Daily Notes and Reflections by Alokda

The spiritual literature left by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is vast, and one may be at loss how to approach and where to begin. After some initial attempts to read the original sources, the sadhaka may start looking for a book that describes an easy-to-do step-by-step practice of the integral yoga. They are often disappointed to learn that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have not only never written such an oversimplified guide to the Integral Yoga, but rather discouraged any such shortcut procedures and reliance on external techniques and outer methods. They can find their limited use, no doubt, but do not form the core of the yoga. Of course, there are books written by well-meaning disciples to satisfy this seemingly legitimate need, but it is important to understand from the very beginning that this yoga does not proceed in this easy to do step-by-step manner.

It is a wide movement in many directions towards an opening and self-giving to the Divine. The Yoga therefore takes place in real-time and all our outer and inner experiences, however trifle or small in our eyes, become catalysts for opening the path or closing the doors to it. It is through the everyday life experiences and our attitude towards them that the doors open one after another, especially with the cultivation and application of that rare quality called sincerity. If the seeking is sincere and not a mask for some earthly or spiritual ambition, then one finds oneself walking the path spontaneously as if an inner Hand is leading him through everything.

Of course, there are special processes, well described in so many books by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Foremost among them is the triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, undertaken with faith and sincerity of our seeking. It is beautifully described in a seminal work of Sri Aurobindo titled ‘The Mother (with question and answers on the Mother)’. There are also other important works, especially Conversations with the Mother, notable among which are the conversations 1929 – 1931, now published as Vol. 3 of the Collected Works of the Mother. There are also countless letters of Sri Aurobindo, written to various disciples, that touch upon the details of Integral Yoga from every angle. These voluminous works answer every possible question one may have on the subject, in essence and often in detail as well.

There is a section of humanity, which wants to engage with the yoga of Sri Aurobindo, also known as the Integral Yoga, the Supramental Yoga or very simply as the Mother’s Yoga. It is here that one encounters a second difficulty, that of practice of the Yoga in the physical absence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. One feels lost and caught up between an incessant urge to practice the yoga and an inability to quite comprehend as to what a sadhaka is supposed to do to follow the path. This happens especially when there has been a little reading or none at all, and yet one has been drawn for the yoga. Of course, if the inmost soul has awakened and takes the lead of our being and the sadhana, if one has felt intuitively the Mother’s Presence and opened oneself to Her in a wide gesture of self-giving, devotion and service, then there is no fundamental difficulty. Such a person walks the straight and sunlit path of Yoga, freed from doubts and serious difficulties. Even if he has countless defects in his nature, his path and the eventual outcome is assured. But such souls are still rare and fortunate. Most experience some initial difficulties with understanding the way. It is here that we discover the treasure trove of Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s works. It is important however to know that there is no external initiation in this yoga. What is needed is a call for the path from within, and if there is this call and a sufficient support of faith, the Divine Master will build the Divine Perfection and transform this mud-born creature, shaped so far under the shadows and laws of ignorance.

The last century or so can be rightly termed as an age of revolutions. The human mind entered into an accelerated mode giving rise to revolutionary changes in the field of Science, Industry, Politics and other fields of knowledge. It is as if there has been a casting of new ideas in the human mind leading to radical shifts in human understanding as perhaps never before. But behind these revolutions that are tangible and visible to the eye of man there is a silent revolution going on within man whose far-reaching consequences are yet to be understood. It is a revolution in consciousness, a silent spiritual revolution with its eventual consequences of the evolution of mankind from the mental to the spiritual person. It is time for evolution next, the spiritual evolution of the human race.

“The changes we see in the world today are intellectual, moral, physical in their ideal and intention: the spiritual revolution waits for its hour and throws up meanwhile its waves here and there. Until it comes the sense of the others cannot be understood and till then all interpretations of present happening and forecast of man’s future are vain things. For its nature, power, event are that which will determine the next cycle of our humanity.” [Thoughts and Glimpses, CWSA 13:211]

We may say that the blueprint of this silent spiritual revolution was given to Sri Aurobindo with his coming to Pondicherry on the 4th April, 1910. With the coming of the Mother on the 29th March, 1914, Sri Aurobindo began sharing something of this blueprint with the world at large through the Arya. The Mother’s final coming on the 24th April 1920 marked yet another stage in the Divine Project. Being the manifesting Power of the Divine, now incarnated as the Shakti of Sri Aurobindo, she started organising the materials and calling some of those who may become part of the project. Yet the formal go-ahead waited for 6 long years. It was to see the readiness of matter, of the earthly soil to bear the Divine descent. The final sanction was needed by the Divine incarnated as Sri Krishna to the Divine incarnated as Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo’s own personal sadhana and the consequent yoga Siddhi was needed before his individual Yoga could enlarge its scope and significance and become a collective yoga, the Yoga of world transformation. For the Divine Life cannot be created by few isolated individuals. At least a certain number of representative human beings were needed to see how far can the spiritual revolution aimed at a collective transformation of mankind go.

We may say that the 24th November is the day when the inner sanction, the sign and the final seal came. Sri Krishna’s descent into the physical along with all the fullness of the Overmental Consciousness was a clear indication that the human body and earth nature can bear the impact of the Supermind which indeed is much more powerful and complete and perfect. Thereby began a huge unprecedented venture or the Divine Adventure of a New Creation upon earth. What was happening in the consciousness of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother was now laid open to the world, to participate and collaborate in various ways. We may say that Sri Aurobindo and The Mother laid the foundation stone for the bridge towards the future and the Mother took charge of not only arranging and organising but actually building the New Creation, starting with a representative sample of humanity and ending with a universal township and now extending into the whole world.

It took nearly another 30 years to build the bridge from the old to the New Creation. The foundation stone for the bridge was laid jointly by Sri Aurobindo and Sri Krishna. The complete charge for the construction through the human consciousness to the divine superhumanity was given entirely to the Mother on this day, the 24th of November 1926. With this there came into existence the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the Integral Yoga, the Collective Yoga for the transformation of earthly life into the Life Divine.

Alok Pandey
November 23, 2024
Pondicherry

Sri Aurobindo’s thought is drawing humanity more and more towards itself. This is only bound to increase as mankind evolves and seeks to find complete answers to the cosmic riddle of which man is a part. Among this humanity, that is turning towards Sri Aurobindo, there is a section that seeks to engage primarily with his thought and the new ideas that Sri Aurobindo has seeded into the earth atmosphere. Many of them engage with these ideas in an academic way and it goes as far as it could, which is not very far. One soon encounters the first difficulty, since these ideas are so new that all our previous understanding of yoga and man and life’s goal stands in the way. The more we compare Sri Aurobindo to various other similar or dissimilar thoughts, the more we get confused. We perhaps enter into a cocoon constructed by our ignorant receiving of the profound truths, that have descended from the plane of Truth into the realms of our mortal ignorance and its small, cramped up understanding of life. One plays with the ideas, churns them in the mind, tries even to digest them mentally or understand intellectually, seeks to discover the truths concealed within the words. But that cannot be done by the mind alone since these ideas were never born from the Mind. What Sri Aurobindo has brought to this earth in terms of Idea-forces has been born through the fire of yoga. It is the gift of his intense and arduous tapasya, the kind of which one hardly had even in far back times. The true understanding can therefore only come as one engages with the yoga itself. The mental lights are not sufficient, it is the fire of yoga that can illumine our understanding and reveal to us what is hidden behind the written word. Still to an extent this difficulty begins to be overpassed if one persists. The words themselves then kindle the fire in one who is now prepared through the readings, and he begins to see what was unclear before.

Atheism is a phase through which the soul must pass in its search towards the Reality that it seeks. Trapped by belief systems and crushed under the weight of dead rituals it breaks free so as to discover a greater and wider Truth. It is this faith inbuilt within the soul that compels it to thus advance.

When belief ends then faith begins, and when we have denied all possible conceptions of God then the ground is cleared for the living experience of That which cannot be captured by any formula or shut in a scripture.

Theist is often satisfied with the image and the shadow. The Atheist is satisfied with his negation of the image. Both miss the greater truth that images, ideas and conceptions are at best scaffoldings and half-way inns towards the soul’s ascension out of a state of Ignorance towards Light and Truth and Freedom and Immortality.

But the atheist is unable to comprehend or find a way to experience That which is beyond Form and yet uses all forms for His Self-expression. If the Theist limits himself to the form, the Atheist limits himself to his temporary incapacity to go beyond the form and come in contact with the Consciousness that inhabits it.

The fact is that the limit of our sight is not the limit of Light, and Truth is wider than all our conceptions and forms.

Emotions, like every other part of nature can be a help or a hindrance to the growth of consciousness.

If moved by the storms of lower passions and sullied by the poison of jealousy and hate, they sap away all our energies and keep us tied to the small and narrow fence of lower nature. The attendant result is suffering and pain or a momentary thrill, followed by exhaustion and indifference and a turning away from the object of love.

Nor does it help to suppress them by the mind since it maims rather than cures. Emotions are a tremendous source of energy, the powerful lever for human actions, often unrecognised but acting swiftly in our thoughts and actions.

What is therefore needed is their purification, and not suppression or a free indulgence. Only a greater and deeper feeling can release us from the lesser, which is a shadow and a limitation. Only Love can cure one of the lesser and distorted forms that love has taken in our human nature.

To try bringing out this deeper love from within, to love unselfishly, without expectation or preference and prejudice, to give oneself to the Divine and His creation in a sublime love that seeks nothing in return is the way to turn emotions into a powerful instrument for progress.

Thus purified, refined, uplifted, they not only become instruments for the growth of consciousness but also give us the key to the doors of delight that we knowingly or unknowingly seek.

It is often said that religion is the birthplace of fundamentalism.

This is true only if we limit our idea of religion to a set of fixed rituals and narrow dogmas, especially when we believe that our conception of God, our Scripture, our way of life is the only true way. It is this exclusivity that makes a fertile breeding ground for fundamentalism.

But this exclusivity is not the sole property of religions. A scientist vehemently denying God even without taking a serious quest, an ideologue believing his ideology to be the only one that can save mankind and the world, are equally prone to fundamentalism. It may not translate into violent actions that seek to eliminate the ‘non-believers’ but oppose them with loud voices trying to stifle what it does not believe in.

It is therefore not religion but narrowness and an intellectual shallowness, an inability to deeper into the very heart of things, an incapacity to search for higher and higher truths, an intolerance of all that has a different way of life and conception of Reality is the birthplace of fundamentalism.

But Religion, Science, Idealism all have a positive side in their search for a better state and condition of human living. If their different approaches can fuse in a common aspiration, then we may discover something of THAT Reality which exceeds both Science and Religion, is beyond ideas and idealism and yet is the secret Source of all.

The Mother reveals to us the truth that Sri Aurobindo’s symbol represents as follows:

“The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda. The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light and love. The junction of both—the central square—is the perfect manifestation having at its centre the Avatar of the Supreme— the lotus. The water—inside the square—represents the multiplicity, the creation.”

It is not enough to know the meaning of this symbol intellectually. Like a mantra, like the yantra of tantric worshippers we can meditate upon this symbol and on the Truth that it represents.

It means to know Sri Aurobindo not only as the Master of Integral Yoga but also and more importantly as the Avatar who has descended into creation in response to the human aspiration for Light and Love and Life Divine. He brings with Him as a gift to creation the perfect consciousness and the Supramental creation of the Future.

It is the meeting of the two, – of the human aspiration for terrestrial Perfection and the Divine answer that leads to the ascension of our soul out of the state of Ignorance and mortality into a state of Freedom and Truth and Immortality. It is by His advent that the earth and humanity become ready to manifest the Supramental Perfection.