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…”
Is there any meaning in performing religious rituals these days?
Q: My relatives complain that their life is not happy because my father didn’t perform religious ritual since he didn’t believe in them, and my mother is upset about all that. Is there any meaning in performing religious rituals these days?
ALOKDA: There are four types of rituals, and we can arrange them hierarchically in a graded manner.
The first kind of rituals, though the most common, are the mechanical rituals that people follow out of convention. To this also unconscious adherence there is often added some kind of fear of harm if the ritual is not done or a favour that the ritual is supposed to grant us if we observe it. Many of the fasts and common temple rituals are of this nature. Of course sometimes the element of faith and prayer comes in which gives it an uplifting feel. But most often it is done mechanically and hence hardly of any use other than giving us the illusion of being a religious person.
The second type of rituals are related to the occult vital worlds. These are special Pooja ceremonies wherein mainly entities and deities of the lower order are invoked. Even when sometimes the deity being invoked is regarded as some benevolent one, it is actually something else that comes because of the nature of the Pooja. These can be dangerous at times and they are best avoided for a seeker on the spiritual Path since sometimes one can come under the influence of these beings who may grant us wishes but start having a grip upon us because they have been given a foothold through the bait of desire.
The third type of rituals are largely individual and symbolic such as lighting a lamp or offering of flowers with the idea or aspiration that may darkness be dispelled from our life and may the flower of love and devotion and faith blossom within our heart. These are used in certain kind of tantric Pooja also and are generally good, provided we are doing it consciously with the meaning in our head and the feeling in our heart.
Finally, there are rituals or rather spontaneous gestures and bodily actions that are the expression of certain soul states within us. They arise naturally out of a great love or reverence for the Divine and flow outwards to include the bodily life in the aspiration that has already awakened in the our soul. These are the throwing of oneself at the Feet of the Divine or bowing down in a gesture of pranam to give oneself to the Lord and Master of our being. If done truly and with the real bhava they can be very powerful in moulding our spiritual life. They can hardly be called rituals though some may see it that way or even do it mechanically so to say.
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