji.

The popular Rigvedic Mantra "sanagachhadwam samwadadwam :samni va akutih samana hridayanivah, samanamastu vo mano yatha vah susahati " (May our intentions and aspirations be alike , so that a common objective unifies us all ) is most appropriately practiced by all their family members. May such Nature walks and musical recitals motivate and help us on the path of Yogic Sadhana in SAS Singapore.

"All Nature was at Beauty's festival "
( Book 4 canto 1)

-          Mrs Balasundari Kottamasu Rao

Vital well-being

Nature of the vital realm

An important stage on the way to transformation.

Botanical Name: Alcea rosea

Common Name: Hollyhock

Spiritual Significance: Integral offering of the Vital

 

The Vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being.

-         The Mother

From the Editor’s Desk (Oct 2016)

This October issue of our Newsletter takes a look at the Vital being. It is vital to establish at the beginning, what is meant by the vital, in this context. The root word of vital is “vit” or “vita” meaning, in Latin, life or live (https://www.google.co.in/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=meaning20of%20 vital). In Sanskrit, it may be denoted as “PranaShakti”. The vital may entail “life-force”. In the parlance of Integral Psychology, it is a term used to denote one of the 5 primary parts and planes of the being, the others being the physical, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Sri Aurobindo defines the vital as that in us “…which seeks after life and its movements for their own sake and it does not want to leave hold of them if they bring suffering … or …. pleasure.” Desire is the vital’s principle support. All in us that is the substance of desire is, therefore, the vital. Further to this, Sri Aurobindo characterises the vital with these phrases: impulses, force-pushes, emotions, sensations, seeking after life-fulfillment, possession and enjoyment. Being the seat of desire and therefore passions, one can understand then the related tendencies of the vital towards disappointments and envisage violent impulses, violent reactions, revolt and depression as results of these disappointments.

 

According to Sri Aurobindo, many people live in their desires. They are wrapped in their own desires, in the thoughts, feelings, sensations, and the imaginations that these desires evoke and support. In The Synthesis of Yoga, he states that most of our works of life are a result of this soul of desire, including the ethical or religious and all those works that are garbed in altruism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice and self-denial. The desire soul is said to be a separative soul of the ego itself and therefore does everything for its own separate self–existence. What is our state of being like? Can we relate to this and arrive at some understanding at the way in which we operate?

 

On the opposite pole of Depression stands Enthusiasm as the vital’s driving force. When there is this enthusiasm, driven by whatever reason, one finds oneself full of power, of energy to get up and pursue the object of desire relentlessly. At such times, when one steps back to look within, one would recognize this force, this energy or power in us that drives us to carry out actions and actualize what was desired.

 

The Mother adds that the vital has three sources of subsistence. Firstly, the subsistence comes “from below, from the physical energies through the sensations”. This is probably best known to most of us, in the way we experience sensations received first by the sense organs of the body, the physical entity, and then translated into an enhanced experience, no matter of what level, by the brain. Secondly, the subsistence comes from the vital plane itself, from the universal vital forces. However, this is effected only when the vital is itself widened and vast enough, open and receptive enough to receive the forces from the universe. Thirdly, the subsistence comes from above, from spiritual forces and inspiration. To receive these high forces is possible only to a vital that is in a deep state of aspiration for progress.

 

What kind of vital does one wants to cultivate in oneself? The vital is said to be a great store-house of energy and of power when its instruments become more cultivated, sensitive, subtle, refined and illumined. This vital too can be “noble and heroic and disinterested” and ultimately turn exclusively to a high and elevated living, serving the Divine alone and not the ego.

 

Savitri

Their anger rushed galloping in brute attack,

A charge of trampling hooves on shaken soil;

Hate gripped hate and love broke in on love,

Will wrestled with will on mind's invisible ground;

Other's sensations passing through like waves

Left quivering the subtle body's frame.

He tore desire up from its bleeding roots

And offered to the gods the vacant place.

 

(Book three, Canto three)

 

An abyss yawned suddenly beneath her heart.

A vast nameless fear dragged at her nerves

As drags a wild beast its half-slaughtered prey.

 

(Book seven, Canto six)

Questions and Answers (Oct 2016)

Q: Sweet Mother, how can one draw on “the universal vital Force”?

 

The Mother: One can do it in many ways.

 

First of all, you must know that it exists and that one can enter into contact with it. Secondly, you must try to make this contact, to feel it circulating everywhere, through everything, in all persons and all circumstances; to have this experience, for example, when you are in the countryside among trees, to see it circulating in the whole of Nature, in trees and things, and then commune with it, feel yourself close to it, and each time you want to deal with it, recall that impression you had and try to enter into contact.

 

Some people discover that with certain movements, certain gestures, certain activities, they enter into contact more closely. I knew people who gesticulated while walking… this truly gave them the impression that they were in contact—certain gestures they made while walking… But children do this spontaneously: when they give themselves completely in their games, running, playing, jumping, shouting; when they spend all their energies like that, they give themselves entirely, and in the joy of playing and moving and running they put themselves in contact with this universal vital force; they don’t know it, but they spend their vital force in a contact with the universal vital force and that is why they can run without really feeling very tired, except after a very long time. That is, they spend so much that if they were not in contact with the universal force, they would be absolutely exhausted, immediately. And that is why, besides, they grow up; it is also because they receive more than they spend; they know how to receive more than they spend. And this does not correspond to any knowledge. It is a natural, spontaneous movement. It is the movement… a movement of joy in what they are doing—of joyful expenditure. One can do many things with that.

 

I knew young people who had always lived in cities—in a city and in those little rooms one has in the big cities in which everyone is huddled. Now, they had come to spend their holidays in the countryside, in the south of France, and there the sun is hot, naturally not as here but all the same it is very hot (when we compare the sun of the Mediterranean coasts with that of Paris, for example, it truly makes a difference), and so, when they walked around the countryside the first few days they really began to get a terrible headache and to feel absolutely uneasy because of the sun; but they suddenly thought: “Why, if we make friends with the sun it won’t harm us any more!” And they began to make a kind of inner effort of friendship and trust in the sun, and when they were out in the sun, instead of trying to bend double and tell themselves, “Oh! How hot it is, how it burns!”, they said, “Oh, how full of force and joy and love the sun is!” etc., they opened themselves like this (gesture), and not only did they not suffer any longer but they felt so strong afterwards that they went round telling everyone who said “It is hot”—telling them “Do as we do, you will see how good it is.” And they could remain for hours in the full sun, bare-headed and without feeling any discomfort. It is the same principle.

 

It is the same principle. They linked themselves to the universal vital force which is in the sun and received this force which took away all that was unpleasant to them.

 

When one is in the countryside, when one walks under the trees and feels so close to Nature, to the trees, the sky, all the leaves, all the branches, all the herbs, when one feels a great friendship with these things and breathes that air which is so good, perfumed with all the plants, then one opens oneself, and by opening oneself communes with the universal forces. And for all things it is like that.

 

Can one do the same thing when it is cold?

 

Yes, I think so. I think one can always do the same thing in all cases.

 

The sun is a very powerful symbol in the organization of Nature. So it is not altogether the same thing; it possesses in itself an extraordinary condensation of energy. Cold seems to me a more negative thing: it is an absence of something. But in any case, if one knows how to enter the rhythm of the movements of Nature, one avoids many discomforts. What makes men suffer, what disturbs the balance of the body is a narrowness, it is always a narrowness. It happens because one is shut up in limits, and so there is, as Sri Aurobindo writes here, a force which presses too strongly for these limits—it upsets everything.

 

Q: How can one conquer the obscure vital? Rather, how is it possible to change the obscure vital into a luminous vital?

 

The Mother: By the surrender of the vital, its opening to the light, and by the growth of consciousness.

 

Q: I have become very sensitive and get upset for the slightest reason.

 

The Mother: These are vital perturbations which show themselves in the course of the Sadhana and have to be eliminated. They must not be regarded as natural movements justified by the wrong actions of others and bound to continue so long as there is an external cause. The real cause is internal and it can be got rid of by yogic discipline, vigilance, self-detachment and a quiet but strict rejection.

 

(CWM, Volume 7&14, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry)

 

 

Opening to the Universal Vital forces

When one is in the countryside, when one walks under the trees and feels so close to Nature, to the trees, the sky, all the leaves, all the branches, all the herbs, when one feels a great friendship with these things and breathes that air which is so good, perfumed with all the plants, then one opens oneself, and by opening oneself communes with the universal forces. And for all things it is like that.

 

-          The Mother

(CWM, Volume 7, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry)

 

The Mother says … on Vital well-being

 

 

 

 

Cheerful Vital Enthusiasm - Very precious if it persists in spite of difficulties.

 

It is the vital that gives enthusiasm, but the vital by nature is unsteady and always wants new things. Unless it is converted and becomes a docile servant of the Divine, things are always fluctuating.

 

***

 

Right attitude in the vital:

Self-confidence, mental and vital quiet faith in your own realisation and in the Divine’s help.

 

***

 

To harmonize the vital is a psychological masterpiece.

Happy is he who accomplishes it.

 

***

 

 

The vital governed by the Presence: the vital force rendered peaceful and disciplined by the Divine Presence.

***

 

Vital consecration: delightfully modest and fragrant, it smiles at life without wanting to draw attention to itself.

***

 

Spiritual awakening of the vital: it soars towards the heights in the hope of reaching them.

 

Trust in the Divine: very indispensable for the impulsive vital.

 

Vital trust in the Divine: full of courage and energy, no longer fears anything.

 

Vital joy in matter: the reward for abolishing selfishness.

 

Peace in the vital: the result of abolishing desires.

 

Silence in the vital: a powerful help for inner peace.

 

Sincerity in the vital: the sure road to realisation.

 

Light in the vital: one of the first steps on the long road.

-          The Mother

(CWM, Volume 14, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry)