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Heaviness
Of those mountains yet difficult to climb
In the paces of time also becomes
A luminous nothing. To be again
Just me I need no Dharma, I need
No Zanskar River, no tranquil presence
Of Mahākāla, and only the non-self
Remains as the featureless sovereign.
But then possibly in a stranger act
When the form is dissolved, and the sounds
Vanish in the valley’s hush, runs Zanskar.

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It is a deep experience in meditation that one is down in the physical consciousness and that the Divine is something up there, so far away. But there is at once the divine Presence everywhere, “not up there: here, here itself.” This wonderful pervasiveness brings Power as well as Sweetness, and one gets the feeling that it could melt a rock. That Sweetness—the Mother would later describe the Smile of the supreme Lord, a smile that knows everything. And the amazement is, it is the experience of the body, material, the experience of the body: there is only That, all is That, That, there is nothing but That. “But then why do people always go up there?” And the answer comes: “Because they want me to be very far from their consciousness!” There is a feeling that He is everywhere, and we do not know it because we are shrunken. The sense of separation comes from this. It was “to find out the fact of the separation, everything appearing so stupid, so ugly. I was assailed, assailed by various living memories of all kinds of experiences, memories of this body, all the memories that might be called ‘anti-divine’, in which the body had the sensation of something that was repulsive or evil, like negations of the divine Presence.” Here is the Horror of Creation, the horror experienced by Aswapati in Savitri, his descent into the Night. The fact of the separation—the body tries but not with success. That which appears as separate, but it is the distortion of the consciousness. There is the physical suffering, a physical suffering that lasts. “And then all of a sudden, instead of being in this state of consciousness, you are in that of this exclusive divine Presence. Pain gone! And it was physical, altogether physical, with a physical reason.” It is just a small beginning. It is still an experience, not an established fact, that nothing else exists, that that alone is present—it is not yet so. This notion of the Supramental “coming down”, and a Consciousness “having entered”, is our translation. All things happen within Him, consciously. And we are like “grains of sand in this Infinity; only, we are the Lord with the capacity to be conscious of the Lord’s consciousness. That is exactly what it is.”

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In one of the footnotes to the Agni-hymns, Sri Aurobindo makes the following comment: “The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion and self-perfecting.” Both the terms are fixed in it, expansion and self-perfecting. Could this not have been the method of Aswapati in creating the new world in the supramental? He had become vast by his largeness, extending all the way up to the Unknowable and enveloping every bit of this immense manifestation, including those of the dark abysses; he had achieved self-perfection in such completeness that no trace of the Inconscient and the Subconscient was present in it; it was a oneness that could embrace all the positives and the negatives, rejecting nothing, that it is all God’s creation, that there is nothing but the Divine who exists in each and every aspect of this freedom and extensiveness.

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When the Yoga enters into deeper states of trance, the heat of the Kundalini begins to course through the body, the subtle body is activated and the brain experiences a reverberating natural silence. The Yogin experiences a sense of purity, rejuvenation and alertness within. At this point, one may hear subtle sounds in the ear, smell burning incense or floral fragrances (which have non-worldly origin) and gain sight into the occult worlds. The sounds which the Yogin hears tend to vary depending on the inner plane of consciousness to which one is currently attuned. This post is a collection of these subtle sounds as noted in various places dealing with occult-spiritual aspects. As we see, there is lot of similarity in these descriptions.

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O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

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In 1976 Jyotirmoyee at last found a shelter where she could spend the last years of her life peacefully. It was the Cheshire’s Home at Tollygunje, Calcutta whose in-charge was Nirmal Chandra Ghose. There she was looked after well. In 1981 when Sunanda Barua went to meet her with her husband, she found that Jyotirmoyee, who had become semi-blind, was getting adequate care and affection from the people of Cheshire’s Home. That was the last time the relatives of Jyotitmoyee saw her alive. Some months later on 14 November 1981, Jyotirmoyee breathed her last. At last the soul was freed from the body which suffered infinitely. For her, death was not the dark, unknown world; it was the medium of liberation—MUKTI!

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In Savitri we have a phrase “sense-formed ear”, suggesting that the organs of cognition are the products of the senses, that the faculties develop or give rise to the necessary instruments; first comes the sense and then the organ. It is not the ear that hears, but it is the sense of hearing, behind it the mind or manas, that hears which is then understood in mental terms; it is that sense which creates the ear, the organ for hearing. The ear is only a receiving, a mechanical instrument, with a diaphragm or a vibrating disc, which on impingement of pressure waves causes the appearance of nervous signals; it is an end product of the sense of hearing. First the Spirit brooded over the Purusha and, thus brooded, the ears broke forth and from the ears Hearing, and from Hearing the regions were born. When the mental being arrived, the quarters or the regions became Hearing and entered into the ears. This is how the Aitereya Upanishad explains the process of formation of the instruments of knowledge, the physical organ or instrument coming into existence as a result of the faculty of the manifesting spirit.

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I remember the night when she was born
In sevenfold greatness; like a deft star
Fore-working destiny written in terms
Of toil, she had come in the late dimness
To do unique things. With joy in her soul
And pain in the deep hole of her veiled charm,
Promptly she moved in expectation’s zest
To forge thorough substance in the new fire
Never whose goldenness can become dull.

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Our mind is incapable of seeing the truth and whatever it judges it judges by its own limited capacity. When we judge our actions with it, and that is the thing we habitually do, we often deceive ourselves; we deceive ourselves in good faith. But with the psychic fully conscious this does not happen. The answer that comes from it is the straight answer and a valid answer. Going further, by identification with the supreme Consciousness we do not annul our true individuality. But to express the supreme Consciousness we should be made of sufficiently luminous and purified substance. There is the experience of transparent fluidity, but concretisation needs a kind of “opacity”, an opacity in Matter. The direct contact of the psychic being with the substance of the body gives the sensation of “felt vision”. When the Supramental manifests, there comes a clarity of vision that does not diminish. It is that which is being built up. Evidently there is a precision that can come from a more exact vision, without division and without separation. And it is that precision which will be the precision of the supramental vision. That is something in preparation. The same holds true for the vital. The vital gives an intensity which nothing else seems to give; this same intensity exists in the supramental, but without division. It is an intensity that does not separate. It is that intensity which must flow in the life and in the body.

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The work of Aswapati as the Divine Incarnate is to will a new creation and establish it in the House of the Spirit. The next task of making it manifest upon earth is the task of Savitri as the Shakti Incarnate. Will and Action, samkalpa and krīyā, the first followed by the second, both are necessary for bringing about the birth of the new world here upon earth. The universal principle is: he wills and she executes. The second cannot happen without the first. It is as though a transcendental archetype, a dynamic and breathing design or model charged with the possibilities of expression, is the sine qua non for the new world to at all take birth here. When it is created up there, in the Real-Idea, in its luminous potencies, then only can it materialise here, brought into the evolutionary process; then only can the heavenly ideal become terrestrially real.

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The sound Om, has three simple phonemes, A-U-M and a fourth state silence. The fourth state is called Turiya, the superconscious state, the absolute Brahman. The three sounds denote the states of walking, dreaming and deep sleep and the aspects of divinity that are involved in the processes of manifestation, preservation and annihilation. The Upanishads say that the Om is the bow, the individual is the arrow, and the Supreme Consciousness, Brahman, is the target. One should shoot carefully, like a skilled archer, while being completely absorbed in the goal—Brahman-consciousness. Unless the student understands the meaning of OM as described in the various Upanishads, various repetitions in meditation become mechanical and boring. If its meaning has been properly contemplated and if the student is attuned to the sound, then during meditation this sound leads him to the realization of higher dimensions of life. Success on this path is not easy. Constant awareness, guidance from a competent teacher and faith in and total surrender to the absolute Reality lead the aspirant to the highest goal of life.

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Tusar Mohapatra, proprietor of the Savitri Era Blogs, has recently posted on his Savitri Era Open Forum a letter addressed to him by S Satheesh. His argument for making Satheesh’s letter public appears at Savitri Era. Here I’m reposting both for the ‘benefit’ of the readers of Mirror of Tomorrow who, in the background of all the relevant posts on it, should be in a position to arrive at their own conclusions. I don’t need to defend myself which is a small trivial matter, as the whole stuff can be plainly dismissed being an outburst hastily published in the nature of sensational journalism. One need not attach any importance to it, nor to the people promoting it. It looks to me that there is no application of one’s mind to the simplest things, and yet one talks of big ontological matters which generally turn out to be captious and therefore inconsequential. In the matter of Savitri-editing none of these things matters; no one matters, in the least Satheesh or Mohapatra or Deshpande or Hartz; but what matters is its text that came out during the yogi-poet’s time. It is in restoring that text that we should be all engaged, and it is towards that that we should make every possible effort. Our approach towards it should be intuitive-perceptive, because it is that which can give us spiritual realizations through Savitri, Savitri the light of the Supreme, parasya jyotih, that offers in its abundance to the aspirant-seeker all that can lead him on the path. I would therefore prefer to view this entire business purely in the context of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, and not the one worked out by the inferior hands. That the present letter by Satheesh, and its prompt posting by Tusar Mohapatra, has given us this opportunity to state it again is the gain which can be pursued gainfully as we should proceed further in this respect. Active participation from observant and insightful lovers of Savitri is anticipated.

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The facts of Science do not compel anyone to take any particular philosophical direction. They are now neutral and can even be used on one side or another though most scientists do not consider such a use as admissible. Nobody here ever said that the new discoveries of Physics supported the ideas of religion or churches; they merely contended that Science had lost its old materialistic dogmatism and moved away by a revolutionary change from its old moorings. It is this change which I expected and prophesied in my poems in the first Ahana volume, A Vision of Science and In the Moonlight.

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I dreamed that in myself the world I saw,
Wherein three Angels strove for mastery. Law
Was one, clear vision and denial cold,
Yet in her limits strong, presumptuous, bold;
The second with enthusiasm bright,
Flame in her heart but round her brows the night,
Faded as this advanced. She could not bear
That searching gaze, nor the strong chilling air
These thoughts created, nourishing our parts
Of mind, but petrifying human hearts.

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Question: Narratives then can be made or written very poetically, not like a mere fact-to-fact story telling?

Answer: But what do you mean by poetically? A fact to fact story telling can be very poetic. Poetry is poetic whether it is put in simple language or freely adorned with images and rich phrases. The latter kind is not the only “poetic” poetry nor is necessarily the best. Homer is very direct and simple; Virgil less so but still is restrained in his diction; Keats tends always to richness; but one cannot say that Keats is poetic and Homer and Virgil are not. The rich style has this danger that it may drown the narration so that its outlines are no longer clear. This is what has happened with Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and Lucrece; so that Shakespeare cannot be called a great narrative poet…

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According to Mughal tradition, nobles were granted a special kitchen allowance in order to entertain their guests; this custom was followed by the East India Company as well and the Resident of Delhi received Rs 5000 for his kitchen expenses. All those who visited him were offered lunch or dinner depending on the time of the day... Due to the extreme polarisation of wealth, a large section of society was crushed by poverty. Thus servants were available at very low salary and the British, like the Indian nobles, employed many servants for their comfort as well as for status... Those who were rich and powerful often kept more than a hundred. The number of servants one could afford was a symbol of one’s status, honour and respect in society. It is interesting to learn how the duties of this army of servants were divided. For example, it was customary for every noble Englishman to keep a servant whose duty was to maintain the huqqa or hubble bubble ready for him. The servant accompanied him along with his hubble bubble when the master went out for a walk or as a guest to someone’s house. After dinner, all servants brought the huqqas, placed them in front of their masters and silently stood behind them.

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What had happened was intriguing, a freak
Designed by chance. From his home of freedom
And deep calm Anandadharma stepped out
And travelled far. … Food offerings
Agni took to the original gods,
And implored them to shape new promptnesses.
Sarvabhadra hailed Anandadharma
And spread out a rich feast; soon aeons moved
In blueness of the chimes, and sweet-scented
Voices urged the soul for the gains of time.

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It seems something that has started must be the onrush of the new species, the new creation, a terrestrial reorganisation. It is not that we have reached the end; we are on the other side. The body wouldn’t care if it is dissolved or it lives, but it cannot accept the state in which it is. That is impossible. The vital and the mental are sent away so that the physical is truly left to its own resources, all by itself, all by itself. It is the physical that puts the questions: “Do they know how Matter was formed? do they know since when the earth existed? do they say there was a beginning? do they know since when man came into existence?” But there was the powerful and prolonged penetration of supramental forces into the body, everywhere at the same time. “It came all of a sudden, as though there was nothing but a supramental atmosphere; there was nothing but that. And my body was within it. That continued for at least four or five hours. And there was only one part that was hardly penetrated: there, it had a grey and dull look, as though the current penetrated less there. But apart from that, all the rest, all... it entered and entered and entered... I never saw anything like it, never! It lasted for hours and hours, altogether consciously.” The body began to be interested in all that. The perception of the Presence is constant and associated with all states of consciousness, whatever they are. “Ah! I became aware that the cells, everywhere like this, all the time, all the time were repeating their Mantra, all the time, all the time. And the Mantra is repeated spontaneously and automatically in a kind of ‘fluid’ peace. It is for this, well, one cannot say that it was suffering, one cannot say that it was ill; this is not possible, not possible.”

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The Puraņas tell us that Brahma created the worlds by the Tapas-Will, by the power of concentrated gathering-in of consciousness. In the present instance, Aswapati created the new world by the power of his yogic samkalpa, as an act of supreme will in the identification and union with the Divine. He had the knowledge, of the Eternal and the Eternal in Time, and he was carrying with him the desire of the world for its fulfilment. There was the problem of the two negations pulling the soul of man in two opposite directions, the rejection of the world by the exclusive God-seeker and the denial of the materialist dismissing the things of the spirit. More fundamentally, there is the entrenched antagonism to all that is high and noble and spiritually elevating, all that is fulfilling, hostility pitched against life, the extreme ill-will and nastiness of death and its stark malevolence. Contradictions have somehow entered into this creation and they have to be met and dealt with, removed, contradictions between falsehood and truth, evil and good, suffering and happiness, darkness and light. The world left behind continues to be governed by naked falsehood and ignorance and death. Aswapati accepts it not. Not only does he not accept it; he sets himself to resolve it.

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The philosophical systems of Mimāmsā and Vedānta are closely related to each other and are in some ways inter-dependent and complementary. The teachings of Vedānta may be said to have their roots in the fertile soil of Mimāmsā. Mimāmsā emphasis the teachings of Veda in the light of rituals, while VE emphasis the teachings of the Veda in the light of knowledge. Traditionally Mimāmsā called Purva-Mimāmsā meaning the initial teachings of the Veda and Vedānta is called Uttara-Mimāmsā meaning the later of higher teachings of the Veda. Vedānta means ‘the end of the Vedas’. In ancient times an Indian student’s education was not complete until he or she received instruction in the Upanishads. A mere study of the Veda is not sufficient to reach his goal. Rather, a student needs to realize its teachings experientially.

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The watchful bailiffs take their silent Stands,
And School-Boys lag with Satchels in their Hands.
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