Wise things are given to those who yet lie,
Who say, the cry of the soul is a silly cry.
Come hither—town-criers and story-tellers,—
You may yell, but yell never of the yellers;
You sure are smart, do up bright robe and cap,
But when you argue you leave many a gap:
Yet a hundred town-drummers would applaud,
Your rational sense that need not know God.

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Pilgrims at the Ganga Ghats

Benaras has always been the most inspirational of Indian cities. Thought to be the world’s oldest, boasting an unbroken habitation of 5,000 years, pilgrims and travellers have been irresistibly drawn to it, as have artists of the Raj and after. Recently, Manu Parekh paid a unique tribute to it in a series of 14 landscapes, 12 feet and more in width. In these mysterious, unpeopled panoramas, Benaras is seen as volatile and fearsome, a city of death. Shrines, atilt like tall-masted ships, bob on the turbulent water, and trees, black and foreboding, punctuate the riverbank. These are essentially mood pictures representing one of the great achievements of Indian Expressionist Art. For those with a less imaginative eye, there are other attractions, chief among them being Benaras Hindu University. Spread over 5.5 sq km with its own electricity and clean water supply, the salubrious environs are a welcome retreat from the pressures of a sprawling, chaotic city. The figures are mind-boggling. It has 124 departments; 64 guest-houses surrounded by lush flower beds and lawns; about 15,000 students, many of whom are foreigners on exchange scholarships; a hospital and research centre; and a superb museum. Its defining point is the slender spire of the Birla Temple, rising higher, it is said, than the Qutb Minar.

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Now in the 1930s the Mother used to go out for long drives. Some of you may have even read in Bulletin the story of a temple that she had visited at Veerampattinam on one of those outings. However, after the visit as she was returning, a young man was strangely fascinated by the Mother and he ran behind Her car, all the way to the Ashram at Pondicherry. Naturally, he was not allowed in the Ashram premises. He went on insisting that he wanted to see the Mother and said he wanted to stay here in the Ashram. The parents of the lad came from Veerampattinam, and tried a lot and cried too. But the lad was steadfast in his resolve. Finally, the Mother advised the parents that, it is best he stays here as he wants to do.

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Atavism: “the recurrence of a genetically controlled feature in an organism after it has been absent for several generations, usually because of an accidental recombination of genes.” This is the usual professional content of the term which rather has to be seen in its deeper psychological aspects. The compilation from the Mother’s writings on several different occasions brings out in a luminous way its true and acceptable connotation. This should help us to examine the latest biography of Sri Aurobindo in the proper perspective. Thanks to Paulette for this timely and thoughtful presentation.

“You think,” asks the Mother, “it is you who decide: these are impulses coming from outside. You think you are conscious of your will: it is a consciousness which is not yours. And everything... you are made up entirely of something which is the forces of Nature expressing a higher Will of which you are unconscious.

Only, one doesn’t understand this except when one can come out of one’s ego, though it be only for a moment; for the ego—and this is its strength—is convinced that it alone decides. But if one looks attentively, one notices that it is moved by all sorts of things which are not itself.”

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Here is a personal e-mail from Paulette which is significant in more than one respect. I therefore thought it gainful to post it for the benefit of the perceptive readers of the Mirror of Tomorrow, particularly the aspiring souls of the Aurobindonian or what is called the Integral Yoga Community. I thus approached the writer whether it would be all right if I should make the letter public. I’m glad she readily consented to it and my sincere thanks to her for the splendid gesture. There’s no doubt that it will bring a fresh look at the controversy that is raging on the latest biography of Sri Aurobindo which is rather unfortunate on several counts. Paulette adds: “I hope this will help to disentangle some of the mess, so that we can at last move forward and look where the real problems are—using this controversy to remind all of us that there is something deeply missing, to be found again! Everything, truly everything is a chance to progress.” How wonderful! But will we avail the chance? go into the depth of our soul and our heart, in the true spirit of the Aurobindoinan ethos, of progressive spirituality? The problem is, essentially, we are looking at things with our idée fixe, with our entrenched formulations and formations, the ancient samskāras,—also as much as with our idée reçue—without realizing the fundamental fact that we are approaching a Yogi par excellence, a spiritual giant, a Master, one from whom we are seeking spiritual guidance. We go to him for that spiritual guidance because there is something in us which tells us that our deepest soul’s aspirations and urges would find fulfilment in it. Should that ‘something’ be lacking, and then it would be immaterial with what else we might be occupied in our life. Those who have a call for that spiritual life, a kind of an imperative for it, they only will find it rewarding; any attempt in our zeal to take him to the spiritually raw or uneducated or illiterate, that is, those who have not received the ‘call’, whatever might otherwise be their great academic or professional standing, is likely to prove much frustrating. In fact spirituality is not a commodity which can in the manner of a Capitalist be freely promoted or exported to others. Such notions of promoting spirituality are a falsification, a gross unpleasant falsification, and therefore it becomes shocking when we see that they are held by those who claim themselves to be members of a spiritual group or an Ashram. That is unfortunately the kind of thing which one sees in the latest biography, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. What have academia to do with spirituality at all, if they have no compulsion of any sort, of them being drawn towards it? Nothing, really nothing. When we say that we belong to the IY Community, then let us not forget its principal element, its foundational aspect, the ‘Yoga’-aspect of it, never—the rest being of little importance or consequence. “Self-realisation is the one thing needful,” says Sri Aurobindo; “to open to the inner spirit, to live in the Infinite, to seek after and discover the Eternal, to be in union with God”—that is the essential sense of spirituality. The “dynamic following after the highest spiritual truth” has to be the only consideration if we are to hold that we belong to the IY Community. The rest is gross and unpleasant falsification which must be eschewed. I’m glad that Paulette brings out some of these aspects in her e-mail in a very forceful manner, and that is why I thought of making it public.

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My great name is Athene Noctua and keep
Through the long interminable night the sense
Of the nocturnal and the infinite;
Hid from the mortal eye in the dark and deep
Hole of the banyan I live, and know whence
Comes wisdom, streams the inexhaustible light!

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My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.



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Stephen Hawking asserts: "... What we normally think of as 'life' is based on chains of carbon atoms, with a few other atoms, such as nitrogen or phosphorous. One can speculate that one might have life with some other chemical basis, such as silicon, but carbon seems the most favourable case, because it has the richest chemistry. That carbon atoms should exist at all, with the properties that they have, requires a fine adjustment of physical constants, such as the QCD scale, the electric charge, and even the dimension of space-time. If these constants had significantly different values, either the nucleus of the carbon atom would not be stable, or the electrons would collapse in on the nucleus. At first sight, it seems remarkable that the universe is so finely tuned. Maybe this is evidence, that the universe was specially designed to produce the human race. However, one has to be careful about such arguments, because of what is known as the Anthropic Principle. This is based on the self-evident truth, that if the universe had not been suitable for life, we wouldn’t be asking why it is so finely adjusted. One can apply the Anthropic Principle, in either its Strong, or Weak, versions. For the Strong Anthropic Principle, one supposes that there are many different universes, each with different values of the physical constants. In a small number, the values will allow the existence of objects like carbon atoms, which can act as the building blocks of living systems. Since we must live in one of these universes, we should not be surprised that the physical constants are finely tuned. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here. The strong form of the Anthropic Principle is not very satisfactory. What operational meaning can one give to the existence of all those other universes? And if they are separate from our own universe, how can what happens in them, affect our universe. Instead, I shall adopt what is known as the Weak Anthropic Principle. That is, I shall take the values of the physical constants, as given. But I shall see what conclusions can be drawn, from the fact that life exists on this planet, at this stage in the history of the universe. ..."

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Darwin made a huge difference to our understanding of who we are and where we come from by establishing that there’s no external design to the evolution of life, just infinite possibilites. A tribute on the bicentenary of his birth.

An open-ended universe: No telling where we’ll end up...

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In 1860, while studying primroses in the garden of Down House, his home in Kent, England, Charles Darwin noticed something odd about their blooms. While all the flowers had both male and female parts—anthers and pistils—in some the anthers were prominent and in others the pistils were longer. So he experimented in his home laboratory and greenhouses, cross-pollinating some plants with their anatomical opposites. The results were striking. “He determined that if they cross-pollinate, they produce more seed and more vigorous seedlings,” said Margaret Falk, a horticulturalist and associate vice president at the New York Botanical Garden. The variation is evolution’s way of increasing cross-pollination, she said. Now the Botanical Garden is replicating this work, and more of Darwin’s Down House experiments, in a stunning, multipart exhibition called “Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure.”

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In July 1938 the Yogi-Poet had an assignation with the primordial Night, the Night of Creation. He went to meet her, carrying “God’s deathless light” in his breast. He was aware that this was going to be a very bold and dangerous rendezvous; it was going to be an exceptional and most decisive affair indeed, fraught with possibilities of a dangerous kind also. His fate and hence the fate of the whole world remained locked in them, in the possibility leading towards earthly deathlessness. So, he the pilgrim-soul made an assignation with the Night. But what was the outcome of that bold and dangerous rendezvous? What had actually transpired in the course of the meeting? But apart from dropping some broad hints, no communiqué was issued. If at all, it seemed that the way was lost and that there was no end to the “weary journeying”. Yet there was hope, a bright and fritful expectation, there was conviction and certitude that the outcome was going to be cutting a path that will lead the soul of man towards immortality, immortality on earth. There was the inalienable freedom, and the Yogi-Poet lived in the Spirit’s calm, in its strength, and was in possession of the vast unshakable and immobile bliss of the Being. Soon his rooms would get lit up with an endless Light, and soon rapture would be coursing through his nerves, and soon it would be firmed up in the very cells of his body. In a mute but powerful blaze of ecstasy, and preserving the strong “living sense of the Imperishable”, even in the bodily existence, he would proceed towards his irrevocable goal. That was great certainly, and marvellous. If the bodily existence was set ablaze in this way, it meant that there was the wonderful realisation or the siddhi of the Mind of Light in him, that the physical had started receiving the supramental. Sri Aurobindo had definitely moved towards it, a remarkable event, a landmark event in the evolutionary sequence. It is said that Pythagoras had a thigh of gold, and that Vamadeva, after crossing the hundredth year, lived in a golden body for sixteen full years. Something golden had happened in that far past, but now the Mind of Light has made the body its permanent base, permanent home, the home of truth, ŗtasya dhām.

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During 1949-1950 Sri Aurobindo dictated a series of articles, his last prose writings touching upon the latest achievement in the field of his Yoga. The picture of the process leading to supramental evolution was becoming clearer and definite; the details had been so sufficiently worked out that they could be stated with a confident finality; the yoga-tapasya has progressed to the subtle physical where once it is established the fuller possibility could be realised in the material world: the evolutionary march had arrived at the point where the appearance of a new humanity had become a good plausibility, an event that was in fact about to take place. This new humanity is going to be an intermediate state between the mental man and the supramental being who will ultimately be the leader of the transformed world-order. Several aspects of the modus operandi were crystallised at this stage; the unknown vast tracts between Overmind and Supermind extensively explored, and traversed, to get an occult hold on the new process. Even a last sacrifice, if needed, was to be made. In this process, Sri Aurobindo saw an important place for the Mind of Light occupying in the scheme of things. It will create an order of beings who will form an intermediate race, a race with the physical mind prepared to receive the supramental. That is to say, the presently covert supermind in the material world will open out to directly receive in evolution the supermind proper for its full dynamic play here: It is the involved supermind in the physical that is going to receive the superconscient supermind leading to the assured glory of a fully transformed divine life.

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The civilisation which is ending now in such a dramatic way was based on the power of mind, mind dealing with matter and life. What it has been to the world, we have not to discuss here. But a new reign is coming, that of the Spirit: after the human, the divine. Yet, if we have been fortunate enough to live on earth at such a stupendous, a unique time as this one, is it sufficient to stand and watch the unfolding events? All those who feel that their heart extends further than the limits of their own person and family, that their thought embraces more than small personal interests and local conventions, all those, in short, who realise that they belong not to themselves, or to their family, or even to their country, but to God who manifests Himself in all countries, through mankind, these, indeed, know that they must rise and set to work for the sake of humanity, for the advent of the Dawn.

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Ordinary speech uses language mostly for a limited practical utility of communication; it uses it for life and for the expression of ideas and feelings necessary or useful to life. In doing so, we treat words as conventional signs for ideas with nothing but a perfunctory attention to their natural force, much as we use any kind of common machine or simple implement; we treat them as if, though useful for life, they were themselves without life. When we wish to put a more vital power into them, we have to lend it to them out of ourselves, by marked intonations of the voice, by the emotional force or vital energy We, throw into the sound so as to infuse into the conventional word-sign something which is not inherent in itself. But if we go back earlier in the history of language and still more if we look into its origins: we shall, I think, find that it was not always so with human speech. Words had not only a real and vivid life of their own, but the speaker was more conscious of it; than we can possibly be with our mechanised and sophisticated intellects. This arose from the primitive nature of language which, probably, in its first movement was not intended,—or shall we say, did not intend,—so much to stand for distinct ideas of the intelligence as for feelings, sensations, broad indefinite mental impressions with minute shades of quality in them which we do not now care to pursue. The intellectual sense in its precision must have been a secondary element which grew, more dominant as language evolved.

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The article posted here is an abstracted text taken from Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo. For the fuller presentation please go to the original. The essay first appeared in the August 1949 issue of the Bulletin of Physical Education and later, in 1952, published in the book Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth. This is the last set of eight prose articles Sri Aurobindo wrote at the request of the Mother. If the evolutionary aim is the manifestation of the Divine in the physical, that even the body shall be the House of God, that it shall express dynamically the possibilities of the Spirit, then the question arises as to what shall be its nature. “Light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit.” There has to be always the push towards perfection that the manifesting powers of light and joy and truth and beauty and sweetness and love find their natural scope of articulation and presentation. The new type, the divine body, must continue the already developed evolutionary form; but it will acquire new means and ranges of communication. It must ultimately reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of the highest glory and greatness of the self-manifesting spirit. It shall be the dynamic centre of activity that a divine collectivity, divyam janam, will be in a position to lead the evolution not from Ignorance to Knowledge but from Knowledge to greater Knowledge in the limitless vistas of the Infinite.

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There are numerous genre of literature, yet more are the schools of criticism aiming at appreciating and analyzing literature. Like every poet and writer differs from each other, similarly every critic and school of criticism differs from the other. The basis of these differences for the poets and writers may be of that of temperament, style and other techniques; critics differ on the subject and method of appreciation. Even in each school of criticism every critic differs from the other due to the subjective elements and temperamental differences that come in. The focus in the present essay is on the method of appreciation more than the subject, the tool of appreciation being consciousness. We see how consciousness plays an important role in creation and reception of a text. The words, as they have power, create the corresponding vibrations and can deliver this vibration into the creation and subsequently into the recipient if he or she is prepared to receive it. We see how beautifully consciousness binds the author, the text and the reader. All the disputes and differences of opinions end when we find these three (the author, the text and the reader) as parts of a continuum and not as distinct entities.

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About three weeks ago my friend and ex-colleague at the sciy, Rich, approached me,—of his own, and that could surely have been a gainful step had it progressed,—for a ‘dialog’ on the issue that has been harassing everyone for months now. I took it as a definite positive move, assuming that it was not a tactical move, and made a proposal for an open discussion on the Lives of Sri Aurobindo, going through the weighty book paragraph by paragraph and page by page. But Rich stepped back—which means that the open ‘dialog’ will continue to languish and the parties will continue to operate in their own ways, moral, ethical, civic, political, literary, academic, legal, spiritual, and what not. Perhaps this has got to get exhausted before something in the nobility of the IY Community appears on the horizon. It is sincerely hoped that it will be sooner than later. But beyond this terrible ‘human potential’ there is another Hand and, true to the IY Ideal, the best, and reassuring, for us is to firmly hold it, rather to let it do unhindered its work in us.

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