29th June 2011
at Dining Room Hall, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Language : Hindi
Talks on Integral Yoga
Yoga of the Body (Part-17) (On Miracles)
28th June 2011
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Duration : 41 Minutes
File Size : 38 MB
Format : MP3 (128kbps)
A short synopsis:
Yoga of the Body
(On Miracles)
The present talk touches upon the subject of miracles
from different angles based upon the vision and understanding given to us
by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother…
by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother…
Words of the Mother (From the Agenda)
To begin with, I said that the vital is peopled by small entities, small formations, the remnants of human beings who have died. But there is a whole vital world which has nothing to do with that one, a world peopled by beings of the vital proper, beings of great power and even great beauty. Most people who dabble in occultism without having a deep enough spiritual life are immediately deluded by them – some even take them as the supreme God and worship them. That's generally how religions are created. They are a great success. They are the supreme God of many a religion – they are beings of the vital world, and can assume an appearance of overwhelming beauty. They are the biggest impostors in the world, and dangerous at that; it takes the spiritual instinct, the instinct of true spiritual purity, not to be deceived by them.
Many religions and sects are founded on revelations and miracles, and every bit of it comes from vital beings.
It's one of the greatest problems in human life; I don't mean spiritual life, but the life of people who deal with the beyond.
There are skies (not heavens) in the vital world that are truly paradises. Naturally the real divine element is lacking, but only spiritual purity and the true spiritual sense can show you the difference. All who remain within the vital or mental worlds are completely deluded. They see marvelous things, miracles in profusion (that's where you find the most miracles!)…
My experience is that in the present state of the world, a direct miracle, material or vital, must necessarily take into account a great many elements of falsehood that are unacceptable—they are necessarily miracles of falsehood. And they are unacceptable. I have seen what people call miracles; I saw many of them at one period, but this gave a right of existence to many things which to me are not acceptable.
What men call “miracles” nowadays are almost always performed by vital beings or by men who are in contact with vital beings, and this is a mixture—it accepts the reality of certain things, the truth of certain things that are not true. And this is the basis on which it works. So that is unacceptable.
* * *
The universe would be like that, if it had not been for the deviation of the adverse forces – I see it very clearly. The perversion, the cold-blooded and cruel perversion of sheer malevolent will keeps it from being like that. That’s what intervenes.... They all call it an ‘accident,’ but a lot of good that does us! The fact is there.
The adverse force is what keeps the Divine from blossoming miraculously whenever He appears. Because I know that wherever Matter is not under the influence of this adverse will to any degree, it blossoms immediately. And everything in the human heart, in human consciousness, in human thought, all that is slightly sheltered from this adverse influence – sheltered by the psychic, the divine Presence – blossoms, becomes ... immediately becomes marvelous, without any obstacle – all the obstacles come from that source…
* * *
‘We are subject to physical laws: this will produce such and such a result if you do that, this will happen, etc.’ Oh! It reeks! I know it well. I know it very well. These laws reek of falsehood. In the body, we have no faith in the divine Grace, none, none, none, none! Those who have not undergone a tapasya’ as I have, say, ‘Yes, all these inner moral things, feelings, psychology, all that is very good; we want the Divine and we are ready to ... But all the same, material facts are material facts, they have their concrete reality, after all an illness is an illness, food is food, and everything you do has a consequence, and when you are ...’ – bah, bah, bah, bah, bah!
We must understand that this isn’t true – it isn’t true, it’s a falsehood, all this is sheer falsehood. It is NOT TRUE, it is not true!
If only we would accept the Supreme inside our bodies, if we had the experience I had a few days ago: the supreme Knowledge in action along with the complete abolition of all consequences, past and future. Each second has its own eternity and its own law, which is a law of absolute truth.
* * *
I began my sadhana at birth, without knowing that I was doing it. I have continued it throughout my whole life, which means for almost eighty years (even though for perhaps the first three or four years of my life it was only something stirring about in unconsciousness). But I began a deliberate, conscious sadhana at about the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, upon prepared ground. I am now more than eighty years old: I have thought of nothing but that, I have wanted nothing but that, I had no other interest in life, and not for a single minute have I ever forgotten that it was THAT that I wanted. There were not periods of remembering and forgetting: it was continuous, unceasing, day and night, from the age of twenty-four – and I had this experience for the first time about a week ago! So, I say that people who are in a hurry, people who are impatient, are arrogant fools.... It is a hard path. I try to make it as comfortable as possible, but nevertheless, it is a hard path. And it is obvious that it cannot be otherwise. You are beaten and battered until you understand. Until you are in that state in which all bodies are your body.
... but it is so deeply rooted: all the reactions of the body-consciousness are like that, with a kind of shrinking at the idea of allowing a higher power to intervene.
From the positive point of view, I am convinced that we agree upon the result to be obtained, that is, an integral and unreserved consecration – in love, knowledge and action – to the Supreme AND TO HIS WORK. I say to the Supreme and to his work because consecration to the Supreme alone is not enough. Now we are here for the supramental realization, this is what is expected of us, but to reach it, our consecration to it must be total, unreserved absolutely integral. I believe you have understood this – in other words, that you have the will to realize it.
From the negative point of view – I mean the difficulties to be overcome – one of the most serious obstacles is that the ignorant and falsifying outer consciousness, the ordinary consciousness legitimizes all the so-called physical laws, causes, effects and consequences, all that science has discovered physically and materially. All this is an unquestionable reality to the consciousness, a reality that remains independent and absolute even in the face of the eternal divine Reality.
And it is so automatic that it is unconscious.
When it is a question of movements like anger, desire, etc., you recognize that they are wrong and must disappear, but when material laws are in question – laws of the body, for example, its needs, its health, its nourishment, all those things – they have such a solid, compact, established and concrete reality that it appears absolutely unquestionable.
Well, to be able to cure that, which of all the obstacles is the greatest (I mean the habit of putting spiritual life on one side and material life on the other, of acknowledging the right of material laws to exist), one must make a resolution never to legitimize any of these movements, at any cost…
* * *
Consequently, if you do not remember having had the experience, you are left in the same condition as before, but with the difference that now you know, you can know, that these material laws do not correspond to the truth – that’s all. They do not at all correspond to the truth, so consequently, if you want to be faithful to your aspiration, you must in no way legitimize all that. Rather, you must say that it is an infirmity from which we are suffering for the moment, for an intermediate period – it is an infirmity and an ignorance – for it really is an ignorance (this is not just a word): it is ignorance, it is not the thing as it is, even in regard to our present material bodies. Therefore, we will not legitimize anything. What we say is this – it is an infirmity which has to be endured for the time being, until we get out of it, but we do NOT ACKNOWLEDGE all this as a concrete reality. It does NOT have a concrete reality, it has a false reality – what we call concrete reality is a false reality…
Therefore, if we do not want to oppose the supramental action by an obscure, inert and obstinate resistance, we have to admit once and for all that none of these things should be legitimized.
* * *
SAVITRI (Hindi)
22nd June 2011
at Dining Room Hall, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Language : Hindi
Yoga of the Earth (Action of the Will)
21st June 2011
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Duration : 38 Minutes
File Size : 35 MB
Format : MP3 (128kbps)
(Starting 5 minutes not recorded)
A short synopsis:
Yoga of the Earth
(Action of the Will)
Knowledge and Power are two sides of the Divine. The Vedantic Yoga seeks
to discover that all-liberating Knowledge that comes by dwelling in a settled
vision of the One Self that dwells in all things, beings, events and
circumstances. On the other hand, the path of Tantra Yoga leans towards Power
and Ananda. These two aspects are roughly represented in man by Faith and Will.
To arrive at knowledge we have to pass beyond knowings; we have to dive deep behind
the appearances of things through a constant dwelling upon the One Idea. So
also to arrive at Power we have to get past the willings and wants and wishes.
The more we quieten the consciousness by removing from it the element of desire
and doubts and ignorant conceptions, the more the Divine Will begins to act
within and through us. The present tal;k is focused upon the action of the
Divine Will.
Words of Sri Aurobindo: The Synthesis of Yoga
The eventual
omnipotence of Tapas and the infallible fulfilment of the Idea are the very
foundation of all Yoga. In man we render these terms by Will and Faith,—a will
that is eventually self-effective because it is of the substance of Knowledge
and a faith that is the reflex in the lower consciousness of a Truth or real
Idea yet unrealised in the manifestation. It is this self-certainty of the Idea
which is meant by the Gita when it says, yo yac-chraddhah. sa
eva sah. , “whatever is a man’s faith or the sure Idea in him, that he becomes.”
Words of the Mother: 4 November 1963: On Thoughts and Aphorisms
We are in the habit of thinking that when we
want something it should come to us, because the vision is too shortsighted — too
shortsighted and too limited; instead of having an overall vision which would
show us that this particular vibration was necessary to set off a certain
number of other vibrations and that
it is the totality
of all that which will have an effect, which is not the immediate
effect of the vibration emitted. I do not know if this is clear, but it is a
constant experience.
As a matter of fact, during this period, I have
studied and observed this phenomenon: how the vibration of desire is added to
the vibration of Will emitted by the Supreme — in our little everyday actions.
And with the vision from above, if we take care to maintain the consciousness
of this vision from above, we can see how this vibration emitted was exactly
the vibration emitted by the Supreme, but instead of obtaining the immediate
result expected by the surface consciousness, it was meant to set off a whole
series of vibrations and to achieve another, more distant and more complete
result. I am not speaking of great things or of actions on a terrestrial scale,
I am speaking of the very small things in life: for example, saying to someone,
“Give me this”, and instead of giving it, that someone does not understand and
gives something else. So if we do not take care to preserve an overall vision,
a certain vibration may occur, for example a vibration of impatience or of
dissatisfaction, together with the impression that the vibration from the Lord
is not understood and not received. Well, this little added vibration of
impatience or, in fact, of not understanding what is happening, this impression
of a lack of receptivity or response, is of the same quality as desire — it
cannot be called a desire, but it is the same kind of vibration — this is what
comes to complicate things. If we have the complete, exact vision, we know that
“Give me this” will produce something other than the immediate result and that
this other thing will bring in something else which is exactly what should be.
I do not know if I am making myself clear, it is rather complicated! But this
gave me the key to the difference in quality between the vibration of Will and the
vibration of desire, and at the same time the possibility of eliminating this
vibration of desire by a wider and more total vision — wider, more total and far-seeing,
that is to say, the vision of a greater whole.
I
insist on this point, because this eliminates all moral factors. It eliminates
this pejorative notion of desire. More and more, the vision is eliminating all
notions of good and bad, right and wrong, inferior and superior, and all that.
There is only what might almost be called a difference of vibratory quality — “quality” still gives
the idea of superiority and inferiority; it is not quality, it is not
intensity. I do not know the scientific term they use to distinguish one
vibration from another, but that’s what it is.
And so what is noteworthy is that the vibration,
what one might call the quality of the vibration that comes from the Lord, is
constructive — it builds and it is peaceful and luminous; while the other
vibration of desire, or any similar vibration, complicates, destroys, confuses and
twists things —confuses and distorts them, twists them. And this takes away the
light; it produces a greyness, which can be intensified by violent movements into
very dark shadows. But even when there is no passion, when passion does not
intervene, it is like that. The physical reality has become nothing but a field
of vibrations that mingle and unfortunately also clash and conflict with one
another; and the clash, the conflict is a climax of this kind of turmoil and
disorder and confusion created by certain vibrations which are in fact vibrations
of ignorance — because we do not know. They are vibrations of ignorance and they
are too small, too narrow, too limited — too short. The problem is no longer
perceived from a psychological point of view at all; there are only vibrations…..
It is always said that it is desire which
creates difficulties, and indeed it is like that. Desire may simply be
something added to the vibration of will. The Will — when it is the one Will, the
supreme Will expressing itself — is direct, immediate, there are no possible
obstacles; and so everything that delays, hinders, causes complication or even
failure is necessarily an admixture of desire.
One
can see it in everything. For example, take an external field of action, with
the external world, external things — of course, to say that it is “external” is
simply to put oneself in a false position — but, for example, from the higher
consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, you tell someone, “Go” — I am giving one
example among millions — “Go and see this person and tell him this in order to
obtain that.” If this person is receptive, immobile within and surrendered,
then he goes, he sees the person and tells him and the thing is done — without any complication whatever, like that. If this
person has an active mental consciousness,
if he does not have total faith, if he has all the mixture of everything
brought in by ego and ignorance, he sees difficulties, he sees problems to be
solved, he sees all the complications — and of course, all this happens. And so according
to the proportion — everything is always a question of proportion — according to
the proportion, it creates complications, it takes time, the thing is delayed
or even worse, it is distorted, it does not happen exactly as it should, it is
changed, diminished, distorted or in the end it is not done at all — there are
many, many degrees, but all that belongs to the domain of complications — mental
complications — and desire. Whereas the other way is immediate. There are
countless examples of these cases — of all cases — and also of the “immediate
case”. Then people tell you: “Oh, you have performed a miracle!” — no miracle
has been performed: that is how it should always be. It is because the
intermediary did not add himself to the action.
I do not know if this is clear, but anyway... So
this ranges from the smallest thing to an action on the terrestrial scale.
There are examples, in terrestrial action, of things that have been done in
this way — if there is a good intermediary. Nobody understood how it was done,
why it was done — like that, very, very simply, everything turned out well. And
in other cases, to get a visa or a permit one has to move mountains. So, from
the smallest thing, the smallest physical indisposition to a worldwide action,
it is all the same principle, everything comes to the same principle.
CWM-10: Pp 175, 176
and 179
* * *
SAVITRI (Hindi)
15th June 2011
at Dining Room Hall, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Language : Hindi
Yoga of the Body (Part-16) (The role of Will)
14th June 2011
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Duration : 38 Minutes
File Size : 35 MB
Format : MP3 (128kbps)
A short synopsis:
Yoga of the Body (Part-16)
(The role of will)
Our
thoughts, feelings, impulsions, desire are each a force in action that tends
towards its realization. We build our fate through these inner agencies often
without our knowledge and unconsciously. Yet to be a master of ourselves and of
the events and circumstances of our life we need to find the true Will within
us. Will is the switch that turns on the other members giving them force and
momentum. It is the power that runs through the warp and woof of life. Of
course to be truly effective, we must learn to distinguish it from wishful
thinking, wants and desires. These are ‘willings’ that come to us from the
atmosphere and not the true will, not the will of our being. This is the theme
of this talk.
Words of
the Mother:
Man,
because he is a thinking being, first gets an idea, then he invests this idea with a force, a vital power, a power for action,
and changes it, transforms it into will. This will is then concentrated on the
object to be realised, and with the vital force and effort added to the
thought, the conception, it becomes the lever of action.But here Sri Aurobindo
uses a word which is not “will”, he speaks of “willings”:
“When
we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the
helper, Effort is the bar.”
Thoughts
and Glimpses, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 377
And
he contrasts these “willings”—that is, all these superficial wills, often
opposite and contradictory and without any lasting basis because they are
founded on what he calls a “knowing”and not on knowledge—with the true will.
These willings are necessarily fragmentary, passing, and often in opposition to
one another, and this is what gives to the individual life and even to the
collective its nature of incoherence, inconsistency and confusion.... The word “will”
is normally reserved to indicate what comes from the deeper being or the higher
reality and what expresses in action the true knowledge which Sri Aurobindo has
contrasted with knowings. So, when this will which expresses the true knowledge
manifests in action, it manifests through the intervention of a deep and direct
power which no longer requires any effort. And that is why Sri Aurobindo
says here that the true power for action cannot come until one has gone beyond the
stage of willings, that is, until the motive of action is the result not of a
mere mental activity but of true knowledge.
True
knowledge acting in the outer being gives true power. This seems to be an
explanation, the real explanation of that very familiar saying which is not
understood in its essence but expresses a truth: “Where there’s a will, there’s
a way”, to will is to have the power. It is quite obvious that this does not
refer to “willings”,
that is, to the more or less incoherent expression of desires but to the true
will expressing a true knowledge; for this true will carries in itself the
force of truth which gives power— an invincible power. And so, when one
expresses “willings”, to be able to apply them in life and make them effective,
some effort must come in—it is through personal effort that
one progresses, and it is through effort that one imposes one’s willings upon
life to make it yield to their demands—but when they are no longer willings,
when it is the true will expressing the true knowledge, effort is no longer
required, for the power is omnipotent.
CWM
8; page 359 – 360: 21 November 1956
* * *
SAVITRI (Hindi)
8th June 2011
at Dining Room Hall, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Language : Hindi
Yoga of the Earth (The Strength of the Idea)
7th June 2011
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Duration : 37 Minutes
File Size : 34 MB
Format : MP3 (128kbps)
A short synopsis:
Yoga of the Earty
(The Strength of the Idea)
Thought is a power, a greater power is the Idea.
Ideas, thoughts, feelings are soft powers. They take time but when their work
is over, it is more thoroughly done. Hard power such as brute force, military
strength, rules and regulations, the violent drugs used in modern medicine have
an instant effect but it does not cure the roots. Therefore the things returns,
often more violently so, suppressed, it only gathers force and momentum to
reappear on the surface. This talk refers to Sri Aurobindo’s writing on the
subject.
Bande Mataram | CALCUTTA, June 8th, 1907
The Stength of the Idea
The Stength of the Idea
The mistake which despots, benevolent or malevolent, have been making ever since organised states came into existence and which, it seems, they will go on making to the end of the chapter is that they overestimate their coercive power, which is physical and material and therefore palpable, and underestimate the power and vitality of ideas and sentiments. A feeling or a thought, Nationalism, Democracy, the aspiration towards liberty, cannot be estimated in the terms of concrete power, in so many fighting men, so many armed police, so many guns, so many prisons, such and such laws, ukases, and executive powers. But such feelings and thoughts are more powerful than fighting men and guns and prisons and laws and ukases. Their beginnings are feeble, their end is mighty. But of despotic repression the beginnings are mighty, the end is feeble. Thought is always greater than armies, more lasting than the most powerful and best-organised despotisms. It was a thought that overthrew the despotism of centuries in France and revolutionised Europe. It was a mere sentiment against which the irresistible might of the Spanish armies and the organised cruelty of Spanish repression were shattered in the Netherlands, which brought to nought the administrative genius, the military power, the stubborn will of Aurangzeb, which loosened the iron grip of Austria on Italy. In all such instances the physical power and organisation behind the insurgent idea are ridiculously small, the repressive force so overwhelmingly, impossibly strong that all reasonable, prudent, moderate minds see the utter folly of resistance and stigmatise the attempt of the idea to rise as an act of almost criminal insanity. But the man with the idea is not reasonable, not prudent, not moderate. He is an extremist, a fanatic. He knows that his idea is bound to conquer, he knows that the man possessed with it is more formidable, even with his naked hands, than the prison and the gibbet, the armed men and the murderous cannon. He knows that in the fight with brute force the spirit, the idea is bound to conquer. The Roman Empire is no more, but the Christianity which it thought to crush, possesses half the globe, covering “regions Caesar never knew”. The Jew, whom the whole world persecuted, survived by the strength of an idea and now sits in the high places of the world, playing with nations as a chess player with his pieces. He knows too that his own life and the lives of others are of no value, that they are mere dust in the balance compared with the life of his idea. The idea or sentiment is at first confined to a few men whom their neighbours and countrymen ridicule as lunatics or hare-brained enthusiasts. But it spreads and gathers adherents who catch the fire of the first missionaries and creates its own preachers and then its workers who try to carry out its teachings in circumstances of almost paralysing difficulty. The attempt to work brings them into conflict with the established power which the idea threatens and there is persecution. The idea creates its martyrs. And in martyrdom there is an incalculable spiritual magnetism which works miracles.
A whole nation, a whole world catches the fire which burned in a few hearts; the soil which has drunk the blood of the martyr imbibes with it a sort of divine madness which it breathes into the heart of all its children, until there is but one overmastering idea, one imperishable resolution in the minds of all beside which all other hopes and interests fade into insignificance and until it is fulfilled, there can be no peace or rest for the land or its rulers. It is at this moment that the idea begins to create its heroes and fighters, whose numbers and courage defeat only multiplies and confirms until the idea militant has become the idea triumphant. Such is the history of the idea, so invariable in its broad lines that it is evidently the working of a natural law.But the despot will not recognise this superiority, the teachings of history have no meaning for him. He is dazzled by the pomp and splendour of his own power, infatuated with the sense of his own irresistible strength. Naturally, for the signs and proofs of his own power are visible, palpable, in his camps and armaments, in the crores and millions which his tax-gatherers wring out of the helpless masses, in the tremendous array of cannon and implements of war which fill his numerous arsenals, in the compact and swiftly-working organisation of his administration, in the prisons into which he hurls his opponents, in the fortresses and places of exile to which he can hurry the men of the idea. He is deceived also by the temporary triumph of his repressive measures. He strikes out with his mailed hand and surging multitudes are scattered like chaff with a single blow; he hurls his thunderbolts from the citadels of his strength and ease and the clamour of a continent sinks into a deathlike hush; or he swings the rebels by rows from his gibbets or mows them down by the hundred with his mitrailleuse and then stands alone erect amidst the ruin he has made and thinks, “The trouble is over, there is nothing more to fear. My rule will endure for ever; God will not remember what I have done or take account of the blood that I have spilled.” And he does not know that the fiat has gone out against him, “Thou fool! this night shall thy soul be required of thee.” For to the Power that rules the world one day is the same as fifty years. The time lies in His choice, but now or afterwards the triumph of the idea is assured, for it is He who has sent it into men’s minds that His purposes may be fulfilled. The story is so old, so often repeated that it is a wonder the delusion should still persist and repeat itself. Each despotic rule after the other hinks, “Oh, the circumstances in my case are quite different, I am a different thing from any yet recorded in history, stronger, more virtuous and moral, better organised. I am God’s favourite and can never come to harm.” And so the old drama is staged again and acted till it reaches the old catastrophe.
A whole nation, a whole world catches the fire which burned in a few hearts; the soil which has drunk the blood of the martyr imbibes with it a sort of divine madness which it breathes into the heart of all its children, until there is but one overmastering idea, one imperishable resolution in the minds of all beside which all other hopes and interests fade into insignificance and until it is fulfilled, there can be no peace or rest for the land or its rulers. It is at this moment that the idea begins to create its heroes and fighters, whose numbers and courage defeat only multiplies and confirms until the idea militant has become the idea triumphant. Such is the history of the idea, so invariable in its broad lines that it is evidently the working of a natural law.But the despot will not recognise this superiority, the teachings of history have no meaning for him. He is dazzled by the pomp and splendour of his own power, infatuated with the sense of his own irresistible strength. Naturally, for the signs and proofs of his own power are visible, palpable, in his camps and armaments, in the crores and millions which his tax-gatherers wring out of the helpless masses, in the tremendous array of cannon and implements of war which fill his numerous arsenals, in the compact and swiftly-working organisation of his administration, in the prisons into which he hurls his opponents, in the fortresses and places of exile to which he can hurry the men of the idea. He is deceived also by the temporary triumph of his repressive measures. He strikes out with his mailed hand and surging multitudes are scattered like chaff with a single blow; he hurls his thunderbolts from the citadels of his strength and ease and the clamour of a continent sinks into a deathlike hush; or he swings the rebels by rows from his gibbets or mows them down by the hundred with his mitrailleuse and then stands alone erect amidst the ruin he has made and thinks, “The trouble is over, there is nothing more to fear. My rule will endure for ever; God will not remember what I have done or take account of the blood that I have spilled.” And he does not know that the fiat has gone out against him, “Thou fool! this night shall thy soul be required of thee.” For to the Power that rules the world one day is the same as fifty years. The time lies in His choice, but now or afterwards the triumph of the idea is assured, for it is He who has sent it into men’s minds that His purposes may be fulfilled. The story is so old, so often repeated that it is a wonder the delusion should still persist and repeat itself. Each despotic rule after the other hinks, “Oh, the circumstances in my case are quite different, I am a different thing from any yet recorded in history, stronger, more virtuous and moral, better organised. I am God’s favourite and can never come to harm.” And so the old drama is staged again and acted till it reaches the old catastrophe.
Silviu Craciunas has a dream of Sri Aurobindo
Silviu Craciunas was a Romanian who
was being tortured in prison by Communists around 1953. He was
contemplating suicide when he began having visions of an unknown Indian
sage whose name he heard as “Aurobin Dogos” [ homonym for the
real name Aurobindo Ghosh 1872-1950].Those visions and the conversations
he had with this unknown sage gave him strength and enabled him to
survive the ordeal. After his escape from prison, he wrote a book “The Lost Footsteps” [ISBN 978-0882641768, published around 1960] where he describes these visions.
Here is the relevant excerpt from his book. (Click on the link for the PDF - craciunas_thelostfootsteps). The interaction with Sri Aurobindo begins on page 167. I have copied some passages here.
One evening, when the
radiator had begun its mournful music, the wall in front of me rolled
back and a chain of snowy mountains gleamed in the rising sun. In the
foreground was a little Indian temple dedicated to the goddess Kali. A
tall tree shaded it. At its foot an old man sat with his legs tucked
under him and his hands resting on his knees in Brahmin fashion. He had a
long and very thin white beard. His ascetic face had the same serenity
as the blue sky stretching over the dazzling peaks. (Note: It is worth noting that Silviu Craciunas’s description of Sri Aurobindo’s visage is quite accurate although no photograph of Sri Aurobindo had been released since about 1920. ) As I gazed at him he bowed his head slightly, smiled and said: “I can see you have forgotten me. Don’t you remember Aurobin Dogos, the Brahmin?”
I heard myself replying: “You have no idea how long I have been looking for you and calling you …”
“I had to make a long journey to get here,” he said. “It took me sixty years.”
For months after this I
lived in the company of the “Brahmin” whom I believed at the time to be
a real person other than myself. But these visions were different in
character from the nightmare hallucinations I had had before. It seemed
that, somehow, I had reached a deeper level of my being and these new
experiences, instead of helping my enemies, marked the beginning of a
period of spiritual integration.
I held long
conversations with the “hermit” and it was “he” who argued me out of
committing suicide, persuading me that life was sacred and must be lived
to the last breath. I complained to him that, locked inside these
walls and thinking ceaselessly night and day without a moment’s respite,
I had reached the limits of my endurance. “Tell me,” I begged him, “am I
the victim of these men who hold me captive, or at the mercy of some
harsh, blind laws of nature?” He explained
to me his view of suffering. “Some people it destroys,” he said, “other
are challenged by it to resist some evil or to undertake some positive,
creative act; some are corrupted, lose control over themselves and
become cruel and vengeful, others grow in strength and grace.”
“But what can a man do alone, armed with nothing but his free will, against an overwhelming evil?” I asked him.
In answer, he told me a
story. Two swallows nested under the eaves of a fisherman’s hut near
the sea-shore. Teaching their young to fly, they took them out over the
sea, gradually training them to cross long distances and to face the
hardships they would have to undergo during their migration. The
fledgelings shot into the air, exulting in the joy of flight and
freedom, but a gust of wind caught one of them and flung it down upon
the surface of the waves. The small bird kept its wings outstretched so
that it did not sink, but neither could it rise; floating like a leaf,
it called piteously to its parents as they circled over it. The parent
swallows did their best to calm and to encourage it, then they flew back
to the shore and made innumerable journeys to the water’s edge, each
time carrying a drop of water in theirbeaks and pouring it into the
sand. Thus they hoped to empty the ocean and to save their young.
“Their heroic effort is a lesson to us,” the “Brahmin” went on. “The
human will and spirit must also not be resigned at moments of crisis;
it must go on looking for a solution, however overwhelming the odds. You
must not accept defeat, you must not believe your efforts to be in
vain. If you have the blind courage to continue to endure and to
struggle, you will find a new beginning in your life.”
My conversations with
the hermit living in solitude near the temple to the goddess Kali had
lasted several months. Outside spring was appearing; the strength of the
light and a suspicion of warmth in the air were the first signs. Who was the “Brahmin”? Why was he trying to give me precious support? Understanding
my perplexity, he gently held out a pale, skeleton-like hand and
stroked my forehead with his cold fingers. Somehow transfigured, he said
to me with emotion: “You want to know who I am? I am your spirit; your
reason! You appealed to me in a moment of abject despair. In your
isolation and helplessness, only I am capable of encouraging you to
bolster your morale and strengthen your will; apart from me, there is no
one who is able to come to your aid. Put your trust in my strength and
you will never regret it!”
This encounter was
indeed a turning point in my existence. Gradually my nightmares left me
and I discovered an inner calm and balance and achieved control over my
mind and body.
After days and weeks of
practice I found that I could sit motionless on my chair for hours, my
head leaning gently against the wall and my eyes open. I breathed deeply
and quietly, my will controlling my heart-beats and keeping them
steady. Hunger and fatigue took less toll of my strength than when I had
dissipated it in pacing up and down my cell, fighting against
drowsiness. My small ration of food and the two or three hours’ sleep I
was allowed out of the twenty-four were now sufficient for my bodily
needs.
To detach my mind
totally from my surroundings took more time and effort. At first I told
myself that I was a spectator in a darkened room: my prison life was
nothing but a film projected on a screen, which I trained myself to
interrupt at will. At a later stage I succeeded in looking upon my
body, sitting motionless in the chair, as though it were a photograph.
Still later I felt my spirit able to escape the prison walls and
undertake long journeys. The warders were
puzzled by the transformation which had taken place before their eyes: a
man who had been frantic, driven to the verge of madness by lack of
sleep, now sat calm and as still as a statue. From time to time
they knocked on the door and ordered me to move my head or blink my
eyes, to make sure that I was still alive and lucid. Inwardly I had
reached a peace and a serenity which I had never known before.
Because do you know the
story of that Romanian who was tortured by the Communists and had
visions of Sri Aurobindo[[Silvius Craciunas, author of The Lost
Footstep.]] (he didn’t see him as he is, in fact, he saw him according
to his own conception: thin and ascetic), and finally the apparition
told him, “I am your soul,” and so on? But he had never read Sri
Aurobindo’s name, he only heard it, and he wrote it in a very odd way
["Aurobin Dogos"]…. It SEEMS to be something of Sri Aurobindo. Anyhow it
gave him the strength to go through all those tortures – appalling
tortures, unimaginable. And he was able to escape, somebody helped him
escape (now he is safe in England). But before that, he suffered so much
that he thought of letting himself die, and that “voice,” that
apparition which came and spoke to him for hours, was what gave him
courage and told him that “the soul NEVER gets discouraged, it has
something to do, and you must endure.” He endured thanks to that voice.
(Mother’s Agenda, June 15, 1963)
* * *
SAVITRI (Hindi)
1st June 2011
at Dining Room Hall, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Language : Hindi
Yoga of the Body (Part-15) (We create our own reality and the power of thought)
31th May 2011
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Duration : 37 Minutes
File Size : 34 MB
Format : MP3 (128kbps)
A short synopsis:
Yoga of the Body (Part-15)
(We create our own reality and the power of thought)
Man is a
link between the Inconscient and the Superconscious, between the darkness below
and the Light Above. This is his conflict in which he is caught at the moment.
But his descent is from a very high plane and sooner or later he is destined to
recover his origin and unmask the potential of a god within him. When that
happens his relation with beings of the other worlds will change. He will no
more be their slave but regard them as aspects and powers of the One Supreme
even as he himself is an aspect and power of the Supreme. This is one of the
things that will change as a result of the growing Supramental consciousness
upon earth and men, a change in his poise and relation with the beings
traditionally known as the gods.
In fact man
is also the meeting point of the subjective and the objective. At least ninety
percent of the reality he perceives is a creation of his subjective state. By
our thoughts and feelings we create reality and lend a value to things that are
not there. Even hell and heaven are at least partially our own making. We need
not be subject to them if we chose. Man has been given this power of thought to
act as a channel and a vehicle to mediate between the higher Consciousness and
the material creation here. Our thoughts and feelings create the world and then
we get trapped into it. But we can by using our thought as an instrument become
free and master of life and destiny. We can access that Supreme Grace that is
the Source, Origin and Support of all things.
Words of
the Mother:
But there do exist also these vital
worlds where one is persecuted, terrible worlds, worlds of torture and
persecution, isn’t it so?
Ninety per cent subjective.
Ninety per cent subjective. For more
than a year, regularly, every night, at the same hour and in the same way, I
used to enter the vital to do some special work there. This was not due to my
own will: I was destined to do it. It was something I had to do. Now, for
instance, this entry into the vital has been often described: there is a
passage where beings are posted to keep you from entering (much has been said
about these things in books of occultism). Well, I know by an experience, not
casual, but repeated and understood, that this opposition or this malevolence
is ninety per cent psychological, in the sense that if you do not anticipate it
or fear it, or that there isn’t something in you that fears the unknown nor has
all these movements of apprehension and so forth, then it is like a shadow
across a picture or the projection of an image: it has no concrete reality.
But then, what is objective?
There are worlds, there are beings,
there are powers, they have their own existence; but what I mean is that their relation
with the human consciousness depends upon this human consciousness for the form
they take.
It is as with the gods, my child, it
is the same thing. All these beings of the Overmind, all these gods, the
relation with them, the form of these relations, depend upon the human
consciousness. You may be... It has been said, “Men are cattle for the gods”,
but if men accept to be cattle. There is in the essence of human nature
a sovereignty over all things which is spontaneous and natural, when it is not
falsified by a certain number of ideas and so-called knowledge.
One could say that man is the
all-powerful master of all the states of being of his nature, but that he has
forgotten to be this. His natural state is to be all-powerful—he has forgotten
to be this….
It is the same thing with the gods.
They can govern your life and torment you a lot (they can help you a lot also),
but their power, in relation to you, to the human being, is the power
you give them.
This is something I learnt gradually over several years.
But now I am sure of it.
Naturally, in the evolutionary curve,
it was necessary for man to forget his omnipotence, because it had simply
puffed him up with pride and vanity, and so had become completely distorted;
and he had to be made to feel that many things were stronger and more powerful
than he. But essentially this is not true. It is a necessity of the curve of
progress, that’s all.
Man is potentially a god. He believed
himself an actual god. He needed to learn that he was nothing better than a
poor little worm crawling on the earth, and so life scraped, scraped, scraped
him in every way until he had... not understood, but at least felt a bit. But
as soon as he takes the right stand, he knows that he is potentially a god.
Only, he must become this, that is, overcome all that is not this.
This relationship with the gods is
extremely interesting.... As long as man stands dazzled, lost in admiration of
the power, beauty, accomplishments of these divine beings, he is their slave.
But when these become for him
different ways of being of the Supreme and nothing more, and himself yet
another way of being of the Supreme, which he must become, then the relation changes
and he is no longer their slave—he is not their slave…..
The one reality is the Supreme. And
all this is a game He plays to Himself. I find this much more comforting than
the opposite view. And after all, this is the only certitude that all this may become
something marvellous; otherwise...
And this too depends altogether on the
stand one takes. A complete identification with the game as a game, as
something self-existent and independent, is probably necessary in the
beginning,
in order to play the game properly.
But there’s a moment when one reaches precisely this detachment and so complete
a disgust for all the falsehood of existence, that it is no longer tolerable
unless one sees it as the inner play of the Lord in Himself, for Himself….
And then one feels this absolute and
perfect freedom which makes the most marvellous possibilities become real, and
all the most sublime things imaginable are realisable.
(Mother enters into contemplation.)
You will see, there is a moment when
one cannot bear oneself or life unless one takes the attitude that it is the
Lord who is everything. You see, this Lord, how many things He possesses,
He plays with all this—He plays, He
plays at changing the positions. And so, when one sees this, this whole, one
feels the illimitable marvel, and that all our most wonderful aspirations, all
these are quite possible and will even be surpassed. Then one is comforted.
Otherwise, existence... it is inconsolable. But like this, it becomes charming.
I shall tell you about this one day.
The
Mother: CWM 11; page Page 36 – 37 dated 18 May 1966
* * *
There is in Love, at its Origin,
something which is translated constantly as the intervention of Grace: a force,
a sweetness, something like a vibration of solace spread everywhere, but which
an illumined consciousness can direct, concentrate on some points. And it is
there, there itself that I saw the true use one can make of thought: thought
serves as a kind of channel to carry this vibration from place to place,
wherever it is necessary. This force, this vibration of sweetness is there in a static way upon the world, pressing in order
to be received, but it is an impersonal action. And thought—illumined thought, surrendered
thought, thought which is no longer anything but an instrument, which tries no
longer to initiate things, which is satisfied with being moved by the higher
Consciousness— thought serves as an intermediary to establish a contact, a
relation, and to enable this impersonal Force to act wherever it is necessary,
upon definite points.
The Mother: CWM 11;
page 42 dated 28 September 1966
* * *
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