Then the Ether went abroad like a quadruped, charging in fury,
And with the speed of thunder threw itself into the green valley.
Awed, they cried, “Bridle this animal lest it should devour us all,
Hold this Daemon rushing unto us with the puissance of fire.”
When the Word sank into the Abyss the Ether chased it out;
It is the wide Ether that kindled in form the flame of ecstasy.

...   more »

This is an essay aimed at clarification and is written in the form of a letter, dated 28 June 1988, addressed to Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran. It arose out of Jugal Kishore Mukherjee’s deep concerns apropos of certain kinds of assertions made in the Ashram’s Archives and Research biennial. He wondered whether controversial statements made in it were seen and approved by them, they constituting the two-member supervisory committee looking into these publications. The letter was written solely with the intention of rectifying the inadvertent slips and restoring the right perspective in the matter of publications in an official periodical. Did it happen? It is a big question but the answer is short: it didn’t. We could discuss this aspect separately, but first in the following is the full essay Jugal Kishore Mukherjee had drafted in the interest of the Ashram, in terms of values to which one must adhere. Retrospectively, it may be pointed out that had a due note of his well-studied and well-documented concerns taken seriously by the advisory and official members, the present imbroglio regarding The Lives of Sri Aurobindo would have been avoided. That could also be true in the case of Savitri-editing.

...   more »

It is only the one who has it, the experience, can be sure. The effects are visible in tiny details that can be observed only by those who are already well-disposed, that is (to translate), by those who have faith—those who have faith can see. And I know that because they tell me: they see examples of those tiny miracles of every minute (they aren't "miracles") multiply; they're everywhere, all the time, all the time—little facts, harmonies, realizations, concords ... all of which are quite unusual in this world of Disorder. But while the experience was there, I knew there would be another one, which is yet to come (God knows when!), and which would join with this one to form a third. And it is that junction that will then probably cause something to be changed in the appearances. When will it come? I don't know. But we shouldn't be in a hurry.

...   more »

It is only a few religions which have had the courage to say without any reserve, like the Indian, that this enigmatic World-Power is one Deity, one Trinity, to lift up the image of the Force that acts in the world in the figure not only of the beneficent Durga, but of the terrible Kali in her blood-stained dance of destruction and to say, "This too is the Mother; this also know to be God; this too, if thou hast the strength, adore." And it is significant that the religion which has had this unflinching honesty and tremendous courage, has succeeded in creating a profound and wide-spread spirituality such as no other can parallel. For truth is the foundation of real spirituality and courage is its soul. tasyai satyam āyatanam.

…   more »

Jesus is said to have raised people from the dead, made the dumb speak, restored sight to the blind ... until he was brought an idiot to be made intelligent—and Jesus ran away!

...   more »

'Father,' she says, 'though in me you behold
The injury of many a blasting hour,
Let it not tell your judgment I am old;
Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power:
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, If I had self-applied
Love to myself and to no love beside. …
'O, that infected moisture of his eye,
O, that false fire which in his cheek so glow'd,
O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly,
O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow'd,
O, all that borrow'd motion seeming owed,
Would yet again betray the fore-betray'd,
And new pervert a reconciled maid!'

…   more »

This is an essay aimed at clarification and is written in the form of a letter, dated 28 June 1988, addressed to Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran. It arose out of Jugal Kishore Mukherjee’s deep concerns apropos of certain kinds of assertions made in the Ashram’s Archives and Research biennial. He wondered whether controversial statements made in it were seen and approved by them, they constituting the two-member supervisory committee looking into these publications. The letter was written solely with the intention of rectifying the inadvertent slips and restoring the right perspective in the matter of publications in an official periodical. Did it happen? It is a big question but the answer is short: it didn’t. We could discuss this aspect separately, but first in the following is the full essay Jugal Kishore Mukherjee had drafted in the interest of the Ashram, in terms of values to which one must adhere. Retrospectively, it may be pointed out that had a due note of his well-studied and well-documented concerns taken seriously by the advisory and official members, the present imbroglio regarding The Lives of Sri Aurobindo would have been avoided. That could also be true in the case of Savitri-editing.

...   more »

---

---

When I remember all these small little things also about Amal I feel very happy, as if some kind of inner contact gets renewed with him. Indeed Amal is always with us, with his bright face and smiling eyes—a direct ray from the bright Sun sent to this lovely earth of ours. I don’t know about his poetry, but the warmth of his soul is here. I don’t think he was one who would like to retire from this lovely earth of ours and live in some far-off cold remote heaven. He is here.

…   more »

---

---

…   more »

Obedience is the sign of the servant, but that is the lowest stage of this relation, dāsya. Afterwards we do not obey, but move to his will as the string replies to the finger of the musician. To be the instrument is this higher stage of self-surrender and submission. But this is the living and loving instrument and it ends in the whole nature of our being becoming the slave of God, rejoicing in his possession and its own blissful subjection to the divine grasp and mastery. With a passionate delight it does all he wills it to do without questioning and bears all he would have it bear, because what it bears is the burden of the beloved being.

…   more »

Sri Aurobindo to the Mother: “It is the Overmind you will manifest. It will be a new religion full of miracles. But the Overmind on earth will be so glorious that people will want nothing beyond it. The Supermind will be held up for millenniums. It is the Supermind we want to establish.”

…   more »

There is no bamboo-tube telescope, no awl of imagination,
There are no river-beds, no estuaries, no lakes, no swans,
The landscape has vanished and there are no wheels of revolution.
He is what Yin and Yang gave him, he is simply the son of Tao;
Chuangtse is drowned in the Autumn flood of a hundred streams.
The waterfall has become quiet—yet the unknown is beyond.
Will Chuangtse then climb up the mountain to be the mountain?

...   more »

This is an essay aimed at clarification and is written in the form of a letter, dated 28 June 1988, addressed to Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran. It arose out of Jugal Kishore Mukherjee’s deep concerns apropos of certain kinds of assertions made in the Ashram’s Archives and Research biennial. He wondered whether controversial statements made in it were seen and approved by them, they constituting the two-member supervisory committee looking into these publications. The letter was written solely with the intention of rectifying the inadvertent slips and restoring the right perspective in the matter of publications in an official periodical. Did it happen? It is a big question but the answer is short: it didn’t. We could discuss this aspect separately, but first in the following is the full essay Jugal Kishore Mukherjee had drafted in the interest of the Ashram, in terms of values to which one must adhere. Retrospectively, it may be pointed out that had a due note of his well-studied and well-documented concerns taken seriously by the advisory and official members, the present imbroglio regarding The Lives of Sri Aurobindo would have been avoided. That could also be true in the case of Savitri-editing.

...   more »

On the morning of the 29th, I woke up ("woke up," I mean "got up") with the consciousness the Vedic Rishis called the "straight consciousness," the one that comes straight from the Lord—the Truth-Consciousness, basically. It was absolutely quiet, calm, but with a sort of supersensation of an absolute well-being. Well-being, security—yes, a security—an indescribable peace, without the contrast of opposites. And it lasted about three hours, continuously, solidly, effortlessly.

...   more »

The phrase "slave of God" occurs in a speech of the Godhead into whom Death is transformed after Savitri's victory, a passage that is now part of Book Eleven, "The Book of Everlasting Day". But this passage in its original form, which already included the line in question, was written as early as 1916. It is found in the notebook used by Sri Aurobindo for his first known draft of the poem, consisting of some eight hundred lines and not yet divided into books or cantos. This nearly complete draft of what would evolve into an epic of thirty times that length is preceded in the small notebook by a three-page draft of the opening—dated on the second page, "August 8th 9th 1916"—

…   more »

Never dared he risk an error,
Casanova with a ring,
handsome, tame suburban terror,
Casanova on a string,

Casanova, the best:
a lovely beast, a beast to feast
from pillow to post,
a beast to boast.

…   more »

Here is Aswapati who is making tremendous progress after two early major spiritual realizations, of static Oneness and dynamic Power, of the Passive Brahman and Active Brahman. In him a greater being sees a greater world. To him come crowding the gifts of the spirit. Mind, life, body have wakened to their true reality. Sheath after sheath of the physical experience the entry of the higher powers in it. A world unseen unknown by outward mind appears in the silent spaces of the soul. And what does Aswapati see in it, in that world invisible to our outward faculties? He sees the perfect ones wearing the glory of a deathless form. They are lain in the arms of the Eternal’s peace, they are rapt in the hear-beats of God-ecstasy.

…   more »

It is only by the inner opening and contact that you can realise my presence.

The Mother

...   more »

Throughout the Record of Yoga, we see Sri Aurobindo gradually perfecting the faculties of knowledge and power, trikāladrsti and tapas, in a progressive movement towards a consummation he envisioned as a state of omniscience and omnipotence, insofar as such a state is at all possible for an embodied being on earth. In Savitri, though the Sanskrit terms used constantly in the Record of Yoga do not occur, the concepts expressed by the words trikāladrsti and tapas were central to the poem from its earliest versions and developed as Sri Aurobindo ascended to higher and higher planes in the scale leading from mind to supermind.

…   more »

There the racing game of the squirrels goes on for generations:
Under this tree was born the mating hour devised by the night,
Under this tree died the seeds that never saw the sun’s beam,
Under this tree has been the squirrel-routine of life and death.

...   more »