Daily Notes and Reflections by Alokda

A moth reached a congregation of fire-lamps that had been lit atop a hill. As it neared the top, it met some fireflies glowing in the darkness below. The moth being an inquisitive one asked the firefly if it had ever seen the sun. Now like the moth the firefly grew blind in the day and therefore knew not of it. But with an air of superior wisdom it declared that there was no sun since it had never seen it. Perhaps the sun was simply a tale told by some to create fear in others. For if there was one then why should not the firefly and the moth see it when they could very well see in the darkness and even light it with its flares. Little did it realise that its eyes endowed to see in the dark and accustomed only to the night cannot see the blazing Light that comes up every day. And what to the moth and the firefly is a night is to the earth at large the light of day.
The moth proceeded further and as it came very close to the fire-lamps it met a few sparks that flew out of the flames by the action of the winds. The moth repeated the question again: “Is there a sun?” And the sparks in all humility replied: “We know not of that, but we do know from where we came. It is those flames that you see out there. Perhaps they may know.” So saying they vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. Soon, guided by the sparks, the moth reached the hill top and stood close to the little lamps. One nearest to it was a small little flame that did not burn long enough to endure the night and glimpse the day. The moth repeated its question. The flame replied as if one with superior wisdom: “The sun I have seen not. I know only the stars and the moon. Perhaps it is this that they call sun or may be the sun is simply a myth, a kind of super-flame much like me, a little bigger perhaps as I may be one day.” One nearer to it that had felt the dawn but seen not the sun responded more hopefully: “I think there is something called the sun because I have felt its light and warmth spread magically over the earth. But soon after this rare glimpse, I fainted and faded till some unseen hand lit me again tonight. But I Think there is a sun since I have felt its glory and its touch. May be none can see it or know of it, yet one can feel it and sense it.”

All this while there stood amidst them a flame, erect and silent like a concentrated mass of energy and force. When the moth approached it the fire spoke not for a while. But seeing the moth’s insistence and the flames around it stand in silent expectation, it addressed the whole group thus: “Yes I have looked upon the sun since the fuel in me could withstand the burden of the long night as al do see who can thus endure. But I have learnt another secret, that what burns in the sun also burns in me, that the sun and fire are the same, one in essence, two in appearance.” Thus saying these deep words pregnant with Truth born of experience, the fire was quiet again. The little flames around lifted their arms in adoration and worship to the great fire that had revealed this great secret to them. But the moth felt an irresistible urge to jump and loose itself into the fire and thus loosing itself find the sun by seeing through the eyes of the fire. For only they who are willing to loose their self who find the Self. Only they who can die to the ego find God.

And as it leaped into the great fire one more spark jumped upward into the sky and the night began to recede as a glow lit the eastern sky.

Guru is the giver of Light. But just as there are several sources of Light so also there are several types of Gurus. There are those unconnected with the earth like distant constellations or stars. They point the path to us that we may follow but neither give light nor warmth. Others are like the moon, close to the earth yet not intimately linked to its life. They shed light and shower coolness of their grace in the human night. They show the way of escape out of the human night of Ignorance to the silent heart of endless Space.

Yet others are like fire that give us warmth and close comfort. They light up aspiration in our hearts and protect us from the animal stalking around us. They are like brief visitations of heavenly light clothed in forms more familiar to us. Of course there are many pseudo gurus who thrive on borrowed and artificial light like the bulbs and tubes. But they too serve a purpose in God’s plan to make the night a little more bearable.

But seldom one finds the guru as the sun, the Divine avatar shedding His light upon earth. He not only sheds Light but changes the seasons and the flow of time. He sustains and supports the cycles and the evolutionary journey of life upon earth by His mere Presence. Not many can bear His closeness and the intense pressure of Heat and Light. Hardly anyone can even gaze at him accept when he chooses to eclipse himself with a human cloak. All feel His warmth and share his light and benefit by His power and splendour. Nothing is hid from his sight and he knows all paths and every law since they originate from him. But none knows Him or can reach Him. Such a Master is born once in a thousand years or even less often. Such is our Lord and Master Sri Aurobindo, whose mere Presence is enough to change the earthly season and who shines deathless in the eastern horizon revealing Time’s secrets to earth and men.

Prayers are like birds that climb from the earth to rise to the sky. But some are weak and stay near the ground. Others climb really high and travel far and wide to distant lands of Light and Truth.

Some prayers are like parrots. They are simply learnt and mechanically repeated without their meaning stirring our soul depths. They look neat and nice but stop at that. They cannot fly far nor reach high. Others are like the crow, restless and doubting, full of fear and suspicion. They arise from our petty surface desires for this or that small object of life. These prayers have neither strength nor trust. They too do not reach high or far but sometimes they do get fulfilled due to sheer persistence since nature rewards every effort that involves perseverance.

Still other prayers are like the pigeon and the dove. They are not strong but full of peace born of trust. Hence they call forth the bounty of nature for the fulfillment of what they seek. Yet others are like the eagle. They are precise and clear about their object and strong in their spirit of seeking. They rise high and far on the wings of concentration and arrive at their object speedily and fast. Yet though they climb high their object is low, the fulfillment of some earthly wish or desire.

Rare are the prayers like a swan. Pure and clear they ask for nothing but the very nectar of the gods. These reach farthest to distant horizons, far above the clouds to the very abode of Shiva, the great god Ashutosh, the dispenser of all boons.

But the rarest of all is the prayer that resembles the phoenix. Such a prayer arises once in a thousand years. Paradoxically it descends from the heavens and enters the bosom of the earth stirring it with sublime impulses. It is the prayer that the avatar does for the earth and men. Such are the prayers of the Mother for the earth as recorded in Her prayers and meditations.

The Master was taking a stroll in the garden. The group of disciples surrounded him like bees around a flower that had turned the Light and Power of the sun into a sweet and strengthening nectar for their thirsty struggling souls.

Feeling the mood of the moment, one among them asked as to how come in this world of beauty there came to dwell evil and suffering. The Master became pensive and took them to a nearby place where the gardener had just thrown some seeds into the ground. Pointing to the soil and the seed below it he asked them why must the seed of this beautiful flower destined to partake of the sun be put underneath the soil into a dark space and breath the waste and the mire and rot on the surface and struggle to reach the top against the heavy resistance of the earth.

‘To throw its roots deep’, said one. ‘To cast off its hard shell’ said another.

The Master smiled and exclaimed ‘That’s the answer to your question. Suffering is like the waste and the mire and Evil like the darkness and the resistance that man’s soul must face so that it can also throw its roots deep into the earth and its surface crust soften in due time. The surface crust is the ego-self, that source of all evil and suffering, when inner being is ready by the pressure of the world forces, when it has cast its roots deep and strong, then the ego-self slowly dissolves and the deeper soul emerges into Light and Freedom. It is delivered out of the womb of darkness and is ready for a new adventure into Light and its climb towards the sun. But if the seed is stripped bare of its hard crust prematurely and exposed too early to the light of the sun and the immense freedom of space then it may simply burn off and be blown away by the strong winds before its roots have steadied it. So also what we call error and evil and suffering are simply necessary intermediary steps and stages in man’s ascending growth towards Light and Freedom.’

‘What then is sin and what then is virtue and good’, enquired another.

The Master observed as he moved from one flowering tree to another: ‘Look at the buds, their petals closed upon each other, their fragrance trapped inside. That is the first stage of the flower. It is as if it was trying to not only feel and hold but also to capture and possess the light it so badly needs and to keep the fragrance to its solitary self that is meant to be its gift to the world. So also with man. Selfishness is the only sin since it induces man to try and appropriate things for its solitary self and give out nothing in return to the world. The result is that it remains dark inside and closed outside. But a time comes when the bud begins to trust the Light that it feels and opens out to it and all that surrounds it in a spontaneous gesture of self-giving. And, lo and behold! – its self-giving is instantly rewarded by the fullness of its bloom and its generous uncalculating gift of fragrance turns into sweet nectar inside. Man is selfish in his early stages of growth but soon he must realise that selfishness is a trap since it prevents him from getting the very thing that he most needs and wants. With this awakening and the pressure of Light and its own secret nature there comes in him the trust and the confidence to open out and reach out and give itself first to the world around it which alone he sees with his half open eyes and then to the sun that it begins to perceive as its eternal source, the secret master of its journey, the fosterer who turns all things to honey within him. Then man becomes a link between the earth and the heaven.’ Then with a mystic pause he added, ‘Selfishness too, that origin of all sin, is a preliminary stage in human growth. This too must pass away as man begins to trust God within and His play around and gives himself freely to both or rather to God and His play in the world.’

The Master sat down quietly on a little rocky promontory in the garden, his gaze as if fixed into infinity, his look encompassing the whole of space in a single glance, his heart one with all things in their eternal essence. And the disciples sat around him wondering whom to admire, the sweet fragrance of the flowers that gave themselves generously to everything around them or like the earth that shared the joy and the struggle and the sorrow of all things giving shelter and place to each thing that must wait for its season to turn ripe and to blossom emerging out of the darkness into the Light, or like the sun that gave itself to the creation and though far and high beyond the reach of earth and its creatures yet was the secret source and support of all. And as they thus contemplated their inner and outer gaze was fixed upon the Master who was to earth and men, at once the flower and the earth and the sun.

Alok Pandey

‘What is love?’ – asked a disciple of the Master.

The Master replied: “Tell me what is not love?”

And then to make it clearer he took them to the nearby fields where a farmer was tilling the soil while another was sowing seeds. Yet another was watering the plants while someone else was plucking them. 

“Here look,” said the Master. “The farmer who is tilling the soil is doing a labour of love even though the soil may not like this touch of hardness that it must bear, the upsetting of its layers of sand that has settled over the centuries.” He continued, “And the farmer who is putting the seeds in the womb of darkness and pouring over it the waste of earth is also doing a labour of love, for the seed is still hard and must soften through all this darkness and waste till it is ready to receive the Light.”

“And when it sprouts, the farmer puts a fence around it and prunes and limits its freedom lest it is not eaten away by the animals that sprawl around. The delicate and tender plant may find it hard to bear the touch of his scissors but this too is love.”

“And when the plant has grown and the fruits and flowers are ready, he carefully selects them and sends them away so that the flowers and fruits of his sacrifice reach out everywhere and bring new blossoms and more fruits and flowers. This too is love.”

‘But what about the plants and the earth’, – asked another.

The Master stood silent awhile as if lost in the wonder of love that he found everywhere. When he came out of his reverie, he spoke again: “The earth holds these and many other countless possibilities silently in its bosom. It waits for the right farmer and the right season, it bears the hard touch of the farmer’s plough so that one day the flowers and the fruits that it hides in the mud may emerge out of its dark womb and be offered to the sun. What else is this but love?”

“And the seed lets go of its hard crust, the plant of its shelter under the earth, its sap rising upward as an invocation to the sun and its fruits and flowers give themselves freely to the bird and the bee so that through their droppings more fragrance and more sweetness can arise out of the earth. What else is this but Love?”

And the disciples stood speechless in wonder and a fresh waft of air moved amidst them, – the wind that gives life force to the plant, dries up the farmer’s sweat, brings about the seasons by following the paths of the sun and carries the pollen far and wide for fresh blossoms. And the Master spoke not but the disciples heard in the winds a hymn of love whisper softly a song of hope in their hearts and a renewed joy in their souls.

Alok Pandey

We have stepped into a New Age. The past century challenges the old views and ways of life and to a large extent has either destroyed it or else is replacing it with a completer and more inclusive view. Each and every field of life and sphere of human endeavour is witnessing this change, this shift of paradigms towards a more comprehensive understanding. But even as this is happening and the debris of past imperfect forms is being cleared, it is important to be cautious of two things. First, in our hurry and eagerness to create we should not end up creating yet something imperfect and give it the name of newness. There is an attempt in certain quarters, for instance, to pitch their tents upon the grounds thus cleared and sell their products each as the new one. Such a ‘newness’ is at best a passing phase, an experimentation of sorts, before the true things can come up. The second danger is that the old thing may be passed off as the new with some minor adjustments or merely a change of label.
It is here that we need to exercise caution. For newness is often (mis)understood as something that is in fashion. It is also understood as something that dazzles us suddenly and caters to man’s grotesque need for an impossible miracle, impossible because it seeks for a miracle without fulfilling the conditions. But such miracles do not last and cannot be replicated for the larger good. A true and lasting miracle could take roots only when the conditions under which we live and labour are changed.

But what are these conditions but the very state of consciousness that we live in. If we regard the universe as a projection of the One Infinite Consciousness then each finite is only an embodiment of a certain movement or poise of this One consciousness. It is this binds us and creates the conditions we live in. Just as we are bound by the state of sleep and dream respectively and become subject to the conditions that exist in these states, so too our waking state itself is a partial and limited consciousness and subjects us to all that we create ad experience in this world. To recreate or create afresh and anew we must first change the consciousness in which we live or rather with which we are presently identified. We need to deepen, widen, heighten ourselves till the boundaries and limits of our individual consciousness begin to overflow on each side into the Infinite. It is this that will create the truly New in us, a new being who will see, understand, live and act from a new and vaster poise. It is raising the human in us to a larger pitch and scale, as it were, rather than multiplying more methods and techniques in the name of newness.

How can we do that? Therein lies the real challenge of the new cycle of evolution that calls upon us. Not to merely repeat the old formulas under new names, not even to merely tinker and polish the surfaces of life but to discover a new possibility and way of being that has never been so far! Time presses towards this change, our souls are called to this great adventure, the winds blow in its favour, the ground and soil of human nature is ready. All that is needed is the leap of faith and the courage to endure the process of change. The change is not outside but within us and it is happening. Only we must look and work in the right direction, and press and persevere till the moment comes when the limited circle of consciousness in which we had locked ourselves open at some vantage point and we begin to breath infinity and work out the dreams of eternity in and around us. This is the new possibility, the possibility of creating a New world that awaits us at this hour. Or shall we say that the New world and the New possibility have already arrived. All that they need is a steady will to enter into it, or better still allow it to enter into us.

We need to make the definitive choice, – whether to belong to the old world built with blocks of ego and division, watered by ignorance and desire whose best bloom is a precariously held temporary gain, a happiness mixed with suffering, a pain that can be ameliorated but not cured, a palliative at best. Or else to be born anew into the True and the Vast with its bloom or intuitive knowledge and spontaneous power of action, and behind it all that delight which is the batch and mark of the New Consciousness, the Delight that sets our souls free and rebuilds for us a life free of the stress of suffering and sorrow.

Alok Pandey

Attachment and love are close companions in their origin and yet different in their working and result. Both spring from the heart, – attachment from the surface heart whereas love from the deeper heart, the heart behind the heart so to say. It is like a seed that has an inner core, from where the tree or the plant emerges and drawn by the light reaches its true fulfilment. Attachment, on the other hand, is the outer crust, the capsule protecting the seed and providing it with all the experience needed while it waits to emerge. Meanwhile, the seed casts its roots down in the soil tying it to the earth nature.

Attachment, therefore, comes first and in the absence of the experience of love, it is mistaken for love. Yet it binds people only to the surfaces. Its sticky threads cannot go deeper into the soul. Besides it remains susceptible to all the forces that move on the surfaces of life tying all creatures in a see-saw crisscross pattern of the dualities of happiness and sorrow, joy and grief, ‘love’ and hate. These experiences eventually burn the outer crust as one begins to feel the inadequacy of it all and turns inwards and upwards. Then the true journey begins and love is ready to be born.

Attachment has its roots in physical nature and hence it easily tends to gravitate downwards towards lust, greed for more, various kinds of emotional and vital hungers, will to dominate. It develops easily with physical proximity and tends to slowly die down with distance. Nature uses this for its inferior purposes of keeping us tied to the forces of lower nature and the surfaces of life. The strings of attachment can start casting their web through any of the surface movements such as physical appearance, affinities, play of surface emotions, charm etc. But these things cannot endure for long when one has arrived at a certain inner development. Our being tires of the surfaces and seeks the Permanent, the True, the authentic, the Real and not replicas and imitations. When thus we begin to seek for the true, the beautiful, the lasting good, then love begins to emerge.

Unlike attachment, Love has its roots above into a higher spiritual nature. Therefore it always pulls us upwards at first through an idealised emotion uplifting human love towards some reflection of beauty and truth. But then finding this too inadequate it turns still higher or deeper towards its Source in the Divine through bhakti devotion. It is then that excessive attachments become an obstacle since they keep us tied to the sweet little longings and the small little pleasures that one derives through the bonds of ignorant earthly attachments. Since our emotions are locked into the objects and people we are too attached to, little is available to turn upwards and inwards. Detachment from the surfaces of life, from the rich relationships that satisfy the ego-self, is therefore advocated by almost all who have walked the spiritual path. This detachment however is not indifference, though it may seem so at one stage. It is a preparation clearing the ground for a deeper, truer, higher love to emerge.

When that happens then new bonds begin to emerge, no more directed by the needs and demands of the ego but by the cry of the soul reaching out to answering souls, the drawing together of kindred souls, of God-lovers and God-knowers and God-servants who meet in the ground. of the spiritual self that continues beyond the pyre and the grave.

Finally love always ascends upwards even when it ties itself to the earth. It binds earth to the heavens making our earthly life taste some harmony and bliss that is native to the higher worlds of Light and Truth Immortality. Its sign is a spontaneous giving flowing naturally from the inmost depths of the soul rather than demands and expectations to which our ordinary life is so prone.

To be attached is to remain tied to the ordinary earth nature. To love is to soar upwards, ever upwards beyond the highest heavens, beyond even the gods.

Alok Pandey

Man has buried himself under the superstructure of “civilization” that he has built by his very own body and brain. This mind has played with mud and unleashed out of it a power of matter whose potency has become a threat to himself. Or else, he lies encrusted under the arches of a toy-city, feeling himself safe and comfortable till some giant hand smashes it to the ground throws him under the rubbles and ruins of his own works. In spite of all his “perfection”, in spite of all his pride and the arrogance of his ignorance, death, disease, disaster continue to strike him at will, through one means or another, through one route or another. Nay, paradoxically enough, the very forces he has roused and chained for his service turn against him. He becomes, as if trapped, within the cocoon of his own perfection. Sitting inside his air-conditioned rooms, he sweats with unknown fears. His safe castles are haunted by unseen ghosts that hold him at ransom within his own house. His comfort zones have become his prison-houses. The fetters that bind him are those he has built with great care with his own hands. In a way man’s mind has built an empire that he cannot manage. Each new knowledge leaves the previous one a doubt and a guess. Each new discovery smashes the neat old world and its paradigm like a house of cards.

So where are we heading through all this? A “civilization” buried under its own weight or a humanity struggling to break free from its own inner limits? But the limits are within us and not outside. The heaping of more and more external superstructures in the name of development is like the caterpillar swelling in its size due to the cocoon he has built around itself. To heap more and more of it externally is to bury itself more and more. Yet this pressure, this constriction, this state of tension generated by a life growing increasingly mechanical is only making us aware, as if by a contrast, our inner smallness. Till something in us… breaks free… tearing the shelter of its cocoon and the neat boundaries of its dimensional world… it spreads beautiful wings and courts with the boundless and sports with the timeless.

But for this he has to discover other locked energies than what his limited matter bound mind can conquer. Not only the material energies but also the energies of life and the powers of mind that man has just begun to discover, cannot eventually set him free. The wings of life and the power of thought can no doubt carry him beyond what the steeds and engines of material energy can even dream of, yet these are not enough. For there lies, sleeping inside the very bodily house of man, an infinite source of energy, an illimitable potency of will and action, a power and force that only his soul can arouse and command. It is to this that man must turn his gaze, now, to this inner empire of which he is presently hardly even aware and yet it is this which determines in the end how much he will actually possess and enjoy his outer empire. Swaraj before Samrajya (conquest over the world outside) is the word given by the wise ones. The inner conquest must proceed the outer. Man must first find and know and master himself before he can find, master and enjoy the world in a lasting and true way.

Alok Pandey

The first things needed is that we do not yet know everything about anything. Rationally speaking, it is absurd to ‘believe’ that man is simply a lump of clay or a bundle of neurons ticking away to glory or a clock set in the heart to tick us slowly towards inevitable death. I refuse to believe that man is just a bunch of chemicals or animalcules. This too is a kind of faith that many ‘scientists’ unwittingly have and I find it worse than a blind faith in totems and taboos that at least admit of something more than the two-legged worm called man. For what else would we be if we are nothing more than a bag of chemicals and physiology? Both Science and Reason demand of us a humility that we do not know and may never know all the mysteries of existence. This keeps us open to new vistas and horizons of discovery. One may say that but Science is after all making new discoveries. Well, yes on the face of it. But a closer look we shall see that unable to shed its obsession with chemistry and biology and physics it is simply running the bullock of effort in the same groves of matter around the same physical tracks despite increasing evidence that the mind (forget about higher consciousness for a moment), our thoughts and feelings and faith and will all have an impact upon our physical health. Can you tell me why research does not go in these directions as much as it should? Simply because this would mean empowering the people, of giving health in their hands which would mean closing down many pharma industries which are big business now (among the top ten in the world). are these people saintly and doing all their research with a selfless motive for the sole purpose of the good of humanity in their heart? One has to be too naïve to believe it.  So much for our beliefs and non-beliefs.

Coming back to the healing process, let us admit that it is a complex affair and to reduce it to one simple cause is not doing justice to science or reason. at any given point there are many factors involved including physical such as heredity and constitutional vulnerability of specific organs, exercise and lifestyle, food habits, sleep and rest balance, etc. Then there are vital factors such as the will to live, the joy of life, the strong instinct to survive or simply a tremendous vitality with which some are born. Besides these, there are a host of several other mental, occult and spiritual factors. All these different factors form a hierarchy of determinism. It is by bringing in a higher determinism that one can alter the usual course of the lower plane. Practically, this means that a strong mental or vital will can change the course of an illness, make it milder or less complicated than it may have turned out. Since spiritual consciousness is still higher its intervention can seem almost miraculous. But the highest of all is Grace that can completely change fixed destiny.

However, the cosmic play involves the creation as well as the Creator. Though the Creator can override all rules and laws, it is with His sanction as the Cosmic Being that these things have come into existence.  A responsiveness, a receptivity is needed on the side of the creation as well. What we experience as pain is an acute response to the contact with world forces. Its purpose is indeed to awaken and open and make the hard crust of matter more receptive. It is here that we must understand the role of faith and fear. Faith opens the doors wide to the workings of the healing forces that can use even a material medium to act. The Divine is least bothered (to use a human expression) whether we believe in this or that. It is enough that we have faith in the recovery, or faith in destiny, in the doctor,  the system,  the medication,  or just faith in ourselves.  It is enough to provide support to the higher forces that are always ready and willing to act if we simply allow them to. 

However isn’t it also true that mankind opens much more readily to the lower and darker forces through anger, revolts, agitation, lust for money and power, aggressive ambition, greed, above all distrust in higher things, fear and despair? It is not just a question of belief in God but the kind of forces to wh8ch we are open.  Leave aside those who are not yet ready for higher things and are genuinely in ignorance,  but even those who have some kind of opening towards greater things. They too so readily shrink back into a selfish fear focused around preserving their physical body so that they can continue devouring nature and exploit others for their selfish ends and brief pleasures! Not that the Divine abandons them. The Grace is equally for all but we shut our doors by putting ourselves in a small hole of fear and doubts. That is what makes life so needlessly complicated by the human mind that has a natural tendency (being on top of the food chain) that he is the highest and best and surrounds his ignorance with armour of arrogance. 

If only we could learn to be simple and humble and open like a flower to the Grace, then life would be so much wonderful. But the sceptic mind stands in the way and an aggressively selfish consciousness opens doors to fear and closes it to the Grace.

Alok Pandey