Daily Offerings
A Prudent Treasurer of Its Ignorance
A dwarf three-bodied trinity was her serf.
First, smallest of the three, but strong of limb,
A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl,
A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds
For ever stooped to hammer fact and form.
Absorbed and cabined in external sight,
It takes its stand on Nature’s solid base.
A technician admirable, a thinker crude,
A riveter of Life to habit’s grooves,
Obedient to gross Matter’s tyranny,
A prisoner of the moulds in which it works,
It binds itself by what itself creates.
A slave of a fixed mass of absolute rules,
It sees as Law the habits of the world,
It sees as Truth the habits of the mind.
In its realm of concrete images and events
Turning in a worn circle of ideas
And ever repeating old familiar acts,
It lives content with the common and the known.
It loves the old ground that was its dwelling-place:
Abhorring change as an audacious sin,
Distrustful of each new discovery
Only it advances step by careful step
And fears as if a deadly abyss the unknown.
A prudent treasurer of its ignorance,
It shrinks from adventure, blinks at glorious hope,
Preferring a safe foothold upon things
To the dangerous joy of wideness and of height.
[Savitri: Book Two Canto 10]
Filled with Thee
March 15, 1914
My thought is filled with Thee, my heart is full, all my being is filled with Thy Presence, and peace grows ever deeper, giving rise to that happiness, so special, so unmixed, of a calm serenity, which seems vast as the universe, deep as the unfathomable depths which lead to Thee.
Oh, these silent and pure nights when my heart overflows and unites with Thy divine Love to penetrate all things, embrace all life, illumine and regenerate all thought, purify all feeling, awaken in every being the consciousness of Thy marvellous Presence and of the ineffable peace that flows from it!
Grant, O Lord, that this consciousness and peace may constantly grow within us, so that we may be more and more the faithful intermediaries of Thy divine and absolute law.
[Prayers and Meditations of the Mother]
Attitude of the Religious Mind
The first and principal article of these established and formal religions runs always, “Mine is the supreme, the only truth, all others are in falsehood or inferior.” For without this fundamental dogma, established credal religions could not have existed. If you do not believe and proclaim that you alone possess the one or the highest truth, you will not be able to impress people and make them flock to you.
This attitude is natural to the religious mind; but it is just that which makes religion stand in the way of the spiritual life. The articles and dogmas of a religion are mind-made things and, if you cling to them and shut yourself up in a code of life made out for you, you do not know and cannot know the truth of the Spirit that lies beyond all codes and dogmas, wide and large and free. When you stop at a religious creed and tie yourself in it, taking it for the only truth in the world, you stop the advance and widening of your inner soul. But if you look at religion from another angle, it need not always be an obstacle to all men. If you regard it as one of the higher activities of humanity and if you can see in it the aspirations of man without ignoring the imperfection of all man-made things, it may well be a kind of help for you to approach the spiritual life. Taking it up in a serious and earnest spirit, you can try to find out what truth is there, what aspiration lies hidden in it, what divine inspiration has undergone transformation and deformation here by the human mind and a human organisation, and with an appropriate mental stand you can get religion even as it is to throw some light on your way and to lend some support to your spiritual endeavour.
[The Mother: CWM 3]
Songs of the Soul: October 07, 2024
Mother Divine,
Thou art the essence as well as the very stuff of our lives for nothing can be without Thee. All power of thought and will and action draws its breath from Thee, yet men think as if it is their own. It is this great illusion of a separate personality cut off from Thee that is the source of all feelings of limitations and incapacity. Nothing is or can ever be cut off from Thee for that would mean an instantaneous dissolution. Yet this illusion of separateness is also part of Thy play preparing us in the womb of ignorance wherein the child knows not its mother and leads an unconscious, mechanical life until it grows up and is ready to take up the real journey and its unique challenges.
Each of our personality is a temporary construction by nature in each life to express something of Thee, of a particular mode of Thy infinity. It is the very purpose of distinct personalities. But our mind turns this distinction into division, the differentiation into separation as if a particular part of the body, distinct in its function could work independent of the whole body. Just as each of the million gods and goddesses are each a mode of Thy working, each an expression of Thy Power and without Thee none will be able to function so too each of us is meant to express something unique of Thy Glory and Presence. But if we believe this as something our own then the doors to all kinds of fall open.
Maa, take away completely this illusion of a separate personality. Let this last veil be torn so that we may live constantly in the truth that we are but a wave of Thy infinity. From Age to Age, life to life, we come from Thee, live by Thee and return back to Thee. While here, may it be Thou who lives and acts and speaks in us and through us. May we live constantly in the uninterrupted vision of this truth.
Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa
What is it that man needs the most?
Not heaps of scientific information that often confuses us more than enlightens. Not the knowledge that burdens us with a sense of helplessness by showing the knots that tie us but not the power that can undo it. Buried within the ashes of information and the smoldering heat of knowledge lie diamond sparks of wisdom that can truly set us free. That we need the most.
Not techniques and a multiplication of methods that only change the scope and circle of our dependency and tie us in one knot of nature while releasing from another. Hidden behind all techniques and methods is the force of an infinite truth that can liberate us from all fear and ill. That we need the most.
Not systems of medicine and governance and all their-isms through which ignorance ensnares us by its changing masks. We only exchange an unpleasant mask for a more pleasant one. Above all the systems and parties lies the all–round healing power of a greater Supernature that shines upon the summits of our being as Grace and Love. That we need the most.
Beyond, all our conceptions, beyond all our constructions of thought, science and philosophy, beyond religion and its fixed formulas, beyond the dogma and the rituals of science and the beliefs and non-beliefs of Ignorance, there is the sovereign truth of the all-powerful soul. That we need the most.
How to Know if I am on the Path of This Yoga?
The sign that one is on this path is either one is drawn towards the Mother and Sri Aurobindo with or without reason, or else, one feels within oneself the calling to walk the way, urge to take up this yoga, aspiration for the Divine provided it is not driven by any personal ambition.
Even before that one may be reasonably sure that he/she is preparing to enter this path if one is attracted towards the teachings and writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Walking on the path makes one humble because the more one comes in contact with the Divine, the more one understands and realises that one is nothing, one can do nothing without the Divine Mother’s Grace.
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