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...THEIR DEEP COMPASSION
A: Well — the best thing you could do is
not to listen to what people say, it would save you from many falls of consciousness— This afternoon when I looked at you in silence I told
you, "be faithful to your love". I suppose this is a
sufficient answer and you do not expect me to justify my love in front of the
foolish ignorance of such interpretations. Whether you believe it or doubt my
love and blessings are with you. * Q: I apologise humbly for my yesterday's query and pray to be forgotten. How could I question your love, you why are the soul of truth and love and goodness? If you were not true, you who are the incarnate Divine Mother, what else could be true in this world of death, disease, ignorance and incapacity? You are right. Mother, it is for me to be faithful to my love and to your lotus-feet.
A: I knew that it was a passing mood and
that you would soon come out of it, — but let this love and this truth be your
shield and protect you against the intrusion of any force of falsehood. My love
and blessings will lead you to the goal. * Q: But time is flying and I must hasten to offer my humble love to my dearest Mother, to see whom is to love her. How sweet you are Mother ?
A: If only you could keep always your inner
happiness, it would please me immensely and help you very much on the way. *
Page -15 Q: Your love for me is my true refuge and sole strength. What I offer you is a turbid mixture of which I am ashamed but which you alone can purify.
A: Whatever is the nature of the offering when it is
made with sincerity it always contains a spark of divine light which can grow
into a full sun and illumine the whole being. You can be sure of my love, you
can be sure of my help and our blessings are always with you.
* Q: How extremely loveable you are, dear Mama! Is there anyone like you in the whole world?
A:
Love, love, love to my very dear child, all the joy, all the light, all the
peace of the divine love and also my loving blessings.
*
Q: I have returned the pot of pickles but I
still have the pickles and whenever I see them I remember you and say to
myself, "The Mother loves me." On the crest of a great wave of low
the gift came to me and I have felt the presence of the ocean which projected
that wave. With that pot in hand when you called me, you know of whom I was
thinking ? I was thinking of Kali standing before me ready to give a boon! In
fact, I was invoking Her and there you were with the pot of pickles and an
A: Indeed, that day I heard you distinctly
calling me and I wanted to answer very concretely to your call.
*
Page - 16
Q: You were asking me this morning as to what was the matter with me. It is the same old thing but nonetheless distressing. It is a civil war, a conflict between two different tendencies and ideals, a war on all the fronts, mental, vital and physical. But I am deeply sensible of your kindness and grateful too.
A: There is no contradiction that cannot be
solved and harmonised in a synthesis if you rise up high enough in the
intuitive mind and yours is not at all irreducible. I am sure that one day you
will find this out.
* Q: Accept my love and forgive my lapses, as you have been doing for so many years. I expect these moods will come and go, but may I never lose sight of your luminous smiling face through all these passing clouds!
A: I truly hope you will soon be out
of all your troubles. Just one good jump to the higher consciousness where all
problems are solved and you will get rid of your difficulties. I never feel
that I am forgiving. Love does not forgive, it understands and cures.
*
Q: Sometime back you wrote to me, "One
good jump to the higher consciousness where all problems are solved and you
will get rid of your difficulties." What exactly is this higher
consciousness and how may I rise or jump into it ? And again you have said,
"Let divine love be your goal. Let pure love be your way. Be always true
to your love and all difficulties will be conquered." Is this higher
consciousness the
13
Page -17
same
thing as a state of pure love and, if so, how would it be related to a state of
higher knowledge ?
A: The higher consciousness is a state of
pure love but it is also a state of pure openness to divine knowledge. There is
no opposition there between these two kindred things, it is the mind that makes
them separate.
The best way to get to it is to refuse all mental
agitations when it comes, also all vital desires and turmoils, and to keep the
mind and heart turned as constantly as possible towards the Divine. The love
for the Divine is the strongest force for doing this.
* Q: You once said "/ am in you". This form and force of your divine self in me, this "Little Mother", is the secret tie between you and me. Like you she is very modest in her. demands and very, very patient (so far); but I know that so long as she chooses to make her abode in my being, sooner or later, poor me will have to abdicate in favour of Her Imperial Majesty and till that day comes there will be no rest for me.
A: So, the best thing to do
is to abdicate at once and to get rest, peace and joy. When you have to get rid
of an obstinate resistance, you must not make more delay than when you have to
pull out a bad tooth.
Inside, outside and everywhere is
this help of the mother.
from sri aurobindo
The desires of the heart and the body which stand in the way of Brahmacharya, give a glow to the vital and emotive
Page -18
nature and prevent it from being dry and
shut to feeling. To keep the heart warm and open, not dried up or closed, and
at the same time attain to spiritual purity the best way is to turn it towards
what is eternal, pure and ever true, behind and beyond these earthly emotions —
the everlasting Love, Bliss and Beauty.
*
The
experience you had of the power of the Name and the protection is that of
everyone who has used it with the same faith and reliance. To those who call
from the heart for the protection, it cannot fail. Do not allow any outward circumstance
to shake the faith in you; for nothing gives greater strength than this faith
to go through and arrive at the goal. Knowledge and tapasya, whatever their
force, have a less sustaining power — faith is the strongest staff for the
journey.
The
protection is there over you and the watchful love of the Mother. Rely upon it
and let your being open more and more to it — then it will repel attacks and
always uphold you.
* The experience you had was that of exteriorisation or going out of the body. The consciousness went up and remained above the body for a time. The feeling or vision of oneself in the form of an egg is frequent in such cases. It is not always so, for many go out in an individualised consciousness with an awareness of a subtle body, subtle thought, subtle sensation etc. and move about in the vital or even in the physical world till they come back to the body. But when one begins, the vital body is at first a little vague and the consciousness also with the result that all is at first dim and unorganised. The serpent must be the Kundalini force which had left its coiled sleeping position in the Muladhara and
Page -19
taken the lengthened one in which it joins the
embodied consciousness with the consciousness above.
The power of exteriorisation is one
that can be used for many purposes by the Yogi when it has been developed.
2-6-1935
*
Q: I saw a small bright/fame as big as a
man's thumb in the region of the heart. What is it?
A: It is the psychic fire kindled in the heart. The
psychic being is described by the Upanishads as of the size of a thumb angushtha-mātrah
puruso’ntarātmā — it may manifest first as this psychic flame.
8-4-1938
*
The Mother in her cosmic power is all things and all
divine Personalities, for nothing can be in manifestation except by her and as
part of her being. But what was meant in the "Visions and Voices" was
that the Ishwara and the Divine Shakti were one Person or Being in two aspects
and it puts forward this vision of them as Krishna-Mahakali as a great power
for the manifestation.
*
Durga combines the characteristics of Maheshwari and Mahakali
to a certain extent, — there is not much connection with Mahalakshmi. The
combination of
*
1 A book by
Amrita. Page -20
It depends on the shade of the yellow. If
it is golden white it comes from above the mind and the combination suggests
the Maheshwari-Mahakali power. Higher Mind colour is pale blue.
*
Although the vital and physical may join in the resistance, yet the most
of it is in the mind — a doubt and a wrong angle of vision there; this imposes
itself on the vital in the form of a corresponding feeling and the two together
obscure the physical and tire and depress it. You say that if it is so in the
beginning what will it be in the future when you are in the real swing of the
thing. But when you are in the real swing of the thing, you will have the
experience, — for the stream of sadhana will mean that and in it these
difficulties will one by one or together disappear. The others belong to the
ordinary course of sadhana and will yield to the increasing experience of the
inner Truth and the growth of the spirit. Faith will come by experience, by the
opening of the inner vision that sees the Truth behind appearances — or it will
come by a simple opening of the soul to the Truth. It cannot be commanded by a
struggle in the mind between old beliefs and new ones. There is no need to give up entirely what you had in the past. Spiritual truths are not warring enemies — they are parts of a single truth and complete each other. It is only the mind that turns them into disparities and wants one to bar out another. That is the weakness of making something in the past the standard by which you judge the present — the mind takes advantage of its own limitations to declare that the two are incompatible. But it is not so in reality — between two truths of the Divine there is always a reconciliation when to the limiting mind they seem opposites; as one is realised after the other, their unity appears, it is not necessary to deny the past experience in order to go forward to the new realisation.
Page -21
This will
before long become apparent to you if you do not allow the mind to stand in the
way of the heart's permanent opening. Let the doors of the heart swing open
freely — allow yourself to enter into the stream without making any mental
conditions before you plunge in; the stream itself will carry you to your goal.
* Q: By no means at my command can I make my mind even reasonably quiet. Again it has started bringing doubts and misgivings. One of them is that perhaps I am on the wrong path, that it is some ambition that has attracted me to this path and that the other paths which satisfied thousands of seekers before me would probably be quite enough for me, etc., etc. I write this to you because I cannot deal effectively with this difficulty and it is by my will only that I am clinging to you. Or ^perhaps it is not my will but the compulsion from a greater will than my own acting from behind the veil. But the rest of my nature seems temperamentally more amenable to influences representing other paths and other goals. Because of this, this path will be more difficult for me than for most here. Am I really on the right path? Have I really a call for it?
A: It is the right path for your inner
nature and there is the call. The resistance is from the outer, especially the
mind, but that is due to a dissatisfied restlessness which is part of the outer
mental nature (the reasons given are only supports which it builds for its
restlessness) and that would have interfered wherever you might have been and
on whatever path. To conquer this outer nature is the only way and that can be
best done here, since the change of the outer being is here a part of the
sadhana and you will receive the necessary help.
*
Page –22
Q: You say: "To conquer this outer
nature is the only way." But how to conquer this restlessness and dissatisfaction
in the mind, I do not know.
A: There must first be the will to change
firmly conceived and held — then to open the consciousness to the Force and let
it work with the inner consent to its working. When there is the psychic
opening, then even the things most obstinate in the nature can change.
* Q: Grant me one little bit of devotion. Mother, just a little bit of it. Otherwise I do not know what will happen to me, I do not indeed know how I can live here. And I do not want. to leave the shelter of Thy Lotus-Feet.
A: Do not allow mental anxiety to harass
you. Wait on the working of the Mother's force which will open the lotus of the
heart. In the light from above devotion will blossom in you.
*
You are not weak, there is a considerable
strength in you, but it is covered over by the fluctuations of the mind — when
these are mastered, then the strength will be apparent.
* Very little — nothing that is definite — can be said from the photograph; for it is too small. The general impression that disengaged itself was of a fine consciousness and especially Page -23
of a deep quietude. It is probable from what
you write that he had achieved the consciousness above the human mental in
which one is aware of the self, the Brahman and lives in it — that includes of
course the sense of the Divine in all. What you report of his sayings is the
utterance of one who has this realisation. There have been several Yogis who have declared that the Avatar was coming, or, more recently, that he was there already in the human birth, — but none have been able to say where.
* I have only now had time to go through the three letters you sent me. X can of course have the Conversations.1 As to what your other friend asks, it is quite possible for him to receive where he is without coming here if he has the adoration of the Mother in his heart and an intense call. About the question of the Avatar, I do not think it is useful to press in the matter. It has become very much the tendency, especially in Bengal, to regard the Guru as the Avatar. To every disciple the Guru is the Divine, but in a special sense —.for the Guru is supposed to live in the divine consciousness, to have attained union and when he gives to the disciple, it is the Divine that gives and what he gives is the consciousness of the Divine who is within the Guru. But that and Avatarhood are two different things. It is mostly in East Bengal recently that those have come who were acclaimed as Avatars; those who came had each of them the idea of a work to be done for the world and the sense of a Divine Power working through them, which shows that there was a pressure for manifestation there and something came in each case, for something of the Divine Power always comes when it is called, but it does not look as if there was anywhere
1 A book by the Mother. Page -25 the complete descent. It is this that may have created the idea that the Avatar was born there. It has always been said of the Advent that is to come now that there would be many in whom it would seem that it had come, but the real Avatar —would work behind a veil until the destined hour came. I do not gather from what is quoted as said by your Guru that he claimed to be the Avatar. It seems to me that he claimed to be a Power preparing the way for the work of the Divine Mother and even to indicate that all that he meant would be manifested not only by his own followers but by other groups (sampradāya), consisting evidently of those who had not had him for Guru but had some other Head and Teacher. This is also confirmed by the saying that some other one than his disciples might be the means of his prakāśa — that is to say, would be the means of carrying on his work and aiding the manifestation of the Mother. If this meant proclaiming him as the Avatar, I do not see how it can agree with the other saying that after his leaving of the body the Avatar would come to the Ashram he had created.
I do not quite know what is meant by
ayoni-sambhava.
An incarnation is always through a human mother, though there have been one
or two cases in which a virgin birth has been proclaimed (Christ, Buddha). The
only other meaning
— unless we suppose an
unprecedented miracle — might be a descent such as sometimes happen, the
Godhead manifesting in somebody who at birth was a Vibhuti, not at once the
full incarnation. But in the absence of a clear statement from your Guru
himself, these are only speculations.
I have written this much as an answer to your
question, but I doubt whether it is necessary or advisable to write anything of
it to your friends. They have their own feeling about the matter; it seems to
me better not to challenge or disturb it. 25-8-1935 *
Page -25
A veil behind the heart, a lid over the mind divide us from the Divine.
Love and devotion rend the veil, in the quietude of the mind the lid thins and
vanishes.
9-9-1936
*
May the inner Sun
tranquillise and illumine the mind and awaken fully the heart and guide it.
9-9-1937
*
In a quietude of the mind open to the presence of the
Divine in your heart and everywhere; in a still mind and heart the Divine is
seen like the sun in still water.
9-9-1938
*
Rise into the higher consciousness, let its light
control and transform the nature.
9-9-1939
*
By the heart's self-giving the Presence and the
Influence will be there even in the inconscience and prepare the nature for the
true light and consciousness through the whole range of the being.
9-9-1940
* Put stress always on the aspiration within; let that get depth 'and steadiness in the heart; the outer obstacles of
Page -26
mind and the vital will recede of themselves with the
growth of the heart's love and aspiration.
9-9-1941
*
Keep the mind and heart open and turned
inward and upward so that when the touch comes from within or the flow from
above, you may be ready to receive it.
9-9-1942
*
To persevere in turning towards the Light is what is
most demanded. The Light is nearer to us than we think and at any time its hour
may come.
9-9-1943
*
To keep the soul ready for the Divine Grace so that it
may be ready to receive it when it comes. 9-9-1944
*
A persistent will for the work to be done in us and in
the world is what is most needed; there is a sure spiritual result, the growth
of the consciousness and the soul's readiness for the touch of the Divine's
Light and Power. 9-9-1945
*
When the Light enters into the Inconscience which
hedges |n all our being and prevents or limits the manifestation of the true
consciousness in us, when it inhibits the habits and
Page -27
recurrences and constant repetition of the
same stimuli which besiege us and rise from the subconscient, then only can the
nature be wholly free and respond only to the Truth from above. 9-9-1946 *
Clarity of knowledge and
inner self-vision, subjugation of the ego, love, scrupulousness in selfless and
dedicated works, are the four wheels of the chariot of yoga. One who has them
will progress safely on the path.
A
mantra
In 1938 I had asked Sri Aurobindo for a brief prayer with His and the Mother's names to use as a mantra. Sri Aurobindo sent the following:
"
Open my mind, my heart, my
life to your Light, your Love, your Power. In all things may I see the
Divine."
While sending this mantra, Sri
Aurobindo wrote: "I have written for you a brief prayer with the 'names in the form of a mantra. I hope it will help you to overcome your difficulty and get an inner foundation."
On
receiving the mantra I inquired:
"Have I to consider the
names and the prayer as one mantra ?" Sri Aurobindo replied: "Yes". 18-7-1938
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