Daily Offerings
A Provisional Scheme
Yet was this only a provisional scheme,
A false appearance sketched by limiting sense,
Mind’s insufficient self-discovery,
An early attempt, a first experiment.
This was a toy to amuse the infant earth;
But knowledge ends not in these surface powers
That live upon a ledge in the Ignorance
And dare not look into the dangerous depths
Or to stare upward measuring the Unknown.
There is a deeper seeing from within
And, when we have left these small purlieus of mind,
A greater vision meets us on the heights
In the luminous wideness of the spirit’s gaze.
At last there wakes in us a witness Soul
That looks at truths unseen and scans the Unknown;
Then all assumes a new and marvellous face:
The world quivers with a God-light at its core,
In Time’s deep heart high purposes move and live,
Life’s borders crumble and join infinity.
This broad, confused, yet rigid scheme becomes
A magnificent imbroglio of the Gods,
A game, a work ambiguously divine.
[Savitri: Book Two Canto 5]
A Heart Athirst for Thee
March 14, 1914
In the immutable solitude of the desert there is something of Thy majestic presence, and I understand why one of the best means of finding Thee has always been to withdraw into these immense stretches of sand.
But for one who knows Thee, Thou art everywhere, in all things, and none of them seems more suitable than another for manifesting Thee; for all things that exist—and many others that yet do not—are necessary to express Thee. Each thing, by virtue of Thy divine intervention of love, is an effort of life towards Thee; and as soon as our eyes are unsealed, we perceive this effort constantly.
O Lord, my heart is athirst for Thee and my thought seeks for Thee constantly. In a mute adoration I bow to Thee.
[Prayers and Meditations of the Mother]
Nature of Religion
What is exactly the nature of religion? Is it an obstacle in the way of the spiritual life?
Religion belongs to the higher mind of humanity. It is the effort of man’s higher mind to approach, as far as lies in its power, something beyond it, something to which humanity gives the name God or Spirit or Truth or Faith or Knowledge or the Infinite, some kind of Absolute, which the human mind cannot reach and yet tries to reach. Religion may be divine in its ultimate origin; in its actual nature it is not divine but human. In truth we should speak rather of religions than of religion; for the religions made by man are many. These different religions, even when they had not the same origin, have most of them been made in the same way. We know how the Christian religion came into existence. It was certainly not Jesus who made what is known as Christianity, but some learned and very clever men put their heads together and built it up into the thing we see. There was nothing divine in the way in which it was formed, and there is nothing divine either in the way in which it functions. And yet the excuse or occasion for the formation was undoubtedly some revelation from what one could call a Divine Being, a Being who came from elsewhere bringing down with him from a higher plane a certain Knowledge and Truth for the earth. He came and suffered for his Truth; but very few understood what he said, few cared to find and hold to the Truth for which he suffered. Buddha retired from the world, sat down in meditation and discovered a way out of earthly suffering and misery, out of all this illness and death and desire and sin and hunger. He saw a Truth which he endeavoured to express and communicate to the disciples and followers who gathered around him. But even before he was dead, his teaching had already begun to be twisted and distorted. It was only after his disappearance that Buddhism as a full-fledged religion reared its head founded upon what the Buddha is supposed to have said and on the supposed significance of these reported sayings. But soon too, because the disciples and the disciples’ disciples could not agree on what the Master had said or what he meant by his utterances, there grew up a host of sects and sub-sects in the body of the parent religion—a Southern Path, a Northern Path, a Far Eastern Path, each of them claiming to be the only, the original, the undefiled doctrine of the Buddha. The same fate overtook the teaching of the Christ; that too came to be made in the same way into a set and organised religion. It is often said that, if Jesus came back, he would not be able to recognise what he taught in the forms that have been imposed on it, and if Buddha were to come back and see what has been made of his teaching, he would immediately run back discouraged to Nirvana! All religions have each the same story to tell. The occasion for its birth is the coming of a great Teacher of the world. He comes and reveals and is the incarnation of a Divine Truth. But men seize upon it, trade upon it, make an almost political organisation out of it. The religion is equipped by them with a government and policy and laws, with its creeds and dogmas, its rules and regulations, its rites and ceremonies, all binding upon its adherents, all absolute and inviolable. Like the State, it too administers rewards to the loyal and assigns punishments for those that revolt or go astray, for the heretic and the renegade.
[The Mother: CWM 3]
Songs of the Soul: October 06, 2024
May our entire being go up in a flame of purification, fortified with faith and aspiration, sanctified with devotion and consecration, climbing on wings of love and knowledge that comes through faithful service and unconditional surrender and self-giving at Thy Feet, O Mother Divine. Let all contrary influences be washed away and only that which is sincere and true and open to Thee remain. May the fire of purification burn brighter and higher each day removing all the dross, purifying all mixture of desires and egoism. Make us once again stainless as we were before the fall yet completer and whole through the experiences of earthly life. Burn away all attachment that limits, ignorance that veils, desires that distract and distort, in the purifying flame. Let the coatings be removed and the pure ingot of gold, our true being shine radiant and bright with Thy Light and be offered at Thy Feet only for Thy Service.
Mother Divine, take away all that yet may seek the petty satisfactions of the ego, all ambition and vain self-satisfaction. Take away all paralyzing doubt and fear that prevents us from advancing towards the future…
Mother Divine, O embodied Purity and Love, may all in us be moulded of one substance, the substance of Thy Truth and Love.
Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa
When God Came Down and Gave Freedom to Man
God came down to earth and found man a slave and a victim to other men. This could not be and so He decided to set man free. A revolution followed and man was now free to be himself, to be what he wished to be. But man answered to this gift of freedom by misusing it endlessly to degrade his great and mighty soul.
God came down again and now with the freedom gave him the law, the law of love and truth, the law of harmony and unity, the law of living together as one family. But man answered to this gift by reducing it to a narrow formula whereby he would love those who were his kin and not others with whom he must fight and conquer. Groups were born and each strove against the other.
God came down again and gave man along with the freedom and the law, the sense of right and wrong, of good and bad, of virtuous and evil deeds. But man answered to this gift by being very acutely aware of the sins of others and being oblivious to his own. He punished others for the crime that he indulged himself secretly. Thus was born crude religion which thrived upon fear and guilt.
God came again and to assist man gave him the means of self-reflection so that he could introspect and discriminate truly the right and the good from the wrong and the evil. But man answered to this gift by engineering with his reason the power of self deception. Thus was formed a seemingly just and civic society that harboured hypocrisy and falsehood in its heart though appeared fair and good on the surface.
God, in His infinite patience came again and taught man the inner path through which he can tear the veils of falsehood and deception and discover what is real and thereby ascend to a state of true freedom and bliss. But man answered to this gift by expressing his helplessness in following the path of Truth and Light even though he now could know it. Thus were born spiritual paths and sects that liberated the few while the rest simply struggled and laboured on.
God came again and this time with His Power and Grace so that man can not only know but also do what he could not do. But man answered to this gift by revolt and doubt thereby loosing his balance and refusing to open to the one Truth that could still save him. Thus was born a world where power was misused to plunder nature for the ego’s comfort and pleasure rather than for the mastery over nature.
But God refuses to give up, how could He for what else is man and this world but His distorted image and a broken reflection. Therefore does He now hammer this world tirelessly so that the distortions may disappear and humanity grows into the perfect image and likeness of God. Therefore does He now close all other doors so that man may turn to the one door he has long denied to himself.
‘He leaves behind the ill with strife and pain,
Because it clings and constantly returns,
And in the fire of suffering fiercely burns
More sweetness to deserve, more strength to gain.’
-Sri Aurobindo: In the Moonlight
Alok Pandey
Where and How the Thoughts Are Formed?
Q: Where and how thoughts are formed, do they come from the subtle body?
ALOKDA: The origin of thoughts is far above like lightnings in the sky. They are rays of light that come to earth as vibrations to awaken earth and man to consciousness. But just as the rays get mixed with the mud and assume a muddy character so too these thought rays when they enter the cosmic field assume a triple character of good-bad-neutral vibrations. From the cosmic field they enter into all things as a dumb knowledge. In human beings they enter the brain and pick up the language, words and sounds to which the person is conditioned and express themselves through speech. Therefore, by training the speech, by cleansing the thoughts freeing them from all the mud and filth into which these brilliant rays are trapped we can ascend upwards as through a rope, right up to their original Source.
The thoughts therefore can be divided into two types with reference to their origin. First two closely connected to the original vibration of Light are in the higher mental worlds in a subtle form and are called paravak and pasyanti, the supreme word and the seeing word. Then when they enter our realm and get modified by the ignorance they are called madhyama and vaikhari, where vaikhari is the average human though and speech.
Recent Posts
