Daily Offerings
The Lyric of the Love
The skilful Penman’s unseen finger wrote
His swift intuitive calligraphy;
Earth’s forms were made his divine documents,
The wisdom embodied mind could not reveal,
Inconscience chased from the world’s voiceless breast;
Transfigured were the fixed schemes of reasoning Thought.
Arousing consciousness in things inert,
He imposed upon dark atom and dumb mass
The diamond script of the Imperishable,
Inscribed on the dim heart of fallen things
A paean-song of the free Infinite
And the Name, foundation of eternity,
And traced on the awake exultant cells
In the ideographs of the Ineffable
The lyric of the love that waits through Time
And the mystic volume of the Book of Bliss
And the message of the superconscient Fire.
Then life beat pure in the corporeal frame;
The infernal Gleam died and could slay no more.
Hell split across its huge abrupt faҫade
As if a magic building were undone,
Night opened and vanished like a gulf of dream.
Into being’s gap scooped out as empty Space
In which she had filled the place of absent God,
There poured a wide intimate and blissful Dawn;
Healed were all things that Time’s torn heart had made
And sorrow could live no more in Nature’s breast:
Division ceased to be, for God was there.
The soul lit the conscious body with its ray,
Matter and spirit mingled and were one.
[Savitri: Book Two Canto 8]
The Beauty of Affection and Tenderness
March 6, 1914
After having suffered acutely from their suffering, I turned towards Thee, trying to heal it by infusing into it a little of that divine Love which is the source of all peace and all happiness. We must not run away from suffering, we must not love and cultivate it either, we must learn how to go deep down into it sufficiently to turn it into a lever powerful enough for us to force open the doors of the eternal consciousness and enter the serenity of Thy unchanging Oneness.
Surely this sentimental and physical attachment which causes an agonizing wrench when bodies are separated, is childish from a certain point of view, when we contemplate the impermanence of outer forms and the reality of Thy essential Oneness; but, on the other hand, is not this attachment, this personal affection, an unconscious effort in men to realise outwardly, as far as possible, that fundamental oneness towards which they always move without even being aware of it? And precisely because of that, is not the suffering that separation brings one of the most effective means of transcending this outer consciousness, of replacing this superficial attachment by the integral realisation of Thy eternal Oneness?
This is what I wished for them all; this is what I ardently willed for them, and that is why, assured of Thy victory, certain of Thy triumph, I confided their grief to Thee that by illuminating it Thou mayst heal it.
O Lord, grant that all this beauty of affection and tenderness may be transformed into glorious knowledge.
Grant that the best may emerge from everything and Thy happy Peace reign over the earth.
[Prayers and Meditations of the Mother]
Love is Universal and Eternal
Love is one of the great universal forces; it exists by itself and its movement is free and independent of the objects in which and through which it manifests. It manifests wherever it finds a possibility for manifestation, wherever there is receptivity, wherever there is some opening for it. What you call love and think of as a personal or individual thing is only your capacity to receive and manifest this universal force. But because it is universal, it is not therefore an unconscious force; it is a supremely conscious Power. Consciously it seeks for its manifestation and realisation upon earth; consciously it chooses its instruments, awakens to its vibrations those who are capable of an answer, endeavours to realise in them that which is its eternal aim, and when the instrument is not fit, drops it and turns to look for others. Men think that they have suddenly fallen in love; they see their love come and grow and then it fades—or, it may be, endures a little longer in some who are more specially fitted for its more lasting movement. But their sense in this of a personal experience all their own was an illusion. It was a wave from the everlasting sea of universal love.
Love is universal and eternal; it is always manifesting itself and always identical in its essence. And it is a Divine Force; for the distortions we see in its apparent workings belong to its instruments. Love does not manifest in human beings alone; it is everywhere. Its movement is there in plants, perhaps in the very stones; in the animals it is easy to detect its presence. All the deformations of this great and divine Power come from the obscurity and ignorance and selfishness of the limited instrument. Love, the eternal force, has no clinging, no desire, no hunger for possession, no self-regarding attachment; it is, in its pure movement, the seeking for union of the self with the Divine, a seeking absolute and regardless of all other things. Love divine gives itself and asks for nothing. What human beings have made of it, we do not need to say; they have turned it into an ugly and repulsive thing. And yet even in human beings the first contact of love does bring down something of its purer substance; they become capable for a moment of forgetting themselves, for a moment its divine touch awakens and magnifies all that is fine and beautiful. But afterwards there comes to the surface the human nature, full of its impure demands, asking for something in exchange, bartering what it gives, clamouring for its own inferior satisfactions, distorting and soiling what was divine.
[The Mother: CWM 3]
Songs of the Soul: September 30, 2024
Mother Divine, people find the sight of physical suffering distressing. But the psychological state in which most human beings dwell is much more distressing.
Instead of studying the real causes and finding a radical remedy, man launches himself into an struggle for material wealth and comforts hoping these will solve his problems. Little does he realise that he is entering into a terrible vortex from which it is even more difficult to come out. For while material wealth provides some temporary outer relief it comes at a heavy price of an inner servitude.
Very few can keep their soul alive and prevent their mind and heart from falling into a dull stupor once they enter into this dark and bottomless pit of desires that lights up the darkness by artificial lights, making it worse by thwarting our seeking for the true authentic light. Money and materialistic sciences are new gods promising a bright future for man, but they cannot deliver. By the time it becomes obvious to all, humanity may be pushed beyond the brink.
Seeing and contemplating all this miserable state of mankind a prayer rises from the heart. Save mankind, Maa, save man from himself. Save him from the route he has taken towards self-annihilation while thinking it is the high road to heaven. Save us Mother, save us from the civilisational catastrophe towards which we seem to be heading in the name of freedom and progress and happiness. Save us from ourselves.
Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa
The Soul’s Dwelling Place
The disciple entered and found the Master cleaning the room. A little embarrassed, he rushed forward and offered help, “Oh, Master, please let me do this.”
The Master smiled while continuing to clean, “But this is nothing compared to the cleaning that I do every day in countless rooms of each one.”
A little quizzically, the disciple stood wondering at the deep import of the Master’s words. By now the work at hand was over. The Master gently kept the cleaning cloth aside, neatly folded as if it was his way of expressing love and gratitude towards the little objects that served him. How much care he bestowed on everyone and everything, men and physical objects, animals and plants and who knows the gods and demons alike as if He saw the indivisible unity of all things. There was nothing big or small in his eyes, nothing trivial and merely mundane.
By now the disciples had gathered around him returning from their respective workplaces. Just as cows return home from their pasture, these souls had flocked around the Master for the deeper nourishment of their famished souls.
As the Master settled in his chair, the disciple prompted, “Master, you were speaking about cleaning the rooms.”
With a faint smile curved upon his beautiful lips, the Master responded: “Oh, that! Men spend so much time and energy in procuring food and lodging for their bodies but do very little for nourishing their souls or cleaning the house in which their soul dwells.”
A brief pause followed. And the Master added: “All the values here are in an inverse order as if this world were an inverted image of God.”
“What house is this that you speak of Master, pray enlighten us?” asked one as if asking the obvious.
The Master said, “This bodily house in which the soul dwells.”
“But is not everyone busy taking care of this bodily house all the time,” asked another.
“Do we?” The Master countered. “We do not take care of this bodily house in which the soul dwells. We rather spoil it through excess preoccupations, anxiety and fear on one hand and through excess of thrill, pleasure and comfort on the other. You see this house is not built by matter alone. Nature has tried and tested a million forms over millions of years before she could build this form in which the gods consented to dwell and through which we could once again discover God.”
“Oh yes, there is that story in one of the Upanishads that speaks of the gods consenting to enter the human body. But we thought it is just a fable.” One among them wondered.
“Not just a fable but a deep psycho-spiritual truth. The gods are powers and aspects of the Divine. Their willingness to enter the human body means that they are willing and ready to express their powers and forces through this bodily instrument and to fashion it towards a higher perfection.” The Master responded. And then, a little pensively observed, “How soon do we spoil this wonderful instrument through wrong habits, wrong indulgences, wrong suggestions, through excesses and immoderations of every kind, through wrong thoughts, wrong feelings, wrong impulses, and wrong will.”
One with a traditional background asked, “By wrong, you mean moral sins, isn’t it Master?”
The Master answered, a little to their astonishment, “No, for one can be moral and follow all the rules of living and yet he may not care for his house.”
“What does that mean, Master?” The discipline looked surprised. “If one leads a totally controlled and regulated bodily life and does not allow the body any form of immoral appetites, then is that not enough?”
“No, my child, it is not enough, for still he may live for the ego and the house may be given for the purposes of his selfish motives and not for the soul to dwell in it.” Spoke the Master who had seen through the dualities of nature as well as the unity behind all things.
Then after a pause, he added revealing new horizons of thought and sight, “As I said this body is not built by matter alone. And what is matter itself but a condensation of the spirit. We are all made of a spiritual substance. The flesh is nothing else but Spirit concretized.” The Master kept quiet for a moment while the disciples pondered, so accustomed were they to the idea of Spirit and matter as being opposed and antagonistic. Did they hear the Master right?
“We don’t quite understand!” exclaimed one, while the other demurred “We always thought that the body was a trap and a deceit, a useless garment that must be discarded as soon as possible like a worn-out cloth setting the spirit free!”
“Oh, this concept has done so much harm to this country and has weakened our hold on material realities. But this is a misreading of the ancient scriptures. After all, why would the Spirit create this or any other world at all if it had no purpose save a trap? And if it is really so, then one has to agree that it is not some All-wise spirit but an insane mind that created this world. But this is not true. The Upanishads boldly declare that the Spirit chose to enter into these countless worlds after it created them and chose to dwell within the human body.” The Master was in a mood to reveal truths unheard.
He continued, adding revelation upon revelation, “Yes, it is the Spirit that has become Matter and then entered into it and these countless worlds through many steps and each of its step is a world in its own right. Now, in return matter is trying to rediscover or become the Spirit and climbs through all the intermediary steps and their worlds whose influence kneads matter. This body itself is built not only by pure matter as you know it but also by an influence from life-worlds and mind-worlds and is now being moulded and prepared under the pressure of the spirit-world.”
One trying to grasp the subtlety of the truth asked, “Is that why our thoughts, impulses and feelings have an effect upon the body?”
“Yes, indeed,” the Master looked happy. “If our thoughts are ugly and unclean, our feelings narrow and turbulent, our will small and tied to petty gains and selfish aims, then the house of the soul becomes a thing small and dark, with little space or fresh air, with not enough sunlight, like a dingy and dusty corner full of the smoke of desires and passions, full of the fumes of anger and jealousy and hatred.”
“I see now, what you meant when you said that men spend a lifetime to build a house of mud but take little care of this bodily house. Perhaps that is why we remain so unhappy even in a palace.”
“Yes,” the Master’s face beamed again. “The joy, the delight one experiences is directly linked to the psychological space of your inner dwelling. If it is small and narrow, full of dust and smoke then one is perpetually restless and unhappy, stifled by the smoke. Naturally, gods do not like to dwell in such an atmosphere. They depart one by one leaving the house at ransom for dark and evil forces that are always waiting.”
“And what about the soul?” asked one.
“The soul silently witnesses and endures waiting for nature to be ready as it must one day, or else remains asleep, unable to express its beauty and goodness and light and truth in that stifling atmosphere. Till it too chooses to depart.” The Master paused: “This is the inner tragedy to be the world’s king but abandoned by one’s soul. But men run after worldly success and if they fail they think it is a tragedy though often worldly misfortune is a great blessing.”
“A blessing, but how?” asked someone.
“For through it, men can once again turn to their soul for support. When tragedy strikes and the charm of outer things is lost, then we have a chance to awaken to the inner realities.”
“But we always thought that success and a rich, comfortable life, free of failure is a gift from God, a reward of good deeds,” asked one steeped in traditions.
“That is why I said that this world is an inverse image of Truth and all its values are turned upside down.” The Master observed again and plunged into a deep Silence that brooded always in his atmosphere. And as he thus plunged, a hope arose in the hearts of those gathered around him. One voiced it, inversely again “How can this inversion be set right, Master, or is it always meant to be so?”
The Master lifted his compassionate gaze and looking as if far-off to some future dawn awaiting its hour guarded by the folds of darkness softly replied, “We shall leave this for some other time…”
Should We Expect Kalki Avatar Coming?
Depends upon what we expect from his coming! The idea of Kalki Avatar is straight from the Vishnu Purana considered as few of the authentic puranas rich in occult significance. He is described as a lame warrior according to some texts who rides a white horse and slays the wrong doers by a sword thereby establishing a new Satya Yuga, a new era of spiritual progress. Though the predictions of a second coming are there in both Christianity and Buddhism (both were Avatars) it has been given its true divine sense by Sri Krishna in the Gita. The Gita does not dwell in the outer characteristics as much as it describes the inner work of the Avatar. He is characterised by his works which mainly consist of restoring the dharma, rescuing the doers of good, destroying the doers of evil, and finally, establishing dharma once again amongst the people. Through all these works he leads the collective march of mankind one step further towards its inevitable divine destiny. When we see in this light, then the details of Kalki’s life are clearly symbolic. To imagine that in this age of mankind someone would descend from heaven with a metal sword in hand and ride a white horse to destroy the evil doers is only to perpetuate a story whose true inner meaning will be lost and the Avatar pass by without even being noticed since we are looking at primarily outer physical things and missing the inner. The second coming is always the symbol of the Divine descending in a new form consistent with the Age and leading man according to the need of the hour, what is known as the Yuga Dharma.
When we look at the times we live in with the light that the Gita provides then we will be forced to conclude that the Avatar has come and gone back doing what he had to do. A clear look at the previous century shows us the great divide between the first and the second half. If we look at the figures around, we shall at the center of this change none else but Sri Aurobindo once again as the divine charioteer piloting humanity through the crisis of Nazism, Imperialism, Scientific Materialism, Communism which is like the distorted image of Vedantic Socialism. Among the first tasks that he undertook was to drive the British out of India. At the same time, he stood against Hitler’s Nazism and openly declared that he had put his spiritual force behind the allies seeing in the triad of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini the Asuras of the Age. India the custodian and upholder of dharma has fallen low and its mighty current of spirituality was either broken into a mass of superstitions and rituals whose meanings had been lost or else begun to dwindle after the wonderful manifestation of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. It was the moment of dense darkness which is what, dharmasya glani really means. Sri Aurobindo took up the work of restoration whose ground was prepared by the saint of Dakhineswar and the fiery patriot sage as mentioned above. Subsequently Sri Krishna himself handed over the baton of the coming Age to him in the Alipore jail. He gave a new key to the understanding of the Vedas and the Upanishads, laid down the larger lines along which India would attain freedom, stood against the Axis powers until they were defeated and destroyed, and eventually through his tremendous tapasya joined by the Mother’s Force (the white steed) he flashed the sword of Knowledge destroying darkness and opening the doors of man towards a new creation.
This is not to say that there were no other great figures during that period or there will not be other great human beings who will come thereafter. Also, it is not that everything has become wonderful and there are no more crisis for man to face and overcome. As long as humanity resists its divine destiny, he will experience the pressure and the push. But the decisive turn has been taken which becomes obvious only if we slightly enlarge our time to include the previous century and a little before that. Equally when we take a look at the great divine beings who manifested upon earth nowhere do we find this tremendous manifestation that serves at once as a divine example for humanity, reconciles the oppositions of Spirit and Matter with a synthetic spirituality, who by his Force single handedly stayed the wheels of the British Empire and reversed the fortunes of Hitler by his lone spiritual power. Nowhere do we find such a luminously powerful pen that rescued the Vedas from the shroud of obscurity as also gave the Yuga dharma and the Gospel for the New Age which he not only foresaw but for which he worked to establish firmly within the heart of man. There is in Sri Aurobindo a very clear taking up and summing up of the previous Avatars, notably Sri Krishna as well as an embodiment of the anguish of the Age. He changed this anguish into a conscious aspiration and promised a new a happier Age emerging through a change of consciousness within man leading to outside changes in his ways of life.
The Mother clearly said that ‘Sri Aurobindo is the last Avatar in a human body’ and one can simply bow down before her statement in humility and gratitude.
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