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
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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