Daily Offerings
Heaven of the Vital Gods
The shining Edens of the vital gods
Received him in their deathless harmonies.
All things were perfect there that flower in Time;
Beauty was there creation’s native mould,
Peace was a thrilled voluptuous purity.
There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreams
And Strength her crowned and mighty reveries;
Desire climbed up, a swift omnipotent flame,
And Pleasure had the stature of the gods;
Dream walked along the highways of the stars;
Sweet common things turned into miracles:
Overtaken by the spirit’s sudden spell,
Smitten by a divine passion’s alchemy,
Pain’s self compelled transformed to potent joy
Curing the antithesis twixt heaven and hell.
All life’s high visions are embodied there,
Her wandering hopes achieved, her aureate combs
Caught by the honey-eater’s darting tongue,
Her burning guesses changed to ecstasied truths,
Her mighty pantings stilled in deathless calm
And liberated her immense desires.
In that paradise of perfect heart and sense
No lower note could break the endless charm
Of her sweetness ardent and immaculate;
Her steps are sure of their intuitive fall.
After the anguish of the soul’s long strife
At length were found calm and celestial rest
And, lapped in a magic flood of sorrowless hours,
Healed were his warrior nature’s wounded limbs
In the encircling arms of Energies
That brooked no stain and feared not their own bliss.
[Savitri: Book Two Canto 9]
A Morning Prayer
Thou wert with us yesterday as the most marvellous of protections; Thou didst permit Thy law to triumph even in the most external manifestation. Violence was answered by calm, brutality by the strength of sweetness; and where an irreparable disaster would have occurred, Thy power was glorified. O Lord, with what fervent gratitude did I greet Thy Presence. It was for me the sure sign that we would have the strength to act, to think, to live in Thy name and for Thee; not only in intention and will, but effectively in an integral realisation.
This morning my prayer rises to Thee, always with the same aspiration: to live Thy love, to radiate Thy love, with such potency and effectiveness that all may feel fortified, regenerated and illumined by our contact. To have power to heal life, to relieve suffering, to generate peace and calm confidence, to efface anguish and replace it by the sense of the one true happiness, the happiness that is founded in Thee and never fades…. O Lord, O marvellous Friend, O all-powerful Master, penetrate all our being, transfigure it till Thou alone livest in us and through us!
[Prayers and Meditations of the Mother]
Manifesting the Divine Love
To manifest the Divine love you must be capable of receiving the Divine love. For only those can manifest it who are by their nature open to its native movement. The wider and clearer the opening in them, the more they manifest love divine in its original purity; the more it is mixed with the lower human feelings, the greater is the deformation. One who is not open to love in its essence and in its truth cannot approach the Divine. Even the seekers through knowledge come to a point beyond which if they want to go farther, they are bound to find themselves entering at the same time into love and to feel the two as one, knowledge the light of the divine union, love the very heart of knowledge. There is a place in the soul’s progress where they meet and you cannot distinguish one from the other. The division, the distinction between the two that you make in the beginning are a creation of the mind: once you rise to a higher level, they disappear.
Among those who have come into this world seeking to reveal the Divine here and transform earthly life, there are some who have manifested the Divine love in a greater fullness. In some the purity of the manifestation is so great that they are misunderstood by the whole of humanity and are even accused of being hard and unloving, although the Divine love is there. But it is in them divine and not human in its form as in its substance. For when man speaks of love, he associates it with an emotional and sentimental weakness. But the divine intensity of self-forgetfulness, the capacity of throwing oneself out entirely, making no restriction and no reservation, as a gift, asking nothing in exchange, this is little known to human beings. And when it is there unmixed with weak and sentimental emotions, they find it hard and cold; they cannot recognise in it the very highest and intensest power of love.
[The Mother: CWM 3]
Songs of the Soul: October 01, 2024
Maa, Mother Divine, all our being lies prostrate and surrendered to Thee, at Thy Feet, in Thy Service.
A mixture of the animal past and the human present we carry within us the seeds of the future that Thou hast planted in the soil of our human nature. Maa, may these seeds of the New Creation sprout watered by the streams of Thy Love, lifted up by the rays of Thy Light, permeated and nourished by the Breath of Thy Grace.
Maa may the human in us be uplifted, transformed by Thy Hands of Mercy and Love. May the animal in us become Thy faithful servitor, Thy vehicle for the Divine Force to ride. And may this body become more and more Thy translucent lamp for Thy Light to radiate, a channel opal and hyaline for Thy Divine Forces to pour upon earth.
Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa
Ways of the Master
The disciples sometimes wondered about the Master’s behaviour. He would gather all kinds of people around him even those who seemed worse than ordinary men. One voiced his doubt. The Master smiled as he replied: “Wouldst thou measure the worth of a seed by the thickness of its casing, the height of a man by the size of his shoe, the dimensions of his inner being by the girth of his belly? So too judge not the inner truth of a man by his outer behaviour nor measure his soul’s aspiration by his outer virtues. A great light may throw up a great shadow behind it. And a most ordinary looking shell may hide beneath its wings a rare invaluable pearl.”
The sceptics wondered why some disciples progressed faster than others. The Master pointed at a rich harvest and answered: “The souls that come to me are like a seed. I am the farmer who ploughs the soil and sows the seeds giving an equal opportunity of the light of sun and the rain of Grace to all. Some seeds however are afraid of the Light and fail to burst open. Other are over eager to draw the sun to themselves and get burnt out. Some, the rare few, trust my hands and the time taken for fruition and do not cling to the dark womb of safety. They are the happiest and the luckiest ones that throw the richest harvest.”
“How does one know that the soul has awakened?” asked another. The Master pointed at the early morning sun and observed: “How does one know that the sun has arisen? By a light that illumines our sight driving away the grey phantom shadows of the night; by the song of the birds that greet the dawn. By the rush of a joy that is full of glad peace and a stillness that carries happiness in its bosom. By the silver lining of hope that begins to appear from behind the clouds. By a scattering of the fog and mist and the warmth of a glow within the heart. By the feeling of an urge to grow and an invitation to work and progress. By discovering the love that binds the sky to the earth and all that exists upon it. By seeing the Fire and Light ascend to higher and higher skies. So too with the awakening of the soul one feels a growing peace and joy within the heart, one begins to see hope behind even the darkest appearances, there is birth of faith and aspiration and prayer. A warmth and sweetness and enthusiasm for Godward effort and the urge for progress. Most of all love is born, true love, in the human heart and there is a smile in every circumstance.
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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