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Inspiration has that power to let loose creative greatnesses in the individual, to make him move on the upward path, bring to him the majesties of the Spirit. The whole process has the semblance, and indeed the authenticity, of the first delight of the cosmic-transcendental creation shaping him in its joy.

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We don't care
Though, so tall up there
In young air. But things get darker as we move
To ask them: Whom must we get to know
To die, so you live and we know?

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A third creation now revealed its face.
A mould of body's early mind was made.
A glint of light kindled the obscure World-Force;
It dowered a driven world with the seeing Idea
And armed the act with Thought's dynamic point:
A small thinking being watched the works of Time.

Is Sri Aurobindo referring to the actual third creation—given the present one is the seventh and will reach supramental? If reference is to the actual third creation, was "early mind" created in the third creation?

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Savitri does not lend itself very often to any precise chronological reading. Yet much of it is undoubtedly an accurate transcription of the spiritual experiences of the poet, sometimes remembered or relived many years later. Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter in 1946: “The mystical poet can only describe what he has felt, seen in himself or others or in the world just as he has felt or seen it or experienced through exact vision, close contact or identity and leave it to the general reader to understand or not understand or misunderstand according to his capacity.” He especially insisted that "all that is spiritual or psychological in Savitri is of that character". No doubt, the autobiographical aspect of the poem has to be seen in the context of its elements of legend and symbol and the demands of its massive narrative structure and literary architecture. But such a work could not have been written without direct access to the domains of reality of which it speaks. From this point of view, the Record of Yoga can help us to gain a fuller understanding of the experiential background of Sri Aurobindo's epic.

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There was an experience the night of the 8th, which lasted at least two hours by the clock, maybe more. An experience I had never had before. In fact, it wasn't at all the experience of a "person," because I was very conscious of the return to the personal consciousness, and in a very interesting way: everything was felt as a diminishing. The return lasted nearly half an hour. It's inexpressible with words. For two hours, it was the experience of Omnipotence—of THE LORD'S Omnipotence—for two hours,

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Aswapati is depicted as having this Two-in-One vision in a state of profound inwardness. Its overwhelming intensity even causes him to lose consciousness at the end. The diary entry, on the other hand, refers to what Sri Aurobindo was seeing when he looked at "living things" and "objects" in the world around him, the normal meaning of "Darshana" in the Record of Yoga. Besides, this Darshana was not a single unique experience, but something that was "increasing" and on its way to being "universalised". We have found, moreover, that the vision in Savitri occupies the position where Intuition ought to come in the scheme of "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds". But by the end of 1926, Sri Aurobindo had already achieved the fundamental Siddhi of the Overmind—although it was not until October 1927 that he coined the word "overmind" itself [23] and it would be several years before he described what had happened on 24 November 1926 as "the descent of Krishna into the physical", adding that this meant "the descent of the Overmind Godhead preparing, though not itself actually, the descent of Supermind and Ananda". [24] Therefore, it was in the context of a sadhana to bring the overmind transformation to a completion and begin the ascent beyond it that on 1 February 1927 he recorded seeing, everywhere he looked, Aditi holding Parameswara-Parameswari—the infinite Mother sustaining the supreme Lord of the worlds and, one with him, the supreme cosmic Power.

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From the End to the n’th dimension of the involved Here-and-Now,
From the Parable of Ignorance to Time’s steps forward ever in Knowledge,
Eternity’s eye extends like some unseen magic to the very foot of God.
Narad is always immersed in the Chant, moving up and down the alleys,
And from the lore of the Past to modern libraries rushes the swift Word.
The celibate singer has again brought to song the undecaying silences,
The urge in bright virginity to bear the bodies of the myriad Godhead;
The Seer comes purple-goldenly tracing infinity of that widening Vast.

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This is the dish made of wild mangoes soaked in country liquor,
This is the bed of screw-pine, a mat jointed with tempered summers.
Then with the lash of the Monsoon all ended, as must the sad verses;
Drowned was the spider-web, and the straw-hut, and the scaffolding.
Past the circles, past the helixes of wobbly winds, was the flight;
In a crystal dome, and above the chimney, was hung the magic’s orb.
So she threw away her flesh and stood gazing at the sandal-wood fire,
And Wisdom leaned down like a sky over luxurious singing trees.
Her modernity brought pots of honey cooked on microwave flames,
And to the full drank heaven the breath drawn from the earth’s deeps.

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The end of the world is an ineluctability if the world is governed by Death—which no one would contest. Had we lived in an entirely different manner from the beginning of time, raising other civilizations, discovering and exploiting other material resources, vital and mental, glimpsing with other eyes the faces of the Divinity, we would nonetheless have been driven one day against what now lies before us.

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One day, as he was walking as usual, he looked at the first clock: stopped; he looks at the second clock (he used to wind them himself): stopped, at the same time; looks at the third clock: stopped, at the same time; the fourth clock: stopped, at the same time.

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There are three kinds of movements which one has to distinguish in seeing the future. First of all there is the result of the actualities: it is a very narrow field and things there are fixed and it is generally the very near future. Secondly, there is a play of potentialities in which certain forces are struggling and you can see the force which is most likely to succeed. But generally it is that force which represents the higher decision on that plane. But you can't be always sure that it will succeed unless you know definitely that it represents the highest decision—the Truth. Thirdly there is a higher plane where important decisions are made. For that movement you have to go very high. It is difficult to distinguish between these three and most of the clairvoyants make a confusion.

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The fact that Ramanujan's early years were spent in a scientifically sterile atmosphere, that his life in India was not without hardships, that under circumstances that appeared to most Indians as nothing short of miraculous, he had gone to Cambridge, supported by eminent mathematicians, and had returned to India with every assurance that he would be considered, in time, as one of the most original mathematicians of the century—these facts were enough, more than enough, for aspiring young Indian students to break their bonds of intellectual confinement and perhaps soar the way that Ramanujan did.

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Anomalocaris, the ancestor of modern insects, had 16,000 separate lenses in each eye giving it a huge advantage when locating its prey. The remains of a pair of ancient compound eyes that belonged to the world's first super predator have been discovered by fossil hunters in Australia.

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It's ONE way of being of the Lord. This experience is a milestone on the road. ... I've had very faint and momentary perceptions of what it could be—it was beautiful. It was magnificent. And the physical world is made to express Beauty; if it became harmonious instead of being the ignoble thing it is, if it became harmonious, it would have an exceptional vibratory quality!... It's rather curious: the vital world is magnificent, the mental world has its splendours, the overmental world with all its gods (who are existing beings, I know them well) is truly very beautiful; but I tell you, since I had that Contact, I have found all that hollow—hollow and ... lacking the essential. And that essential thing, in its principle, is here, on earth.

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I was then having a very intense Sadhana on the vital plane and I was concentrated. I had a questioning mood, whether such things as the Siddhi of utthapana—levitation—were possible. Then suddenly I found myself raised up in such a way I could not have done it myself with muscular exertion: only one part of the body was slightly in contact with the ground and the rest was raised up against the wall and I know I could not have held my body like that normally even if I had wanted to. I also found that the body remained suspended like that without any exertion on my part. That is the only thing that happened. In jail there were many such extraordinary and, one may say, abnormal, experiences. As I was doing the Sadhana on the vital plane I think the power might have come from there. All these experiences passed away and did not repeat themselves.

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Soraia, who is now 22, told her father she saw colours when she heard music. He explained that he experienced music the same way and that it was a medical condition called synaesthesia, in which the brain conflates two or more senses, causing both to be experienced at the same time. A recent study by the University of Edinburgh concluded that around 4 per cent of the British population has synaesthesia. The condition takes many forms: some experience tastes when they read or hear words; some perceive numbers as shapes; others, such as Soraia, see colours when they hear music, or when they think of particular periods in their lives.

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In regard to the Purushottama the Divine Mother is the supreme divine Consciousness and Power above the worlds, Adya Shakti; she carries the Supreme in herself and manifests the Divine in the worlds through the Akshara and Kshara. In regard to the Akshara she is the same Para Shakti holding the Purusha immobile in herself and also herself immobile in him at the back of all creation. In regard to the Kshara she is the mobile cosmic Energy manifesting all beings and forces.

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Q: What is your observation about the present trend in poetry, will it take a step forward towards the Future Poetry as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo?

Amal: Doubtful, except when it has the intuitive touch. Modern poetry is not properly formulated. It is partly chaotic, like modern life. Mostly, it is a cerebral ingenuity. People try to be clever but cleverness is the last thing in poetry. One must be natural and spontaneous, that means to feel in the heart and feel in the mind and express things as they come but not formulate your answers.

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He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

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Yesterday again, the experience was quite concrete and powerful: it isn't necessary to move, or to move anything, for this Truth-Consciousness to replace the consciousness of deformation or distortion. In other words, the capacity to live in and be this true Vibration—essential and true—seems to have the power to SUBSTITUTE this Vibration for the vibration of Falsehood and Distortion, to such an extent that ... For instance, the outcome of Distortion or of the vibration of distortion should naturally have been an accident or catastrophe, but if, within those vibrations, there is a consciousness that has the power to become aware of the Vibration of Truth and therefore manifest the Vibration of Truth, it can—it must—cancel the other vibration. Which would be translated, in the external phenomenon, by an intervention that would stop the catastrophe. There is a growing feeling that the True is the only way to change the world; that all the other processes of slow transformation are always at a tangent (you draw nearer and nearer but you never arrive), and that the last step must be this—the substitution of the true Vibration.

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