Daily Notes and Reflections by Alokda

The Master had trod many a ways. So a disciple asked him once as to how many spiritual paths were there?

“As many as there are human beings” replied the Master rather laconically, and then added after a pause, “there are as many paths as there are aspiring souls and yet in reality there is only one path.”

“And which path is that?” asked one who had a special liking for a particular way hoping to get approval of his methods.

But the Master responded rather quizzically, – “well, it is the path that is no path!”

Seeing the puzzled look on the faces of the disciples he explained by taking them to the sea shore where the sun was just beginning to rise and its first reflections fell upon the waters. A small section of the sea was lit up by the sun as its rays fell upon it. He asked one of them if he saw a path of light over the waters? “Yes, of course, right in front of me.” The eager disciple noted.
Bidding him to stay there, the Master took another a few steps further and asked if he also saw a path of light upon the sea in front of him.

“Yes of course, it is there right in front,” said the second. And so on and so forth as they moved ahead each one noted a path of light upon the sea right in front irrespective of how much ever far they went.

“There you are,” said the Master, “see how the one path becomes the many depending upon the angle of your vision, the starting point of your journey, the route you take and the goal you set in front of you. In fact there is only one path and that is the universal path of the sun through whose help we climb to the Light and Force that governs the world. It is the sunlit path. But men are not yet wide and their vision too narrow, so they break the path into several streams and oppose it to each other.”

Alok Pandey

“Master, what is truth?” asked a disciple who for years had been struggling to understand this.

As was his method of instruction, the Master pointed towards a glass of water that was lying on the table and asked of the disciple, “What is that?”

“The water of course!” replied the disciple, somewhat  surprised at the suddenness and the simplicity of the question, but wondering what depth lay behind this simplicity that the Master would disclose.

“And what is water? Can someone tell me that?” The Master seemingly inquired.

One went on to describe its properties, its colour, taste, smell etc.

And the Master…”But that is only what your senses perceive or report to you. That tells us about how human beings experience contact with water. So it is a relative truth and not the reality of water.”

Another ventured who seemed like a scientist: “well, scientists have analysed the structure of water molecules and it is made up of a certain combination of hydrogen and oxygen atoms.” He confidently spoke.

The Master smiled and asked him: “That is only its structure as you perceive it through your mathematical models. It tells us what constitutes the material aspect of water. But this does not tell us why this combination has certain properties and not others. It still does not explain about the truth of water.”

The scientist nodded in approval and added: “But this is as far as science has gone and perhaps can go.”

“But not art and aesthetics, not the poet and the mystic.” The Master observed turning to the rest of his disciples.

One spoke, an artist and a poet perhaps: ”Well, water is the giver of life because it is itself a symbol of life, ever flowing, ever moving, ever changing its course though ever the same in its depths.”

The Master seemed happy with this answer, but turned to a mystic who was quite indrawn as if in a silent contemplation. Gathering himself outward, the mystic spoke: “It is a symbol of our mind that reflects the Self. If it is still, it reflects the inner truth; if it is moving and restless, it distorts it.”

And another, who had developed the occult vision responded: “Water is Consciousness limiting itself in certain form and functions. It is the gross representation of a subtle reality. The force of consciousness that makes things flow is the inner truth of water.”

The Master smiled and even as the disciples were wondering at the many ways of looking at, perceiving and understanding water, he spoke with the authority of someone who knows something because he has made it: ”All these are so many facets of the reality of water, depth upon depth, each complementing the other. Yet, even if we were to sum up all these things we would still miss out the essential as well as the total truth of water. And that cannot be described in words but known only through an experience of identifying with it.”

The Master fell silent and the disciples fell into a contemplative mood reflecting upon the meaning of those strange but powerful words. And as their meditation grew deeper and profound, one began to enter deeper and deeper into the truth of what is known and recognised as water. He entered past the truth of the senses. He entered deeper and went past the truth of the atomic void and its mysterious magic that lends shape and form to apparent nothingness. Further he pressed and saw the world of symbol figures and the flow of energy and all nature through the shape and form of water. He went on till he met the very being of water appear before him as the godhead who stands behind the flux and flow of the vast current of life. For a while he felt that this was the last bedrock, the inner foundation of water. But prompted by an inner something he concentrated till his whole being became one with the great godhead of his vision. And he felt himself flow everywhere and become the movement of the cosmic whorl. In the being of water, he saw all other beings grow one in unity. He saw the Light of the stars and the dust of the planets, he saw the splendour of the sun and the heat and fire that built the worlds. He saw the winds raising the dead to life and again contracting them till they collapse and die. And he saw behind these godheads and their wonderful artistry, the work of a great cosmic Intelligence weaving the dance of creation. He slipped past the world of forms as if carried by some giant wave of bliss. And past that vast stupendous dance of creation, at its center and core, he beheld the deathless One from whom all emerges and issues forth as if from an unseen womb, by whom all sustains as if by a fixed unalterable law, to whom all returns undone as if by a magician’s skill. Rapt in his vision and full of an unspeakable joy, he got up and exclaimed; “The truth of water as indeed the truth of everything else is a wonder wisdom, a knowledge and power ineffable, an infinite delight.”.

The Master smiled and spoke not, neither affirming nor negating. But the disciple understood through an inner contact. And others wondered and tried to fathom the meaning of the disciple’s words and still more of the Master’s rich and pregnant Silence. 

Alok Pandey 

There is sometimes a tendency to draw all kinds of conclusions about the life and works of the Master and the Mother based on what they have written. At other times one draws conclusions based on what one has seen or experienced in one’s personal life with or without physical contact with Them. One must, however, remember that however much one may have read, understood or known it is impossible to fathom the heart of the supreme Mystery that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are. What They have revealed is surely not even a fraction of what they knew and what they have withheld. In a sense, it is true of any spiritual scripture such as the Gita, for instance. The Scripture is a guide but the Master is the incarnate Wisdom and even beyond. Since Wisdom is but one aspect of the Supreme, there are also many other, in fact, infinite aspects. There is most importantly Love whose single touch is far more powerful than hours of reading of scriptures and even reflections and deliberations.

Even if all the scriptures and all the truths that have been expressed so far about the Divine and will yet be spoken were to be kept together on one scale and the Divine Master, the embodied Divine, the scales would completely tilt on the side of the Master. It is perhaps this quality of the Master that he was called as a Guru, which means two things. One is that it indicates the one who takes us from darkness towards the Light. But the other meaning is equally significant, perhaps even more so. The word also means ‘heavy’. He is heavy with Wisdom, with Strength, with spiritual Power, with compassion, with Grace and Love. An ideal disciple or a seeker after Knowledge is therefore always eager to know not just what the word means but also what is hidden behind it and even more what has never been said or uttered by the Master. He receives not only the Word but also the Silence pregnant with infinity.

It is with this background that we shall now turn to some of the works of Sri Aurobindo knowing the inherent limitations of the human mind but also knowing the infinite Grace of the Divine Mother that can make the dumb speak and the deaf to hear and understand.

Let us close or rather begin with an invocation to Her:

“But thought nor word can seize eternal Truth:
The whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun.
In our thinking’s close and narrow lamp-lit house
The vanity of our shut mortal mind
Dreams that the chains of thought have made her ours;
But only we play with our own brilliant bonds;
Tying her down, it is ourselves we tie.
In our hypnosis by one luminous point
We see not what small figure of her we hold;
We feel not her inspiring boundlessness,
We share not her immortal liberty.
Thus is it even with the seer and sage;
For still the human limits the divine:
Out of our thoughts we must leap up to sight,
Breathe her divine illimitable air,
Her simple vast supremacy confess,
Dare to surrender to her absolute.
Then the Unmanifest reflects his form
In the still mind as in a living glass;
The timeless Ray descends into our hearts
And we are rapt into eternity.
For Truth is wider, greater than her forms.
A thousand icons they have made of her
And find her in the idols they adore;
But she remains herself and infinite.”
[Savitri:276]

We must have a synthetic understanding with as total a vision as possible of their complete vision and yet be plastic enough to admit that all that we understand today is nothing compared to what we will understand tomorrow and the day after. This wideness and plasticity is most needed when we deal with their writings that cover every aspect of life from every angle of vision without losing, even for a moment, the total picture. It is as if a Master-artist was filling a vast canvas with a meticulous eye on each detail but all the time keeping the full picture and every other detail in it constantly in his universal mind. Everything is there but in its just place and right proportion. If we take the word or the sentence out of this totality and put it as an exclusive truth then it turns into a falsehood by such misplacement. A certain understanding and formulation may have been needed for us at a certain point of time and a certain stage of development but if we do not constantly enlarge our vision and scope then this understanding begins to get petrified and turns the high spiritual truths contained within a body of words into a fixed and narrow formula or a dogmatic religion. Or worse still by repeating it too often, especially without an effort to live it, we turn the living body of Truth into a dead and sterile corpse whose carcass we carry as Shiva carrying Sati on his shoulders until Vishnu breaks the dead body into pieces so that Sati may be reborn as Parvati, Sati must pass through the flames of sacrifice to be thus reborn. So too, the word must pass through the flames of our inner aspiration to reveal its inmost truth.

When we thus make an effort we shall ourselves see how Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s Works are arranged in a hierarchical manner. There is a context to everything, a context at once inner and outer; and a purpose, a purpose that goes beyond mere understanding and living. It is to lead us to the heart of Love that the Divine Incarnate embodies. Each of Sri Aurobindo’s Works is a step of the Infinite Shakti that leads us closer and closer to Her and it is only when we have found Her that the real truth behind the luminous words is revealed to us by Her Grace. It is Her Grace that leads us to the vast and luminous heart of the Lord where the word stands self-revealed. This, after all, is the real, if not the only, purpose of his words, – to take us closer to the Divine and His workings in creation and all these countless revelations to lead us to Her Feet where knowledge rests in a blissful Silence. This is the grand revelation towards which the all-powerful Word of the Avatar leads us.

Indeed it is only to the degree that we grow close to Her that we can truly understand. Words of Sri Aurobindo are like illuminated stairs that lead us towards Her. Of course the world experiences are also a staircase that takes us to Her but it is a dark and dangerous staircase. The ascension through the Word is swifter and safer provided we read it with the fire of aspiration to grow closer to the Divine. But if we get lost in mere outer meanings and pedagogy and analysis of the structure and the sentence then we shall be like the man who kept staring and appreciating a mountain from the foothills but never really tasted the bliss of rising into the skies which is where the mountains were meant to lead him. The more we ascend, the better we understand the mountain, in its totality and its specific details. The same is true of Sri Aurobindo’s books. The more we read about a given subject from different works of his, the better we understand the many-sided and all-encompassing vision contained within them. The more we put into practice what we read, the more we grow closer to the intrinsic sense of the Word rather than its outer meaning. The more we let the power within the Words penetrate deeper into the different layers of our consciousness, the more they do the work of illumining and awakening different parts of our being to the greater Truth-Light. Sound and sense is our mind’s contact with the Word. The soul however opens out to the state of consciousness contained within it and grows by this strengthening wine ‘born from the presses of Light’.

The Mother reminds us:
“There is a world of ideas without form and it is there that you must enter if you want to seize what is behind the words. So long as you have to draw your understanding from the forms of words, you are likely to fall into much confusion about the true sense; but if in a silence of your mind you can rise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, at once the real understanding comes. If you are to be sure of understanding one another, you must be able to understand in silence. There is a condition in which your minds are so well attuned and harmonised together that one perceives the thought of the other without any necessity of words. But if there is not this attunement, there will always be some deformation of your meaning, because to what you speak the other mind supplies its own significance. I use a word in a certain sense or shade of its sense; you are accustomed to put into it another sense or shade. Then, evidently, you will understand, not my exact meaning in it, but what the word means to you. This is true not of speech only, but of reading also. If you want to understand a book with a deep teaching in it, you must be able to read it in the mind’s silence; you must wait and let the expression go deep inside you into the region where words are no more and from there come slowly back to your exterior consciousness and its surface understanding. But if you let the words jump at your external mind and try to adapt and adjust the two, you will have entirely missed their real sense and power. There can be no perfect understanding unless you are in union with the unexpressed mind that is behind the centre of expression.” [CWM 3:64–65]

Herein comes the third and most important major difficulty when we turn to the word of any scripture. It is this that very often we bind ourselves to the letter and not the spirit, the outer sense rather than the deeper inner meaning, the mental understanding rather than the truth being revealed to us. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo repeatedly caution us not to turn their luminous writings meant to awaken and inspire rather than instruct and systematize, into fixed systems of thought or rigid dogmas of life. Worse still to use them as means to justify our own weaknesses (given the vastness of their writings) while pointing figures at others. Such a misuse of their words would be the proverbial ‘devil quoting the scriptures’. The word is a means of ascension but not the final culmination of yoga. If born out of the yog agni  of tapasya as indeed all words of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are, it can purify us, uplift us, refine us but the final act of entering the sanctum sanctorum of the Lord is effected by the free surrender of all that we are and do and understand. The powerful Word can carry us to the abode of the Lord on wings of fire like the Garuda, but to enter the shrine of Truth where sleeps the Great Being in the heart of Time and its infinite unfolding afloat the great ocean of infinite Knowledge, we must step out of the vehicle and step inside the house of the Lord bare feet and humble with faith as the only lamp of Light. There the Word ceases and understanding fails, a holy darkness wraps us in its sacred shroud and passing through the mystical gates of the Unknown we step into Light and Freedom and Bliss and Truth. What is of greater importance than mere reading and intellectualizing is to meditate on the living truths contained in the words with a will to live it.

“A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the reading of Scriptures or by the stress of philosophic reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and yet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not indispensable: it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the intellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding preliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind.” [CWSA 23: 55 – 56]

It means that we should be careful of limiting the Divine by our own understanding of His too luminous Words! Both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have often cautioned us about this tendency to quote their words and worse still think that our own understanding is the one true understanding of it. The Mother clearly reminds us:       

“Men find a book or a teaching very wonderful and often you hear them say, “That is exactly what I myself feel and know, but I could not bring it out or express it as well as it is expressed here.” When men come across a book of true knowledge, each finds himself there, and at every new reading he discovers things that he did not see in it at first; it opens to him each time a new field of knowledge that had till then escaped him in it. But that is because it reaches layers of knowledge that were waiting for expression in the subconscious in him; the expression has now been given by somebody else and much better than he could himself have done it. But, once expressed, he immediately recognises it and feels that it is the truth. The knowledge that seems to come to you from outside is only an occasion for bringing out the knowledge that is within you. The experience of misrepresentation of something we have said is a very common one and it has a similar source. We say something that is quite clear, but the way in which it is understood is stupefying! Each sees in it something else than what was intended or even puts into it something that is quite the contrary of its sense. If you want to understand truly and avoid this kind of error, you must go behind the sound and movement of the words and learn to listen in silence. If you listen in silence, you will hear rightly and understand rightly; but so long as there is something moving about and making a noise in your head, you will understand only what is moving in your head and not what is told you.” [CWM 3: 51 – 52]

Our limited receptivity is one issue when we turn towards Sri Aurobindo’s words. There is another issue that arises from the vast and complex nature of the Truth he brings to earth and man. The Supramental Truth is the truth of the Infinite. It cannot be bound or limited by any one-sided formula or understanding of things. Nor even can it be bound by any process or technique for which we may be eagerly looking for. Sri Aurobindo would rather give us the fundamental understanding of how things are and work. He leaves the rest to be adapted by each individual given his or her evolutionary stage. As he points out in the Synthesis itself about the workings of the Divine Shakti:

“In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga….

What is his method and his system? He has no method and every method. His system is a natural organisation of the highest processes and movements of which the nature is capable. Applying themselves even to the pettiest details and to the actions the most insignificant in their appearance with as much care and thoroughness as to the greatest, they in the end lift all into the Light and transform all. For in his Yoga there is nothing too small to be used and nothing too great to be attempted. As the servant and disciple of the Master has no business with pride or egoism because all is done for him from above, so also he has no right to despond because of his personal deficiencies or the stumblings of his nature. For the Force that works in him is impersonal—or superpersonal—and infinite.” [CWSA 23: Pp. 46 – 47, 61 – 62]

Or else he would give us some luminous and helpful hints, some uplifting strains of divine music that carries us deep and high into hitherto unknown realms of the Spirit. Then mere reading with a quiet concentration and receptivity to the power contained in the words itself becomes a yoga. The word here becomes not just a messenger bringing to us divine tidings from high and luminous worlds but also a vehicle to carry us back to the Source from where the Word has emerged. Ordinarily, we dissociate understanding from doing. Therefore men have a tendency to first read, then reflect, then act in accordance with what is written. This is of course needed since mere reading a Teaching without a sincere will to live it is at best a stage of development prior to the beginning of the yogic journey. Here we read with our active mind and the outer consciousness receives the impacts of the word-meanings as our mind understands. Slowly these multiple impacts begin to create a dent and an opening for the inner being to open up and receive the Light. But once the opening has come then the reading itself becomes a yoga since now it is no more the active external mind but the inner being and the inmost soul that hears and receives the Word. The Word then becomes a representative of the Divine Master, a power and force of the author who created it like the Rishis of yore, or brought it down from a higher Source embodying the higher states and the vibrations of Truth into a rhythmic expression wearing the body of sound and letter and word. Sri Aurobindo reveals this power of the Representative Word in The Synthesis:

“Ordinarily, the Word from without, representative of the Divine, is needed as an aid in the work of self-unfolding; and it may be either a word from the past or the more powerful word of the living Guru. In some cases this representative word is only taken as a sort of excuse for the inner power to awaken and manifest; it is, as it were, a concession of the omnipotent and omniscient Divine to the generality of a law that governs Nature….

But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra,—some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins,—it may be practiced either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.”  [CWSA 23: 23: 54 – 55]

However he also cautions us not to bind ourselves rigidly in a dogmatic manner to the written or spoken word, however great and helpful it may be. The sadhaka is, in his words, ‘not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite.‘

Alok Pandey

In an autobiographical poem, Sri Aurobindo reveals the deeper truth behind his own writings:

Seer deep-hearted

Seer deep-hearted, divine king of the secrecies,
Occult fountain of love sprung from the heart of God,
Ways thou knewest no feet ever in Time had trod.
Words leaped flashing, the flame-billows of wisdom’s seas.
Vast thy soul was a tide washing the coasts of heaven.
Thoughts broke burning and bare crossing the human night,
White star-scripts of the gods born from the book of Light
Page by page to the dim children of earth were given.
[CWSA 1: 655]

This very much applies to the words of Sri Aurobindo. They are mantric in nature and their action is not confined to the limits of our understanding. In fact, our human understanding is a double-edged sword. It can clarify the inner sense of the word if the mind is quiet and receptive to the one who has released the word-power. Or it may, indeed very often in normal human life, obfuscate the understanding and even create confusion by sieving the words through the net of our preconceived ideas and opinions about things. This is a common problem that many encounter when they read Sri Aurobindo. When the mind is in a dull state because the mental faculties have not been adequately used, it tends to fall asleep. The idea-forces contained in these powerful words then sink into some subconscious terrains of our complex nature and then work their way upwards from there. There is an action but a slow and one and the reader, living in the surfaces of life may not be fully aware of the occult action of the words going on within. But something else within him knows and therefore returns again and again to the writings even though the mind is unable to comprehend what is being revealed through the words. The soul still hears and if it is sufficiently awake, responds.

Or the mind may be restless, disorganized, filled with all sorts of ideas and opinions gathered from here and there and everywhere thinking that by doing so it will grow in wisdom and knowledge. Little do we know that wisdom is as far from knowledge as knowledge is from information! Wisdom is the light that grows within the soul; in that Light we see our self and the world anew. Knowledge, as it is used in the spiritual parlance (and not a scholarly knowledge which counts for little from the spiritual point of view) is the reflection of this growing Light in the inner being of man. This knowledge frees us from ignorance and bondage to fixed ideas and opinions and rigid dogmas and narrow views of existence. On the other hand, Wisdom leads us to Oneness. As to Information, it is merely a raw data, often inadequate data that conceals more than it reveals (leaving apart the falsifying and distorting action of the limited and imperfect human instruments). It cannot lead us to knowledge. Rather when knowledge awakens and an inner sight leaps out of Wisdom’s eyes then alone we can make the right use of information, understand its true import and the distortion lent to it by our own sensory apparatus. That is why the wise have always insisted on first clearing the obstructions in our understanding, purifying the mental instruments, awakening to the Truth within rather than losing ourselves in the maze and haze of the first raw data that is presented to us through the inadequate senses and the mind.

But even when we have carefully overcome these two difficulties we may still be caught and trapped by an idealized mentality whose shadowy brilliance breaks the Sun into multiple rays adding which we cannot constitute the original plenitude of the Light contained in Sri Aurobindo’s words that are vehicles of the Supramental Truth. Of course, still lower down the ladder of and idealized Mind we have our own ideas of what this World and God and Spiritual thought is or should be. These ideas are most often not the product of any patient reflection but merely the gathering of flowers from the garden of Religious scriptures and musings of someone else plucked from the tree of Philosophical thought. These things, useful aids as they may be in their own domain and at a certain stage of our mental evolution, interfere with the deeper spiritual understanding.

Sri Aurobindo reveals the various kinds of impurity that arise in our instruments of understanding itself. 

“The first cause of impurity in the understanding is the intermiscence of desire in the thinking functions, and desire itself is an impurity of the Will involved in the vital and emotional parts of our being. When the vital and emotional desires interfere with the pure will-to-know, the thought-function becomes subservient

to them, pursues ends other than those proper to itself and its perceptions are clogged and deranged. The understanding must lift itself beyond the siege of desire and emotion and, in order that it may have perfect immunity, it must get the vital parts and the emotions themselves purified….

The second cause of impurity in the understanding is the illusion of the senses and the intermiscence of the sense-mind in the thinking functions. No knowledge can be true knowledge which subjects itself to the senses or uses them otherwise than as first indices whose data have constantly to be corrected and overpassed. The beginning of Science is the examination of the truths of the world-force that underlie its apparent workings such as our senses represent them to be; the beginning of philosophy is the examination of the principles of things which the senses mistranslate to us; the beginning of spiritual knowledge is the refusal to accept the limitations of the sense-life or to take the visible and sensible as anything more than phenomenon of the Reality….

A third cause of impurity has its source in the understanding itself and consists in an improper action of the will to know. That will is proper to the understanding, but here again choice and unequal reaching after knowledge clog and distort. They lead to a partiality and attachment which makes the intellect cling to certain ideas and opinions with a more or less obstinate will to ignore the truth in other ideas and opinions, cling to certain fragments of a truth and shy against the admission of other parts which are yet necessary to its fullness, cling to certain predilections of knowledge and repel all knowledge that does not agree with the personal temperament of thought which has been acquired by the past of the thinker. The remedy lies in a perfect equality of the mind, in the cultivation of an entire intellectual rectitude and in the perfection of mental disinterestedness.”    [CWSA 23: 313 – 315]

That is why the Mother advises us to remain quiet and not try to understand the words but simply wait for the understanding to develop in a receptive state:

“To read my books is not difficult because they are written in the simplest language, almost the spoken language. To draw profit from them, it is enough to read with attention and concentration and an attitude of inner goodwill with the desire to receive and to live what is taught.

To read what Sri Aurobindo writes is more difficult because the expression is highly intellectual and the language is much more literary and philosophic. The brain needs a preparation to be able truly to understand and generally a preparation takes time, unless one is specially gifted with an innate intuitive faculty.

In any case, I advise always to read a little at a time, keeping the mind as tranquil as one can, without making an effort to understand, but keeping the head as silent as possible, and letting the force contained in what one reads enter deep within. This force received in the calm and the silence will do its work of light and, if needed, will create in the brain the necessary cells

for the understanding. Thus, when one re-reads the same thing some months later, one perceives that the thought expressed has become much more clear and close, and even sometimes altogether familiar.

It is preferable to read regularly, a little every day, and at a fixed hour if possible; this facilitates the brain-receptivity.”   [CWM 12: 203]

The word has power, even the ordinary word releases into the psychological and occult atmosphere certain energies that have concrete and lasting repercussion upon earth. The physical scientists would perhaps even say that the word contains within it certain vibrations that have an impact and influence on the very structure of matter and its behaviour. The biologists would note the influence of sound upon the cells. The psychologists of course know very well the power of words and its impact upon building (or destroying our lives). For the spiritual seeker, it has always been said that one must be careful about not only what one speaks and writes but also about what one thinks. It not only impacts those around us but also the person who uses speech as an instrument for expressing certain states of consciousness. Surely a spiritually realized person can pass on his influence even in silence, but not all are ready to open and receive this silent influence that is often much more potent than words. Man lives largely in the external consciousness and needs something to touch him there and through that penetrate deeper into his inner layers. The word does this work. A word of Wisdom and Power not only penetrates the inner being but also touches the outer surface layers of life with sound impact and moulds not just the inner but also the outer character of man. This was the secret of the mantra that the ancient Rishis knew so well. The mantra was the highest possibility of speech and by its power could unlock an inner door as well as create a powerful outer atmosphere that would prevent the entry of all sorts of forces and energies that are harmful to the seeker of a higher life. Very simply, the word is a vehicle that contains within it the state of consciousness of the person who has used it as a means of expression. It is a capsule of rejuvenating Light or benumbing poison depending upon how it is used, the person used it and the secret purpose towards which it is directed.

The Mother beautifully explains this in one single word, in response to a query:

Q) You put something in Your words which enables us to see the Truth that words cannot convey. What is it that accompanies Your words?
A) Consciousness.
[CWM 13: 27 December 1967]

And Sri Aurobindo has written the following autobiographical poem:

The Word of the Silence

A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,
A world of sight clear and inimitable,
A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,
A greatness pure of thought, virgin of will.

Once on its pages Ignorance could write
In a scribble of intellect the blind guess of Time
And cast gleam-messages of ephemeral light,
A food for souls that wander on Nature’s rim.

But now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence’ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day.

All turns from a wideness and unbroken peace
To a tumult of joy in a sea of wide release.

We are all aware of the supramental ship of the Mother carrying different beings of the old creation as a prototype towards the New Creation. The beings are representative and at various levels in their individual evolution. Some are more ready; others ready in some parts but not in other parts; still others need to go back and prepare till they are ready for the great transit. Another interesting thing is that this great transit is a collective one. The ship is carrying different types of people from different parts of the world!

How are these different samples of humanity linked to each other in time and space? Of course the central link, the true link is the Divine Mother who is the captain of the ship as well as the mediatrix between the old and the new creation. At least that is the work she has chosen to undertake in Her present avatara. But how are these different samples of humanity interlinked individually and collectively, even as they have gathered together around Her!

Here an image comes to us, the image of the Supramental tree.
The image unfolds itself as follows:

The Mother brought down with Her the mantra of eternal life concealed in the higher hemisphere. It is the word of New Creation, the Real-Idea concealed in the folds of earthly darkness but revealed in the Supramental Truth-Consciousness. This word is the seed of New Creation which she brings down just as Shri Krishna in a previous age brought down parijata, the tree of aspiration for divine life, upon earth at the insistence of Satyabhama, who was herself an aspect or power of the Divine Mother hoping to plant upon earth the heavenly tree. This time, and for this age, the Divine Mother brings the seed of the New Consciousness and hands it over to Sri Aurobindo when she meets Him for the first time, in this embodiment, so to say. But the earth is not ready. ‘The debt to Rudra must be paid before the heart of man can be ready for peace.’ The first Great War follows and it shakes the earth and its nations and it shakes men and nations as if a thunderbolt or lightning strikes a field turning its foliage to ashes. The foliage of old creation is burnt down though the stump remains. The ash from the burning down of the old goes on to enrich the soil. Shiva and Kali dance over the earth; – he smearing the ash over his body and thereby sanctifying it, she drinking the poisonous blood of the old creation thereby purifying it.

The Mother returns in 1920 and for the next few years there begins an unprecedented work not witnessed before in earth’s history. For the soil of our earth – nature will not readily accept this new seed. It is not ready and has to be made ready by tilling and watering the soil. This first phase of the work is the early part of the Ashram. The soil of earth – nature is thoroughly tilled by the twin avatara. The soil is watered constantly by Divine Love so that it can have the right constitution, neither too hard as a rock nor too soft as sand, so to say. When the tilling is complete and the soil can hold the light of the sun and the air from higher regions then the next phase begins.

This first phase is largely over with the siddhi day. Six years of cleansing of the past and six years of ceaseless tilling of the soil brings down Sri Krishna’s Light into our earth-stuff to play freely with matter. This Light itself will now further prepare matter to receive the Supramental Sun necessary for the seed of New Creation to sprout. A great inner rite and ceremony of consecration follows. It is the formation of the Ashram formally, so to say. The digging is done deep into the soil so as to plant the seed. The digging takes long as it must be fairly deep, nay the very deepest. It must go right upto the very heart of inner darkness, the inconscient foundation of the earth. Once dug, the yajna must be performed so that the whole environment is purified and the toxic things kept out of harm’s way. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother light the fire of aspiration deep into the earth nature. The rites of this yajna is simple, – to put all of oneself into this fire of a new aspiration so that the descending Grace may purify the earth further. This is a long painstaking, laborious and thorough work. The Supramental seed cannot co-exist with any impurity. It is the seed of the immaculate truth, the purest diamond of God.

As They dug deeper, there came out from the chasm beings and creatures and forces that had taken shelter in the dark underbelly of the earth, the animal past imprinted in our subconscient nature. And as the descending Truth drew closer to the sap of life embedded within the earth as a hidden treasure, there rose up from earth the resistance of the vital forces that had held it in their sway. The seed cannot be implanted in such an atmosphere. Like Shiva, Sri Aurobindo drank this poison stuff and at once the ground was cleared for the deep sowing. The moment of Death became also the moment of eternal life:

‘A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil
Nature shall overleap her mortal step
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.’
Sri Aurobindo

The digging deep in ‘a horror of filth and mire’ enduring ‘a thousand wounds’ in an effort to reclaim the land from the fiefdom of old for sowing the Tree Divine, led, as we know, to the other great war of the previous century. Nevertheless the seed was sown in matter or rather extracted out of it when Sri Aurobindo Himself chose to go down into the ‘bottomless pit’ for the battle with the forces of the Abyss. It would take another six years (29th Feb 1956) before the first rays of the descending Supramental Light touch the seed of Divine Life. The link is established, the higher mystery is joined to the lower, the betrothal of earth and heaven is accomplished and the New Consciousness begins to nurture and nourish the golden seed.

These three phases, the phase of a general preparation of the soil, the digging and the rite of purification, finally the sowing of the seed are accomplished on a small scale in Pondicherry. But now the seed begins to sprout and the earth is a little more ready (because of Their labour) to receive more seedlings. Branches extend themselves out of the plant, some main and others side branches that would serve as conduits to carry the sap of a New Life outwards and offer it through the sun to the earth atmosphere. These are a few of the main branches opened by the Mother after the Great Descent of the New Light upon earth. These in turn gave rise to smaller branches and twigs that are the many centers spread across the world. Once these twigs grew strong enough, and as a natural consequence the leaves came out as foliage covering the branches and the main trunk. These leaves provide an interphase and an exchange with the earth atmosphere. It is through the leaves that the tree absorbs the energy of the earth and releases its own back into the earth atmosphere. This foliage of many colours supported on many a different twigs is Auroville, the first outwardly visible manifestation of the New Consciousness. More appropriately perhaps, it is the precursor to the emergence of flowers and fruits into the arena of the world.

Now the Supramental tree is still small. It is still not fully visible in the forest of this world though more and more of humanity is beginning to take notice of it. The first few phases of the work were not meant to be noticed and could not have been noticed or understood by the world at large, but the later few phases are bound to be noticed and cannot be ignored. And as the flowers and fruits bloom on this tree the seekers of Divine Life will be attracted more and more to it and in an increasing numbers. Some would make one part of the tree or other their home. Of these the most difficult part is the root and the main trunk. It is the largely unseen work wherein one has to be willing to bear the burden of the rest of the tree, to patiently extract the possibilities enclosed in the seed and pass it upwards for the world to manifest it through the touch of the sun and the exchange of forces with the outside world. This work needs an entire self giving, a self effacing spirit of glad sacrifice for the Work, a sincerity that is one-pointed and free of the taint of every ambition and desire, a strong adhara to bear the pressure from below and above without being crushed or broken apart, an unsleeping aspiration linking the seed with the sun and, a deep faith and will to sacrifice everything for this Work and for this Work alone. The Central Influence radiates from here, from this seed sprouting from within; the chief difficulties are represented here, in the roots sunk deep into the inconscient foundations of our nature. The burden is greatest here but so are the peace and delight supporting it. The close proximity with the seed means drinking from the possibilities concealed in It but also going down and sometimes struggling in the darkness below. The branches of the tree serve another purpose in the work of New Creation by freely transmitting the sap to and fro. The foliage serves as a cradle for the fruits and the flowers. The fruits and the flowers are the individual souls that have been prepared through all this labour to realize the Life Divine in some measure. Through these the fragrance and sweetness of the New Consciousness shall spread to all.

The full tree already exists in the subtle worlds and is trying to manifest here upon earth in the physical world. But there are missing pieces or misplaced cells. That is the source of disorder in this world. For the world to be perfect with each thing in its true place where it should be, this tree should also be perfect. For even the tree of Truth-Consciousness has to work itself out in the conditions and circumstances of our material existence that are very different from the Truth above where the Supramental tree exists in its native home. But as the tree grows it will come closer and closer to the Truth that it represents. The Divine gardener is busy bringing the earthly tree as close to its image of truth. Now He shifts this element, plucks away this leaf to put it back into the roots so as to nurture and nourish the whole tree. Now He pulls and draws the sap upwards and throws up the energy of the whole tree into a fresh leaf and a new shoot. And through all this falling and rising, shedding and springing, churning and mixing all is being drawn into a single plan. For a deep oneness is the truth and origin of life and a deep oneness shall be its high culmination as well.

‘O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
And bring down God into the lives of men;
Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,
My garden of life to plant a seed divine.
When all thy work in human time is done
The mind of earth shall be a home of light,
The life of earth a tree growing towards heaven,
The body of earth a tabernacle of God.’
Sri Aurobindo: Savitri; p. 699