Savitri: the Light of the Supreme
View Article  Passing through the Portals of the Birth that is a Death
In the cosmic process the Purusha stands aside and allows Prakriti to do all the work of manifestation; it is her department. In this modus operandi one of the first practical and essential things done was to create four qualities or the fourfold soul-force, the four swabhāvas, as the organisational basis for the universal functioning. The Purusha handing over the initiative to Prakriti and himself becoming subject to her operational demands is the key step that was taken the moment things were ready for a certain larger and worldwide collective life. That was the happy optimism of the Purusha Sukta in which the Purusha offered himself to be sacrificed. In the language of Savitri, he has forsaken his omnipotence, and he knows her only, and to her he abandons all to make her great, hopes in her to find himself anew, incarnate, wedding his infinity’s peace to her creative passion’s ecstasy; he leaves to her this gigantic immense management and watches all, the Witness of her scene. It is by this process shall he manifest himself multiply, manifest in his will and power, in the delight of existence and in the delight of becoming.

As one particular incarnation,—call her the sweet Mother, call her Savitri, call her a fit intermediary, a beautiful slave of God, the incarnate who came here in the ancient past, the embodied Word or a living Scripture, a spirit who arrived from the immortal spaces to set her conquering foot on Time, the divine Consciousness-Force, or Mahashakti born on earth,—she, in the field of evolution, has ever been engaged in the work of her Lord. Her yoga-tapasya progresses in the Will of the Lord, her power grows in the Will of the Lord, her action is in the Will of the Lord. A prayer of the Mother speaks of amplitude and majesty, nobility and grace, charm and grandeur, variety and strength, “for it is the will of the Lord to manifest.” For that purpose she is ready to suffer, she is ready to accept all these cruel “lamentable limitations”, climb up the Calvary of the painful and deep-rooted frustration, bear the ignominy of countless human births. This is the personal aspect of the Sacrifice, of the divine Soul. More specifically, Savitri’s mortal birth was compelled by the world’s desire; she came here, answering the earth’s yearning and her cry for bliss. Savitri came here to hew the ways of Immortality.

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View Article  Sanatana Dharma LIII—The Mother on the Dhammapada: Evil-Punishment-Old Age-The Ego-The Workd
People have the habit of dealing lightly with thoughts that come. And the atmosphere is full of thoughts of all kinds which do not in fact belong to anybody in particular, which move perpetually from one person to another, very freely, much too freely, because there are very few people who can keep their thoughts under control. When you take up the Buddhist discipline to learn how to control your thoughts, you make very interesting discoveries. You try to observe your thoughts. Instead of letting them pass freely, sometimes even letting them enter your head and establish themselves in a quite inopportune way, you look at them, observe them and you realise with stupefaction that in the space of a few seconds there passes through the head a series of absolutely improbable thoughts that are altogether harmful. You believe you are so good, so kind, so well disposed and always full of good feelings. You wish no harm to anybody, you wish only good—all that you tell yourself complacently. But if you look at yourself sincerely as you are thinking, you notice that you have in your head a collection of thoughts which are sometimes frightful and of which you were not at all aware… If you want to clean your house thoroughly, you must be vigilant for a long time, for a very long time and especially not believe that you have reached the goal, like that, at one stroke, because one day you happened to decide that you would be on the right side. That is of course a very essential and important point, but it must be followed by a good many other days when you have to keep a strict guard on yourself so as not to belie your resolution.

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View Article  Poetry Time: 29 May 2010—The Lake Isle of Innisfree by WB Yeats


I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.


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View Article  Jung in a Valley of Diamonds: Supermind and Unus Mundus, the Qualitative Value of Numbers and Unity of Spirit and Matter (Part VI-D)—by David Johnston
In Part VI, I continue the discussion that I began in Jung’s Later Visions, Individualized Global Consciousness and Completed Individuation in Light of the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I begin by discussing the meaning Jung gives to the unus mundus and show its significant similarities, of which and differences to Sri Aurobindo’s understanding of the Supermind as well as discernments. I include in this discussion the process of ascent and descent, with emphasis on the descent, which is common to the path of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and Jung. From there I discuss three variations of Advaita Vedanta, the path of Adi Shankara, born in the eighth century CE, and credited with having established Advaita Vedanta on a philosophic basis, the teachings of the Shankara lineage in its contemporary expression, and then Śrī Ramana Maharshi’s popular contemporary spiritual teachings. I draw some conclusions as to the limitations of Advaita Vedanta in comparison to Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s path of Integral Yoga. Following this discussion, I continue my amplifications on Jung’s Coniunctio vision from an earlier essay mentioned above, and differentiate the Supermind consciousness from the Overmind consciousness, while relating them to Jung, his psychological work and, I believe, his having attained global knowledge. Following that, I discuss a late dream of Jung’s, where he found himself in a valley full of diamonds in terms of his post-1944 writings. This leads me into a discussion of the qualitative value of numbers and their relationship to the unus mundus and the unity of spirit and matter. In this part of the essay I include the Mother’s “vision-dream” of creating a new world by way of manipulating living numbers and then Norelli-Bachelet’s [Thea’s] esoteric use of numbers regarding the measurements of the inner chamber of the Matrimandir. I do this, especially in order to substantiate Jung’s and Marie-Louise von Franz’s views on numbers, although, in the process, I acclaim the intrinsic value of the Mother’s achievement and acknowledge the value of Norelli-Bachelet’s [Thea’s] claims.

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View Article  River Reverie—by TR Shankar Raman


Over the water, the river terns fly briskly ahead. In handsome grey-and-white, with shiny black caps, red legs, and yellow beaks, they contrast sharply with the green-brown waters. In the evening light, to the gentle drone of insects, they fly purposefully forward, their heads pointed down scanning the river. The river terns make effortless progress even when their vision is perpendicular to the river. If our vision remains perpendicular to the direction we must take, will we make progress, too?

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View Article  The Secret of the Golden Flower


The black tail is but the vision’s other eye.
Out of the mouth of Truth comes the vast Death
And in the Inane blossoms the golden flower.

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View Article  34: The Yoga of the Cells by the Mother
Everything is getting disorganised. However, there is a movement towards a higher organisation, towards a widening, a liberation. The body has reached a state of consciousness in which it knows that death may make a change, but not a disappearance of the consciousness. There is: “May it disappear, so that it be as Thou willest.” This is the absolute certitude. And all that is the experience of this body; it is not mental but altogether material. But from time to time the body becomes anxious, evidently something meaningless. All that one has to do is to find out the means. Extraordinary things are happening all the time. The body does not worry even about its purification. It is, without break, “What Thou willest, O Lord, what Thou willest.” The Consciousness which is at work to help it in its labour, has made it per-fect-ly understand that to go away is not a solution. The possible desire to go away, when that becomes suffocating, that also has gone with the idea that it will change nothing. So, there is left only one thing for it, to perfect the acceptance.

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View Article  The Loch Ness Monster—by David Lister


Not so long ago it was impossible to visit Loch Ness without tripping over somebody who claimed to have intimate knowledge of Nessie. But in the twilight zone of Britain’s deepest freshwater loch, a strange sanity is suddenly prevailing. It’s becoming a potential crisis. In any other circumstances, such an outbreak of level-headedness would be applauded. But along the shores of Scotland’s most famous loch the apparent disappearance of the legendary monster has sparked frenzied speculation. Some Nessie fans claim that she has been driven into hiding by low-flying RAF fighter jets, while others blame increased pollution. Some have even dared to venture the unthinkable: that Nessie, God rest her soul, is dead.

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View Article  Sanatana Dharma LII—The Mother on the Dhammapada: The Mind-The Flowers-The Fool-The Sage-The Adept-The Thousands
There is a very interesting sentence here: “He who is not credulous but has the sense of the Uncreated....” One who is not credulous—all kinds of things can be understood from this word. The first impression is that it refers to one who does not believe in invisible things without having an experience of them, as distinct from people who follow, for example, a particular religion and have faith in dogmas simply because that is what they have been taught. But he “has the sense of the Uncreated”, that is to say, he is in contact with invisible things and knows them as they are, by identity. The Dhammapada has told us, to begin with, that the greatest of men is he who has no faith in what is taught but has a personal experience of things that are not visible, he who is free from all belief and has himself had the experience of invisible things.

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View Article  Poetry Time: 22 May 2010—Leda by HD (Hilda Doolittle)
Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.


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View Article  Jung in a Valley of Diamonds: Supermind and Unus Mundus, the Qualitative Value of Numbers and Unity of Spirit and Matter (Part VI-C)—by David Johnston
In Part VI, I continue the discussion that I began in Jung’s Later Visions, Individualized Global Consciousness and Completed Individuation in Light of the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I begin by discussing the meaning Jung gives to the unus mundus and show its significant similarities, of which and differences to Sri Aurobindo’s understanding of the Supermind as well as discernments. I include in this discussion the process of ascent and descent, with emphasis on the descent, which is common to the path of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and Jung. From there I discuss three variations of Advaita Vedanta, the path of Adi Shankara, born in the eighth century CE, and credited with having established Advaita Vedanta on a philosophic basis, the teachings of the Shankara lineage in its contemporary expression, and then Śrī Ramana Maharshi’s popular contemporary spiritual teachings. I draw some conclusions as to the limitations of Advaita Vedanta in comparison to Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s path of Integral Yoga. Following this discussion, I continue my amplifications on Jung’s Coniunctio vision from an earlier essay mentioned above, and differentiate the Supermind consciousness from the Overmind consciousness, while relating them to Jung, his psychological work and, I believe, his having attained global knowledge. Following that, I discuss a late dream of Jung’s, where he found himself in a valley full of diamonds in terms of his post-1944 writings. This leads me into a discussion of the qualitative value of numbers and their relationship to the unus mundus and the unity of spirit and matter. In this part of the essay I include the Mother’s “vision-dream” of creating a new world by way of manipulating living numbers and then Norelli-Bachelet’s [Thea’s] esoteric use of numbers regarding the measurements of the inner chamber of the Matrimandir. I do this, especially in order to substantiate Jung’s and Marie-Louise von Franz’s views on numbers, although, in the process, I acclaim the intrinsic value of the Mother’s achievement and acknowledge the value of Norelli-Bachelet’s [Thea’s] claims.

...   more »
View Article  In search of Muziris—by A Srivathsan


Muziris was a thriving port in the Indo-Roman trade in the First Century BCE. And one day, it just vanished. Recent excavations have thrown up the possibility that Pattanam, a small village on the Kerala coast, could be the lost port. What happened all those years back? “After every rain, when the water rises from beneath, the beads surface with them.”

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View Article  These Birds


The birds meet the hours at the end of Time
Whose winged splendour is but Eternity’s beat.

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View Article  33: The Yoga of the Cells by the Mother
These notions about individuality, they have a different sense. It is not something that exists independently, having its own destiny. Consciousness in this body knows it is a pulsation of “something” which for the moment has a separate action, but is at bottom, in essence always one. There is only one Being, only one Consciousness. This body has a series of experiences, of passing through all the states of consciousness that one can pass through, from the sense of the sole reality of that of the substance, with all the miseries, up to the liberation. But the consciousness of the cells realized the unity, the true essential unity, which could become total if this sort of illusion disappeared. What is to be realised is to return to the true Consciousness. The feeling is that it is moving as fast as it is possible to go; truly the Consciousness is at work. The body knows it is ‘What Thou willest, Lord, what Thou willest.” It knows it with a smile and a perfect joy. Does this consciousness know what has to be done materially? “I do not know. But the body does not concern itself with it; it goes on doing from second to second what it has got to do, without putting questions.”

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View Article  What is Nationalism?—by Sri Aurobindo
Here is a lecture delivered by Sri Aurobindo on 19 January 1908 at Bombay.

You must remember that you are the instruments of God. In Bengal Nationalism has come to the people as a religion, and it has been accepted as a religion. Nationalism cannot be crushed. Nationalism is not going to be crushed. Nationalism survives in the strength of God and it is not possible to crush it, whatever weapons are brought against it. Nationalism is immortal; Nationalism cannot die; because it is no human thing, it is God who is working. It is a solemn thing. You are merely instruments of God for the work of the Almighty. If you have realised that, then you are truly Nationalists; then alone will you be able to restore this great nation. You are the instruments of God to save the Light, to save the spirit of India from lasting obscuration and abasement. One of them, the man who had the greatest influence and has done the most to regenerate Bengal, could not read and write a single word. He was a man who had been what they call absolutely useless to the world. But he had this one divine faculty in him, that he had more than faith and had realised God. God knew what he was doing. He sent that man to Bengal and set him in the temple of Dakshineshwar in Calcutta, and from North and South and East and West, the educated men, men who were the pride of the university, who had studied all that Europe can teach, came to fall at the feet of this ascetic. The work of salvation, the work of raising India was begun.

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View Article  Sanatana Dharma LI—The Mother on the Dhammapada: Vigilance
When I read these ancient texts, I really have the impression that from the inner point of view, from the point of view of the true life, we have fallen back terribly and that for the acquisition of a few ingenious mechanisms, a few encouragements to physical laziness, the acquisition of instruments and gadgets that lessen the effort of living, we have renounced the reality of the inner life. It is that sense which has been lost and it needs an effort for you to think of learning the meaning of life, the purpose of existence, the goal towards which we must advance, towards which all life advances, whether you want it or not... How far we are from the times when the shepherd, who did not go to school and kept watch over his flock at night under the stars, could read in the stars what was going to happen, commune with something which expressed itself through Nature, and had the sense of the profound beauty and that peace which a simple life gives! It is very unfortunate that one has to give up one thing in order to gain another. When I speak of the inner life, I am far from opposing any modern inventions, far from it, but how much these inventions have made us artificial and stupid! How much we have lost the sense of true beauty, how much we burden ourselves with useless needs! Perhaps the time has come to continue the ascent in the curve of the spiral and now with all that this knowledge of matter has brought us, we shall be able to give to our spiritual progress a more solid basis. Strong with what we have learnt of the secrets of material Nature, we shall be able to join the two extremes and rediscover the supreme Reality in the very heart of the atom.

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View Article  Poetry Time: 15 May 2010—To Thee, Old Cause! by Walt Whitman
Around the idea of thee the strange sad war revolving,
With all its angry and vehement play of causes,
(With yet unknown results to come, for thrice a thousand years,)
These recitatives for thee—my Book and the War are one,
Merged in its spirit I and mine—as the contest hinged on thee,
As a wheel on its axis turns, this Book, unwitting to itself,
Around the Idea of thee.


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View Article  Jung in a Valley of Diamonds: Supermind and Unus Mundus, the Qualitative Value of Numbers and Unity of Spirit and Matter (Part VI-B)—by David Johnston
In Part VI, I continue the discussion that I began in Jung’s Later Visions, Individualized Global Consciousness and Completed Individuation in Light of the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I begin by discussing the meaning Jung gives to the unus mundus and show its significant similarities, of which and differences to Sri Aurobindo’s understanding of the Supermind as well as discernments. I include in this discussion the process of ascent and descent, with emphasis on the descent, which is common to the path of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and Jung. From there I discuss three variations of Advaita Vedanta, the path of Adi Shankara, born in the eighth century CE, and credited with having established Advaita Vedanta on a philosophic basis, the teachings of the Shankara lineage in its contemporary expression, and then Śrī Ramana Maharshi’s popular contemporary spiritual teachings. I draw some conclusions as to the limitations of Advaita Vedanta in comparison to Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s path of Integral Yoga. Following this discussion, I continue my amplifications on Jung’s Coniunctio vision from an earlier essay mentioned above, and differentiate the Supermind consciousness from the Overmind consciousness, while relating them to Jung, his psychological work and, I believe, his having attained global knowledge. Following that, I discuss a late dream of Jung’s, where he found himself in a valley full of diamonds in terms of his post-1944 writings. This leads me into a discussion of the qualitative value of numbers and their relationship to the unus mundus and the unity of spirit and matter. In this part of the essay I include the Mother’s “vision-dream” of creating a new world by way of manipulating living numbers and then Norelli-Bachelet’s [Thea’s] esoteric use of numbers regarding the measurements of the inner chamber of the Matrimandir. I do this, especially in order to substantiate Jung’s and Marie-Louise von Franz’s views on numbers, although, in the process, I acclaim the intrinsic value of the Mother’s achievement and acknowledge the value of Norelli-Bachelet’s [Thea’s] claims.

...   more »
View Article  Improbable research: The repetitive physics of Om—by Marc Abrahams


Meditating in the Himalayas
Om has many variations. In a study published in the International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, the researchers explain: "It may be very fast, several cycles per second. Or it may be slower, several seconds for each cycling of [the] Om mantra. Or it might become extremely slow, with the mmmmmm sound continuing in the mind for much longer periods but still pulsing at that slow rate. The important technical fact is that no matter what form of Om one chants at whatever speed, there is always a basic Omness to it.

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View Article  If You Take Wings


If you take wings of the surreal science
In its flight towards the symbol being,
You would reason the hopping of the bird—
The image, the vision, the primordial form…
You would extrapolate the starry line
To the gleam of a perpetual hyacinth,
The beautiful symbolist of the bright sky.

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