Art historians have deduced in that singularly mysterious visage everything from a cross-dressing self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci to the knowing glance of an unfaithful wife to the satisfied pride of a pregnant woman. Bob Dylan once even offered up a very 20th century American conclusion on the matter: "Mona Lisa must've had the highway blues." A Sicilian professor of pathological anatomy has come up with the latest and what is arguably the least poetic explanation imaginable for why Mona Lisa looks the way she does: high cholesterol.
The pink-footed goose is pinkish-grey with a dark head and neck, a pink bill and, not surprisingly, pink feet and legs. It likes to eat grain and potatoes. What was less well known about the pink-footed goose, until now, is that each bird is responsible for more than 100 kg of ¬carbon-dioxide emissions each year. The pink-footed goose: the bird with a carbon footprint four times larger than a patio heater. Unlike cows and sheep, the geese do not fart and burp out their sizable contribution to global warming. Rather, they free the carbon from the ground when they grub around in the Arctic soil for food.
“…In the aloofness
Of everlasting calm there ought to be
A reality reckoning us all,
Worthwhileness of pain too, suffering, death,
This daily passing world. Naught here around
Was planned unwisely, and there’s no mountain
That speaks not to the valley.” But Phuntsok
Struck a note, even as he mused non-god
Becoming these many gods. “O Tenzin,
This is the birthplace of conscious nihil
Out of which shall ensue first a power
In whose passion shall grow the urge to be.”
The cells of the body have made such tremendous progress that they are constantly offering a prayer to the supreme Lord of the Universe, they imploring for the strength and the beauty, the harmonious perfection needed to be the Divine’s instruments upon earth. The body is fully awake, the cells live consciously, aspire consciously, by themselves, without the interference from the vital and the mental: the consciousness is working directly in them. The mind of the physical has been converted, has become silent; in that silence it receives the inspiration of the Consciousness. This mind of the physical, the physical’s mind, is illumined, is conscious, organised, and it expresses itself in prayers. While all is one single substance, the material cells have to obtain the capacity to receive and to manifest consciousness. This is what is being done. There is certitude that a new form will take birth, which will be what Sri Aurobindo called the supramental form. “It is the body that ends by saying the mantra! Spontaneously, so spontaneously that even if you by chance think of other things, your body will be saying the mantra. And it is the body that aspires, the body that says the mantra, the body that wants the light, the body that wants the consciousness.” The significant aspect is, once it is done, once one body has done it, it has the capacity to pass it on to others. The progress is there, and there are happy conversations among the cells: “Imbecile that you are! Why do you have fear? Don’t you see it is the Lord himself who is doing this to transform you?” Yet the other: “Ah! ...” The difficulty is, of these “Ah-wallahs”. But there is the advance, and it looks so wonderful. Now, there is a kind of suppleness, there is plasticity. “And then, the splendour of the Presence.” Wow!
This physical’s mind is, pointed out Sri Aurobindo, an impossibility, but impossibility not in the sense of hopelessness or infeasibility but in terms of impracticality at a point of advance; in fact Sri Aurobindo worked to remove that impossibility—and this is what the Mother means while referring it to him. She said on another occasion, 18 December 1971, “Sri Aurobindo has said that if the physical mind is transformed, the transformation of the body would follow quite naturally.” The physical’s mind receiving the supramental Light he called as the Mind of Light which was already established in him and which he passed on to the Mother the moment he withdrew on 5 December 1950. Sri Aurobindo himself has said: “It is only when the Supramental manifests in the body-mind that its presence can be permanent.”
In Part IV-B I examine what Sri Aurobindo referred to as the humankind’s double nature consisting of its animal nature of instincts impulses desires and automatisms and its higher, self-reflective, mental, aesthetic, ethical and spiritual nature. I particulary study humankind in terms of modern western individuals, with their damned-up repressed instincts. I then study the Evil Persona as defined by Sri Aurobindo, suggesting that it be understood in light of the persona as presented by CG Jung. Sri Aurobindo defined it as a being that is attached to the sadhaks who creates wrong conditions. The persona is the ideal image and mask that one wears to present oneself to the world, either professionally or otherwise. Although the persona serves the purpose of greasing the wheels of life, one is enjoined not to identify with its false wrappings. The Evil Persona, in fact, seems to be a product of both the workings of the persona, and also the shadow. The brighter and more virtuous the persona, then the darker is the shadow, the repressed other side of the coin. If the falseness of the Evil Persona can be relegated to the field of the Asura of Falsehood, then the darkness of the shadow is the realm of the Asura of Ignorance. I then examine the nature of first the personal shadow and then the archetypal shadow, or the shadow side of the God-image. The personal shadow is not evil per se, but awkward and ill-adapted aspects of the psyche that need to be integrated into consciousness, often to the advantage of gaining a greater range of life and instinctual connectedness. At the archetypal level, the goal is for to suffer the opposites of good and evil, to allow them to come together in the Self as a vessel filled with divine conflict. I end the essay by studying the shadow as positive value and source of vitality, and then indicate how the spiritualization and assimilation of the animal shadow at an individual level enhances the transformation of community. An important goal of the opus is realization of the fourfold quaternity of the mental, vital and physical planes of being organized around the psychic being. This requires coming to terms with the persona and the shadow.
The Nyaya system is also known as Nyaya Vidya or Tarka Shastra—the Science of Logic and Reasoning. Because Nyaya analyses the nature and source of knowledge, its validity and invalidity, it is also known as Anvikshiki, the Science of Critical Study. Nyaya asserts that obtaining valid knowledge of the external world and its relationship with the mind and self is the only way to attain liberation. If one masters the logical techniques of reasoning and dutifully applies these to daily life, he will rid himself of all suffering. The ultimate aim of Nyaya philosophy like other systems of Indian philosophy is liberation—the complete cessation of pain and suffering. Although concerned with the study of logic and epistemology, Nyaya is a philosophy of life.
Bearing on the theme developed by David Johnston in several instalments under the title Jung’s Psychology of the Living God and Transformation of Individual and Community, I am posting here a chapter which appears in my book Narad’s Arrival at Madra. The book essentially deals with the opening passage of 83 lines of the Book of Fate of Savitri. The background briefly stated is as follows. Savitri the radiant daughter of Aswapati, the king of Madra land, has grown into full maidenhood and is advised to find for herself her life’s partner. In a distant forest she meets Satyavan, the son of exiled king Dyumatsena, and they decide to be together. Even as she returns to the palace, Savitri sees her parents in the company of the heavenly sage Narad who had hastened to be there in time just before her arrival. The intention behind his visit was to deliver the Word of Fate, that exactly one year after the marriage of Savitri with Satyavan he will die. Narad foresees this supernaturally charged possibility in the greater design and leaves his home in Paradise to be at Madra. While he is on his way to the place, he sings the Song of Creation, and the Name of Vishnu, and the Glory and Marvel still to be born. He sings of the delight when every barrier falls, and the transfiguration and the ecstasy. In its spell the demons, foreseeing the end of their long dreadful task, weep with joy that soon they shall be released from their self-chosen doom. The evolution marches on. Out of the Inconscience and the obscurity of matter came first life and then mind; what is now expected is the glory and marvel of the divine birth, the establishment of the name of Vishnu here. This song has the entirety of sweetness to bring joy to the hostiles who have stood too long in the way of this growth of consciousness. They are happy that they will soon be vanquished in the greatness of the Spirit and that in its victory their horrendous task will get terminated; the product of the dark Inconscience shall be dissolved for good. In response to every descent that had occurred until now, it always threw answer antagonistically to distort it, if not to destroy it. Therefore triumphing over it means establishing a greater delight in mode of the very existence-consciousness itself. The demons now return into the supreme Origin from which they had come, the bright Womb of the Creation. The relationship of the primordial Creative Shadow and the weeping of the Demons to return to their Origin has deeper occult connotations which no other shadow can throw light on. Thus Evil Persona turns out to be simply an operative mechanism in the greater scheme of things and its unexaggerated importance just lies in it. The present article discusses some of these details in the limit of a chapter of a book.
Five thousand Dabbawalas deliver two hundred-thousand tiffin boxes a day that too in time. And they return the tiffin boxes home, meaning there are four hundred-thousand transactions a day. Not one mistake, though. Such is their precision and dedication to work that they did not have time for even Prince Charles, says Raghunath D Medge, another Dabbawala.
Our success has taken us to various management institutions within and outside the country and has also brought many more to us.
In Parts IV-A and -B, I move into the realm of praxis, which is so essential to understanding Jung’s contribution to psychology and spirituality. Part IV-A primarily concerns an experiential phenomenon that I call the white-shadow persona. The white-shadow persona is a product of the persona that is identified with high ideals driven by a power-complex. The persona is the mask that feigns individuality, but which is a collective phenomena with which one should not identify. The power-complex is a split-off power-drive, which, when assimilated to consciousness, becomes a formative factor that can be used creatively, and the spirit of life. As a subsidiary theme and as an example I comment on the book and movie, The Da Vinci Code, focusing on the albino monk, who is a striking image for the white-shadow persona, as a puffed-up murderous monk who believes he is an instrument of God. In fact, he is trying to prevent the resurrection of Mary Magdalene from obscurity and projected sinfulness, and her being located in her in her rightful place as the bride of Jesus and spouse of Christ, which is important evidence for the tradition of the Holy Grail. As an archetypal image, Mary Magdalene unites both the superior and inferior aspects of the psyche and would, therefore, promote wholeness and the ability of aligning the human will with the Divine will.
Nothing
Stirred and, like a pessimist who would find
Never a fish in the pond, desolate
Ages slipped by. Sapteshwara was indeed
Stunned but in half a moment decided
To do austerities, and to Priyā
Told so. A sudden flock of augur birds
Flew over his head lost in thought; tranquil wings
Beat through blueness of the wind. In a calm
Hillside temple he, gathering himself
For long years, stayed and looked into the germ
Of death. Nothing came from the Twelve, Diśā
Had no clue, nor the elements, nor hell,
And the soul of the earth suffered. Anguished,
Into the self of zero he entered
To explore its puzzling contents, the cause.
We are impatient about the physical transformation. But our impatience really means nothing. There is a process, and there are imponderables of time and of what is beyond it, and there has always to be the sanction of the Supreme. The Mother constantly spoke of trying it in her own body, trying it in the divine pragmatism. That was the only positive attitude possible for her, and leaving everything to the higher Will and Wisdom. She never thought that transformation could come quickly, in a jiffy. One must first appreciate that there is such a big difference between Matter as it is and the Divine Existence as Matter, that which is not at every second tied to the obscurity of a half inconscient stuff. The question as to how long it will take, could be viewed in another way. Now that the consciousness is there, a fairly well-developed mental consciousness, things can possibly go much quicker. The bulk of the work is done, says the Mother. Yet the danger of haste cannot be underestimated. Truth born too soon might shatter this imperfect earth, writes Sri Aurobindo in Savitri. “If the divine Consciousness, the divine Power, the divine Love, the Truth manifested itself too rapidly upon the earth, the earth would be dissolved! She would not be able to bear it... brrf!” Yet the Mother had prepared herself, prepared her physical self that it could do wonderful things. The divine Presence, the divine Consciousness, the divine Truth could manifest as in a flash, could change it. She perceived that it is a Force, a Will that moves forward step by step. The truth is, there is none who is not ruled by the law of inconscience. There is prevalent disorganisation that prevents the cohesion necessary for the cells to constitute an individual body. But there is the aspiration of the cells, and there is something like a central consciousness of the body which aspires intensely, with a surrender as complete as it can make. There is peace and light, and there is the Harmony. There is at once this feeling in the cells that they live the eternity, for the eternity. “This happens many times in a day. At times it is like a mass. Sometimes it is only a thing that touches; then in the consciousness of the body it translates itself in this way, as a kind of thanksgiving: a progress in fact over the inconscience. There was, as it were, a total vision of this effort of the earth towards its divinisation. It belongs to a domain which is not yet ready to be explained, to be manifested in words. What is spoken is almost incomprehensible.”
In Part III I interpret Jung’s later visions and dreams and his most complete description of the Self in light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s teachings on Integral Yoga, with special reference to Overmind and Supermind consciousness. I compare and contrast Jung’s experiences and writings with the goal of becoming one with the Transcendent non-dual Reality accompanied by ego dissolution. Jung’s psychology of individuation requires a creative engagement with the world and not seeking or attaining the Transcendent non-dual Reality per se. The goal of individuation, rather, demands full consciousness of spiritual experiences and not dissolution of the ego. I argue that Jung’s later visions and dreams are most likely experiences of what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother referred to as Overmind consciousness, although their high numinosity and comprehensiveness opens up the possibility of him having touched the Supermind, at least intuitively, His latest and most complete description of the Self, fourfold in structure and differentiated at four levels of being supports the Supermind hypothesis. Jung’s last dream-vision is an indication that Jung had won through to individualized global consciousness and attained completed individuation. An important caveat to this essay is that it is written as no more than a contribution to a hypothesis on the nature of Jung’s experiences and the level of consciousness he attained, and nothing more.
