The real difficulty is always in ourselves, not in our surroundings. There are three things necessary in order to make men invincible, Will, Disinterestedness and Faith...

God is within us, an Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient Power; we and He are of one nature and, if we get into touch with Him and put ourselves in His hands, He will pour into us His own force and we shall realise that we too have our share of godhead, our portion of omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience. The path is long, but self-surrender makes it short; the way is difficult, but perfect trust makes it easy.

Will is omnipotent, but it must be divine will, selfless, tranquil, at ease about results. "If you had faith even as a grain of mustard-seed," said Jesus, "you would say to this mountain, Come, and it would come to you." What was meant by the word Faith, was really Will accompanied with perfect srigT.r5T does not reason, it knows; for it commands sight and sees what God wills, and it knows that what is God's will, must happen. T, not blind but using sight spiritual, can become omniscient.

Will is also omnipresent. It can throw itself into all with whom it comes into contact and give them temporarily or permanently a portion of its power, its thought, its enthusiasms. The thought of a solitary man can become, by exercise of selfless and undoubting will, the thought of a nation. The will of a single hero can breathe courage into the hearts of a million cowards.

This is the Sadhana that we have to accomplish. This is the condition of our emancipation. We have been using an imperfect will with imperfect faith and imperfect disinterestedness. Yet the task we have before us is not less difficult than to move a mountain.

The force that can do it, exists. But it is hidden in a secret chamber within us and of that chamber God holds the key. Let us find Him and claim it.

Sri Aurobindo

(C. E. Vol. 17, p. 178)

The Divine gives itself to those who give themselves without reserve and in all their parts to the Divine. For them the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wide-ness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda. Sri Aurobindo

EDITORIAL

IN HER COMPANY

ALL of you, I suppose, sometime or other attend the meditation, the evening meditation at the Playground. If not all, at least a good many or most of you. Perhaps a few of the younger ones do not. When the Mother was giving this collective meditation in the Playground, almost always there used to happen a strange phenomenon. She has spoken of it, Sri Aurobindo also referred to It, some of you may recall. Among the people who attended . . the meditation, mostly ashram-people, there used to be present strange guests in the company: invisible beings from other worlds, gods, various degrees and kinds of gods, great gods and small gods — disembodied or un bodied beings jostling with embodied human creatures. They had a great fascination for this meditation. They must have been tempted in view of some profit they would gain by it, as in our human cases we too expected some benefit. Apart from that, there was a great fascination for this meeting, especially for these inhabitants of the other worlds; for this was an opportunity, a great opportunity when they could come near and

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meet the embodied Divine. In the other worlds, in their own domains they were far from the Divine, the contact was indirect, but here at this place was the Divine himself or herself, in a physical body. Nowhere else they could have this vision, this direct contact; that was what prompted them to come here.

We had had, poor human creatures, this great opportunity for years. I have always spoken of it, the presence of the Divine in a physical body. Even if you did not know, something in you knew and the touch was there, you still carry that touch with you, it is indelible. The earth even now retains something of that Divine touch and will retain it for ever; it is that which is helping it to go forward in spite of the tremendous odds and difficulties that the earth is going through and has yet to go through  for sometime — towards its inevitable goal.

There was another phenomenon similar and likewise extraordinary. When the Mother used to play on the organ, to entertain us with her music, sometimes one noted that she would sit quiet for a while before the organ, apparently waiting for something before she began to play. And naturally we in our small way of understanding used to say, "Mother was concentrating or awaiting the inspiration." Very often it was not that. She herself explained once or twice what it was. She said here also, as at the meditation in the Playground, when she sat with her fingers on the keys of the board, there was a host of invisible musicians assembled there, musicians of course who wanted to hear Mother play, also there were ambitious musicians who sought to play, play through her fingers. That was a great opportunity for them to express themselves, to show their capacity, exhibit their talents through her. Indeed at times there was a clamour and scramble among these unearthly musicians, as to who should come, whom should Mother allow to appear. It was very interesting, Mother used to say, when for some reason or other she allowed some particular musician, the fortunate being used to play his music through her gracious fingers. And when the music passed through her fingers, something of her own quality or inspiration naturally entered into the music played. When you hear Mother's music now, some, are of that nature, not absolutely or wholly by herself, but some other great musician from another world has given his version of the Mother's

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music. Our Sunil's music is a peculiar case: it is exquisitely human music grafted on the Mother's Divine music — a blend of the two.

It was a great mystery, and a great, as I said, a great phenomenon, this free interchange between the physical world, the physical life and the other heavenly or other worldly worlds. There was a mixture, a co-mingling, and at times a fusion of these two different dissimilar realms. And it was a very concrete, a very living phenomenon. It is not however as mere isolated instances that the phenomenon occurs: this phenomenon of interaction between two distinct and dissimilar worlds. These higher or other worldly powers exist not merely for their own sake, for their own delight or growth, they have also a place in the universal play, in the play of earthly evolution: that is to say, they are there in their own realms and come nearer to the earth to extend their help in its forward march. They help individual beings also bestowing their powers and capacities and their inspiration. The word 'inspiration' itself means a breath an influence from elsewhere, from another sphere. It means that which is not confined to the known and the present but something new, something unfamiliar, from somewhere else touches our old life's sphere. Sri Aurobindo has given some instances how, here, people who were very commonplace and ordinary in their intelligence and capacity developed in a strange uncanny way other qualities and accomplishments they could not think of or dream of. This was possible only because of this help, this inspiration or prompting from elsewhere. We have had people in our midst who received or receive this help in creating their music, poetry and art. I may cite here a remarkable instance: There was a professor here, an Englishman, Professor of Philosophy, but of a special kind of Philosophy, mathematical logic — mathematics and logic married together, two of the driest subjects to students: Teachers or students among you will kindly excuse me for this compliment I am paying to their subject. This professor, dry as dust, miraculous to say, flowered into a very fine poet. He wrote poetry of an extreme sensitiveness, exquisite in form and feeling. You must have heard of him, some must have read him, I speak of Arjava. A really fine poet he became, no trace of mathematics at all was there — unless it is the magic of the mathematics of the Infinity, of the Unknowable.

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I was speaking of the influence of other forces upon human beings and the power they exercise upon external circumstances. These phenomena happen automatically, we have no control over them. But this too can be acquired. These supra-normal faculties can be brought under control. One can come in conscious contact with such forces and influences and know them and even guide their action. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of this mystery and I think I have referred to it in my Reminiscences. Sri Aurobindo himself used to do automatic writing, as perhaps many of you, the older ones particularly, know it. I will explain. Sri Aurobindo used to allow these otherworldly forces and invisible beings to enter into his physical personality, in the same way as the Mother used to do with regard to her music allowing other persons to enter into her fingers and play through them their music. Here also Sri Aurobindo used to do the same and similar things consciously. I have seen it myself, and many others. He used to hold the pen or pencil between his fingers, ready to write on a piece of paper, placed in front; he used to leave his fingers absolutely passive without any will in himself to write: they were almost like an inert object. After a time the pen or pencil used to move by itself and begin to write, write sometimes even speeches, give instructions or in formations, answer questions also.

Once, it was here in Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo was trying this experiment. Mother also was present there. Someone asked the medium, the person who was appearing through the medium, "Can you answer questions?" "Yes, I can." "Will you speak something about the..." He mentioned the name of a person we knew. The medium gave a description of the person's nature and various information about him which were marvellously accurate. He described in this way two or three other persons known to us. Then someone among us asked, "Can you tell us something about the Mother?" Mother intercepted with vehemence: "No, no, nothing about me." Immediately Sri Aurobindo's pencil dropped on the paper and the matter came to a dead stop then and there. All the same what the invisible being was saying was quite interesting, and even could be of educative value. Sri Aurobindo used to explain that many of these beings were very eager to come but they were not always very truthful. They wanted to show this cleverness

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or amused themselves by confusing or irritating human beings. Sometimes however higher beings can come and then you get useful instruction or even true knowledge from them. Sri Aurobindo himself has described at length how, when he was in prison, Vivekananda used to come to him and give him important indications in Yoga. What he did not know Vivekananda was explaining to him.

I have spoken of automatic writing, there is a parallel phenomenon, automatic speech. That is also possible. When you speak, personally you do not speak, in other words, you make no effort, exercise your brain or your mind, all remains still, even your tongue, like the pencil in automatic writing. Sri Aurobindo explained how he arrived at this achievement. At one time when he thought of practising Yoga seriously, he was looking for some one who could give preliminary practical guidance. He was told there was such a person somewhere in Baroda. This person was not a guru in the normal sense, he looked like a householder, was not at all a sannyasi. He was employed in an office, perhaps as a clerk, still he was pursuing some practice of yogic discipline. Sri Aurobindo had an interview with him, and the first lesson was to this effect: Make your mind quiet, absolutely silent, there should be no thought, no ripple of any mental movement, it has to be absolutely blank. Then you will be able to have your first experience. Usually we are in the habit of saying: I think, you think, he thinks, but in point of fact you will observe that you do not think at all — there is nobody who thinks,¹ the thoughts simply come to you: when you have made this field of silence within, you will actually see thoughts arriving from outside into that field, your brain is occupied by intruders as it were, and you have the choice either to accept or to reject, entertain or throw them out. You can keep your mind absolutely blank as long as you like. Sri Aurobindo said he practised this and in three days he made his mind absolutely blank, a zero, no thought, not even a ripple was there — it was a very remarkable experience at that time, quite new to him, such a peace

¹ It is interesting to compare the Buddhist teaching:

Suffering there is, sufferer none.

No doer, only deed is there.

Renunciation is there, no renouncer;

Way there is, no wayfarer.

Buddhaghosha

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and stillness, a perfect void! Then one day Sri Aurobindo met his teacher Lele Maharaj and told him that he was doing political work then and the next day he had to deliver a lecture, how was he to do it if he has to continue to be in a blank mind. If I speak, I have to think, I have to choose a subject. What am I to do? Lele Maharaj answered, "Do one thing, go to the meeting, stand in front of your listeners, do namaskar to the public and keep quiet, wait, see what happens. Don't try to say anything or think of anything, simply remain as a passive instrument in the hands of the Supreme Power." Sri Aurobindo did as instructed, he stood with folded arms, did namaskar to the public, and within did pranam to the Supreme. He says: I was thinking of nothing, awaiting things to happen as a silent witness. Then suddenly I found that something started in me and the tongue began to move, the tongue moved and moved and the has began to utter words. He delivered in this way a long lecture, and he said he did not exactly know what was spoken through him, there was only a vague impression, but it was a great speech the others said. And from then on all his public speeches came in that way as automatic speeches. Later on he explained to us, and showed to us, by example as it were, how the thing was done. It was at a seance; we used to sit together, a few of us, in his company. We sat, made ourselves comfortable, remained quiet and silent and then the thing happened: suddenly when everybody was quiet, still, he began to speak: I said he, but it was not his voice, it was surely somebody else speaking through him. The speaker sometimes announced himself saying he was such and such a person. Sometimes great historical persons also came, as for example, I have described in my Reminiscences, the famous leader of the great French Resolution, Danton. In a terrible voice he cried out: I am Danton, terror, red terror, etc. Once a great politician of the ancient days, of the Greek times, appeared and started to give lessons on politics. Bankim also appeared once, I have referred to this episode in my book.

So all this is to tell you that you are surrounded by a world of beings and influences and this visible body that you have, the normal mind active in you, are not all that you can call yours. Even-in ordinary life when you think that you are acting, you are .speaking, it is not at all true, or only partially true. A part, often a small part of you is involved in your activities. You are like an iceberg —

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the greater part is submerged, only the top, a very small portion of the whole is visible. This becomes apparent in abnormal occasions, when for example, you are upset off your feet, wild with anger, you utter words that you would never think of uttering, or act in a way absolutely contrary to your nature, all this is because at that time you are "possessed", truly possessed by invisible beings and entities. "Possession", possession by a ghost is a familiar phenomenon. Hysteria also is a familiar case of possession. Hypnotism, mesmerism, various mediumistic practices are attempted ways and means to cultivate conscious and willed communion with the other world. But these are very crude operations and do not go deep or far enough; besides they may prove positively dangerous. Such phenomena are explained in many other ways but these are among things which are not dreamt of by the ordinary mentality. Indeed we live in the midst of a world fair. As I have said, all sorts of beings and influences and forces are there jostling within you and outside, and most of the time you are a mere puppet in their hands. It is not however all so miserable for you: as there are adverse beings and forces, so there are good angels and helpful deities available to you. It depends upon you to choose. And you have to choose rightly, that is how yoga comes in as the saving factor in your life. We say Yoga is the way to be conscious of these invisible things and forces and to bring harmony and order out of the million contending forces in you. Instead of being driven, pushed and pulled in a thousand ways, Yoga shows how to direct them to a single aim, organise them round a single centre. Organise your life, that is the aim, the very central aim. That centre is the Divine in you, the Divine Presence, the Presence of the Mother, your true self, your soul. As I have said, there are very many forces and movements in you and without you that drag you in conflicting directions, you have to marshal them, direct them towards one goal, organise your being, your self, rather your selves, for you are not one self but many selves; you are not one person, but many persons. All of them have to be comprehended, coordinated, and finally that is the way to happiness i— to true happiness. If happiness and content-'ment in life is life's purpose, then there is no other way than that of harmonising your personalities. Mother was always speaking of this necessity of rounding up, centering or integrating your personality, the only way of securing a fruitful purposeful fulfilled life.

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Indeed Yoga means literally joining together, joining all the discordant parts of your being, all the quarrelling personalities lodged in you in one single harmonious entity — your divine soul. It is difficult, the process: the path of Yoga starts with purification, which involves strenuousness, tapasya, but that is the basis. However, as I have said, you are not alone on the path, the help is there, apart from the helpful persons and forces accompanying you there is the supreme unfailing help from the Mother. The Divine came to us in the material body to help us. She has withdrawn, taken away the body outwardly, but the help she has left with us, it is there almost in the same way as before.

In this age the saints say, the Divine is near to us, quite near. When we were young we were told that we have entered into the Kali age, the age of darkness, of darkness and smallness, that is to say, human beings are small, small and weak in the body and in the inner make-up. But the Divine took pity on us and to be with us became herself small and perhaps apparently weak also (Vamana) to be human with us. In other ages, even in the Satya Yuga, the age of Truth, God, the Divine was very far from earth, away and aloof from the material universe (which was Illusion, Maya). Therefore in those days to reach the Divine, to attain nearness to God, one had to rise and mount on and on almost endlessly, strenuously. It needed tremendous, arduous labour, it was the age of tapasya, one had to be a tapasvi to find God and reach him. But now it is different. God has come down to us and lodged himself in the material body. He continues to be in the earth atmosphere, but not very far from the material. In our childhood we used to hear that in Kali the practice of religion or spirituality has been made easy by the Divine Grace in view of man's frailty. In Kali man is now incapable of austerity, so, at present simply to utter God's name is sufficient to bring salvation. So I was saying the Divine help is at our door: the Divine himself is there in person. Only you have to be sincere and earnest about it, you have to extend your arms, extend your consciousness. It is a turning of the consciousness that is needed, it is to ask for it with the sincerity of a child. That is what the Mother used to say always: Be a child, be a child, I am with you always.

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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MUTE*

EVER in the heart's core rings a faint strain,

The ringing of His hidden flute:

Its dumb utterance evokes a sweet pain,

The ardent desire of a burning love.

 

In the moonlight haze, in the love-game, steps around me

Brush past to avoid eyes meeting:

Half-seen the body, foot-fall muffled, —

The soul is ever athirst.

 

In the dark a flickering smile, glimmering limbs,

Someone unseen spinning around:

Love binds my soul as if trapped in a prison,

I am in search of the body, the golden mine of love.

 

Lip to lip, hand in hand anon,

A vain moment's thrill: Failure increases the

greed, hopelessness sweetens the regret,

 

Sorrowful am I in my happiness.

O! when woulds't thou come into my arms with thy smile divine

Pouring out all the treasure of thy heart?

A mere touch is a world of delight, Beauty universal incarnate —

Revealed in one body!

(SRI AUROBINDO)

 * Translated from Bengali by Nolini Kanta Gupta.

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RELEASE*

WILL the sun rise tomorrow?

" It is here now evening. Darkness spreads into every nook and corner,

And in a blind rage drives onward a desparate cry.

Night comes down the sky:

Will the spell of darkness dissolve?

 

New-moon Night is black.

There is no mistaking;

And the full moon even at stand-still

With all its witchcraft cannot turn black.

 

Oh, where is the heart kind to the poor?

And where the generous soul?

The honey-bee has ceased to hum and buzz:

Only the chains jingle,

fettering the honesty of the honest.

 

Now it is time

to journey back to you:

Shall your eye ever turn

to a helpless yearning gaze?

Shall the sun rise tomorrow?

Shall the sun rise ever?

 

* Mukti — "Jayashree", Agrahayana — 1384.

Translated from Bengali by Nolini Kanta Gupta.

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ATHARVA VEDA

XII-1

( 1 )

THE vast Truth, the Mighty Law, the Consecration, the austere Will, the Word, the Sacrifice these uphold the Earth. She is the guardian of our past and of our future. May she create for us the wide Realm.

( 2 )

Man offers no barrier: many are the hills and dales and plains (ups and downs and levels) there; of multiple varieties are the plants she nourishes. May the Earth spread wide for us; on us may she bestow the plenitudes.

( 3 )

In her are the oceans and rivers and all the waters — in her, aliments have grown and the people as well, in her all this lives, breathes and moves; may the wide Earth give us her very first yield to drink.

( 4 )

Fourfold' are the expanses to which this Earth turns; in her have grown the food and the human workers: she nourishes in various ways, she breathes, she moves. May the wide Earth establish us in Light and in the Matter.

( 5 )

Here in ancient days our ancient fathers did their deeds. Here the Gods routed the Asuras. This is the home of kins and horses and birds. May the Earth bestow upon us enjoyments and splendours.

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( 6 )

She contains all things. She holds the very Substance. She is the Foundation. Gold-breasted, she harbours the World. She harbours the whole world. The vast Earth carries in her Agni, the all-power. May she under the protection of Indra establish us in his riches.

( 7 )

Her the unsleeping Gods give protection eternally; the Vast Earth, the unfailing giver of all things, may she pour out for us the milk, the sweet delight, the honey, and sprinkle us with the lustre.

( 8 )

In the beginning she was as water on the bosom of the ocean; men of intelligence with their creative formations followed her in her wake. The heart of Earth lay immortal, robed with Truth, in the highest spaces; may the wide Earth establish for us strength and a flaming energy in the supreme kingdom.

( 9 )

There the waters move all around equally night and day and flow unerringly.

That wide material earth opulent in her streams yields water like milk, may she pour upon us a shower of lustres.

(10)

The twin Ashwins have measured her out; upon her Vishnu strode wide. Indra, the Lord of the Lights, for his own sake, has freed her of enemies.

That wide material earth of ours as a mother to her son pours out her sweet drink for us.

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(11)

May the hills, the snowy ranges, the forests bring happiness to thee, O Earth.

Brown or black or red, in all forms upon this wide secure Earth that is protected by Indra (the Divine Mind), I stand firm and conquer, unslain, unhurt.

(12)

O Earth, that which is thy middle, that which is thy navel, and those lofty formations of thine, establish them in us. Flow towards us, O Mother Earth; I am the son of the Earth, the God Rain (Parjanya) is my father, may he bring fulfilment to us.

(13)

There on a high ground the universal workers stand encircling the altar, there they conduct the sacrifice; there the stakes are planted straight and luminous before the offering is made; may the wide Earth herself grow and make us grow.

(14)

They that hate us, O Earth, they that war with us, they that obstruct us by their thought or by their missile (weapon), may our .land forestall them and subdue them.

(15)

Born of thee, the mortals move in thee. Thou nourishest the twin-seats and the fourfold seats. Thine are these five human races for whose sake, for these mortals, the sun rises and spreads with his rays the immortal Light.

(16)

May this whole world of creatures give us their yield (the sweet drink).

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O Earth, establish in me the sweetness of speech (the Word).

(17)

She begets all things, the Mother of healing plants, the firm, the wide Earth, upheld by the Divine Law, full of bliss, full of happiness: upon this earth may we live and move ever and ever.

(18)

A mighty abode thou hast become mightiness itself: a great speed and vibration and energy are thine. The great Indra protects thee unfailingly, O wideness, illumine us with that perfect sight as of gold. May none bring hurt to us.

(19)

Upon the earth they offered to the Gods the sacrifice and the oblation perfectly prepared. Upon earth men, mortals, live by their own inner nature and outer need (self-nature and food). May that wide earth establish in us the vital force and a long span of life. May Earth grace me with a ripe old age.

(20)

The aroma, O Earth, that rises out of thee, that which the healing plants and that which the waters carry, that which delights the heavenly beings and the celestial nymphs, with that make me sweet-scented, O Earth, may none bring harm to us.

(21)

That expanse which is to thy east and that which is to thy north and that, O wide Earth, that which is below and that too which is behind, may all bring bliss to me who am moving here, may there be no stumbling for me, a dweller upon this wide Earth.

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(22)

O Earth, that which I am digging out of thee, may it grow forthwith; O Purifier, let me not disturb thy heart nor thy soul.

(23)

The Earth carries multiple riches in her cavern, may she yield to me jewel and gold. Giver of wealth, may the Goddess bestow upon us wealth; in her delight, in a happy mind may she establish them in us.

(24)

Whatever villages and forests are there, whatever gatherings and meetings, to all, for your sake, may we speak beautiful words.

(25)

O vast Mother, firmly established I am, implant in me the supreme good; O seer, in conscious union with the heaven, establish upon the wide Earth the supreme beauty.

Translated by NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

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MOTHER AND THE RIDDLE OF LIFE

THE RIDDLE OF LIFE

HUMAN beings come into a body, they do not know why. Most of them pass through life without knowing why. They leave their bodies, without knowing why. And they have to begin all over again, — without end — the same thing... Until someone comes along, some day, and tells them, 'Mind you, there is a reason for all that, you know...' And how many years are wasted in vain!"¹

This is the Mother's commentary on life as it is lived.

There are children who imagine that life is going to be like a fairy tale; some young people seem to think it is like a romantic novel, all sweetness and honey. "Life is not as they describe in the novels," Mother had once to explain to a young girl. "The life of each day is filled with sufferings big and small."² It is well that one is told so, at an early age.

THE AIMLESS WANDERING

Mother had nobody to tell her when she was young; there was nobody whom she might ask.³ But she knew what life would be like for one who does not choose the right way when there is still time. In 1893, at the age of fifteen, she writes in a schoolgirl essay: "A young traveller swings along the road, breathing in the pure morning air with joy. He seems happy and without a care for the future. The way which he follows opens out on a crossroads, where innumerable paths branch off in every direction..."

He is carefree and he chooses the wrong path. As he goes along merrily, pleased with what he sees around him, voices are heard from afar: "Where are you going, poor fool? You don't see that you are going to your ruin, you are so young! Come, come towards us, towards the beautiful, the good and the true. Don't be misled by the soft and easy, do not remain asleep in the present..."

The flowers smile at him. The sun is overhead. The end of the road is not in sight. The man feels a little uneasy. "Where am I going", he asks himself, yet he drifts along. The sun begins to go

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down. The traveller marches on, even as the sun disappears behind the horizon and the road is lost in a desert. The traveller, now desperate and exhausted, wants to stop but cannot.

A huge castle now looms large in front. As he approaches the castle, thinking he has reached his goal, suddenly, the castle disappears, and he sees standing before him terrible phantoms, "whose names are desolation, despair, disgust for life; and even in the midst of the ruins he has a glimpse of suicide... He calls out, no voice responds to his cries.. He clutches at the phantoms, but everything falls away beneath him. With haggard eyes he surveys the void; he calls, he implores, there only rings out in reply a gruesome and evil laughter.

"The traveller is now on the edge of the abyss; all his attempts are vain; after a supreme struggle he falls "⁴

This schoolgirl essay won her the compliments of the teacher. But he probably did not realise that it was no mere schoolgirl essay; it was a very symbol of life as it is led by most men.

THE MIRAGE OF SUCCESS

Much later, when she had long passed the prime of life, — she was seventy-two in fact, — Mother produced a stage play written in collaboration with some disciples, which vividly brings out the futility of a "successful" life, as it is conceived by the elite of humanity. She gives here the secret of a truly successful and worthwhile life: the play is called The Great Secret. ⁵

Seven men are seen in a boat rocking on the high seas; there has "been a shipwreck and they are facing imminent death. Six of these men are among the most widely known in their respective professions: they are a statesman, a writer, a scientist, an artist, an industrialist, and an athlete. There is also a seventh man whom nobody knows about. He is dressed in simple garb, and sits quietly listening as the others talk.

As death stares them in the face, they talk about themselves — what they have achieved in life, what they have failed to achieve, and how they look upon the prospect of death. Each of these six men had been a man of repute, a man of ability, a man who had reached the peak in his chosen path. They had little to regret, except...

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except a sense of void as they approached the end. Some of them were really afraid of death. But none seemed to be happy after having achieved all they had throughout life. A sense of disappointment burdened their souls. As the athlete puts it, "What then has been missing in my life, so painfully even in the midst of success?"

Then the voice of the unknown person rises, 'calm, sweet and clear, with an air of serene authority.'

"I can tell you what you want to know... All the six of you have come to the same conclusion, in spite of the success that has crowned your efforts, — because you lived in a surface consciousness, looking at the appearance of things and ignoring the true Reality of the universe..." One may add here in parentheses that the words put in the mouth of the unknown person, represented on the stage by a handsome young man in his prime, had been written by the Mother herself.

"'You represent," the young man continues, "the elite of humanity. You have, each one of you in your own sphere, achieved the maximum of what man can achieve. You are thus at the summit of humankind. But from the height of this summit, you stand facing an abyss, and you cannot go farther... You are not satisfied, none of you. At the same time none of you knows what to do. None of you knows where is the solution of the double problem that your goodwill and your life have presented to you.

"I say the double problem; because the problem has two aspects in fact. One is individual, the other collective: how to realise in full one's own good, and the good of everybody else." He offers a solution. They accept it, and they are saved...

THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS

Mother here puts squarely before the elite of humanity the fundamental problem that life must solve.

It boils down to three primary questions: What is the use of living if all ends in death? What is the use of acting or knowing, if it leads us nowhere? What is the use of loving, if it ends ni dsi-appointment? These are not academic questions. They are some of the questions that are agitating seriously the minds of today's restless youth, the avant garde of tomorrow, and driving it to

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desperate solutions for want of the right answers.

All springs from a fundamental dissatisfaction with life as it is. Mother does not dispute the right to derive satisfaction from life. Indeed, she attaches importance to the need for satisfaction. "Once you are here and you have to go right till the end, even if the end were a nothingness, you go on till the end — and it is better that you go on in the best possible manner, that is to say, to your greatest satisfaction."⁶

An arbitrary end to one's life, through suicide, is no solution at all. She has dwelt on the question of suicide a little. "It is not for any reasons of morality, nor even a spiritual reason that I disapprove of suicide. It is because, to me, it is a cowardice, and there is something in me that does not like cowardice... "⁷

. The problem of life is not solved by death, even when it is a natural death, all does not end with death. "Death is not the solution, far from it. Death is a mechanical return to the endless round of existences; and what you have not achieved in one life, you have to do in the next, generally in much more difficult circumstances. There is only one way of getting free from life altogether: it is to go to Nirvana; and this can be obtained only by a very strict tapasyd (austerities) of complete detachment."⁸ The difficulties in the way of Nirvana are more serious perhaps than any that life on earth offers.

ACTION AND ITS BOURGEOIS IDEAL

The problem of life cannot be solved by desisting from action. For one thing, to desist from action is an impossibility, so long as we live. If we tried it seriously, it would very soon end in death, — unless we had developed the powers of great Yogis who can pass into the Beyond at will, — or at least claim to be able to do so. The right answer here is to find the clue to right action. And on this a great deal hangs. For, on the nature of our action, the kind of aim we choose for our works, depends, to a large extent, the kind of life we shall lead, the nature of the satisfaction or dissatisfaction it is likely tg bring.

The aim of action in life, call it the ideal if you like, differs from person to person; this is the "god" that he really worships, whatever the "official" religion he professes to follow, this is his real "religion".

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"The god he worships may be the god of success, or the god of money, or the god of power ... It is difficult for a human being to live, to continue to live, without having something like a rudiment of an ideal which can serve as the centre of his existence.

"Most of the time, he is not aware of it; and if he were asked what his ideal was, he would be unable to formulate it. But he has one, vaguely, something that seems to him to be the most precious thing in life. For the majority of people, for example, it is security: to live in security, to be in a condition in which one is assured of being able to continue to live. This is one of the great "aims", if one may say so, — one of the great motives behind human effort. There are people for whom comfort is the important thing; for others it is pleasure, amusement.

"All that is very low, and one would not be inclined to give it the name of an "ideal". But it is really a form of religion, something that may seem to deserve the consecration of one's life."⁹

Mother considers these "ideals" low, because they are selfish, in comparison to others that are at least less selfish. "For example, there are those whose aim (in life) is to make a fortune; and ... there are those whose aim in life is to make for themselves a comfortable and peaceful existence : have a family and children and ensure that all should be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. All this is fairly low, and in any case quite ordinary."¹⁰

Somehow to go through life, simply because one is here: "that is the attitude of men in general.... And most of the time they feel bored, because they have nothing in them, because they are empty beings, and there is nothing more boring than emptiness. And so, they seek to fill that emptiness by amusing themselves, they make themselves perfectly useless."¹¹

This is the bourgeois ideal, an ideal on which the Mother comes down with a thud in one of her rare outbursts: "Go on working while you are young. Accumulate wealth, honours. Have a position. Think of the future, save up, have some capital, take service under the Government, so that later on, when you are forty, you may sit down and enjoy your income, and afterwards your pension, and, as they say, 'a well-earned rest'. Sit down, stop on the way, do not go any farther, go to sleep, slide down towards the grave before it is time, cease from living the existence ... sitting down!"¹² Mother had used these

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words with a force and emotion which it is impossible to bring out in cold print.

The Paucity of Knowledge

The futility of most of our life and action springs from a want of knowledge, says the Mother.

This may come to us as a surprise in an age of technological perfection, an age in which the human intellect has been working at fever pitch, as never before in history. But we seem to have learnt practically everything, except the one thing that matters: the science of living. We know practically nothing about it. "Ordinary men enter life without even knowing what it is to live. And at each step they have to learn how to live....

"Who are the people who know how to live? It is through experience, through mistakes, through all sorts of untoward happenings and inconveniences of every kind that little by little one begins to be what is called "reasonable"; that is to say, when one has committed a mistake a certain number of times, and has had the annoying results of this mistake, one learns not to commit it again."¹³

One is not even taught how to go to sleep. "One would imagine that you have only to lie down in bed, and then you go to sleep. But that is not true. You have to learn how to sleep, just as you have to learn how to eat, just as you have to learn anything whatever. And if you do not learn, well, you do it badly, or you take years and years to learn how to do it, and during all these years when you do it badly, all sorts of unpleasant things happen to you."¹⁴

The first thing that we have to learn and that seems so obvious — is how to live properly, simply how to keep good health and a sufficient amount of goodwill and sanity in the first instance, before we try anything more ambitious. And it has to be learnt early. "If, when you are quite a little child and you are taught ... But, they teach you, generally speaking, very few things...."¹⁴ And everybody knows how much time and effort are needed to learn only the things that are indispensable for the right ordering of one's fife not to speak of "mastery," which in earth is something really exceptional."¹⁵

Most of the time we five and act almost automatically, and awaken to the need of knowing only when something goes wrong. "One

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does things, generally speaking, so automatically and spontaneously, ... almost unconsciously, in a semi-consciousness, and such a simple fact that in order to do something, one must first know what one is going to do and then one must have the will to do it — of this simple fact one does not even take any note. It is only when one of these factors does not work rightly, for example the capacity of making a plan within oneself and next, the capacity to carry out the plan, when these two things begin to work badly, one gets worried about the right functioning of one's being.... Otherwise, you do not even notice that the whole of life is like that..."

"A little child is altogether unconscious and it is only little by little, little by little that he begins to see things. But, if one does-not take special care, there are people who five almost all their lives without even knowing how to five ... And then, anything can happen."¹⁶

Even when one thinks before one acts, one thinks most of the time wrongly, and acts wrongly. It is what Sri Aurobindo calls the "willings" and not the "Will" that governs our life in most cases. This happens, first because we fail to see what the true Will is, and next, because we are not always strong or keen enough to follow the Will rather than the willings. The "willings" are usually fragmentary, fluid in their nature, constantly changing. They cannot give any permanent satisfaction, they in fact lead us nowhere.

"We have kept the word 'will' to indicate what, in the consciousness of the individual, is the expression of an order or an impulse coming from the truth of the being, the truth of the individual, — his real being, his true self. That is what we call the 'will'.

"And all the impulses, actions, movements which take place in the being and are not that 'will', are, we have said, 'willings'. And in fact I have told you that without your knowledge, or sometimes knowing it, you are set in movement by influences which come from outside, which even enter you without your noticing it, and they raise up in you what you call a 'will', that this thing should be and that other should not be, and so on."¹⁷

Living on the Surface

This can happen because we five mostly on the surface.

"All the time you are projected outside. All the time you live as

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it were outside yourself, with a sense so superficial that it is almost as if you were outside yourself. When you want even to observe yourself a little, control yourself a little, or simply know what is happening, you are always obliged to draw back, pull something inside which is all the time like that, on the surface. And it is this surface thing which meets all the outer contacts, which puts you in touch with similar vibrations coming from others."¹⁸

And inside, that is, what we call our inside, all is chaos.

The earth atmosphere, says the Mother, the atmosphere, that is, in which our physical consciousness fives, and in which we spend most of our time, is full of all sorts of ideas, impulses, imaginations. And it is these that make us act and feel and think as we do, most of the time. "If one could see, that is, if you could see this mental atmosphere which moves about everywhere, which moves you, which makes you feel, which makes you think, makes you act, Oh my God, you would lose many of your illusions about your personality. But, anyway, it is like that; whether you know it or not, it is like that."¹⁹ No wonder this creates a chaos within as well as outside.

This is the condition of men in general.

There are a certain number of people, not quite so many but they exist, who have raised themselves above the general level. Mother compares them with the foam that floats on the surface of the sea.

"But even among these, even among these beings who are indeed a select lot, there is not perhaps one in a thousand who is a real individual conscious of himself, unified with his psychic being, governed by its inner law, and in consequence, nearly, if not wholly, free of the outside influences ... And so, instead of being a chaos, or in any case a frightful mélange, they are beings who are organised, individuals, conscious of themselves, walking through life with the knowledge of where they want to go and how they want to walk."²⁰

Mother had found it intolerable, even when she was a little child, that one should be "a plaything in the hands of forces which toss one about like a cork in a river: one goes where one does not want to go, one is made to do things which one does not want to do, and in the end one finds oneself in a hole with no power to save oneself. In any case," she adds, "I don't know — I found that most annoying, even when I was a little child. At the age of five that began to appear to me entirely intolerable, and I sought for a means that it should be

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otherwise."²¹ And she found the way to make it otherwise, — all by herself.

The Tragedy of Love

And now about that last question — concerning love: what is the use of it as all ends in disappointment and misunderstanding? This is the great sociological problem of today and tomorrow, it has been so during all our yesterdays.

Mother has spoken at length on the question of love its travesty in human life and the real love that never fades. We cannot touch upon this subject here, except in brief outline. But one thing it may be well to clear up at the outset. It will be entirely wrong to suppose that Mother never knew of human love, nor does she deride all human emotion as otiose. Nor was the divine Love that she poured so profusely on men and women who knew her, something cold and distant and lacking in the warmth that we so much value; it could be as tender as the softest rose. One or two examples may suffice.

She was leaving her old friends as she came out to India for the first time. And she notes in her Diary: "After I had acutely suffered from their suffering, I turned towards Thee," she says addressing the Lord, "in an attempt to heal it by infusing into it a little of the divine Love, source of all peace and happiness.... Certainly this sentimental and physical attachment which produces a wrench when the bodies separate, is childish from a certain point of view when we contemplate the impermanence of outer forms and the reality of Thy essential oneness." And she prays: "O Lord, grant that all this beauty of affection and tenderness may be transformed into a glorious knowledge. . ." ²²

And here is how the Divine Mother could be as gentle and sweet as any human mother who prides herself on her affection for her children. "Poor darling," she writes to a young girl who had just come to the Ashram and is perhaps feeling lonely and hurt. "Poor darling, I take you most willingly in my lap and rock you in the cradle of my heart and console you... Let me take you in my arms and bathe you in my love..."²³

All the same, she has no illusions about human love, or shall we say, the thing that seeks to pass for love among human beings

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in most cases. "I do not believe much in pure love among human beings."²⁴ Human love is fugitive, they say. "Men always complain that love does not remain with them. But, replies the Mother, "it is entirely their fault. They give to this love a life so sordid, mixed up with a pile of horrors and such vulgarity, with things so low, so egoistic, so unclean that the poor thing, it cannot remain. If they do not manage to kill it outright, they make it altogether sick. And then, the only thing it can do is to run away.

"People are always complaining that love is impermanent and a fleeting thing. To tell the truth, they ought to be very grateful that_ it comes to them at all, in spite of the sordid place they give it to live in."²⁵

Love itself is not to blame. "Love, in its essence, is a thing absolutely pure, crystalline, perfect. In the human consciousness, it gets mixed up with a more or less considerable amount of mud. So, it becomes more and more muddy when there is more and more mud."²⁶

THE ECOLOGICAL PROBLEM

This brings us to what may be broadly described as the ecological problem — taking the phrase not in the narrow specialised sense in which it is used in modern parlance, but as the wider question of our dealings with the environment, social, economic, political, as well as the material conditions in which we are forced to live, — the collective aspect of the human condition.

"The conditions under which men live upon earth," the Mother is emphatic on this point — and she makes it very clear, "are the result of their state of consciousness. To seek to change the conditions without changing the consciousness is a vain chimera." She goes on to say that all those who have sought to change the environmental conditions of human life — social, economic, political, educational or sanitary — have found that "their ideas have remained more or less theoretical, or if an attempt has been made to put them into practice, it has always failed lamentably after a more or less long or short interval, because none of the human organisations can change radically unless the human consciousness itself undergoes a change."²⁷

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This may sound disconcerting to the apostles of change. The saving grace is that the Mother recognises the possibility and the necessity of a change taking place simultaneously, in the inner and the outer conditions of man's existence. Indeed, in her view, the two kinds of progress are closely linked with each other, they are interdependent.²⁸

We may take as an illustration one or two problems that are at the present moment very much to the fore. The problems of collective existence are innumerable and vary in their nature, importance or urgency; to deal with them in the light of the Mother's knowledge and experience would be far beyond the scope of this present endeavour.

The so-called battle of the sexes is a case in point. How many battles have been fought over the last century or so, simply to get the right to vote for women. The battles have borne fruit in most of the civilised countries; the battle has now shifted to the home front. Mother has spoken and written something very much worth while in this context. We quote only from one message: "No law can liberate women unless they liberate themselves. What makes them slaves is: attraction towards the male and his strength, desire for home life and its security, attachment to motherhood. If they get free from these three slaveries, they will truly be the equals of men.. ."²⁹

The question of juvenile delinquency, especially in the matter of drug addiction is another headache with all civilised societies. Laws are there, others are in the offing. But nothing seems to avail. Mother knows all about the drugs and those who take them. Here is a description of a vivid experience, more or less in her own language.³⁰

"Early one morning I felt something so heavy in my head and a weight in the chest... bizarre! I had never felt like this before. All sensation became a kind of violence. I closed my eyes and — along came an avalanche, a cavalcade of forms, sounds, colours, even odours, imposing themselves with such reality, such intensity... I said to myself, 'This is a fine way of going mad!'... I watched, I studied, observed... I saw that it was something that had upset the natural equilibrium of the being, stressing one point to the detriment of all the others..."

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Of course, she had not taken any of the drugs in use; the experience came to her spontaneously, as in so many other cases, simply to show her what the drugs do to those who are addicts. "And these people imagine that this is a means to develop the consciousness and open it to unknown horizons... As I have said, the impression made on me was that this is a good way of going mad... They take the drugs telling themselves, 'When I stop taking the drug, the effect will be no longer there'. But this is not true. For it can produce a habit of disorder in the being, a persistent imbalance..."

Unless therefore the addicts are made to feel that drugs will not lead them anywhere, except perhaps to the lunatic asylum, no laws will save them, and all enforcement measures will prove to have been in vain.

A WORD OF HOPE

What we have described above touches only the fundamentals. They serve to give some point to the Mother's dictum that "the world is walking upside down, legs on top and the head down below."³¹

The riddle of life is unending.

Do we really know how to avoid illness, how to keep young and fit all our life, how to remain beautiful all our life? Do we have the secret of inexhaustible energy that banishes all fatigue and strain? Are we in a position to prolong life at will, in spite of the astrologers?

Do we fully realise the power of thought, how it can create and destroy our happiness and that of others? Do we feel the power of silence? Can we imagine what dangerous things words are, to what extent they contribute to our difficulties? Have we mastered the secret of success, in fife and in action?

Have we yet discovered the way of controlling our vital movements, anger and jealousy, fear and hatred, violence and sexual madness? Do we know why there are accidents? Why do we have nightmares and the other unpleasant occurrences in our dream-state? Modern Psychology seeks to explain all, but does it really explain all? The solutions it pretends to give to our personal problems, do they really solve them?

And the bigger questions: what determines destiny? how

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are our circumstances shaped? how can we really be of help to others, our immediate associates and the wide world? how are we to resolve the persistent tensions that mar human relationships, in society, in the economic field, in politics ? how is the age-long dream of human perfection, of perpetual peace, of world unity going to be realised in practice?

We may leave aside for the moment the large metaphysical issues, the problems that confront art and literature and science, the question of education, the enigma of spirituality. The "practical" problems are enough to occupy a life-time.

The Mother has examined them all, studied all the answers, realised in experience where they fail, found the way out. That gives us a hope.

SANAT K. BANERJI

REFERENCES

1. Entretiens,

2. "Lettres a Mon Sourire", Bulletin,

3. Entretiens,

4. Paroles d'Autrefois, " L e Sentier de toute-à-I'heure",

5. Le Grand Secret.

6. "A Propos", 7 .8 .63, Bulletin, February 1964.

7. Ibid.

8. White Roses, p . 43 .

9. Entretiens, 16 .7 .58 .

10. Ibid., 16 .12.53.

11. Ibid., 21. 9. 55 .

12. Ibid., 20.3 .57.

13. Ibid., 25. 5.5 5.

14. Ibid., 2.6.54 .

15. Ibid.; Mother India, India, May 1960, p. 43.

16. Entretiens, 29 .1.58 .

17. Ibid., 12.12.56

18. Ibid., 20 .6 .56.

19. Ibid., 14.4.54 .

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., 1.7 .53.

22. Pridres et Meditations,

23. "Lettres a Mon Sourire", Bulletin, February 1975.

24. Breath of Grace, p. 248.

25. Entretiens, 12.5.51.

26. Entretiens, 14.4.54.

27. "Un Centre Universities International," Bulletin, April 1952.

28. Ibid.

29. Mother India, August 1951 .

30. Ibid., October 1968.

31. Entretiens, 15.8.56.

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THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY

An Outline

CHAPTER XIX.

THE DRIVE TOWARDS CENTRALISATION AND UNIFORMITY

ASSUMING that a free grouping of the nations will be the ideal form of a stable world-union, the next question that arises is: what will be the status of these nation-units in the larger body? Will they enjoy full freedom, or will they be just like provinces or districts in a strongly centralised nation-state, with very little independence of their own? Will the world-union seek to impose its domination in such a way as to compel its members to adopt a uniform system of government and culture?

The possibility of such a stringent form of world-union coming into being is not so remote as one might suppose. Science is rapidly annihilating distance and increasing its powers of vast and close organisation. And if the ideas of the socialist thinkers prevail in the long run, a unitary world-state seeking to impose its rule over all may come about within a century or two, at the most three or four.

The principle underlying this attempt will be that uniformity is a precondition for unity. It will take the formation of the nation-state, with its growing insistence on uniformity, as a precedent. The recent examples of Turkey, Belgium and Germany suggest how the principle of uniformity would work. The tendency has been towards a general uniformity allowing of only minor variations, even in states like Switzerland, U.S.A., Australia and South Africa, whose constitutions provide for a federal structure.

The first step in this process will be the creation of a strong central government. The authority vested in the central government may well be delegated to it by the constituent units, as happened in the U.S.A. But the central authority tends, by its very nature, to absorb all but the most unimportant powers and leave

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but a shadow in the hands of the constituent units. The U.S.A. would long since have become a close-knit unitary state but for the existence of a Supreme Court charged with the maintenance of the original constitution. Once the U.S.A. begins to get mixed up in the turmoil of world politics and abandons its age-long tradition of aloofness, it may find it difficult to preserve its federal structure intact. So is the case with Switzerland.

The necessity for a strong and compact central government arises from the need to defend the country against foreign attack, or else in order to make successful attacks on others. Nations that failed to evolve a strong central government have not been able to preserve their liberty: witness the case of Italy, Poland, China, India. Even a liberty-loving nation like England had to forego its ancient liberties in war-time; it had to allow a strong and irresponsible government to rule the nation so long as the threat of war and invasion continued.

Prussia could usurp powers of absolute control over the other states of 19th century Germany, owing mainly to the ever-present threat of aggression from its neighbours. Again, it was the threat of war that ultimately converted the loose confederate unity of the old British empire into a strongly knit federation. A loose form of unity can survive only in conditions of peace; war makes a closer union inevitable.

Once brought into being by an impending threat of war, the central organisation tends to grow in power and seeks more and more to control the component units. This arises from the need to impose a uniform rule all over the country. For the human mind, when it begins the conscious ordering of life, seeks always to lay down a uniform pattern of behaviour. So it was with the conscious organisation of the nation-state. Its first aim has been to establish a uniform system of administration.

The principle is well illustrated in the history of the French monarchy. The medieval kings had insisted on a gradual unification of France out of the feudal chaos. The Bourbons, when they came to power, aimed at a uniformity in all the branches of administration.

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They did not succeed entirely in this aim. But the gaps left by them were filled in by the French Revolution and Napoleon.

In other countries too, the process has been the same, even when the steps of change are not so clearly visible as in France.

We may safely conclude that any attempt at the unification of the world on administrative and political fines would follow a similar pattern.

(To be continued)

SANAT K. BANERJI

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WORDS OF THE MOTHER : A FORCE IN ACTION

Aspiration and Consecration

The question you are to answer is this: Do you want the Yoga for the sake of the Divine ? Is the Divine the supreme fact of your life, so much so that it is simply impossible for you to do without it? Do you feel that your very raison d'etre is the Divine and without it there is no meaning in your existence? If so, then only can it be said that you have a call for the Path.

This is the first thing necessary — aspiration for the Divine.

The next thing you have to do is to tend it, to keep it always alert and awake and living. And for that what is required is concentration — concentration upon the Divine with a view to an integral and absolute consecration to its Will and Purpose.

Concentrate in the heart. Enter into it; go within and deep and far, as far as you can. Gather all the strings of your consciousness that are spread abroad, roll them up and take a plunge and sink down.

A fire is burning there, in the deep quietude of the heart. It is the divinity in you — your true being. Hear its voice, follow its dictates.

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The Divine Will

How are we to know, you will ask, when it is the Divine Will that makes us act? The Divine Will is not difficult to recognise. It is unmistakable. You can know it without being very far on the path. Only you must listen to its voice, the small voice that is here in the heart. Once you are accustomed to listen, if you do anything that is contrary to the Divine Will, you feel an uneasiness. If you persist on the wrong track, you get very much disturbed... Do not try to give a material excuse when you feel a little depression or a slight uneasiness. When you stop and look about for the reason, be absolutely straight and sincere. At first your mind will construct a very plausible and beautiful explanation. Do not accept it, but look beyond and ask, "What is it that is behind this movement? Why am I doing this?" Finally you will discover, hidden in a corner, the little ripple a slight wrong turn or twist in your attitude that is causing the trouble or disturbance.

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Nothing is Insignificant

In the integral Yoga, the integral life down even to the smallest detail has to be transformed, to be divinised. There is nothing here that is insignificant, nothing that is indifferent. You cannot say, "When I am meditating, reading philosophy or listening to these conversations I will be in this condition of an opening towards the Light and call for it, but when I go out to walk or see friends I can allow myself to forget all about it." To persist in this attitude means that you will remain untransformed and never have the true union; always you will be divided; you will have at best only glimpses of this greater life. For although certain experiences and realisations may come to you in meditation or in your inner consciousness, your body and your outer life will remain unchanged. An inner illumination that does not take any note of the body and the outer life, is of no great use, for it leaves the world as it is.

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Attacks from Adverse Forces

Attacks from adverse forces are inevitable: you have to take them as tests on your way and go courageously through the ordeal. The struggle may be hard, but when you come out of it, you have gained something, you have advanced a step. There is even a necessity for the existence of the hostile forces. They make your determination stronger, your aspiration clearer....

In any case, when an attack comes the wisest attitude is to consider that it comes from outside and to say, "This is not myself and I will have nothing to do with it." You have to deal in the same way with all lower impulses and desires and all doubts and questionings in the mind. If you identify yourself with them, the difficulty in fighting them becomes all the greater; for then you have the feeling that you are facing the never easy task of overcoming your own nature. But once you are able to say, "No, this is not myself, I will have nothing to do with it", it becomes much easier to disperse them.

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Abandon All Mental Conceptions

When you come to the Divine, you must abandon all mental conceptions; but, instead of doing that, you throw your conceptions upon the Divine and want the Divine to obey them. The only true attitude for a Yogi is to be plastic and ready to obey the Divine Command whatever it may be; nothing must be indispensable to him, nothing a burden. Often the first impulse of those who want to five the spiritual fife is to throw away all they have; but they do it because they want to be rid of a burden, not because they want to surrender to the Divine. Men who possess wealth and are surrounded by the things that give them luxury and enjoyment turn to the Divine, and immediately their movement is to run away from these things, or, as they say, "to escape from their bondage". But it is a wrong movement; you must not think that the things you have belong to you, — they belong to the Divine. If the Divine wants you to enjoy anything, enjoy it; but be ready too to give it up the very next moment with a smile.

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Get Rid of All Fears

Once you enter the path of Yoga you must get rid of all fears — the fears of your mind, the fears of your vital, the fears of your body which are lodged in its very cells. One of the uses of the blows and knocks you receive on the path of Yoga is to rid you of all fear. The causes of your fears leap on you again and again, until you can stand before them free and indifferent, untouched and pure. One has a fear of the sea, another the fear of fire. The latter will find, it may be, that he has to face conflagration after conflagration till he is so trained that not a cell of his body quivers. That of which you have horror comes repeatedly till the horror is gone. One who seeks the transformation and is a follower of the Path, must become through and through fearless, not to be touched or shaken by anything whatever in any part of his nature.

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The Material World

Is not this material world of ours very low down in the scale in the system of worlds that form the creation ?

Ours is the most material world, but it is not necessarily "low down", at least, not for that reason; if it is low down, it is because it is obscure and ignorant, not because it is material. It is a mistake to make "matter" a synonym for obscurity and ignorance. And the material world too is not the only world in which we live: it is rather one of many in which we exist simultaneously, and in one way the most important of them all. For this world of matter is the point of concentration of all the worlds; it is the field of concretisation of all the worlds; it is the place where all the worlds will have to manifest. At present it is disharmonious and obscure; but that is only an accident, a false start. One day it will become beautiful, rhythmic, full of light; for that is the consummation for which it was made.

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Art and Yoga

Does the work of an artist improve if he does Yoga ?

The discipline of Art has at its centre the same principle as the discipline of Yoga. In both the aim is to become more and more conscious; in both you have to learn to see and feel something that is beyond the ordinary vision and feeling, to go within and bring out from there deeper things. Painters have to follow a discipline for the growth of the consciousness of their eyes, which in itself is almost a Yoga. If they are true artists and try to see beyond and use their art for the expression of the inner world, they grow in consciousness by this concentration, which is not other than the consciousness given by Yoga. Why then should not Yogic consciousness be a help to artistic creation? I have known some who had very little training and skill and yet through Yoga acquired a fine capacity in writing and painting.

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Surrender

By surrender we mean ... a spontaneous self-giving, a giving of all your self to the Divine, to a greater Consciousness of which you are a part. Surrender will not diminish, but increase; it will not lessen or weaken or destroy your personality, it will fortify and aggrandise it. Surrender means a free total giving with all the delight of the giving; there is no sense of sacrifice in it. If you have the slightest feeling that you are making a sacrifice, then it is no longer surrender. For it means that you reserve yourself or that you are trying to give, with grudging or with pain and effort, and have not the joy of the gift, perhaps not even the feeling that you are giving. When you do anything with the sense of a compression of your being, be sure that you are doing it in the wrong way. True surrender enlarges you; it increases your capacity; it gives you a greater measure in quality and in quantity which you could not have had by yourself.

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Surrender

Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender. You can surrender either through knowledge or through devotion. You may have a strong intuition that the Divine alone is the truth and a luminous conviction that without the Divine you cannot manage. Or you may have a spontaneous feeling that this line is the only way of being happy, a strong psychic desire to belong exclusively to the Divine: "I do not belong to myself," you say, and give up the responsibility of your being to the Truth. Then comes self-offering: "Here I am, a creature of various qualities, good and bad, dark and enlightened. I offer myself as I am to you, take me up with all my ups and downs, conflicting impulses and tendencies — do whatever you like with me."

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The Divine Will

How can we know what the divine Will is ?

One does not know it, one feels it. And in order to feel it one must will with such an intensity, such sincerity, that every obstacle disappears. As long as you have a preference, a desire, an attraction, a liking, all these veil the Truth from you. Hence, the first thing to do is to try to master, govern, correct all the movements of your consciousness and eliminate those which cannot be changed until all becomes a perfect and permanent expression of the Truth.

And even to will this is not enough, for very often one forgets to will it.

What is necessary is an aspiration which burns in the being like a constant fire, and every time you have a desire, a preference, an attraction, it must be thrown into this fire.

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Sincerity

When you are absolutely sincere, you make a constant effort to live in harmony with the highest ideal of your being, the truth of your being. At every moment, in all that you think, all that you feel and all that you do, you try as perfectly as possible, as completely as possible, to put yourself in harmony with the highest ideal or, if you are conscious of it, with the truth of your being — then you have reached true sincerity. And if you are like that, if truly you do not act from egoistic motives or for personal reasons, if you act guided by your inner truth, that is, if you are perfectly sincere, it is absolutely the same to you whether the whole world judges you in one way or another. In this state of perfect sincerity you do not need to appear good or to be approved by others, for the first thing you experience when you are in harmony with your true consciousness is that you do not care what you look like.

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The Most Important Surrender

The most important surrender is the surrender of your character, your way of being, so that it may change. If you do not surrender your very own nature, never will this nature change. It is this that is most important. You have certain ways of understanding, certain ways of reacting, certain ways of feeling, almost certain ways of progressing, and above all, a special way of looking at life and expecting from it certain things — well, it is this you must surrender. That is, if you truly want to receive the divine Light and transform yourself, it is your whole way of being you must offer — offer by opening it, making it as receptive as possible so that the divine Consciousness which sees how you ought to be, may act directly and change all these movements into movements more true, more in keeping with your real truth. This is infinitely more important than surrendering what one does.

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It Is Not What One Does

It is not what one does (what one does is very important, that's evident) that is the most important thing but what one is. Whatever the activity, it is not quite the way of doing it but the state of consciousness in which it is done that is important. You may work, do disinterested work without any idea of personal profit, work for the joy of working, but if you are not at the same time ready to leave this work, to change the work or change the way of working, if you cling to your own way of working, your surrender is not complete. You must come to a point when everything is done because you feel within, very clearly, in a more and more imperious way, that it is this which must be done and in this particular way, and that you do it only because of that. You do not do it because of any habit, attachment or preference, nor even any conception, even a preference for the idea that it is the best thing to do — else your surrender is not total.

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The Positive and Negative Sides

The positive side is to increase one's aspiration, develop one's consciousness, unify one's being, to go within in order to enter more and more into contact with one's psychic being; to take up all the parts, all the movements, all the activities of one's being and put them before this psychic consciousness so that they fall into their true place in relation to this centre; finally, to organise all one's aspiration towards the Divine and one's progress towards the Divine. That is the positive side.

At the same time the negative side consists in refusing methodically and with discernment all the influences which come from outside or from the subconscient or inconscient or from the environment, and stand in the way of spiritual progress. One must discern these influences, suggestions, impulses, and systematically refuse them without ever getting discouraged by their persistence and ever yielding to their will... That is the negative side.

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Endurance

People have a beautiful experience and say, "Ah, now this is it!..." And then it settles down, diminishes, gets veiled, and suddenly something quite unexpected, absolutely commonplace and apparently completely uninteresting comes before you and blocks your way. And then you say, "Ah! what's the good of having made this progress if it's going to start all over again? Why should I do it? I made an effort, I succeeded, achieved something, and now it's as if I had done nothing! It's indeed hopeless." For you have no endurance.

If one has endurance, one says, "It's all right. Good, I shall begin again as often as necessary; a thousand times, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times if necessary, I shall begin again but I shall go to the end and nothing will have the power to stop me on the way."

This is most necessary. Most necessary.

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Sincerity

"What is the fundamental virtue to be cultivated in order to prepare for the spiritual life ?"

I have said this many times, but this is an opportunity to repeat it: it is sincerity.

A sincerity which must become total and absolute, for sincerity alone is your protection on the spiritual path. If you are not sincere, at the very next step you are sure to fall and break your head. All kinds of forces, wills, influences, entities are there, on the look-out for the least little rift in this sincerity and they immediately rush in through that rift and begin to throw you into confusion.

Therefore, before doing anything, beginning anything, trying anything, be sure first of all that you are not only as sincere as you can be, but have the intention of becoming still more so.

For that is your only protection.

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Play and Divinity

Perhaps there is more divinity in the spontaneous play of children than in the erudition of the scholar or the asceticism of the saint. That's what I have always thought. Only (smiling) it is a divinity which is quite unconscious of itself.

As for me, I must confess to you that I feel much more essentially myself when I am joyful and when I play my own way — than when I am very grave and very serious — much more. Grave and serious that always gives me the impression that I am dragging the weight of all this creation, so heavy and so obscure, whereas when I play — when I play, when I can laugh, can enjoy myself it gives me the feeling of a fine powder of delight falling from above and tinting this creation, this world with a very special colour and bringing it much closer to what it should essentially be.

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Right Attitude

I knew a young woman who was a theosophist and was trying to practise; she told me, "We are taught that the divine Will must prevail in all that we do, but in the morning when I have my breakfast, how can I know whether God wants me to put two lumps of sugar in my coffee or only one?"... And it was quite touching, you know, and I had some trouble explaining to her that the spirit in which she drank her coffee, the attitude she had towards her food, was much more important than the number of lumps of sugar she put into it.

It is the same with all the little things one does at every moment. The divine Consciousness does not work in the human way. It does not decide how many lumps of sugar you will put in your coffee. It gradually puts you in the right attitude towards actions, things — an attitude of consecration, suppleness, assent, aspiration, goodwill, plasticity, effort for progress — and this is what counts, much more than the small decisions you take at every second.

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Pain and Suffering

If one can face suffering with courage, endurance, an unshakable faith in the divine Grace, if one can, instead of shunning suffering when it comes, enter into it with this will, this aspiration to go through it and find the luminous truth, the unvarying delight which is at the core of all things, the door of pain is often more direct, more immediate than that satisfaction or contentment____

Pleasure is a deceptive and perverse disguise which turns us away from our goal and we certainly should not seek it if we are eager to find the truth. Pleasure vapourises us; it deceives us, leads us astray. Pain brings us back to a deeper truth by obliging us to concentrate in order to be able to bear it, be able to face this thing that crushes us. It is in pain that one most easily finds the true strength again, when one is strong. It is in pain that one most easily finds the true faith again, the faith in something which is above and beyond all pain.

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Freedom and Service

In their purity, in their truth, these two things — freedom and service — far from being contradictory, are complementary. It is in perfect union with the supreme Reality that perfect freedom is found, for all ignorance, all unconsciousness is a bondage which makes you inefficient, limited, powerless. The least ignorance in oneself is a limitation, one is no longer free. As long as there is an element of unconsciousness in the being, it is a limitation, a bondage. Only in perfect union with the supreme Reality can perfect freedom exist. And how to realise this union if not through a spontaneous self-giving: the gift of love. And as I said, the first gesture, the first expression of love is service ....

It is indeed love which leads to Unity and it is Unity which is the true expression of freedom. And so those who in the name of their right to freedom claim independence, turn their backs completely on this true freedom, for they deny love.

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Your Best Friend

Your friend is not one who encourages you to come down to your lowest level, encourages you to do foolish things along with him or fall into bad ways with him, or one who commends you for all the nasty things you do, that's quite clear....

We don't like the company of someone who has a contagious disease, and avoid him carefully; generally he is segregated so that it does not spread. But the contagion of vice and bad behaviour, the contagion of depravity, falsehood and what is base, is infinitely more dangerous than the contagion of any disease, and this is what must be very carefully avoided. You must consider as your best friend the one who tells you that he does not wish to participate in any bad or ugly act, the one who gives you courage to resist low temptations; he is a friend. He is the one you must associate with and not someone with whom you have fun and who strengthens your evil propensities. That's all,

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The True Friend

Indeed, you should choose as friends only those who are wiser than yourself, those whose company ennobles you and helps you to master yourself, to progress, to act in a better way and see more clearly. And finally, the best friend one can have — isn't he the Divine, to whom one can say everything, reveal everything? For there indeed is the source of all compassion, of all power to efface every error when it is not repeated, to open the road to true realisation; it is he who can understand all, heal all, and always help on the path, help you not to fail, not to falter, not to fall, but to walk straight to the goal. He is the true friend, the friend of good and bad days, the one who can understand, can heal, and who is always there when you need him. When you call him sincerely, he is always there to guide and uphold you — and to love you in the true way.

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The Bourgeois Ideal

How many times in life does one meet people who become pacifists because they are afraid to fight, who long for rest before they have earned it, who are satisfied with a little progress and in their imagination and desires make it into a marvellous realisation so as to justify their stopping half-way.

In ordinary life, already, this happens so much. Indeed, this is the bourgeois ideal, which has deadened mankind and made man into what he is now: "Work while you are young, accumulate wealth, honour, position; be provident, have a little foresight, put something by, lay up a capital, become an official — so that later when you are forty you can 'sit down', enjoy your income and later your pension and, as they say, enjoy a well-earned rest." — To sit down, to stop on the way, not to move forward, to go to sleep, to go downhill towards the grave before one's time, cease to five the purpose of life — to sit down!

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REFERENCES

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BOOK REVIEW

Bhaviyute Darsinakan - Sri Aurobindo. The Seer of the Future - Sri Aurobindo - Sri P. Parameszoaran . Published by jayabharath Publication, Kallai Road, Calicut-z; Kerala. Price Rs. 10,

IN presenting this biography of Sri Aurobindo which, to the best of this reviewers's knowledge, is the only one of its kind in Malayalam on the great Yogin, Sri Parameswaran has filled a lacuna that was so sadly and glaringly evident in Malayalam literature. This 211-page book, beautifully got up by the jayabhararh Publications of Calicut, gives an authoritative account of the life and works of Sri Aurobindo and a detailed analysis of his multifaceted genius, with emphasis laid on his adventures into the Consciousness, the Yoga of the Supermind, which entitle him to be called 'the seer of the future'.

The biography takes us through the childhood of Sri Aurobindo, his education both at home and abroad, his professional career, his entry into the political life of India, his emergence from it as philosopher and sage, the years of intensive spiritual sadhana at Pondicherry and his mahasamadhi on December yth, 1950. This purely biographical section of the book has been given the title "DIVYARAVINDAM". The second section entitled "ARAVINDA PARIMALAM" is a detailed exposition of Sri Aurobindo's Supramental Yoga (the Poorna Yoga), an analysis and appreciation of his literary and philosophical writings and a description of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at PONDICHERRY. Sri Parameswaran's lucid style of writing and his intellectual grasp and acceptance of the Aurobindonian philosophy have helped him to present its tenets and deep spiritual content effectively and objectively. H e refers to the general misconception many seekers of spiritual knowledge have with regard to Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, that the path he advocates is tortuous and off-beat and that his vision can be comprehended only by the intellectually enlightened few. Sri Parameswaran, while conceding that Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine, Synthesis of Yoga, etc. do not make easy reading, points out that perseverance and sincerity are all that is required to grasp the fundamentals of the Aurobindonian philosophy. "These books", says the biographer "are the mirrors of his own spiritual experiences.

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Enter into them, and you will be enthralled by their captivating style — reading them then becomes an experience and a joy." Perhaps this is the most signal service that Sri Parameswaran has rendered through his book to Malayali students of Indian thought and spiritual traditions — that he has made an effective attempt to stir up intellectual curiosity regarding this new and total vision of the great seer.

In the last chapter "SIMHAVALOKANAM", which carries an appraisal of Sri Aurobindo's contribution to world thought and the conscious evolution of man, one senses the rapport the biographer has with his subject when he portrays Sri Aurobindo as a patriot to whom India is not a country but a living presence, a divine messenger charged with the sacred mission of leading the world into a higher level of collective existence, as the Divine's instrument for the unification of the whole world. "Sri Aurobindo", he remarks, "gave a philosophy to the Indian patriots, and a practical programme of action to those who wish to serve India."

Devoting a section under the heading "AMMA", to the MOTHER, Sri Parameswaran gives a short sketch of her life and explains the unique role she played in the Supramental Sadhana of the MASTER and in the development of the Ashram at Pondicherry into a spiritual laboratory. He points out that it was the MOTHER, with her all-embracing love and understanding of human nature, who cemented the lofty relationship that the sadhaks developed with the MASTER and with HER as their spiritual gurus and as the leaders of the new age, to whom, however, no sadhak or devotee was too small or too imperfect to deserve their constant attention and careful guidance.

Sri Parameswaran concludes his biography with the significant statement that in the flux of time the entire world will come to seek inspiration from Sri Aurobindo's life and thought and that India will find in his message the path to the fulfilment of her own mission.

As an authentic biography of the greatest thinker and sage of this century, and as a clear exposition of his philosophy, this book is to be much commended.

A. P. SARAD

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