Series One Section One I CYCLES OF CREATION The present cycle of creation has for its goal the advent of the Supermind, the coming of a supramental race of beings. The world, it seems, moves in cycles. There are periods of creation with a hiatus or a gap in between of dissolution. Present day science too speaks of the universe proceeding in pulsations, that is to say, alternate expansion and contraction. Indian mythology speaks of alternate 'Pralaya' and 'Srishti'. The Indian system speaks also of 'Maha-pralaya', utter dissolution or 'Yoga-nidra' of the Supreme. In other words, there are periods when the universe retires altogether

III LIFE IN AND THROUGH DEATH The soul carries the body even like a corpse, says a scripture. It is a dead inert mass of inconscience weighing upon the conscious being that is behind. Such is the burden of life that the soul bears through its earthly existence. The image is beautifully delineated in the Indian legend of Shiva and Sati. Sati is dead, the bereaved Shiva goes about in anguish with the dead body of Sati flung upon his shoulder. Shiva is to be relieved of this burden, otherwise the creation will go to rack and ruin. The prayer went to Vishnu and Vishnu hurled his discus that cut to pieces the corpse of Sati—the pieces were fifty-two in

XIII THE GOLDEN BRIDGE The Truth, the Supreme Truth cannot be expressed here below, neither in words, nor in mental ideas: It is inexpressible, indeterminable—anirvacyam, anirdeśyath. For, it exists, it is found only where the creation ceases to exist—prapañcopaśamām. If it is asked how does then the world itself exist? has it not come out of the Truth? is it not an expression of the Divine? well, an easy answer is: Look at the world and see what kind of expression it is. Is it a divine creation? What truth is there? In truth, it is an expression of falsehood, it is all an error. So it has been declared by the great sages of the past that this is a false c

VI BEYOND THE DUALITIES It is true that mind in its natural state seeks the truth, seeks to know the fact, know what is what. But the difficulty is, it has its own criterion of truth, it has a mould and whatever does not fit into that mould is brushed aside or doubted as untruth. The most simple and the most categorical of its canons is that a thing is always itself and cannot be anything else (it is the famous logical law of identity and law of contradiction). One is always one and cannot be two. So by extension the mind affirms if the reality is one it cannot be also many. I£ the Brahman is there, the world cannot be, and if the world is there, Brah

IV TRANSFIGURATION The Divine attributes—such as Peace and Joy, Consciousness and Power, Freedom, etc.—each and all of them are self-existent realities, existing by themselves in their fullness and perfection. They are not mere qualities that are acquired by effort through gradual culture and development, they are not acquired piecemeal as other human possessions, material or mental. They are there near us, about us in their fullness and wholeness. We do not see them or seize them as there happens to be a veil in between. We need not strain and struggle, labour and sweat, go through all the pains of the world in order to find them, realise them. It is, as

VIII THE MYSTERY OF THE FIVE ELEMENTS The material world, as the ancient sages viewed it, is composed of five elements. They are, as we know, (i) earth (kṣiti), (2) water (ap), (3) fire (tej), (4) air (maruf), and (5) space or ether (vyom), mounting from the grossest to those that are more and more subtle. The subtlest, the topmost in the scale is space or ether. As we descend in the scale, each succeeding element becomes more and more concrete than the preceding one. Thus air is denser than space, fire is denser than air, water is denser than fire and earth is the densest of all—solidity belongs to earth alone. Water is liquid, fire gaseous, air i

XI THE MORAL AND THE SPIRITUAL Is there anything essentially wrong, evil in its very being and nature? Some religious traditions say, there is: Satan is such a thing, Ahriman is such a thing, and what else is māyā or mārā? However that may be, the sense of something essentially wrong is the fount and origin of the moral sense. The moral sense stems from and lives on the sense of sin and guilt. The sense of sin is the fundamental inspiration behind some religious disciplines, even the sense of something irrevocably bad or something irreparable; for that gives a stronger impetus, a more dynamic urge to the spur of the religious consciousness.

IX ON DISCIPLINE The Mother says: "No big creation is possible without discipline". The true and original meaning of discipline is to be a disciple. And a disciple is one who learns, is ready to learn from a master. So the first requisite for a disciple or a learner is to obey. Obedience then is the beginning and the very basis of discipline. We know from ancient stories and legends how this discipline of obedience was exacted from a disciple or learner. For knowledge or learning was not considered at that time as a bundle of information to be acquired or collected by the pupil. It is not a mass of dead materials that is laid before the learner to possess and store;

IX EDUCATION AS THE GROWTH OF CONSCIOUSNESS All knowledge is within you. Information you get from outside, but the understanding of it? It is from within. The information from outside gives you dead matter. What puts life into it, light into it is your own inner light. All education, all culture means drawing this inner light to the front. Indeed the word 'education' literally means, 'to bring out.' Plato also pointed to the same truth when he said that education is remembrance. You remember what is imbedded or secreted within, you bring to the light, the light of your physical mind, what you have within, what you already

II A TRUE PROFESSOR The Mother says a professor, a true professor, must be truly a yogi. That is to say, a teacher, even a schoolteacher, one imparting what is called secular education, has to be nothing less than a yogi. The Indian term for teacher is 'guru' and 'guru' meant a teacher both spiritual and secular. This distinction of the two words is made by the modern spirit, it did not belong to the ancient culture. The secular knowledge was also considered a necessary part of the spiritual knowledge, that which prepared for it and led towards it. The 'apara vidaya' or the 'vedangas' were but limbs of the supreme knowledge 'para vidya' and 'veda'. A teache