He is seized by the sweetness that wins every felicity

Re: 08: A Shrine for the God of Love by RY Deshpande

on Mon 26 Mar 2007 06:01 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

The incarnate God of Love’s perfect Savitri In what manner does the incarnate God of Love become aware of incarnate Savitri? They have met on the well-planned chance road of Time and also recognised each other at once, Savitri remembering through the ages the one whose heart was longing for her as much as hers for him, he who knows that she is some immortal who has come to him putting on a mortal form. In the emerald depth of the Shalwa Woods, and in the glory of the summer morning, Satyavan is stunned by the beauty standing in front of him, “the haunting miracle of a perfect face”. The way the sea heaves to the loveliness of the full moon, so does he rush towards her.

In fact, his life is now taken by another life; he is seized by the sweetness that wins every felicity. Irresistible is the pull of that magnetic force, alchemic the charm that can transmute everything into lustrous gold of God. In it a new discovery of divinity in things is made. He has found the whole aim of existence, he has known the reality of the dreams he was cherishing through the long aeons, the possibility of heaven’s truth residing in the mortal breast. He tells Savitri: (Savitri, The Book of Love)

A well-designed dream greater than the possibilities reality can hold

Re: 08: A Shrine for the God of Love by RY Deshpande

on Sun 25 Mar 2007 02:31 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

The incarnate God of Love Incarnate Savitri is in search of the incarnate God of Love. Her quest is across lands and countries and mountains, in cities and towns and pilgrim places, and forests and hermitages, across the wide ways of the world, ways that are also uncertain. There is chance, there is fate, there is destiny and wheels are locked within wheels. But suddenly there he appears, in proper time and proper place, in the wilderness rich in its natural setting. He standing there—was that a dream? But it was a well-designed dream greater than the possibilities reality can hold. The dream happens to come true one early summer morning, at the dawn of eternal Time. It was as though the God was waiting there in the green mountainous land for the perfect shrine to walk unto him. (Savitri, The Book of Love)

But who is this incarnate God of Love? Does he expect the shrine to walk unto him? Lonely in the thick forest, how long has he been waiting for it to arrive? What is his appearance? And will he be acceptable to the shrine in the imperfection that is there all around? He is noble and grand and youthful, a weapon of living light, erect and lofty like a spear, his figure leading the splendour of the morn. There is visible wisdom on his brow, and beauty resides in his limbs, and joy makes his face gleaming-bright. Where he stands, he stands like a pillar of solid wonder, and where he moves, he moves like a lustrous statue of delight. But he is also a God who grows, grows in the divine marvel of this creation. Nature is his teacher and the wise sages of the woods are his preceptors.

We will reject, for instance, Emerson, without belittling him

Re: 08: A Shrine for the God of Love by RY Deshpande on Fri 23 Mar 2007 04:33 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Word in its triple glory When we read Sri Aurobindo’s later poetry or his theory of poetic creation, a radical change in our way of thinking makes almost look all else insubstantial; the values undergo a sea-change. All the human lamps dim and dwarf under the spiritual sun. That we start seeing how small indeed everything appears in its comparison, could be taken as a shift in our perceptions. What is ordinarily considered to be the high achievement of our faculties, appealing to the very immediate senses, very striking to the modes of our cognition and aesthetic appreciation begins to lose its force in the reckoning. We will reject, for instance, Emerson, without belittling him. His Poetry and Imagination (1872) fails to stir any response in our depth, in any unfeigned sense: “Poetry is the perpetual endeavor to express the spirit of the thing, to pass the brute body and search the life and reason which causes it to exist;--to see that the object is always flowing away, whilst the spirit or necessity which causes it subsists. Its essential mark is that it betrays in every word instant activity of mind, shown in new uses of every fact and image, in preternatural quickness or perception of relations. All its words are poems. It is a presence of mind that gives a miraculous command of all means of uttering the thought and feeling of the moment. The poet squanders on the hour an amount of life that would more than furnish the seventy years of the man that stands next him.”

And about rhyme-melody-rhythm: “We are lovers of rhyme and return, period and musical reflection. The babe is lulled to sleep by the nurse's song. Sailors can work better for their yo-heave-o. Soldiers can march better and fight better for the drum and trumpet. Metre begins with pulse-beat, and the length of lines in songs and poems is determined by the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs. If You hum or whistle the rhythm of the common English metres, --of the decasyllabic quatrain, or the octosyllabic with alternate sexisyllabic, or other rhythms,--you can easily believe these metres to be organic, derived from the human pulse, and to be therefore not proper to one nation, but to mankind. I think you will also find a charm heroic, plaintive, pathetic, in these cadences, and be at once set on searching for the words that can rightly fill these vacant beats. Young people like rhyme, drum-beat, tune, things in pairs and alternatives; and, in higher degrees, we know the instant power of music upon our temperaments to change our mood, and gives us its own; and human passion, seizing these constitutional tunes, aims to fill them with appropriate words, or marry music to thought, believing, as we believe of all marriage, that matches are made in heaven, and that for every thought its proper melody or rhyme exists, though the odds are immense against our finding it, and only genius can rightly say the banns.” How can we accept the statement that “the world exists for thought?” True, that “mountains, crystals, plants, animals, are seen; that which makes them is not seen: these, then, are apparent copies of unapparent natures." And yet there must exist the possibility of those “unapparent natures” expressing themselves in them, expressing in its native language, in its genuine movement carrying authentic substance and the revealing vision of its beauty and joy and life and spirit and soul. And just see how British it sounds when we hear Ben Jonson! According to him, the "principal end of poetry is to inform men in the just reason of living."

But this is just a small aspect of our personality, of our totality, almost a trivial aspect, and such a reason for man will only turn him into a frozen wee-bit. But there are manners of living that open to widenesses beyond the reach of reason. Indeed, there is always present in man some deeper longing and urge to exceed himself. That the aesthetic creation should be towards its fulfilment is the function, the satisfying purport of the creative art.

But the deepest poetic expression is possible, explains Sri Aurobindo, “when three highest intensities of poetic speech meet and become indissolubly one, a highest intensity of rhythmic movement, a highest intensity of interwoven verbal form and thought-substance, of style, and a highest intensity of soul’s vision of truth.” Here we have the threefold power, the power of word-making, image-formation, and felicity of movement. Ezra Pound calls them Logopoeia, Phano- or Iconopoeia, and Melopoeia. In Logopoeia “it is the dance of the intellect among words”—says Ezra Pound. Commenting on this classification Amal Kiran elaborates as follows: “Broadly speaking, all poetry is image-making, since the poet is primarily the seer, the artistic visualiser. But, while all poetry is based on sight and insight, not all of it has the image-aspect in prominence. The other two aspects that can stand out are Melopoeia and Logopoeia. In the former we are impressed overwhelmingly by the music of the verse: often the very structure invites being set to music. Phanopoeia resembles not music so much as painting and sculpture. Logopoeia is poetic play essentially of ideas, the dance of the intellect among words—it is the conceptive word as distinguished from the musical or the pictorial-sculpturesque.”

But these seem to be two ways of looking at poetry from two different stations, one from top of the ladder down below and the other stretching its gaze from the intermediate steps upward where the ladder itself begins to disappear into the inexplicable. If we have to apply these poetic formulations to the 51-line passage describing the “perfect shrine”, we must take the top view of the things, the shrine built from above down below, as were some of the gigantic rock-hewn caves in Ellora. Is it not “Om, the creation-sound as the first music…”, the Word in its triple glory? Maybe, we could have a look at some of these aspects. RYD

Their tone of certain informality also brings out the intuitive perspective

Re: 08: A Shrine for the God of Love by RY Deshpande

on Tue 20 Mar 2007 04:20 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

The Bird-passage in the “Perfect Shrine” During the period 1936-47 Sri Aurobindo had written a number of letters, mostly to Amal Kiran, dealing with a few aspects of Savitri. Elucidations were sought in various respects, particularly about the text of Part I of the epic even as it was in the process of early composition. It is said that after completing the writing of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo would have written a preface or a preamble, a kind of overture for the epic; but it didn’t happen. However, the need for an introduction is to a large extent satisfied by these letters; their tone of certain informality also brings out the intuitive perspective which becomes difficult to get in a formalised presentation. Concerned with the bird-passage in the “perfect shrine” we have the author’s educative and revealing comments and clarifications. Here is the bird-passage:

As might a soul fly like a hunted bird, Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms, And a quiet reach like a remembered breast, In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire, Recover the lost habit of happiness, Feel her bright nature's glorious ambience, And preen joy in her warmth and colour's rule.

The law that deprives us of the memory of past lives is a law of the cosmic Wisdom

It becomes at once evident that in this plan of rebirth the false importance which our mind attaches to the memory of past lives disappears altogether. If indeed rebirth were governed by a system of rewards and punishments, if life's whole intention were to teach the embodied spirit to be good and moral,—supposing that that is the intention in the dispensation of Karma and it is not what it looks like in this presentation of it, a mechanical law of recompense and retribution without any reformatory meaning or purpose,—then there is evidently a great stupidity and injustice in denying to the mind in its new incarnation all memory of its past births and actions. For it deprives the reborn being of all chance to realise why he is rewarded or punished or to get any advantage from the lesson of the profitableness of virtue and the unprofitableness of sin vouchsafed to him or inflicted on him.

Even, since life seems often to teach the opposite lesson,—for he sees the good suffer for their goodness and the wicked prosper by their wickedness,—he is rather likely to conclude in this perverse sense, because he has not the memory of an assured and constant result of experience which would show him that the suffering of the good man was due to his past wickedness and the prosperity of the sinner due to the splendour of his past virtues, so that virtue is the best policy in the long run for any reasonable and prudent soul entering into this dispensation of Nature. It might be said that the psychic being within remembers; but such a secret memory would seem to have little effect or value on the surface. Or it may be said that it realises what has happened and learns its lesson when it reviews and assimilates its experiences after issuing from the body: but this intermittent memory does not very apparently help in the next birth; for most of us persist in sin and error and show no tangible signs of having profited by the teaching of our past experience.

But if a constant development of being by a developing cosmic experience is the meaning and the building of a new personality in a new birth is the method, then any persistent or complete memory of the past life or lives might be a chain and a serious obstacle: it would be a force for prolonging the old temperament, character, preoccupations, and a tremendous burden hampering the free development of the new personality and its formulation of new experience.

A clear and detailed memory of past lives, hatreds, rancours, attachments, connections would be equally a stupendous inconvenience; for it would bind the reborn being to a useless repetition or a compulsory continuation of his surface past and stand heavily in the way of his bringing out new possibilities from the depths of the spirit. If, indeed, a mental learning of things were the heart of the matter, if that were the process of our development, memory would have a great importance: but what happens is a growth of the soul-personality and a growth of the nature by an assimilation into our substance of being, a creative and effective absorption of the essential results of past energies; in this process conscious memory is of no importance. As the tree grows by a subconscient or inconscient assimilation of action of sun and rain and wind and absorption of earth-elements, so the being grows by a subliminal or intraconscient assimilation and absorption of its results of past becoming and an output of potentialities of future becoming. The law that deprives us of the memory of past lives is a law of the cosmic Wisdom and serves, not disserves its evolutionary purpose.

The absence of any memory of past existences is wrongly and very ignorantly taken as a disproof of the actuality of rebirth; for if even in this life it is difficult to keep all the memories of our past, if they often fade into the background or fade out altogether, if no recollection remains of our infancy, and yet with all this hiatus of memory we can grow and be, if the mind is even capable of total loss of memory of past events and its own identity and yet it is the same being who is there and the lost memory can one day be recovered, it is evident that so radical a change as a transition to other worlds followed by new birth in a new body ought normally to obliterate altogether the surface or mental memory, and yet that would not annul the identity of the soul or the growth of the nature.

This obliteration of the surface mental memory is all the more certain and quite inevitable if there is a new personality of the same being and a new instrumentation which takes the place of the old, a new mind, a new life, a new body: the new brain cannot be expected to carry in itself the images held by the old brain; the new life or mind cannot be summoned to keep the deleted impressions of the old mind and life that have been dissolved and exist no more. There is, no doubt, the subliminal being which may remember, since it does not suffer from the disabilities of the surface; but the surface mind is cut off from the subliminal memory which alone might retain some clear recollection or distinct impression of past lives. This separation is necessary because the new personality has to be built up on the surface without conscious reference to what is within; as with all the rest of the superficial being, so our surface personality too is indeed formed by an action from within, but of that action it is not conscious, it seems to itself to be self-formed or ready-made or formed by some ill-understood action of universal Nature.

And yet fragmentary recollections of past births do sometimes remain in spite of these almost insuperable obstacles; there are even a very few cases of astonishingly exact and full memory in the child-mind. Finally, at a certain stage of development of the being when the inner begins to predominate over the outer and come to the front, past-life memory does sometimes begin to emerge as if from some submerged layer, but more readily in the shape of a perception of the stuff and power of past personalities that are effective in the composition of the being in the present life than in any precise and accurate detail of event and circumstance, although this too can recur in parts or be recovered by concentration from the subliminal vision, from some secret memory or from our inner conscious-substance. But this detailed memory is of minor importance to Nature in her normal work and she makes small or no provision for it: it is the shaping of the future evolution of the being with which she is concerned; the past is put back, kept behind the veil and used only as an occult source of materials for the present and the future.

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This is the Word at once inspired and revelatory, with the quality of multi-sided inevitability

Re: 08: A Shrine for the God of Love by RY Deshpande on Wed 14 Mar 2007 04:15 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

His Perfect Shrine: This passage of 51 lines is one of the rarest examples in which the poetic utterance can reach the absolute of speech. What Sri Aurobindo was proposing not too long ago in the series of his Arya-articles dealing with the possibilities of the future poetry, that he achieved within twenty years in this description of Savitri. Here she is presented as a “perfect shrine” in whom the God of Love could move “as in his natural home”. It is one of the high marks of getting the pure Overmind expression in its sustained level for the first time in English poetry. This is the Word at once inspired and revelatory, with the quality of multi-sided inevitability, all making it mantric. We shall see this aspect in some detail later...

In the course of her work, when Huta was doing painting on Savitri with her, the Mother commented on this description as follows: “Coming from the highest world, Savitri knew intuitively what should and would be the possibilities of the beings who will live upon earth. But the possibilities were already in Her because She had them from Her Origin. But, for the beings born upon earth and of earth-origin, they are to be acquired after a long transformation. She came to announce what could be and to show that it would be possible. But all the work upon earth was to be done and is yet mostly to be done and that means a long effort and serious preparation. To know not only that it is a possibility but that it is a certitude and will surely be when the time comes, helps the consciousness to make the necessary effort to hasten the advent of the right time. She came to show what could be and would be. And that gives the energy to fulfil. ” This is Savitri. RYD

Nietzschean supermanhood can only colossalise the human creature

This is man's only way of true self-exceeding: for so long as we live in the surface being or found ourselves wholly on Matter, it is impossible to go higher and vain to expect that there can be any new transition of a radical character in our evolutionary being. The vital man, the mental man have had an immense effect upon the earth-life, they have carried humanity forward from the mere human animal to what it is now. But it is only within the bounds of the already established evolutionary formula of the human being that they can act; they can enlarge the human circle but not change or transform the principle of consciousness or its characteristic operation. Any attempt to heighten inordinately the mental or exaggerate inordinately the vital man,—a Nietzschean supermanhood, for example,—can only colossalise the human creature, it cannot transform or divinise him.

A different possibility opens if we can live within in the inner being and make it the direct ruler of life or station ourselves on the spiritual and intuitive planes of being and from there and by their power transmute our nature. The spiritual man is the sign of this new evolution, this new and higher endeavour of Nature. But this evolution differs from the past process of the evolutionary Energy in two respects:

• it is conducted by a conscious effort of the human mind, and
• it is not confined to a conscious progression of the surface nature, but is accompanied by an attempt to break the walls of the Ignorance and extend ourselves inward into the secret principle of our present being and outward into cosmic being as well as upward towards a higher principle.

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Man is a multiperson

In animal being Nature acts by her own mental and vital intuitions; she works out an order by the compulsion of habit and instinct which the animal implicitly obeys, so that the shiftings of its consciousness do not matter. But man cannot altogether act in the same way without forfeiting his prerogative of manhood; he cannot leave his being to be a chaos of instincts and impulses regulated by the automatism of Nature: mind has become conscious in him and is therefore self-compelled to make some attempt, however elementary in many, to see and control and in the end more and more perfectly harmonise the manifold components, the different and conflicting tendencies that seem to make up his surface being.

He does succeed in setting up a sort of regulated chaos or ordered confusion in him, or at least succeeds in thinking that he is directing himself by his mind and will, even though in fact that direction is only partial; for not only a disparate consortium of habitual motive-forces but also newly emergent vital and physical tendencies and impulses, not always calculable or controllable, and many incoherent and inharmonious mental elements use his reason and will, enter into and determine his self-building, his nature-development, his life action.

Man is in his self a unique Person, but he is also in his manifestation of self a multiperson; he will never succeed in being master of himself until the Person imposes itself on his multipersonality and governs it: but this can only be imperfectly done by the surface mental will and reason; it can be perfectly done only if he goes within and finds whatever central being is by its predominant influence at the head of all his expression and action. In inmost truth it is his soul that is this central being, but in outer fact it is often one or other of the part beings in him that rules, and this representative of the soul, this deputy self he can mistake for the inmost soul-principle.

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It is for the exegete to demonstrate how an all-pervasive and abiding internal consistency remains the hallmark

Newsletter Articles March 2007 The Primacy of Sruti in Sri Aurobindo’s Thought

Prashant Khanna, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Delhi Branch

Indian philosophy, embracing several streams of widely divergent persuasions, also includes in its fold, the six schools of Vedantic metaphysical thought. These again, though differing considerably in their conclusions, have one feature common and unique to them all, namely that they have the sacred texts, called Sruti in Sanskrit, as their starting point. In other words, at least for these six schools, all metaphysical enquiry resolves itself to the interpretation of the Sruti.

All six schools are agreed on the primacy of the ancient texts – the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Brahmasutras and the Bhagavad Gita and believe them to be the possessors and expressions of the Supreme Truth and it is left to the philosophers only to interpret and explain their true meaning. The role of the metaphysicians, therefore, is not to discover the Truth independently with the help of Reason and Logic, as in other philosophical traditions, primarily of the West, but rather to act as true, consistent, accurate and faithful exegetes – interpreters of the text. Since these scriptures are often very abstract in content and pithy and terse in their expression, they provide ample scope for widely varying interpretations and conclusions.

The bulk of Sri Aurobindo’s philosophical writings, generally described as “Integral Vedanta” too fall in the category of exegesis. In Sri Aurobindo’s view, correctness of interpretation would imply that the various verses of each text are self-consistent with the particular text taken in totality. In other words, whether we study an individual text or all of them together as a whole, it is for the exegete to demonstrate how an all-pervasive and abiding internal consistency remains the hallmark at every level.

In order to derive maximum benefit from these texts, it is imperative that they be treated as being not only abstract expressions of great metaphysical truths but also as organic and living entities imbued with the power to redeem and transmute. It is for the Seeker of Truth to forge an umbilical chord for the knowledge contained in them to pass into him. The most appropriate description of this phenomena is found in the metaphor used in one of the texts itself, viz. of a very coy mistress who yields herself up only after ardent and persistent wooing, vivrinute tanum svam.

According to Sri Aurobindo, while trying to understand and interpret these texts, it may also be worth our while to go back to their point of genesis and their method of actualization – how did they come into being?...In other words, while the source of inspiration is an Absolute, Eternal, Cosmic and Supracosmic Reality which is the Creator, Upholder, Final Arbiter and Final Goal of this phenomenal world, the mode of transmission of the knowledge is Intuition. The Rishi by a process of self-purification and internal development – Yoga – experienced and even attained unity with this Reality and then became a completely spontaneous, transparent and unalloyed medium for the transmission and reception of knowledge by the mode of Intuition.

These texts have no authorship; they are only “receiving from above” manifested through perfect mediums. It is, therefore, incumbent on the part of the Seeker to cover the same ground and discover and realize for himself the truth of the text. To the extent that his aspiration for right understanding of the text is sincere and earnest, paradoxically enough, he will find maximum help by invoking the grace of the text itself.

In this context one also needs to bear in mind that however comprehensive the experience and perfect the medium, the individual should be in full possession of the necessary Adhars as well. The basic desiderata are good education, a well trained intellect and deep knowledge of the meaning of the Scriptures even if it be at a purely intellectual level to begin with.

A correct, proper and fully rewarding interpretation of Sruti would require that the exegete be also a seeker and should undertake to trace his steps backward with aasrha (faith) and shraddha (devotion) in his mind, making it receptive for inspiration to flow into him as revelation of the deeper meaning of the text, rather than have recourse merely to his own individual labour and intellectual reasoning. As the Gita itself declares, shraddhavan labhate jnanam – it is the devotee who is blessed with knowledge.

http://www.website.com.sg/sassingapore/resources/newsletterarticles.htm

Nolini Kanto Gupta came in contact with the god Varuna

Raman’75 continues his series on Collective Meditation in the Ashram

Compiler’s Notes The Golden Chain FEBRUARY 2006

These early meditations with the Mother belong to what Sri Aurobindo called "the brightest period in the history of the Ashram".1 This period represents an early and occult phase of sadhana in the Ashram which began shortly before the Siddhi Day and ended a few months after the descent of the Overmind on 24 November 1926. The Mother took up the responsibility of Sri Aurobindo’s disciples and immediately "a very brilliant creation was worked out in extraordinary detail, with marvellous experiences, contacts with divine beings, and all kinds of manifestations which are considered miraculous".2

Each one came in touch with the "inner godhead he represents". Nolini Kanto Gupta came in contact with the god Varuna 3 who represents vastness and purity, Haradhan Bakshi with Twashtri, the Divine Fashioner, and Rajani Palit with Kubera, the God of Wealth. Purushottam identified himself in a state of trance with "Sesha-naga, the primal energy that sustains the material world" and became a means of the spiritual purification of others under the Mother’s own supervision. This sometimes worked itself out in a rather unusual way at the physical level. Champaklal, for example, was pounded by him for almost an hour and the result was so beneficial that Sri Aurobindo remarked, "Champaklal has become a demi-god". Similarly, he gave a twist to Barin Ghose’s throat and the latter found his "head shooting up and up until [heing down on everybody from a great height".

Later, Purushottam was strongly discouraged by the Mother from such actions when the ocslow and difficult process of purification of the lower vital and physical began for the sadhaks and sadhikas of the Ashram. 4 ] was lookcult phase of the sadhana came to an end and a slow and difficult process of purification of the lower vital and physical began for the sadhaks and sadhikas of the Ashram. Endnotes
1. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, On Himself, Volume 26, p 472.
2. The Mother’s Collected Works, Volume 9, p 148.
3. A copy of the first edition of Sri Aurobindo’s book The Mother found in Nolini Kanto Gupta’s papers is addressed "To Varuna" with the Mother’s signature below it.
4. See Champaklal Speaks (2002), p 71. 

The Earth is one

World Union is a non-profit, non-political organisation founded on the 26th November 1958 in Pondicherry, inspired by Sri Aurobindo's vision of carrying forward a movement for Human Unity, World Peace and Progress on a Spiritual Foundation. For the ordinary humanitarian and religious outlook and motivation are inadequate to meet the demands of the New Age which is already in the process of manifesting under the inevitable programme of the evolutionary nature on earth.

The Mother became the President of the first World Council of World Union on 20 August 1964, and since then, 20th August is celebrated as World Union Day. A. B. Patel was the leading figure in the organisation for many years, he was succeeded in that role by M.P. Pandit. The organisation also publishes a quarterly journal with the same title, which draws inspiration from the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, particularly from The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity. At the instance of Surendra Mohan Ghosh, J. Smith and Anil Mukherjee along with other prominent persons formed an Association named ‘New World Union’ on the 26th November 1958 in Pondicherry. A. B. Patel joined in May 1959, and then on April 23, 1960 the name was changed to 'World Union' on The Mother’s advice. The Mother became the President of the first World Council of World Union on 20 August 1964, and Surendra Mohan Ghosh, the Chairman.

Present office-bearers of the World Executive of World Union
Samir Kanto Gupta - Chairman Jagdish Gandhi - Vice-chairman
Ananda Reddy - Vice-chairman Anjali Roy - Vice-chairperson
Suresh Ch. De - General Secretary plus Treasurer
Prakash S. Patel - Asst. General Secretary plus Treasurer
Editorial Board - Samir Kanto Gupta, Ananda Reddy, and Suresh Ch. De
Location - Rue Desbassyns de Richmont, Puducherry - 605002, India. Phone - (0413) 2334834
Select articles from the Journal
Concept of Man in Sri Aurobindo. Indra Sen July-Sept 1968
The Integral Culture of Man. Indra Sen April-June 1970
Integral Philosophy and a New Civilization. Karl Heussenstamm April-June 1971
Unity and Harmony in Practical Prospects. H. Maheswari March 2006
Drive to Higher Integrations. Purnendu Prasad Bhattacharya June 2006

Three days (or two or “really in one” day) of meditation with Vishnu Bhaskar Lele

“Aurobindo’s Spiritual Initiation” [Excerpts from a chapter of Barin Ghose’s book From “Sri Aurobindo (As I Understand Him)”]

After the break up of the Congress at Surat Aurobindo came to Baroda, the capital city of His Highness the Gaikwar. A few months back while searching for a spiritual guide for our political workers I had been to Swami Brahmananda’s Asram at Chandote on the banks of the river Nurbada. At that time there was a dawning sense growing in us — the young dedicated workers — that the deliverance of India was not possible without spiritual power. An idea of a Bhawani Mandir in the hills (a temple dedicated to that aspect of the Shakti which was worshipped by the great Sivajee of Aurangzib’s time) was in the air among the secret workers. I was sent along with another friend1 to Northern India to look for a Guru or spiritual guide who could guide India’s destiny and train us — the future builders of the nation — along spiritual lines.

Deeply imbued with the cult of violence, learnt from the Irish Seinfeinners and Russian secret societies, and equally ignorant of what spiritual power actually meant, we in our blindness wanted to harness Divine power to our dark mission.… It was no wonder then that we wished to take to spiritual means for a holy war against the British, this idea of God helping the righteous even in murder and bloodshed being ingrained in man from his savage days.

The great Yogi Brahmananda of Nurbada had passed away some years before and I found his disciple Keshavananda to be a dry as dust pedant and a mechanical Hatha Yogi knowing no higher yoga at all. But quite accidentally I had met for a few minutes a Maharashtra Brahmin, Vishnu Bhaskar Lele by name, in the Chandote Asram. I did know that this man was a great and real Yogi. While returning to Bengal quite disappointed in my quest. I met Lele again in a friend’s house at Navasari. He made me sit in a dark room with him for a few minutes and as a result three days afterwards I had my first glimpse of spiritual awakening, my first psychic experience.

Aurobindo hearing about him from me had expressed a desire to meet this wonderful devotee of love. As soon as the Surat Congress was over I wired to Lele requesting him to come to Baroda to meet Aurobindo. Crowds with flags and national cries followed us from the station and students unyoked a carriage and putting Aurobindo, myself and a Sannyasi, Sakhariaswami, on it, pulled it for some distance. In the midst of a surging crowd we reached Khasirao’s [sic] Bungalow at 8 a.m. and immediately after Vishnu Bhaskar Lele arrived. I left Aurobindo alone with him for half an hour. When he had left I asked my brother how he found him so far as Yoga was concerned. Aurobindo said in his characteristic cryptic way, “Lele is a wonderful Yogi.”

The next day Lele came again and requested Aurobindo to sit with him continuously for seven days all alone and in silence in a quiet place. At that time nothing was more difficult than this to arrange. Aurobindo had become the idol of the nation and a wonderful halo surrounded him producing a mysterious magnetic attraction for him in the hearts of our young men. Anybody, who was in national work anywhere, needed and sought his advice and guidance. Day in and day out, crowds surrounded our house and programmes of public meetings were being arranged for him.

Lele suddenly spirited Aurobindo away from the midst of all this commotion to a lonely old place tucked away in the heart of the city. There, day in and day out, the two of them sat wrapped in deep meditation facing each other. Their simple needs were looked after by Vishnu Bhaskar’s wife, a matriculate girl of small stature of very subdued nature. I was also there and used to sit in meditation with them morning and evening in my restless and perfunctory way. My mind was divided between my ambitious national work and this inner life of Yoga.

Seven days passed almost in continuous and silent meditation2 while batches of young men traversed the town in search of their newly-found leader who had so suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from among them upsetting all their crowded programmes and arrangements. When Aurobindo was at last permitted to come out and attend a meeting in the famous gymnasium there among his ardent admirers, a great and abiding peace had descended on him which from thence forward formed the basis of all his future Sadhana.…

2 According to Sri Aurobindo he obtained the experience of the Silent Brahman in three days (or two or “really in one” day) of meditation with Lele. See On Himself, pp. 49, 82, 84, 85. He may have remained in seclusion with Lele for some days more before going out to give lectures etc.
3 Not necessarily this day. Barin seems to have been writing under the impression that Sri Aurobindo and Lele parted at the station, but Lele in fact accompanied Sri Aurobindo to Poona and Bombay.

ooooo

SRI NOLINI KANTA GUPTA (A Life Sketch): It would not have been far out to call it an Ashram And it was precisely because of this that Barin got Lele Maharaj down here for our initiation and training in Sadhana, the discipline of Yoga, the same Lele who had been of a particular help to Sri Aurobindo at a certain stage of his own sadhana.

With Sri Aurobindo, spirituality explained politics and politics fulfilled itself in spirituality

Glimpses of Vedantism in Sri Aurobindo's Political Thought by Samar Basu: Published by Sri Mira Trust; Pondicherry, India. Pp 73 (Book Review) International Journal of Humanities and Peace, January, 2002 by Reddy, Ananda

Samar Basu's attempts at bringing out the Vedantic ideals in Sri Aurobindo's political thought only confirms that with Sri Aurobindo "spirituality explained politics and politics fulfilled itself in spirituality". All along his brief political engagement, Sri Aurobindo's life was based on spirituality of which politics was only an outer expression. And the underlying realization of this spirituality was the Vedanfic ideal.

I was completely against "God"

October 16, 1971: You know, the "Cosmic" had a very interesting effect in my life. I was completely against "God." The European notion of God was quite repulsive to me. But at the same time naturally, that prevented me from having any experience. And with the "cosmic teaching" of the inner god (that was Théon's idea, the inner god -- Mother touches her chest -- the one that is inside each of us), brff! (gesture as if walls were crumbling). The experience was fantastic. I am very grateful to him. That's how it happened; I found it by following his instructions and searching within, behind the solar plexus. I found it, I had an experience ... an absolutely convincing experience.
Only people will stumble upon some vital force and mistake it for the soul, so.... You have to be VERY sincere, that is the absolute condition. You have to be VERY sincere, VERY sincere -- not only must you not deceive others, but you must not deceive yourself. You have to be VERY sincere. And then you find it. You find it, it's an absolutely concrete experience.
I had the experience before coming here. Before I came, before knowing Sri Aurobindo, I had the experience. So three quarters of the work was already done, you could say.... I didn't have mental knowledge (the mental knowledge was nothing to talk about), but it's not necessary for the experience. If you're sincere, you have the experience without thinking, you don't NEED to think. But you have to be sincere.
And now that's what my body has, it's having those same experiences. But words are....
In a certain attitude (but it's difficult to explain or define), in a certain attitude, everything becomes divine. Everything. And what is marvelous then is that when you have the experience that everything becomes divine, everything that is contrary quite simply disappears (fast or slow, right away or little by little, depending on circumstances).
That's really marvelous. That is to say, becoming conscious that everything is divine is the best way to make everything divine -- you understand -- to eliminate all opposition. The Mother's Agenda_12

It first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance

The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy.

The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings,—including Science itself,—must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance.

Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect. That he sees himself everywhere and worships that as God is also true; but here too he has laid confusedly the groping hand of Ignorance on a truth,—that his being and the Being are one, that this is a partial reflection of That, and that to find his greater Self everywhere is to find God and to come near to the Reality in things, the Reality of all existence.

Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > The Life Divine Volume-19 > The Progress To Knowledge — God, Man And Nature

I will prefer to observe not dumb but deep and respectful silence

Re: Re: Re: 05: Numerology of 365th line of 'Savitri'? RY Deshpande Thu 15 Feb 2007 06:36 AM PST Profile Permanent Link Hi Ron But you want me to handle a difficult situation! In Canto One, The Symbol Dawn of Savitri, we have the following passage on p. 7:

In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.

A prodigal of her rich divinity,

Her self and all she was she had lent to men,

Hoping her greater being to implant

And in their body's lives acclimatise

That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.

Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change;

Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch:

It fears the pure divine intolerance

Of that assault of ether and of fire;

It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,

Almost with hate repels the light it brings;

It trembles at its naked power of Truth

And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.

The 5th line here—“And in their body's lives acclimatise”—is the additional line which occurs in the Revised Edition of Savitri; with it the total number of lines in the first Canto becomes 342, as against 341 in the earlier editions. That would make our line—the line from Canto Two, The Issue we have been discussing, “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate”—as the 366th line of Savitri. There is a reason to feel somewhat disappointed with it, with this change of count; your question “...why they changed the line count in the Revised Edition?” becomes pertinent. What should be 365, has become 366. Why?

The answer is simple and straightforward: No, their intention was not to change the line count. They have restored what was missed or dropped; they found a line that was missed by the earlier versions, including those which came out before the publication of Part One consisting of the first three Books of Savitri in September 1950, before Sri Aurobindo’s passing away on 5 December of that year; the remaining nine Books came out as Part II and Part III in a single volume in May 1951. This absence—of the relatable line in The Symbol Dawn—continued through the Centenary Edition, 1972, and its subsequent reproductions, until the Revised Edition reinstated it in 1992. So, unfortunately, that upsets our line count.

But is that important? But if there is an occult-hermeneutic connection between 365 days of the year and the appearance of the line “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate” as the 365th line of the poem, if there is acceptable numerology pertaining to the deeper working of things, then our sensibility has reason to feel disappointed.

The second part of your query is more complex, with a complexity which could also include official as well as editorial approaches. You are asking “…why this critically important line, ‘Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate’, became the 366th rather than the 365th line as in the Centenary Edition? Was this an editorial decision they made on their own, or was it the result of new research regarding SA's actual intention?” A part of the answer is already present in what I have just said.

Regarding “Sri Aurobindo’s actual intention”—what can anyone really say, or should say about it? His “intentions” belong to another domain altogether and his instruments of knowledge are of a different order. We have talked elsewhere in considerable detail about our limitations and the small scope of the possibilities vis-à-vis our post-human destinies. I will therefore prefer to observe not dumb but deep and respectful silence as far as this phrase “Sri Aurobindo’s actual intention” is concerned; it is beyond my capacity.

But if the line was simply missed by the earlier team, and yet what was printed during Sri Aurobindo’s time as the text was a result of having been read out to him at every stage of its composition and publication, then would that not amount to his tacit approval of things as they were presented to him? What does one really do in such a situation? Does one go by what Sri Aurobindo heard and passed, or go by what he wrote or dictated but got left out by others? Each has its own set of uncertainties, and we become helpless with our mental or so-called objective-rational approaches. the dangers are there... Well, before I make my position known in this regard, it will be good to have responses from the readers of this sciy forum. And thanks. RYD 12:45 PM

One is concentric, another is vertical

There are in fact two systems simultaneously active in the organisation of the being and its parts: one is concentric, a series of rings or sheaths with the psychic at the centre; another is vertical, an ascension and descent, like a flight of steps, a series of superimposed planes with the supermind-overmind as the crucial nodus of the transition beyond the human into the Divine. For this transition, if it is to be at the same time a transformation, there is only one way, one path.

• First, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the inmost psychic being and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature.
• Next, there must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts. When one has made the inward conversion, one psychicises the whole lower nature so as to make it ready for the divine change.
• Going upwards, one passes beyond the human mind and at each stage of the ascent, there is a conversion into a new consciousness and an infusion of this new consciousness into the whole of the nature.
• Thus rising beyond intellect through illuminated higher mind to the intuitive consciousness, we begin to look at everything not from the intellect range or through intellect as an instrument, but from a greater intuitive height and through an intuitivised will, feeling, emotion, sensation and physical contact.
• So, proceeding from Intuition to a greater overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience everything from the overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and body surcharged with the overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation, play of force and contact.
• But the last conversion is the supramental, for once there – once the nature is supramentalised, we are beyond the Ignorance and conversion of consciousness is no longer needed, though a farther divine progression, even an infinite development is still possible.

Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Letters On Yoga Volume-22-23-24 > Planes And Parts Of The Being

Purity of one's adoration and seeking

The personal realisation of the Divine may be sometimes with Form, sometimes without Form. Without Form, it is the Presence of the living Divine Person, felt in everything. With Form, it comes with the image of the One to whom worship is offered. The Divine can always manifest himself in a form to the bhakta or seeker. One sees him in the form in which one worships or seeks him or in a form suitable to the Divine Personality who is the object of the adoration.

How it manifests depends on many things and it is too various to be reduced to a single rule. Sometimes it is in the heart that the Presence with the form is seen, sometimes in any of the other centres, sometimes above and guiding from there, sometimes it is seen outside and in front as if an embodied Person. Its advantages are an intimate relation and constant guidance or if felt or seen within, a very strong and concrete realisation of the constant Presence.

But one must be very sure of the purity of one's adoration and seeking—for the disadvantage of this kind of embodied relation is that other Forces can imitate the Form or counterfeit the voice and the guidance and this gets more force if it is associated with a constructed image which is not the true thing. Several have been misled in this way because pride, vanity or desire was strong in them and robbed them of the finer psychic perception that is not mental and can at once turn the Mother's light on such misleadings or errors.

Document: Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > Letters On Yoga Volume-22-23-24 > Planes And Parts Of The Being

Uinterrupted flow of the Mind of Light in the physical

Re: 04: Now her Life Shared the Cosmic Load by RY Deshpande on Sat 10 Feb 2007 08:06 PM PST Profile Permanent Link

When did this happen? Did it happen on 5 December 1950, at 1.26 am? When Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his physical, there was the uninterrupted flow of the Mind of Light in the physical of the Mother, even as she could feel the friction of its passage. The Mind of Light is the Physical receiving the Supramental and it got established in her at that moment. It became the basis of her luminous and active dynamism ever since.

Is Savitri’s “This was the day when Satyavan must die” the same as Amal Kiran’s “divine Aurobindo died”? Possibly so, but probably not; the answer is less of ‘yes’ than ‘no’. One is designedly set in the Transcendent while the other is a Yogi’s definitive step in the process of working out things. Satyavan’s death is a necessary condition for Savitri’s occult-yogic work to make it sufficient. Sri Aurobindo’s death was not fixed in the Transcendent, though later it became a part of the Transcendent; in an act of supreme sacrifice it was fixed by Sri Aurobindo himself. Who can plunge into the depth of its mystery? But we can aspire to live and grow in it. RYD

Sri Aurobindo himself was magnanimous enough to go through my first and second drafts

Sri Aurobindo - A Biography and a history by K R Srinivasa Iyengar

Paperback - 843 Pages (Year: 2006) Sri Aurobindo Ashram ~ ISBN: 8170588138

The first edition of this book was published on 21 February 1945. When I started work on it late in 1942, I was not slow to realize that the biographer of Sri Aurobindo had himself to be a poet and a prophet, a philosopher and a Yogi; and being fully conscious of my limitations, I knew that the task I had undertaken greatly exceeded my abilities.

Neverthless I persevered, benefiting by encouragement, counsel and criticism from several friends in Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, and it was my unique good fortune that Sri Aurobindo himself was magnanimous enough to go through my first and second drafts of February 1943 and November 1943 respectively, rectifying many errors whether of fact or interpretation. In the result, the book was received warmly as a reliable first introduction to Sri Aurobindo’s life and work.

The second edition appeared on 21 February 1950. In preparing it for the press, I had retained the main text of the first edition, but I had also tried to make it up-to-date by introducing additional matter here and there, and supplying a few more footnotes. Although the second edition sold out not long afterwards, and although there were calls for a new edition, for about twenty years I found myself unable to return to this task. During this period a great deal of valuable material came to light and a large mass of Sri Aurobindo’s own writings-prose as well as poetry-was posthumously published.

While I no doubt tried desperately to keep in touch with this growing literature- both writing by Sri Aurobindo and writing on Sri Aurobindo-the idea of a third edition of my biography nevertheless filled me with grave misgivings. It was clear that a casual or piecemeal revision wouldn’t serve the purpose. With each succeeding year, the task only became more and more difficult, and I felt correspondingly inadequate and was afraid even to make a beginning. I realized too that I could look for no respite so long as I consented to be shackled to the arduous tasks of university teaching or administration.

Table of ContentsPREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITIONPREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITIONINTRODUCTIONRenascent India and Sri AurobindoPART ONEHUMANIST AND POETChildhood, Boyhood and YouthBarodaTranslationsEpic and RomanceDramas of Conflict and ChangeMusa SpiritusPART TWOPATRIOT AND PROPHETBhavani ManditHour of GodBande MataramThe Nation’s Pace-makerOn the EveSadhana in PrisonKarmayoginPART THREEPILIGRIM OF ETERNITYChandernagore: Inn of TranquillityPondicherry: Cave of TapasyaArya: A God’s LabourThe Supramental ManifestoLights on ScriptureMan and Collective ManGlobal ComprehensionPART FOURARCHITECT OF THE LIFE DIVINELighthouseThe Ten Limbs of the YogaThe Yoga and the AshramPoet of YogaSavitri Identity with GodEPILOGUESri Aurobindo’s ActionREFERENCESCHRONOLOGYBIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX

The satisfied assent of all our being to her workings

The faith in the divine Shakti must be always at the back of our strength and when she becomes manifest, it must be or grow implicit and complete. There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit's omnipotence. All knowledge, all strengths, all triumph and victory, all skill and works are in her hands and they are full of the treasures of the Spirit and of all perfections and siddhis.

• She is Maheshwari, goddess of the supreme knowledge, and brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity of illumination:
• she is Mahakali, goddess of the supreme strength, and with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest austerity of tapas and swiftness to the battle and the victory and the laughter, the attahasya, that makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance:
• she is Mahalakshmi, the goddess of the supreme love and delight, and her gifts are the spirit's grace and the charm and beauty of the Ananda and protection and every divine and human blessing:
• she is Mahasaraswati, the goddess of divine skill and of the works of the Spirit, and hers is the Yoga that is skill in works, yogah karmasu kaushalam, and the utilities of divine knowledge and the self-application of the spirit to life and the happiness of its harmonies.

And in all her powers and forms she carries with her the supreme sense of the masteries of the eternal Ishwari, a rapid and divine capacity for all kinds of action that may be demanded from the instrument, oneness, a participating sympathy, a free identity, with all energies in all beings and therefore a spontaneous and fruitful harmony with all the divine will in the universe. The intimate feeling of her presence and her powers and the satisfied assent of all our being to her workings in and around it is the last perfection of faith in the Shakti. The Synthesis of Yoga Part 4: The Yoga of Self-Perfection Chapter 18: Faith and Shakti (June 1920)

Free self-expression in the application and evaluation of a dynamic spiritual message

The Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: A Commemorative Symposium Book by Haridas Chaudhuri, Frederic Spiegelberg; George Allen & Unwin, 1960 www.questia.com PREFACE

THE idea of this Commemorative Symposium on the integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo was first conceived while celebrating his birthday anniversary at San Francisco Ashram in August 1957. It was felt that the time was ripe for the message of Sri Aurobindo to be increasingly known to the wider public in different parts of the world. It is a message which silently took shape over a long period of time in the medium of a life such as transcended all geographical and national boundaries, and unconditionally offered itself at the altar of human welfare, or rather at the altar of the Divine in human evolution. The message is one of human unity, and of 'the out- flowering of the Divine in collective humanity'. Occasioned by an intermingling of the two broad streams of culture, eastern and western, it envisages a new world-order of peace, progress and international harmony, broadbased upon a radical change of man's collective consciousness. It indicates the lines along which the unification of all human races is to be achieved through increasing participation in the creative adventure of the world-spirit. It utters forth the secret of collective and co-operative living toward the fulfilment of the ultimate destiny of man.

The present symposium consists of various articles contributed by some eminent scholars of Aurobindonian literature. It cannot possibly claim to cover all the aspects of Sri Aurobindo's teaching. Nor is the list of contributors included herein to be taken in any way exhaustive of the vast and ever-growing volume of scholarship in the field. Different contributors had full freedom in expressing their own interpretation and evaluation of the approach and outlook which has now come to be known as integral nondualism (pūrṇa- advaita). Editors have proceeded on the assumption that truth in its creative aspect lies, not in reproducing a static thought structure, but in the free self-expression of different individuals in the application and evaluation of a dynamic spiritual message.

The symposium has five parts: Philosophy, Epistemology and Psychology, Yoga and Ethics, Literature, and Miscellaneous. The part called 'Miscellaneous' includes tributes to Sri Aurobindo, an outline of the historical setting in which his message was formulated, his political thoughts on freedom and world unity, and a brief sketch of his life.

Dr Frederic Spiegelberg's article 'Sri Aurobindo and Existential- ism' is based upon one of the three talks which he gave at San Francisco Ashram on August 21, 1958, in connection with the celebration of Sri Aurobindo's birthday. Dr Pitirim A. Sorokin article, "'The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo'", is taken from his book, The Ways and Power of Love ( Boston: The Beacon Press, 1954), pp. 371-6. Editors wish to take this opportunity of expressing their grateful thanks to Dr Sorokin and his publisher for their kind permission in this respect. Professor Richard P. Marsh paper, "'The Organismic Psychology of Andras Angyal in Relation to Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Integral Nondualism'", represents the essay which won him the first prize in the Aurobindo Essay Contest which was held in 1958 among the students of Indian philosophy in Northern California. Sri A. B. Purani brief life-sketch, 'Sri Aurobindo', was first broadcast from the B.B.C., London, in December 1955, and has been incorporated here by courtesy of the B.B.C.

No words would be adequate to express the gratitude of the editors to the eminent contributors who have most graciously co-operated with them by joining this symposium. Editors are also grateful to Cultural Integration Fellowship, San Francisco, for sponsoring the symposium. Finally, sincere thanks are due to Bina Chaudhuri, Esther Weissman, Bernice Littlewood, Myrtle Vepsala, and Blanche Beat, who have assisted in various ways in the preparation of this volume, and to the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram of Pondicherry for permission to quote extensively from the works of Sri Aurobindo.

HARIDAS CHAUDHURI
FREDERIC SPIEGELBERG
San Francisco October 15, 1958

Since no one culture has a monopoly on truth-seeing

Re: Post Human Variations by Richard Carlson
by RY Deshpande on Sun 28 Jan 2007 06:54 AM PST Profile Permanent Link
I understand what you are trying to say, Deba, but even there I will take a different stand. It is the power of truth-seeing that uses the faculty of imagination, like any other well-developed human faculty, and not the other way around. The Vedic poetry is all that, and everywhere so; so of course is Savitri. RYD

by Rich on Sun 28 Jan 2007 08:38 AM PST Profile Permanent Link
Actually if you boil it down, the "power of truth-seeing" proceeds from the organ of meditation e.g."imaginito vera" at least that is my interpretation after some twenty odd years of studying Corbin's esoteric Sufism . I should also add that since no one culture has a monopoly on truth-seeing, it should not surprise us to find cross-cultural accounts which poet the phenomena by using different metaphors. Interesting also is that 600 years before Edward Said raised the issue of the exoticism of the East by the West in his book Orientalism that the Persian Sufis were referring to the journey to the "Orient" as a mystical journey toward the soul, and contrasting this with the profane journey to the "Occident" as leading to the surface world of sensory experience. Although I am mostly sympathetic to Said, obviously this metaphor of the "Orient" is much more complex than certain post-colonial accounts of cross -cultural differences ascribe. rc

by Debashish on Sun 28 Jan 2007 09:13 AM PST Profile Permanent Link
Both these comments of RY and RC are profoundly interesting to me. I agree with you RY that Truth-seeing uses the imagination. Truth-seeing in the Aurobindian corpus is an aspect of the Divine Sense (see the posting on Instruments of Knowledge and Post-Human Destinies), an impersonal and supramental power which can act directly but this may act also through various forms of individualized imaging - here the psychic imaging. Cultural differences, as for example the variations in function, symbology and iconography between Greek and Vedic gods may also be due to such individualized receptions.

Rich, I find particularly interesting your comment on the history of Sufi "Orientalism" vis-a-vis Edward Said. Perhaps one strand of colonial Orientalism can be traced to this Sufi history though what complicates the Orientalism of 18th/19th c. Europe is its co-existence with colonial mercantile/religious/political hegemony. Said's "Orientalism" has been criticized for its homogenizing of the phenomenon. In my own approach, I have seen these two strands, the mystical and the predatory, as a dialectical pair generating the productive force of European Orientalism. DB

by Rich on Sun 28 Jan 2007 11:09 AM PST Profile Permanent Link
Let me also briefly post a quote taken from an important essay by Ashram archivist Richard Hartz which I hope to post on SCIY soon. The quote is from Ibn' Arabi one of the most important figures in Corbin's medieval Sufism and one whose method of illumination was in cultivating imaginito vera. Corbin has written an important text called "creative imagination in the Sufism of Ibn' Arabi" Speaking of the experience of Divine that transcends mere belief Ibn' Arabi says: * "It is He who is revealed in every face, sought in every sign, gazed upon by every eye, worshipped in every object of worship, and pursued in the unseen and the visible."

This is why I suggest that while it is important to parse differences in approaches to spiritual experience -which I have attempted to highlight in Sri Aurobindo and Mothers experience of evolution - it is also essential that we recognize the affinities of inner experience across cultures and epochs.. * (In Hartz the Forgotten 9/11 and the Clasp of Civilizations: Ibn ’Arabi, Futûhât al-Makkiyya, cited at http://ibnarabisociety.org/. rc

Top Ten books on Sri Aurobindo

Aspects of Sri Aurobindo
Consciousness and its Transformation
Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo
Integral Psychology
Integral Yoga Psychology and A. Maslow
Meeting of the East and the West
Patterns of the Present
Sri Aurobindo and Karl Marx
Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Evolution
The Destiny of the Body

[in alphabetical order - TNM]