Tapping the subliminal

The importance of subliminal self: It is in the subliminal that true spiritual experiences occur, and therefore, it is an instrument of experience By N SHAKUNTALA MANAY

Deccan Herald Tuesday, February 15, 2005

In Sri Aurobindo’s writing, ‘consciousness’ is a key word which is frequently used. This is a self-aware force of existence. It refers to a wakeful awareness of a dynamic creative energy. Below this is the subconscious and above it reaches the superconscience, which is beyond the mind. Besides these, Aurobindo refers to another state of the consciousness, which is subliminal. The wakeful awareness is the surface consciousness, which refers to the outer gross states of the physical, vital and mental, and the inner state that is subliminal, which combines the inner physical, inner vital and inner mental states, finally entering into psychic consciousness. The psyche is the divine spark hidden behind all these, which has descended into manifestation and is capable of evolving to unite with the divine reality. It supports all others from behind.

The importance of the subliminal in the growth of the psychic consciousness is of utmost importance in the spiritual journey. It is this which is the reality behind the superficial (surface) awareness. It is immensely wider and superior in capacity and is the refined purity of being. This power behind the surface being is vaster and luminous, opening directly to the superpower. Hence, when this pure being is progressively brought forward through the subtle hidden sheaths of the physical, vital and mental, the psychic entity, a pure power of light, love and joy, the essence of refined being, is experienced. It is in the subliminal that true spiritual experiences occur, and therefore, it is an instrument of experience. An individual, if he or she merely remains in the surface consciousness, will have a limited experience, as he or she would feel the acute limitations of the body, life (or vital) and the mind.

To feel that vaster universe as part of oneself, the subliminal, through deeper experiences, removes the veil between the individual and the universe. The experiences become richer, as one is enabled to receive the universe of contrary forces with indifference but with equal delight (samata). Thus, individuality widens to accommodate the universe. The individual subjectively experiences the objective universal and experiences the power to transcend the physical (grosser) world. The subliminal is the subtlest consciousness where the dream state can be useful to solve the problems of life. It is subliminal intelligence which can release premonitions, give warnings, indicate the future through symbol images, and give coherence to the surface activities. Because, it is the dream state which allows entry to the higher region of the consciousness. Keeping a record of dream experiences is a useful habit to bridge the gulf between the consciousness and the sub-consciousness. It enlarges the consciousness beyond the wakeful surface state. The dream experience takes one to other planes of our being, which is not possible in a wakeful state. Therefore, Aurobindo calls the subliminal self a “dream builder”.

Evolution can be accelerated as ascent to the higher planes of existence becomes possible. It is because the processed knowledge, gathered through inner experiences, brings the future closer in the light of psychic aspiration. The individual begins to blossom in becoming what was hidden and begins to realise and manifest his or her deeper soul.In this process, the weaker sheaths of the physical, vital and mental can be strengthened with the knowledge gathered of one’s realised identity, and the world view changes. What is required for developing one’s own consciousness can be acquired. The change is an organic transformation. Hellen Keller developed her states of consciousness only through the sense of touch when all her other senses had failed. The soul within gathered experiences of the outer world and she experienced the universe by enlarging her inner state. This is the power of the subliminal consciousness.

To tap this secret consciousness of the subliminal is to gradually open to the superconscient. While the subliminal and the subconscient are like the waves on the surface of the sea, the supraconscient is the higher ether which controls the surface of the sea. The subliminal, when it connects itself to the superconscience, has the power to penetrate the existing physical world to a still higher quality world. The problems of human nature which cannot be solved at the surface superficial level receive divine intervention. The spiritual journey is evolutionary. Therefore, it is an inner journey through the inner physical, the inner vital and the inner mental, and the subliminal is like a submarine with its periscope in the superconscience which makes human journey safe, and steady in reaching divine destiny. This journey is long, yet when gone through, the experience becomes enriching as one becomes what one cherishes and sincerely aspires for. All experiences will be of fulfilment, with a sense of completeness and wholesomeness.

Integral Healing

Compiled from the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication, 2004, pp 236, Rs 105). The book explores how the hidden causes of physical disorders can be uprooted by discovering and utilising one’s inner power and participating consciously in the accelerated evolutionary process known as Internal Yoga. Deccan Herald Sunday, February 20, 2005

Free Progress System

Values for the soul: Sri Aurobindo proposed an education system guided by the soul. As we celebrate his 131st birthday today, S V SABNIS highlights the need to incorporate Aurobindo’s doctrine in our education system Deccan Herald, Friday, August 15, 2003

No education system can be complete without value education. Unfortunately, a glaring lacuna in the NCERT documents on value education is the non-inclusion of the concept of dynamic spirituality, which transcends all religions, and is meant not for rejecting life but conquering it with the power of spirit. It is here that Sri Aurobindo’s doctrine on value education assumes significance. Sri Aurobindo, along with the Mother constituted a treatise on value education, which included Integral Education with Free Progress System. This education system is guided by the soul, as against the present education system that is guided by the mind. It propagates moral and dynamic spiritual values. In India, there are only two authenticated schools, one in Pondicherry and the other at Delhi that impart integral education with free progress system. The essential reason behind the limited popularity of this system is that it is not job-oriented, which is the only prerequisite seen as worthy of consideration today.

Ever since 1949, various committees and commissions on education, headed by experts like Dr S Radhakrishnan, Dr V K R V Rao and Dr D S Kothari have furnished reports to the Union Ministry to inculcate universal human values of love, co-operation, democratic decision making, and so on. With this background, in 1986, the Parliament approved the National Policy on Education (NPE), which laid emphasis on value education for the cultivation of social and moral values. The NPE maintains that in our culturally plural society, education should foster universal and eternal values oriented towards the unity and integrity of people of all caste and class backgrounds. These values are in conformity with the fundamental duties of an Indian citizen enshrined in Article 51 A of the Indian Constitution.

Despite these documentations on value education, the education departments at the Centre and State governments have not been fully successful in implementing these recommendations in their complete essence. Nor has it been possible for the Central Board of Secondary Education, so far guided by the NCERT and its NRCVE (National Research Centre on Value Education) to evolve and adopt a specific curricula and class-wise textbook syllabus on value education from Class I to Class X. The best move would be to introduce integral education with free progress system into the present education system through textbooks meant for Classes I to X, or XII. At a time when there is greater need to eliminate obscurantism, religious fanaticism, violence, superstition and fatalism from the society, Sri Aurobindo’s teachings would be ideal as the values in his system are secular and transcend religious considerations.

The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind

Sri Aurobindo
Savitri A Legend and a Symbol
PART ONE BOOK TWO The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto Eleven The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind

• There ceased the limits of the labouring Power.
• But being and creation cease not there.
• For Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind,
• It is greater than its earthly instrument:
• The godhead crammed into mind's narrow space
• Escapes on every side into some vast
• That is a passage to infinity.
• It moves eternal in the spirit's field,
• A runner towards the far spiritual light,
• A child and servant of the spirit's force.
• But mind too falls back from a nameless peak.
• His being stretched beyond the sight of Thought.
• For the spirit is eternal and unmade
• And not by thinking was its greatness born,
• And not by thinking can its knowledge come.
• It knows itself and in itself it lives,
• It moves where no thought is nor any form.
• Its feet are steadied upon finite things,
• Its wings can dare to cross the Infinite.
• Arriving into his ken a wonder space
• Of great and marvellous meetings called his steps,
• Where Thought leaned on a Vision beyond thought
• And shaped a world from the Unthinkable.
• On peaks imagination cannot tread,
• In the horizons of a tireless sight,
• Under a blue veil of eternity
• The splendours of ideal Mind were seen
• Outstretched across the boundaries of things known.
• Origin of the little that we are,
• Instinct with the endless more that we must be,
• A prop of all that human strength enacts,
• Creator of hopes by earth unrealised,
• It spreads beyond the expanding universe;
• It wings beyond the boundaries of Dream,
• It overtops the ceiling of life's soar.
• Awake in a luminous sphere unbound by Thought,
• Exposed to omniscient immensities,
• It casts on our world its great crowned influences,
• Its speed that outstrips the ambling of the hours,
• Its force that strides invincibly through Time,
• Its mights that bridge the gulf twixt man and God,
• Its lights that combat Ignorance and Death.

Poetry and music come from the inner being

SRI AUROBINDO

Letters on Yoga Volume 1 Section Nine

I suppose I have had myself an even more completely European education than you, and I have had too my period of agnostic denial, but from the moment I looked at these things I could never take the attitude of doubt and disbelief which was for so long fashionable in Europe. Abnormal, otherwise supraphysical experiences and powers, occult or yogic, have always seemed to me something perfectly natural and credible. Consciousness in its very nature could not be limited by the ordinary physical human-animal consciousness, it must have other ranges. Yogic or occult powers are no more supernatural or incredible than is supernatural or incredible the power to write a great poem or compose great music; few people can do it, as things are, – not even one in a million; for poetry and music come from the inner being and to write or to compose true and great things one has to have the passage clear between the outer mind and something in the inner being. That is why you got the poetic power as soon as you began yoga, – yogic force made the passage clear. It is the same with yogic consciousness and its powers; the thing is to get the passage clear, – for they are already within you. Of course, the first thing is to believe, aspire and, with the true urge within, make the endeavour.

Sri Aurobindo's Cosmology - The Seven Planes

Sri Aurobindo's writing style, like that of other esotericists like Blavatsky and Steiner, is heavy and repetitious. This is unfortunate, as the poor style veils a cosmology of great comprehensiveness and profundity. Of great relevance book is his detailed map of states of consciousness. Influenced by such diverse sources as the Theosophical idea of seven planes of consciousness and existence, the "Hindu" (Vaishvanite) Puranas with their poorly defined idea of seven Lokas or "Worlds", and the early Taittiriya Upanishad (700 B.C.E.), which refers to an ascending series of five "selves" (atma) - Food (anna), Life (prana), Mind (manas), Consciousness (Vijnana), and Bliss (Ananda); Aurobindo postulated seven planes of being.

But these are not equivalent to the Theosophical ones. The higher four are totally transcendent planes of infinite Consciousness and Bliss. The lower three - the physical, vital, and mental - are the planes of finite existence. Beyond all the planes was "the Supreme" or Absolute.

• The Supreme Sachchidananda Para Prakriti Para Maya Sat Infinite Existence Chit-Tapas Infinite Consciousness and Will Ananda Infinite Bliss Supermind Infinite Truth-Consciousness
• Prakriti "Lower Hemisphere" Mind (both spiritual and mundane levels) Overmind Intuition Illumined Mind Higher Mind Thinking Mind Life Matter Physical Subconscient Inconscient

The four higher planes are eternally pre-existent, and constitute the modes or qualities of the Absolute (in Indian philosophy, the Absolute is described as being Sat-Chit-Ananda or Sachchidananda, of the nature of pure Being, Consciousness, and Bliss. The Supermind is Sachchidananda in manifestation; the transitional stage between the unchanging planes of Sat, Chit-Tapas and Ananda and the finite lower ones. Aurobindo considers it pivotal for the Divine transformation of the world. "It alone contains the self-determining Truth of the Divine Consciousness (that) is necessary for a Truth-creation." [Letters on Yoga, vol 1, p.239]

Between the Supermind and the lower three planes is a transitional level, the Overmind, a level of global or cosmic consciousness. Beneath the Overmind one passes from Truth (albeit a multiform, rather than as in the Supermind a Unitary, Truth) into falsehood and ignorance. These are the lower planes of Mind, Life, and Matter. It is also in these lower planes that their dwells the Divine Soul, or "Psychic Being".

The terminology in all this is a little confusing, for Aurobindo and Mirra use the term Life or "Vital" to designate what Western occultists and Theosophists call the Astral plane. "Vital" in this context therefore has nothing to do with the life-principle (the Etheric plane of Steiner and the Prana of the Hindus). Similarily, "Psychic" is used to refer to the Spiritual or Higher Self, the Divine Soul, rather than the Astral realms, as is the case with the common understanding of the word (e.g. "psychic experiences"). This curious terminology derives originally from Max Theon, Mirra's teacher in occultism Kheper Home

Mud Map of Consciousness

Inspired by Power vs. Force - The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour

Dr. David Hawkins, 1995.

PRF Brown, EDITOR Mountain Man Graphics The Mountain Man Mandala

What the author and researcher Dr. David Hawkins has achieved is a means to discuss the nature of consciousness as a continuum, in much the same manner as the eastern traditions have been doing for many many thousands of years. Only this time, the tabulation has been prepared by western scientific practice, and it should be highly regarded by all students of life seeing as though it addresses the subject matter of human consciousness itself.

In the following article I discuss the implications of the generalisation of the author's original detailed tabulation into the three (coloured) zones. This may or may not represent the original intentions of the author, however as the author's publication company Veritas, objects to the disclosure of the author's full "map of consciousness" then we have to be content to simply discuss a simplification of the original.

The findings of the author seem to suggest that that any map of human consciousness is essentially a landscape which has three predominant regions. These three regions have been color-coded, and are discussed separately below. However in the first instance it is better to introduce a summary of these three regions of consciousness as follows:

This realm is the realm marked in red, with the increasingly calibrated series of levels ... shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger and pride. In this realm survival is via the knowledge and use of force verse force, and consciousness is very much held in sway by the tidal influences of the outer world. It represents a terrestrial environment in constant change and flux, a world where a tidal influence is exerted by force over all things. None of the influences in this realm are reliable, none are lasting, none are energy efficient, and none are worth even thinking about. The student of life should stay out of the red. None of it is worth anything.

There is a narrow band of the horizon between the lower environment of consciousness and the upper environmental levels of consciousness, and this is reserved for what the author terms the level of courage. This realm is marked in yellow/gold colour. Courage should be governed by the realm above, not the realm beneath. Courage is a vehicle by which the human soul become known to the student of life.

This realm is that marked in green, and corresponds to the higher calibrated levels of consciousness delineated by the author as neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace and enlightenment. In this realm survival is subsumed by association and knowledge of the cosmic powers of the inner realm of consciousness. The entire planet which is shared by life is open to the cosmic environment which can be seen as another ocean in itself, just alot bigger than what our terrestrial perspective affords. As travellers of the mountain paths know well, such trails reach closer to the sky, and provide direction in this process we call life.

Being No One

Allan Hobson

PSYCHE June 2005: VOLUME 11 ISSUE 5 2

I praise Thomas Metzinger's book On Being No One by calling my essay "Finally Some One" meaning that I am pleased to see a first rate philosopher so carefully reading the neurobiological literature. Especially as it pertains to sleep and dreaming.
2. How to read Being No One
How to read a book that is 634 pages long? My answer is to browse (as if this were a reference book) looking for a discussion of subjects that you know well enough to appreciate Metzinger’s analysis and then venture into more unfamiliar territory. Another answer is to emphasize the readability of Thomas Metzinger’s discussion of even the most obscure philosophical concepts. It is a pleasure to report that every page indeed every line of the book is well written and understandable.
3. The book itself
Having refreshingly introduced the questions he wants to answer (Part I) and the tools (Part II) he uses to answer them, Thomas Metzinger then lists eleven constraints upon theneural functions that could qualify as phenomenal representations (Part III). I found this section of the book to be annoyingly obscure and abstract. It blocks the reader’s access tothe more interesting discussion of neurophenomological case studies in Part III. And it is in Part IV that the clinician and the experimentalist will feel most at home. The same cycle recurs in the second half of the book. Opaque and abstract discussions of Tools (Part IV), Representational deep structure (Part VII) proceed a second pass at Neurophenomenological case studies (Part VII) before the conclusion (Part VIII). I found myself most at home in Part VII.

On balance it may seem gratuitous to fault such a tour de force. In this book Metzinger covers just about everything. He is remarkably eclectic and balanced in his treatment of the philosophical and cognitive neuroscience literature. He proposes his own models which are original and interesting. What doesn’t he do? Metzinger doesn’t tell us that we need a more tactical approach to collecting first person data and a more strategic approach to correlating it with third person data. He doesn’t take seriously enough the charge of Anti Revonsuo (and David Chalmers for that matter) that the time is ripe for breaking down both the institutional and the methodological walls that divide the fields of philosophy, psychology and physiology and the tasks of consciousness science. I hope this essay will goad him into taking further step in this direction.
4. Why I like the book
The book is alive with the clarity and openness of Metzinger’s mind. From my initial reading I was so sure that Metzinger was authentic and sincere that I called him up to say so. Thomas Metzinger may be "No One" in the sense that there is no self without a brain but he is surely some one in the sense of a fully embodied self, a brain with a transparent (my meaning) motivation and interest in the truth. I have never read such a complete and penetrating analysis of my own scientific field: the cognitive neuroscience of sleep and dreaming. In this, as in other parts of the book that I understand well enough to comment, Metzinger cuts to the heart of the matter.

I have always thought that the scientific study of sleep and dreaming was relevant to a science of consciousness. Metzinger endorses this view and brings to our field his own way of understanding the relationship of mind to body. Metzinger fully understands the state dependence of conscious experience and appreciates how much we can learn from an examination of the alterations in phenomenal experience that accompany the now well understood changes in brain function during sleep. In particular, he appreciates that the robust differences between dreaming and waking consciousness (such as the visuomotor hallucinosis, the delusional belief that one is awake, the distinctive defects in cognition, the heightened emotionality, and the poor memory) have their neural correlates in the altered neural activation pattern of REM sleep.

Thus it is all the more surprising to note that Thomas Metzinger does not consider first person reports of conscious experience to be data. The importance of sleep and dreaming to understanding consciousness is a key point upon which Metzinger and I agree. So does Anti Revonsuo who goes so far as to suggest in his chapter Neural Correlates of Consciousness that a vigorous and sophisticated scientific assault on consciousness might well focus on dreaming as a virtual reality simulation that illustrates the brain’s intrinsic capacity to create a self and a world that are off-line but richly detailed.
5. What I don’t like about the book
Metzinger doesn’t tell us he himself is a lucid dreamer. Is this because he doesn’t trust first person data? On page 591 he states: "My politically incorrect conclusion is that first person data do not exist."

The other worlds

Sri Aurobindo passed away 55 years back, on December 5, 1950. He is perceived as a great soul but his writings have yet to earn the reception they deserve. The vast body of his work and the difficult diction he employs, may be the reason to deter the common reader; but even the scholar is not enamoured enough of them. The most plausible factor that seems to be responsible is Sri Aurobindo’s insistence on spirituality while discussing secular themes such as politics, poetry, the arts, or education.

The convenient demarcation between secular and the sacred suits the academic approach. But for Sri Aurobindo this is a faulty notion because the causal aspect is eclipsed. The linkage between the two is less of the manner of an umbilical chord and more in the nature of interpenetrating imbrications. If our sensory and scientific construct of the world fails to accommodate such a picture, it must be understood as a lack.

Astronomy as an ancient passion has helped us to know about the outer universe. Astrology, too, by talking of stars and planets attunes us to their subtle influences. The different abodes of gods as described by various mythologies, also, permit us certain familiarity of the other worlds. But we rarely take their effect on our lives any seriously. And the task of Sri Aurobindo is to hammer the modern mind so as to rid it from secular superstitions.

The inner and the other worlds are a consistent theme in his poem, Savitri. Composed through the years from Quantum mechanics to nuclear holocaust, this modern epic puts a stamp of authority on the unseen fecund worlds and their inhabitants who are inextricably linked to our motions and emotions. To recognize this reality seriously, is what Savitri demands from its readers.

The different parts of our being and consciousness, as delineated by Sri Aurobindo in his Integral Yoga system, are nothing but the other worlds. We can well imagine our plights as puppets when disparate worlds are very much in the play to pull the strings. Somewhat similar to the insight offered by Baudrillard that it is the object which uses and employs us and not the other way round that we ordinarily perceive. But then, how do we benefit by this concept in our practical life?

That there runs a perpetual consonance between the seen and the unseen, might seem, at times, hard to digest, but a poetic impression can be allowed to swim aloft. The process should further deepen in the realm of creative imagination leading to a faint intellectual recognition. Since the notion runs counter to our egoistic autonomy, it is bound to take a long time to percolate down to the distant and defiant impulses. And regular recitation of Savitri helps here; its mantric effect casting its reach down to our body cells.

For all time and for all mankind

TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF SRI AUROINDO'S STYLE SUBLIME
V. V. B. Rama Rao LANGUAGE IN INDIA HOME PAGE Volume 3 : 8 August 2003

Intuitive knowledge leaping into speech

Hearing the subtle voice that clothes the heavens,

Carrying the splendour that has lit the suns,

They sang Infinity's names and deathless powers

In meters that reflect the worlds,

Sight's sound waves breaking from the soul's great deeps.

-- Sri Aurobindo in Savitri

Savitri is scripture as pregnant as lofty as the Upanishad. The lines cited above as an epigraph are from the holy text. The lines are mantra, revealed to the drashtas of yore with blessed resources of spiritual inwardness describing how language offers itself and performs the most sublime function through a visionary.

• We find another exegesis of the workings and ascent of thought in the drashta, the seer Sri Aurobindo's poem Thought the Paraclete.
• The mystic mind bursts forth in effulgent thought (the very spur to expression and language) aspiring to become one with the universal radiance and ultimately merging itself into its origin.
• The heightened sensibility in the inspired mind releases expressive, electrifying language. It flows forth bubbling, seeking, electrifying expression.
• The virtue of such language is that, in the initiated reader, it is capable of throwing a flood of discovered light through the medium of speech, vaak or musical sound, naada.

The poem speaks of Thought as the Holy Spirit leading the mind upward through stages: the higher mind, the illumined mind, the intuitive mind and the over mind to the supra mental region which finally leads to the identification of the finite to the infinite. What is significant here is that it is not so much a matter of style as a dimension of the inner spirit, which defies analysis. It is a highly 'intuited' revelation.

Sri Aurobindo remains a perfect example of Hero as Poet and Hero as Man of Letters expounded by Thomas Carlyle. The poet is a heroic figure belonging to all ages; whom all ages possess. He is the vates sacer, the sacred seer seen by Carlyle in Dante and Shakespeare. Sri Aurobindo answers Carlyle's description of the Poet and inspired Maker; who Prometheus-like, can shape new symbols, and bring new fire from Heaven to fix it here. "A musical thought," we are told by the Sage of Chelsea, Carlyle, "is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the innermost heart of the thing; detected the inmost mystery of it; namely the melody hidden in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its soul whereby it exists, and has a right to be here in the world. All inmost things, we may say are melodious, naturally utter themselves in song."

In this sense there is little difference between prose and poetry for the seer, the drashta. Everything is music and every thing is mantra. Everything is sweet and everything is luminous and light emitting. But, Sri Aurobindo as he said himself somewhere about his Savitri, wrote the poem just for himself. We don't find in Sri Aurobindo the despair Carlyle was said to have felt "in the face of a nature dis-godded and language desacralized." Our seer and saint Sri Aurobindo has in him the power of language to alter human lives, to take the initiated reader, his disciple and follower godward. He did re-god nature and re-sacralize language.

When a devout reader approaches the Gita , an Upanishad or a piece of any sacred text of an inspired genius, say like Sri Aurobindo, the very subject of the discourse is sublime and the appreciation of style is automatic along with the loftiness of thought, understanding, insight and intuition. The quality of communication itself is holy. Understanding. Aurolangue goes to the domain of saadhakas and enlightened ones slowly initiated and introduced to the higher realms. This is caviar to the general.

Aaryavarta has a hoary tradition of language reflecting the complexity and the sublimity of thought of her great sages, saints and seers. This unique aspect of language is reason for its glory amidst diversity and multiplicity. Here language is only a springboard to launch the reader into the spiritual. Modern models of the emerging stylistic evaluation, translation technology and procedures of splitting, and dissecting discourse to the level of morpheme and phoneme is not much of an aid to understanding Aurolangue. Hard effort in terms of pondering and contemplation is essential to get at the pure metal of the author's intuition and intent.. Hence the relevance of Ruskin's famous trope. This could even be a worthwhile caveat to readers approaching Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo's works are for all time and for all mankind. A mere reading would never do. Each line or each sentence has to be taken in slowly (chewed and digested is the Johnsonian dictum) for contemplation, eventual enlightenment, and ultimate spiritual joy, aananda. Here is a very brief example, a bit of the poem The Rose of God, that could be a useful beginning for fruitful contemplation:

Rose of God, smitten purple with the incarnate divine Desire

Rose of Life, crowded with petals, colours' lyre!

Transform the body of the mortal like a sweet and musical rhyme,

Bridge our earthward and heavenward, make deathless the children of Time.

What more aspiration or prayer could there be than this? Does this not echo many an Upanishad invocation? The harnessing of the polychromatic variations in the poem would take a separate paper for itself. The springs of spiritual aspiration lay at the bottom of the cadence and naada, which always runs as an undercurrent yielding a benediction.

As for initiation, the individual reader must fend for himself. Initiation is to being led into. A reader would do well to slowly get familiar with the seer's turn of expression with a degree of reverence. His own thought should be above the mundane, the commonplace and the routine. A basic familiarity with or an understanding of spirituality would be a great help.

Holonic sequence

A.V. Ashok

Akanksa is a key principle of holonic sequence. Any word in a sentence has been expected/anticipated by the previous word and in turn expects/anticipates the next word. Akanksa invalidates the autonomy of a word in a sentence and renders it "dialogic" or networked "across to the other word(s)." Kumarila's abhihitanvaya and Prabhakara's anvitabhidhana are opposing paradigms of the poetics of sequence: aggregative and holonic.

The most memorable expression in literature of the akanksa of time in consciousness is Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" that shows the poet seeing the Brooklyn ferry from the perspective of the expected future and also simultaneously with a superadded expectation of himself as the past for this future:

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,

Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,

Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,

Others will see the islands large and small;

Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high

A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,

Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

It avails not, time nor place – distance avails not,

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,

Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt...(Fisher 367).

The finest evocation of akanksa in recent non-fiction is Jonathan Schell's meditation in The Fate of the Earth on the "unborn" in relation to the threat of extinction posed by the nuclear peril (114-178).

Build a bridge

Don Salmon, September 8, 2001

In recent years, many have attempted to build a bridge between Indian and modern (i.e. "Western"7) psychology. Like others who are sympathetic to both the Indian tradition and modern science, I was delighted when Herbert Benson, for example, presented meditation as an empirically verifiable "relaxation response". When University of Chicago psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi likened the experimentally validated experience of "flow" to mystical states of consciousness attained by yogis throughout the ages, I took this to be a great step forward in bridging the gap between Indian and scientific psychology. I rejoiced at Stephen LaBerge's determination in looking for empirical evidence of lucid dreams, in spite of persistent and abject denial amongst mainstream dream researchers of the possibility of conscious dreaming. When he developed a technique using a combination of physiological evidence and self-report to prove the presence of self-awareness in the dream state, I believed a new interest in and acceptance of non-ordinary states of consciousness was just around the corner.

Psychologist Daniel Goleman writes, "Psychoanalytic thought... has charted aspects of what would be called 'karma' in the East in far greater detail and complexity than any Eastern school of psychology".27 Among other things, Indian psychology is said to have no equivalent of the Freudian unconscious, to be deficient in the understanding of the development of the ego, lacking in understanding of interpersonal relationships, and without a sophisticated awareness of social and cultural structures of consciousness. Charles Tart observes, "We [in the West] have studied some aspects of samsara (illusion, maya) in far more detail than the Eastern traditions that originated the concept of samsara."28

Alan Wallace and Greg Simpson, a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and a neuropsychologist respectively, have regularly brought EEG equipment to Tibetan Buddhist communities in Northern India to measure the brain waves of highly accomplished contemplatives. They are careful in their reports to describe their findings solely in terms of correlation, avoiding the assertion that contemplative experience is caused by certain conditions of the brain. Dr. Newberg, the neurologist, is another example of a sympathetic, non-reductionist researcher.

The dream researcher Stephen LaBerge represents an interesting case midway between sympathetic and reductionist stances. He doesn't state with assurance, as Alan Wallace does, that consciousness survives the death of the physical body. He remains agnostic, in contrast to this note of striking assurance from J. Allan Hobson: "The brain-mind question and the problem of consciousness are already solved... What we call 'subjectivity' is.. an emergent property that inevitably arises in any sufficiently complex sensory system composed of sensory neurons... We are ourselves, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing but the integrated neuronal activity representing our sensations of the world and our bodies - including our emotions and all the other modalities that make up our conscious and unconscious minds... How can we any longer doubt that our brains... are ourselves?"33

One such pioneer is Greg Kramer, a long-time teacher of Buddhist meditation who, in collaboration with Terri O'Fallon, has developed a meditative practice he calls "Insight Dialogue". In its simplest terms, the practice involves meditating while engaged in interpersonal interaction; in other words, speaking while meditating.

Universe, an evolutionary process

The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analyzing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above.... The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things.... You must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour."

Sri Aurobindo

This phrase, "All Life is Yoga", appears on the frontispiece of Sri Aurobindo's book, "The Synthesis of Yoga". It refers to his vision of the universe as an evolutionary process in which the hidden or involved Divine consciousness in matter is seeking to reunite with its source, the Divine Spirit. "Yoga" refers to any process by which an apparently separate or finite consciousness attains (or regains) union with the Infinite Divine Reality. In Sri Aurobindo's vision, the consciousness of all individuals and all beings is seeking this reunion; hence the phrase, "All Life is Yoga".

According to Sri Aurobindo, we have - in the depths of our heart - a means for direct, experiential access to the universal force of evolution, the force which is leading the world toward rejoining (i.e. yoking) with its Divine Source. Focusing on the center of the chest, concentrating on the feeling of aspiration in the center of our being, we come into contact with the energy ("shakti") which moves the universe. Eventually, we learn to connect with the same energy in all parts of our being - physical, vital, mental and spiritual. By consciously connecting with this energy, we become integrated individually - within ourselves; universally - with the All, the Divine in everything and the Divine as everything - and with the transcendent - the Absolute which is beyond all human imagining. This is the source and the means of a truly integral transformative practice.

Don Salmon

Imagine the endlessness of Time

In the passage which follows, Sri Aurobindo invites us to still for a moment the voices of doubt and fear, to take a leap of faith across the threshold of the mind, and have a glimpse of "what infinite enjoyments.... what luminous reaches of spontaneous knowledge, what wide calms of our being" may lie in wait if we would dare to take Indian psychology seriously: Don Salmon

"Lift your eyes towards the Sun; He is there in that wonderful heart of life and light and splendor. Watch at night the innumerable constellations glittering like so many solemn watchfires of the Eternal in the limitless silence which is no void but throbs with the presence of a single calm and tremendous existence; see there Orion with his sword and belt shining...Sirius in his splendor, Lyra sailing billions of miles away in the ocean of space. Remember that these innumerable worlds, most of them mightier than our own, are whirling with indescribable speed at the beck of that Ancient of Days whither none but He knoweth, and yet that they are a million times more ancient than your Himalaya, more steady than the roots of your hills and shall so remain until He at his will shakes them off like withered leaves from the eternal tree of the Universe. Imagine the endlessness of Time, realize the boundlessness of Space; and then remember that when these worlds were not, He was, the Same as now, and when these are not, He shall be, still the Same; perceive that beyond Lyra He is and far away in Space where the stars of the Southern Cross cannot be seen, still He is there.

"And then come back to the Earth and realize who this He is. He is quite near to you. See yonder old man who passes near you crouching and bent, with his stick. Do you realize that it is God who is passing? There a child runs laughing in the sunlight. Can you hear Him in that laughter? Nay, He is nearer still to you. He is in you, He is you. It is yourself that burns yonder millions of miles away in the infinite reaches of Space, that walks with confident steps on the tumbling billows of the ethereal sea; it is you who have set the stars in their places and woven the necklace of the suns not with hands but by that Yoga, that silent actionless impersonal Will which has set you here today listening to yourself in me. Look up, O child of the ancient Yoga, and be no longer a trembler and a doubter; fear not, doubt not, grieve not; for in your apparent body is One who can create and destroy worlds with a breath."

A myth for our time

David Johnston

The existentialist psychologist, Rollo May (1991), wrote a book entitled The Cry for Myth where he expressed his conviction in the (urgent) need for myth in our day. Living myth, according to both him and Campbell (1975), contributes to a sense of individual and communal identity, as well as provides the foundation for a moral order. In addition, they each contended, myth can awaken consciousness to the mystery of being or the mysterium tremendum et fascinens of the existential nature of the universe.

In my opinion, Sri Aurobindo's poem Savitri fulfills all these requirements for the new age that is in the process of being bom. The poem is, in fact, a dialogue between a highly individuated individual and the archetypal powers of the unconscious, fulfilling in a superlative fashion Jung's appeal for the need, today, for an active dialogue between the conscious and the unconscious. The result is a symbolic myth that speaks directly to what Sri Aurobindo referred to as the "Cosmic Self", that is the individual's innermost being and the "general mind of man" (1970b, p. 800).

Campbell (1973) likened mythologies and religions to great poems. The poet, according to Robert Graves (1978), was originally a priest and seer, at least in the Celtic tradition. This is also true of other traditions including the Hindu tradition, dating back to the time of the mantras of the Vedic cycle, some three to five thousand years ago. Sri Aurobindo is a contemporary poet-seer and Savitri a high order mantric poem. The mantra consists of words of power that find their source deep within, while being "framed in the heart" (Sri Aurobindo, quoted in Pandit, 1967/1970/1972, p. 35). According to Sri Aurobindo, its purpose is to "create vibrations in the inner consciousness" that encourage the realization of what the mantra symbolizes (p. 35). Savitri, in other words, is not only a visionary poem, but its mantric quality renders it a supreme vehicle for the transformation of consciousness and for a life to be organized around the Self.

Perhaps it is not correct to say that there is no coalescing myth or worldview that provides a focus for life today. But, if there is, it is a narrow one organized around materialistic science, technology, consumerism and the profit motive, somewhat modified by humanistic concerns. Moreover, as the industrial age gives way to the information age and the modern mind gives way to post-modernism, a centerless, open-ended relativistic world without reference to any authority is growing, where even this focus is being increasingly subjected to narcissistic individualism and the will to power. This comes along with the quantification of life, social isolation, mass-mindedness and alienation from the instincts and the power of symbols. Jung's observation that everywhere one hears the cry for a Weltanschauung (1967/1975,p. 337), that is a meaningful worldview or philosophy of life, is perhaps more relevant today, at least in North America, than ever.

When a people's myth breaks down, life becomes fragmented and disoriented. This has always been the case, whether it be in the second and third century classical Greece, Egypt of three thousand, BC or the Hebrew world of Isaiah. During the breakdown of classical Greece, Lucretius wrote that he could see "aching hearts in every home ... forced to vent themselves in recalcitrant repining" (quoted in May, 1991, p. 16). In Proverbs 29:18, we are warned that when there is no vision, people destroy themselves. It is not difficult for sensitive individuals to relate to both these observations today. Increasingly, people find life meaningless and without purpose, while defending themselves in all manner of ways, whether it be through mindless consumerism, obsessive involvement with new technology, or through excessive use of alcohol and drugs, whether legal or illicit. Add to this a popular culture, - movies, music and tv. programs, that appeals to the lowest common denominator, while often celebrating destructive tendencies and shadow qualities, and the situation looks anything but hopeful.

People at all times have had a coalescing worldview that gives meaning to existence and focus to all activities of life and social patterns. At least, this is the case in normal times when society is functioning creatively and productively in tune with its ideals. The most recent period in Western consciousness of an integrated worldview dates back to the middle ages, when all life and art was organized around a Christian conception of life, based on a geocentric universe. There was, however, considerable repression which exploded with the Renaissance, the period when there was a creative shift in consciousness towards more direct concern and involvement with life in this world, along with the exaltation of the human ego. This coincided with a heliocentric conception of the universe and the beginnings of the development of the scientific mind and positivism or objective reason.

Today, not only has our thinking turned more subjective but science has given us a new view of the reality of the physical universe. Now the sun itself is perceived as but a star amongst billions of stars, and our universe a part of a galaxy of stars and planets, amongst millions of galaxies. Meanwhile, leading physicists have come to regard physical reality to be of a unitary nature. In psychology, C.G. Jung (1967/1975) has given evidence for the unitary nature of all reality, both physical and spiritual, in his conception of a unus mundus.

The chaos of the present post-modern condition is giving birth to a deep-seated yearning for direction and purpose, integrated around a spiritual center and wholeness. There is a cry for a guiding myth and an integral Weltanshauung that is in harmony with the most contemporary view of reality, and that does not repress life but fulfills it in all its multifacetedness. There is, in addition, growing awareness, especially among women, of a need for a re-evaluation of the feminine, which in some quarters is acknowledged as a need for a return of the Goddess. As a mythic poem of the Goddess as heroine, who assimilates death in order to release the soul and truth of being into life, Sri Aurobindo's is a remarkable response to all these aspirations. It is a myth for our time.

Sri Aurobindo's epic poem, Savitri, is a symbolic myth that responds to a deeply felt need in the contemporary mind. Not only does it represent a world view that is in harmony with the most recent understanding of scientific reality; but, as a symbol, it penetrates to the essential truth of that reality. It concomitantly describes what is involved in the fulfillment of a spiritually individuated life. This is the goal of Jung's myth of consciousness for our time. Not only is Savitri a vision for individual and collective self-fulfillment, but, as a mantra, it has a directly transformative effect on the inner consciousness. Such a magnificent poem calls for intelligent reflection.

David Johnston is a Jungian psychotherapist with a private practice in Victoria, B.C. You can read more of his work, and see some of his art, at http://www.theorems.com/johnston

le surhomme, the transitional being

Review of Beyond Man by Georges Van Vrekhem

By Carel Thieme from The Awakening Ray, Jan/Feb 1998, p. 34-35.

If any persons from India's political history, philosophical thought and spiritual greatness can be labeled as The Great Unknown, they are Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Few indeed know about Sri Aurobindo's role as one of the leaders of India's early independence movement; or of his theory of evolution beyond mankind; or of his and The Mother's occult action on world events. Even less is their true mission known: to bring down on earth a higher level of consciousness, called by Sri Aurobindo "the Supermind", in order to make a divine life on earth possible. For, says Sri Aurobindo, "Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges."

The book comes as an unexpected, agreeable and timely surprise, in this 125th year of Sri Aurobindo's birthday and the 50th anniversary of India's freedom, to which not only Sri Aurobindo but also The Mother have contributed so much. While reading, one starts to realize how much outward facts are determined by interventions from other levels of consciousness, for which those facts are only the external appearances and signs. The writer has presented us the biographical material in this context, for instance when explaining Sri Aurobindo's and The Mother's occult action on world events.

In Beyond Man, the importance of the transitional being, called in French by The Mother "le surhomme" is stressed. The Mother, announcing the descent of the consciousness of the 'surhomme' in January 1969, explains that, just as in every other great leap in evolution, this time too transitory beings or races will appear. They, born like all of us from human parents, but manifesting a certain degree of a supramental consciousness, will in turn find the key for the creation of the supramental beings. This important element in the evolution, first described by Sri Aurobindo in 'The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth' and afterwards time and again elaborated upon by The Mother, has rarely been given due attention. It is one of several illuminations in this important book.

It is unavoidable in a book of this magnitude that some prevailing standpoints and opinions on the life and work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are being put into question. But Van Vrekhem's comments are always restrained and worded in a language of moderation. He clearly has been writing in a spirit of understanding, inclusion and construction. His guiding idea seems to have been to consider all Aurobindonians as one family. So doing, Beyond Man shuns no important point or argument, but it is never polemical. Beyond Man is being published by Paragon House in fall 1998 under the title Beyond the Human Species: the Life and Work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

The Issue

Sonia Dyne

If your desire is to enter the magical world of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, you can do no better than to start with the second canto of Book Two, called The Issue. It is almost a personal invitation to meditate with Savitri herself, at a crucial turning point in her life, and to share, as far as we are able, in her discovery of the inner divine Self.

This canto is best approached with some preparation on the part of the reader. Choose a time when you are not likely to be interrupted. Try to free your mind from all preconceived ideas about what you are going to read, and put aside for the time being any religious or spiritual teaching you may have encountered in your life. Most important of all, dismiss the notion that Savitri is difficult to understand, or that it has nothing to do with the ordinary business of living.

Before beginning to read, spend a few minutes thinking about the past - your past. Starting from yesterday, trace your own life back to earliest childhood. Be detached about this, reviewing events as if you were watching a film about a stranger. Then let your imagination run freely: where were you in a life before this one? What kind of work attracted you? What qualities or talents did you admire?

Now turn to the opening lines of The Issue. You will see that Savitri did something similar to what you have just done. If you tried this at a time of conflict or trial in your own life the similarity will be even more striking, for Savitri in her surface self faced the extinction of all her worldly happiness with the untimely death of her husband Satyavan. She was at a crisis point when all human resources fail:
'An absolute supernatural darkness falls
On man sometimes when he draws near to God:
An hour comes when fail all nature's means;
Forced out from the protecting ignorance
And flung back on his naked primal need,
He at length must cast from him his surface soul
And be the ungarbed entity within:
That hour had fallen now on Savitri.'

There are moments when life forces us to exceed ourselves; these moments bring what popular wisdom calls 'a blessing in disguise.' Later we will read some mysterious lines:
One dealt with her who meets the burdened great.
Assigner of the ordeal and the path
Who chooses in this holocaust of the soul
Death, fall and sorrow as the spirit's goads....

Someone asked the Mother: who is this 'one' who dealt with Savitri? And she answered 'You can call him the Master of Evolution if you like'. Those who are ready to make the discovery of the inner Self (or as Sri Aurobindo calls it, 'the psychic being’) will often pass through a period of trial or personal tragedy or serious illness which demands more of them than 'the surface soul' can provide. Only 'the ungarbed entity within' armed with the divine strength, courage and unconditional love can act in this world free from sorrow and 'armoured against all fear'.

Savitri's profound meditation leads her beyond the happy years of her childhood into the discovery of past lives and she realises the chain of causal links that bind all human life on earth. This link she must consciously break, and live as one without a past in order to be reborn in the freedom of the spirit. As she draws nearer to the realisation of the inner Self, the sense of herself as an individual being drops away, and the burden of the whole earth becomes hers. It is an experience of utter loneliness and desolation:
A combatant in silent dreadful lists
The world unknowing, for the world she stood;
No helper had she save the strength within......

Read on now to discover Sri Aurobindo's wonderful evocation of the earth's natural beauty. Here, as it is through out the whole epic, the magnificence of Nature unspoiled by human depredations is a backdrop to the action. It enters into Savitri's meditation, preparing her for the revelation to follow:
And the mighty wideness of the primitive earth
And the brooding multitude of patient trees
And the musing sapphire leisure of the sky
And the solemn weight of the slowly passing months
Had left in her deep room for thought and God.

Wideness, silence, peace and a profound contemplation - the very conditions needed for the revelation to come. And suddenly, it is there! A door opens onto a spiritual world of harmony and bliss. Divine Love takes on the aspect of a radiant Goddess, whom Savitri realises as her true Self. The old antagonism between spirit and matter is no more. The gulf between human and divine is bridged in Savitri, the embodiment of that Love:
In her he found a vastness like his own
His high warm subtle ether he refound
And moved in her as in his natural home.

Now Savitri can no longer live an ordinary human life in the world. 'A work she had to do, a word to speak.' And more significantly 'In her the superhuman cast its seed.' This is the first direct reference in Savitri to the advent of the supramental consciousness, the ultimate stage of human evolution. Savitri realising her identity with the in-dwelling Divine, realises in the same instant her divine and human destiny:
To wrestle with the Shadow she had come
And must confront the riddle of man's birth
And life's brief struggle in dumb matter's night.
Whether to bear with Ignorance and Death
Or hew the ways of Immortality,
To win or lose the god-like game for man
Was her soul's issue thrown with destiny's dice.

This challenge faces everyone who accepts to share the vision that inspired Sri Aurobindo. All are called upon to decide 'whether to bear with Ignorance and Death' or to discover the inner being and bring it out from behind the veil. This is the issue for us as well.

In every house there is a locked door. Most of us are unaware of its existence, or if we suspect it is there we are not very curious about it. If someone told us that the place where we live held a vast treasure no doubt we would make every effort to obtain it, even to the extent of demolishing all the walls. But when the treasure is a spiritual one, we do not remove even one brick! In Savitri Sri Aurobindo affirms the existence of the door, and describes in detail what lies behind it, and even gives us the keys.

So let us join Savitri in her meditation, and who knows what door may open within?

Vibrations of flowers

Flowers and Their Messages
By The Mother

By entering into contact with the nature of a flower, its inner truth...one knows what it represents...if you are in contact with it, if you feel it, you can get an impression which may be translated as a thought.

There is a kind of identification with the vibration, a perception of the quality that it represents...little by little there occurs a close approach between these vibrations, that are of the vital-emotional order, and the vibration of mental thought.

The Mother puts us in contact with the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical vibrations of flowers and provides insight into how we can contact these energies and permit them to open us up to new forces, thoughts, emotions and directions. Practical psychology at its best. List Price: $29.95309 pp Paper Back ISBN: 094152468X

Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology

by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
compiled by Dr. A.S. Dalal

Many of us face the difficulty of trying to change something in our nature, only to find that it is either difficult or virtually impossible. We struggle, try to suppress various actions, only to have these actions rebound on us and cause feelings of failure, shame, guilt or frustration.

• The key to solving this problem actually lies in a deeper understanding of the true nature of our psychological being.
• We are actually composed of various different "parts" or "planes" of action that combine together, interact with one another and impinge upon one another.

This understanding allows us to differentiate between a mental idea, a force of will, an emotional movement, a vital energy, or a physical structure, and thereby more clearly understand the results of our psychological efforts and growth activities. 285 pp Paper Back ISBN: 0940985349

Empire of Man

By Walter J. Baylis

What a contrast there is between our own vast consciousness and the definite lines of personality which we present to others! Human beings are like extensive empires which touch only on their frontiers; like countries, they often present their most angular points to their neighbors, thus causing what we may call border difficulties and conflicts. We may think what a peculiar, cantankerous character Joe is, and wish he were different. But what you see is not Joe. It is only the aspect or side which he presents to you; and the view of him which you get depends as much upon yourself as upon Joe. What you see or know of him is but the smallest possible part of his totality. Behind the aspect turned towards you lies a vast continent of emotions, aspirations, and thoughts; and underneath that deep layers of semi-conscious feelings, mostly unknown perhaps to Joe himself.

Realizing this, we should be less impatient when our efforts to impress and modify our fellow beings fail. We are endeavoring to influence not some slight organism, but a being of unknown dimensions and hidden powers. Even ourselves we do not know thoroughly, nor can we make ourselves exactly as we would like to be. How then can we expect to make others as we would wish them to be?

In man, as in the universe, there is something infinite. That is his share of the divine nature. Full harmony among human beings can be attained only in the depths or in the uplands of consciousness; disagreements arise through superficial contacts. Not, of course, that these contacts are always disagreeable; they may be quite pleasant and may lead to deeper and truer relationships. Our various relations with different people supply another proof of our infinite variety. Different points or areas of our personality find themselves in harmony with different people. Each new friendship develops a side of our being which otherwise might have remained dormant. With one friend we may discuss politics or religion, with another literature or science, while with a third we may be so intimate that our most secret thoughts and emotions are mutually confided. Every friend is a means of cultivating a patch of our mind or a corner of our heart. Our interest in a subject often decays if we can find no one with whom to share it. The life of activity is at our borders or surface; but another life is ours in the depths of consciousness, where, as in a City of God, we have a safe retreat if things go wrong on the frontiers.

• As Emerson observed, "The soul environs itself with friends that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society."

It is by contact or collision with other minds that our own nature becomes clearer to us. The philosophers tell us that thought joins itself to matter in order to divide itself, and so make itself distinct and clear; just as the ocean only takes form as it approaches the land, and owes its shape to the indentations, nooks, and crannies of the shores which it washes. So with our personality: it finds itself and discovers its own nature by intercourse with others.

Personality and fellowship are the two poles of our being; it is as necessary to develop the one as to cultivate the other. The one reacts upon the other, not in the way of mutual destruction, but of mutual strengthening. That is to say, a person of strong individuality of character has usually also strong social instincts. The need for fellowship is not felt least acutely by him who possesses the most powerful personality, and who feels the greatest necessity for freedom in his individual development.

• Walt Whitman, for instance, presents a notable example of a temperament in which a strong love of independence and a determination to develop along his own peculiar lines were combined with a profound capacity for friendship and an enthusiastic affection for his chosen comrades. His cravings for fellowship were so intense that he pitied even a live oak growing in Louisiana, and "wondered how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there without its friend near."
• And Thomas Carlyle recognized the importance of both elements, personality and friendship, in the following passage: "A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would fail in."

(From Sunrise magazine, August/September 2005; copyright © 2005 Theosophical University Press) Current Issue Contents

Indigo Children

About the Indigo Child; The Wisdom Archive for Indigo Children

Indigo Children - Indigo Child - Crystal Children

In the spiritual community, there are many who anticipate the Emergence of a Golden Age to come. An important part of this awakening that is occuring is the coming of Children with an awakened Consciousness. These childrens have been called the Indigo children. Are the Indigo children, (variously called the Indigo children, Crystal Children, the Children of Oz) the ones who will launch humanity into a new era of consciousness, laying the groundwork for the emergence of a Golden Age?

"The Indigo Child is a boy or girl who displays a new and unusual set of psychological attributes, revealing a pattern of behavior generally undocumented before. This pattern has singularly unique factors that call for parents and teachers to change their treatment and upbringing of these kids to assist them in achieving balance and harmony in their lives, and to help them avoid frustration." Lee Carroll & Jan Tober

In an epic poem, Savitri, the late master Sri Aurobindo of India vividly describes a coming new race of humanity emerging on Earth. Was he reffering to the Indigo Childrens?

"I saw them cross the twilight of an age,

The sun-eyed children of a marvelous dawn,

Great creators with wide brows of calm,

The massive barrier-breakers of the world,

Laborers in the quarries of the gods

The architects of immortality."

To release the glory of God

The Outstretched Hand Mangesh V. Nadkarni J Y O T I An Informational and Cultural Quarterly published by The Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles * The East-West Cultural Center *

Vol. One, Number 1, February 21, 1999

The act of writing of Savitri seems to have been an event of great significance to mankind and to the earth-consciousness. The first half of the twentieth century was the period during which the leaders of thought, particularly in the West, were moving from dogmatic materialism to an absolute, stark nihilism, which saw mankind as a species "swept from darkness to darkness, like a straw on a torrent by a ruthless, mysterious and ignoble force". That was an age of the loss of faith, of spiritual desolation, of intellectual despair and metaphysical sickness, of Auden's 'Age of Anxiety' and of T. S. Eliot's 'Waste Land'. During those years, mankind was passing through a very critical phase of evolution when many thinkers wondered whether humanity, having reached such depths of despair, can even have the will to live. The scientific and philosophical revolutions of the preceding four centuries had succeeded in creating the impression that man is no more than an accidental product of creation and a pawn in the play of vast forces entirely beyond his control.

Sri Aurobindo rejects this nihilistic world-view and its despair and gloom about mankind and its future; his great contribution to human thought is that he makes it possible for us to believe that this creation and man in it are neither a purposeless illusion nor a fortuitous accident, and that they have an important meaning. This world is not an unfortunate accident; it is in fact a miracle that is gradually unfolding itself. Our mind may find this process too baffling, but that is because it is still an imperfect instrument groping after true knowledge. In Savitri, he reveals to us in many places that the present appearance of our terrestrial existence is a veiled and partial figure, and that to limit ourselves to the present formula of an imperfect humanity and to regard that as an abiding truth for all times is to disregard the evolutionary nature of this world. This tone of optimism and hope is central to the grand music of Savitri.

Take, for example, Book II, Canto 4 of Savitri. Here the poet is describing the struggle of consciousness in the early phases of its terrestrial evolution through the lower levels of the vital plane, when "the need to exist, the instinct to survive" is paramount and unseeing desire is the only instrument for growth available to this consciousness. At that point, it looked like

a vain unnecessary world

Whose will to be poor and sad results

And meaningless suffering and a grey unease

Nothing seemed worth the labour to become

But the poet perceives this wasteful-seeming effort in another perspective and describes even this as a heavenly process which aims "To release the Glory of God in Nature's mud".

A heavenly process donned this grey disguise,

A fallen ignorance in its covert night

Laboured to achieve its dumb unseemly work,

A camouflage of the Inconscient's need

To release the glory of God in Nature's mud. (page 138)

Savitri has many such passages. In fact, by writing passages such as this Sri Aurobindo seems to have virtually inundated the earth atmosphere with vibrations of hope and optimism about man and his terrestrial future. This has a parallel in his writing of The Life Divine. It is not just a fortuitous co-incidence that he wrote it and published it serially in The Arya as the First World War was waging, and he took up its revision as the Second World War erupted. It was as though he was countering the Asuric attacks on mankind by strengthening the forces of the Divine in an occult and spiritual way. The same may be said about the writing of Savitri. By writing this great epic, Sri Aurobindo seems to have countered the dark forces which were seeking to engulf mankind with a feeling of despair and defeatism about its own future.

The Subtle Body

EXPLORING INDIA'S SACRED ART

SELECTED WRITINGS OF STELLA KRAMRISCH
Edited and with a Biographical essay by Barbara Stoler Miller 1994 ISBN: 81-208-1208-x. This presents a selection of her influential essays, along with a biographical essay.

The writings collected here emphasize the cultural and symbolic values of Indian art. The first section discusses the social and religious contexts of art. This is followed by essays on various forms of ritual art. The section entitled "The Subtle Body" is derived from her term for the form that underlies concrete shapes; it includes studies of literary and visual symbolism. Further essays concentrate on formal and technical aspects of temple structure and painting in the context of their symbolic meaning. Over 150 illustrations, many of them prepared especially for this volume, provide a vital visual dimension to her writings. Also included is Joseph Dye's comprehensive bibliography of her work.

STELLA KRAMRISCH was a pioneering interpreter of Indian Art and its religious contexts. During her entire career as a creative scholar, teacher, museum curator and editor, she was a dominant force in shaping European, American and Asian notions of Indian culture. Among her many published works mention may be made of the Visnudharmottaram (Pt.III), Indian Sculpture, A Survey of Painting in Deccan, and The Hindu Temple.

BARBARA STOLER MILLER, herself a scholar of Indian literature and art who studied with Stella Kramrisch at the University of Pennsylvania, was Professor of Oriental Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Among her published works are Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva's Gitagovinda. She passed away in 1993.

Re-member who you are

Welcome Home, You are not here by accident. We are very happy that you have found us. Here at Lightworker you will find a joyous re-union in progress. It is a re-union of people re-connecting to their own power and each other. We invite you to join in on any level that you feel comfortable. Lightworker is a place to help you re-member who you really are and why you are here. Here you will find true original spiritual family. When you look at yourself through the eyes of this family, it will help you re-member who you are and why you came here. We thank you for being here at this wonderful time on the new Planet Earth. It's an exciting time to be here. Humanity is stepping into its next stage of evolution. Together, by holding hands, we can create Home on this side of the veil. We are now creating Heaven on Earth.......one heart at a time.
We hope you enjoy your time spent here. It is a very special place for us and we are glad you have found us........ Welcome Home.
Big Hugs and gentle nudges
Steve & Barbara Rother
The Lightworker gathering began as Steve Rother began receiving divinely inspired messages from the loving entities simply known as the Group. He published these messages on the Internet as the monthly Beacons of Light ~ Re-minders from Home. These messages are now translated into 20 languages.
Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, Steve and Barbara, present the Paths to Empowerment Seminars. Lightworker offers these workshops based on information from the Group for living in the higher vibrations.
Books, tapes and videos are availble in the Lightworker store.
The object of The Game is to re-member who you are and reclaim your own powers of co-creation. The next step in the game is to use those powers to create Home on this side of the veil.
The Group says that the easiest way to re-member your power is to re-connect with members of your original spiritual family.
This web site is dedicated to the creation of Heaven on Earth and the re-connecting of spiritual family.Welcome Home