Daily Questions

A bhakta is someone who takes delight in the Lord. Bhakti comes from the root bhaj which means to enjoy. He does not approach the Divine to know about Him as the seeker does. He rather knows Him in a way having seen and felt Him through the eyes of faith and his heart. He intuitively knows without any complications, mental analysis or intellectual effort that the Divine exists and that He is beautiful and blissful and always full of Love for all creatures. He does not receive this knowledge through any proofs or satisfaction of desires as the mental and vital beings in us try. Rather he knows it directly through his heart and emotional being. It is through this door that he enters the sanctum Santorum of the Lord and since it is in the heart of all creatures that the Lord resides, his is the shortest if not always the easiest path. Yet through his journey he finds himself all the time supported by the Divine Grace and an unseen Hand of the Lord always protects him from all outer and inner difficulties, even from himself since of all difficulties this is the greatest. It stems from our identification with the ego-self for which bhakti with its natural tendency to give itself, is the perfect antidote.

A bhakta is someone who takes joy in the Divine, in His Name, in His vision, even in an idol or photograph, in hearing about the Lord, in thinking about the Lord, in giving himself to the Lord, in wanting to know His ways not because he ever doubts Him but because knowing about His lila adds to the charm and sweetness of his love for Him. Similarly he loves to receive His touch through Prasad or Relic or a piece of cloth or anything he may receive from Him out of His Grace. And all this not because he wants something but because these things carry something of His Love. All that a bhakta wants is nearness of the Divine, the only thing he fears is the veiling of the Divine. His life is centered around loving Him and serving Him.

What happens to the other relationships in his life? Quite naturally since he is too satisfied and happy with his Lord, he seeks no other human companionship. All the deepest satisfactions that one seeks in various forms of human relationships are fulfilled in the Lord who becomes for him the father and mother, friend and playmate, lover and beloved, even husband and wife and child and teacher and master. All his outer relationships therefore begin to assume this hue. His love for the Divine begins to extend towards all creatures and in everyone and everything he begins to discover Him whim he loves. All events, the slightest and the most seemingly trivial, the happy hours of life as well as the difficult moments become for the God-lover moments when he experiences the Divine Grace and the Divine Love. He knows the Divine, becomes one with the Divine through a direct identification for to whom all gates to His chamber are flung wide open and all discloses the Divine beloved.

Now you can see for yourself whether you are on the path of bhakti or some other way! If this comes naturally to you, it must be followed until it leads you to the great consummation of the yoga.

Habits tend to form due to repetition of an action. The same applies to bad habits such as the ones you mention. The origin of habits such as alcohol, porn etc is usually some perversity or falsehood that drags us towards the abyss through the hook of instant pleasure. Sometimes it starts as a result of the company one keeps (hence the necessity of being careful about the friends one chooses). At other times it starts when people are going through stress and boredom and are looking for something to give instant gratification to stay off the clouds of depression. Little do they realise that this instant gratification will soon turn into a nightmare. Therefore, one of the strategies that is advocated for effectively cutting off these things is to stay busy with work or anything that one finds joy in. The other advantage of engaging in activities that one enjoys, especially sports, is that it releases natural endorphins which give us a natural joy and hence keep off the tendency towards sinking into depression which opens the doors to the hostile forces. Once the hostile forces enter and have a grip over the consciousness then they keep rising up from time to time and throw suggestions that can overtake the mind at any weak moment. A great vigilance, a tremendous sincerity of aspiration is then needed to come out of it. Especially the internet-based porn takes the person caught in it to an entirely dark and dangerous web of falsehood where one starts believing in all that is displayed thereby capturing the mind and giving a twist to everything in a certain way.

And yet there is hope. There always is hope if we can truly surrender like a child and sincerely aspire to get rid of such habits. It may take sometimes long if one is not sincere or it may happen suddenly once and for all and the individual is freed from its clutch provided something perverse does not call it back again. Sometimes one has to persevered with faith and endurance but eventually the victory is sure if one continues to have a complete trust and confidence in the Mother’s Grace. Meanwhile it is good to change one’s company, engage more in Satsang, stay away from atmospheres that are not helpful to the life one has chosen and keep rejecting the temptations with the persistence of one who refuses to give up. We must always remember these magical words from Savitri that always give hope even in the worst of situations:

     But there is a guardian power, there are Hands that save,
     Calm eyes divine regard the human scene.

Love

Alok da

I can understand the pain that such an event causes and no amount of explanations can suffice because the heart strings that are attached to someone as dear as one’s child feel completely at loss when the person leaves suddenly and abruptly. However, it is equally true that the soul can take such a drastic route if it feels or senses intuitively that it must evolve further and the present circumstances and the constitution of nature does not support the further experience it needs. This is the reason that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo gave for some such early departures especially in a letter to Dilip Kumar Roy when he asked him about the premature passing away of a young singer Uma Bose.

My experience with some such departures does indicate something similar. In any case we have to accept that each is a unique journey with its own needs and ground of experiences to cover.

We can only turn to Their Grace to heal and help, and to Savitri for guidance.

But few can look beyond the present state
Or overleap this matted hedge of sense.

All that transpires on earth and all beyond
Are parts of an illimitable plan
The One keeps in his heart and knows alone.

Our outward happenings have their seed within,
And even this random Fate that imitates Chance,
This mass of unintelligible results,
Are the dumb graph of truths that work unseen:
The laws of the Unknown create the known.

The events that shape the appearance of our lives
Are a cipher of subliminal quiverings
Which rarely we surprise or vaguely feel,
Are an outcome of suppressed realities
That hardly rise into material day:
They are born from the spirit’s sun of hidden powers
Digging a tunnel through emergency.

But who shall pierce into the cryptic gulf
And learn what deep necessity of the soul
Determined casual deed and consequence?

Absorbed in a routine of daily acts,
Our eyes are fixed on an external scene;
We hear the crash of the wheels of Circumstance
And wonder at the hidden cause of things.

Yet a foreseeing Knowledge might be ours,
If we could take our spirit’s stand within,
If we could hear the muffled daemon voice.

With prayers and Her Love
Alok

There are so many ways to grow in Her Consciousness, including:
– taking the Mother’s Name as often as one can;
– offering one’s work in the beginning and again when it is over;
– concentrating upon Her image in the heart, meditating upon Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s words;
– reading Savitri and Prayers and Meditations, reading the other books of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother;
– hearing about Them, keeping Their pictures and hearing Savitri music;
– taking up some work for Her in the spirit of service to Her, doing one hour work daily with no other purpose but the Mother’s service;
– making a visit to the Ashram;
– becoming conscious of our inner motives and rejecting all that stems from fear and desires;
– praying to Her in the morning after waking up and at night before sleeping;
– offering our thoughts and feelings and will and actions inwardly to the Mother
– practicing equanimity under changing conditions and situations;
– calling Peace until it is firmly established in us;
– learning to step back as a witness and act after reflection or a deeper inspiration;
– writing one’s inner and outer state to the Mother;
– aspiring within for opening to the Mother and consecration to Her;
– cultivating the right attitudes.

But most important is faith in Her Grace, sincerity in our thoughts, feelings and actions, and an increasing surrender to Her.

Christ and Krishna are both divine descents and like all other divine Advents are a blessing to earth and men. Each Divine Advent comes putting forward one aspect of the other of the Divine. Christ brought forth the Divine Compassion born of the Divine Love. He showed the way of sacrifice and redemption through faith. Krishna brought forth the Divine Delight and showed the way to be inwardly free even while leading an outwardly normal life through the path of Divine Works.

Continuing in the same line, now Sri Aurobindo has come bringing forth the Divine Perfection that exists in the home of Truth, for earth and mankind through the path of progressive and integral surrender to the Divine Mother’s Grace.

Q:
Why nature does not help soul in order to bring heaven to this earth, or to end all the difficulties? And why the creator from the very beginning made this universe like this, with all the species of this earth suffering? If we got a chance to contact the creator…

ALOKDA:
Suffering is an undeniable fact of our earthly life. So too evil very much exists. The question is about its cause and cure, if any. Here we have a number of theories, each valid in its own realm but none touches the root of the problem.

According to the Scientists suffering and evil are all due to the nature of things. It means that this is how Nature works, – material and psychological nature, and there is no deeper reason to it. We have to discover the grooves of nature, unravel her processes and find ways to correct them with medication or other methods and processes. The results are rather quick but often temporary and there is no permanent remedy to abolish the possibility of suffering. The human body and mind continue to be vulnerable to the possibility of suffering and propensity to evil. At best one can somewhat contain it by imposing and promoting a rational way of life and social order. Here we have these two factors operating, first is the vulnerability due to our heredity, constitution and the body’s mechanism. Secondly, we have our own role by not living according to the rules of nature and not following a rational, moral way of life. Not that this will eliminate the possibility but perhaps reduce it.

According to Religious thought the law of suffering and the propensity to evil are because man deviates from the Laws given by God or according to the tenets of a given Religion. There is also the law of karma where our own deeds bear results in the future. Allied to Religion is the occult understanding of life wherein man is moved and influenced by cosmic forces that open doors to suffering or compel his heart to err by luring him to evil. By propitiating these forces we can find temporary or permanent relief. But the vulnerability remains and one remains subject to these cosmic forces and the harsh law of karma. Here again the problem goes back to man who alone is responsible for his suffering.

Spiritual philosophy goes one step deeper as it tries to discover the roots of suffering and evil in the human consciousness. According to the traditional spiritual understanding suffering and evil are due to Ignorance and ego that make us chase desires that invariably results in suffering one way or the other. If the desire is not fulfilled it results in frustration. If fulfilled it gives temporary happiness but because of the attachment that follows and the transient nature of everything suffering invariably follows sooner or later. Desire deviates our conduct and in trying to forcibly snatch something there is the emergence of evil. The remedy is to get rid of ignorance and desire, to free ourselves from the ego and dwell in the peace of Nirvana. The solution is permanent though not as easy as it seems to be. Besides while it can eliminate individual psychological suffering and propensity to evil, it cannot eliminate physical suffering (though one can rise above it) and since it cannot change others, life upon earth will always remain vulnerable to suffering and evil though the individual can at least eventually find the permanent exit door to the state in which suffering does not touch anymore. The reason for ignorance is presumably the mysterious Maya whose origin and purpose remains itself unknown.

As you can none of these are satisfactory and do not address the problem comprehensively. Most importantly the origin of the law of suffering and evil propensities remains unexplained. So what does Sri Aurobindo and the Mother say? We can summarise it as follows.

As long as the human body remains what it is, the vulnerability to suffering will remain. Whether child or adult the body driven by seeds of heredity, the heart vulnerable to dark forces, the mind veiled by ego and ignorance and the life driven by desires and open to fear the spell of suffering and evil will always remain. Individual can liberate himself but earthly life will always be subject to this dark law. All these things are accepted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as operating processes that bring suffering and open the doors to evil. However, he takes up the unanswered questions of the origin of Ignorance and ego and desire itself. Instead of blaming man he takes the burden and the final responsibility back to God.

The origin of ignorance lies in the origin of Creation itself but unlike the traditional explanation of the mysterious Maya suddenly superimposing herself on the Divine or Brahman, Maya is the power of the Divine Himself and her work is to create many divine individuals out of the One Infinite Divine. The creation of Many requires the veiling of the sense of totality and the All. The infinite Consciousness becomes limited leading to ignorance and desire and ego and suffering and evil. This however is done with the purpose of each of these seemingly separate individualities to recover the Whole divinity without losing its individuality. It is like the tree limits itself in a seed thereby losing its features of the tree. But it is only so that the seed growing into the tree multiplies the One original tree into many trees. Ignorance therefore is a temporary necessity, suffering and evil incidents that act only as a spur to hasten the seed’s growth into a tree. But even in this limited state of utter ignorance there is an unseen spur that compels us (as the seed is compelled) to unfold our divine possibility. This divine compulsion uses everything including the worst defeat and failure and fall to jump across Time. It uses suffering and evil and death and all else to hasten the goal of divinising matter and furthering our spiritual evolution. It is this Divine Intent working in creation in and through everything that alone can justify the the long or short interlude of pain.

Now to come back to the analogy of the tiger and the deer, the tiger prowls upon the deer so that the deer grows in swiftness and vigilance. Nature assists by multiplying the deer while the tiger becomes a dwindling species. One may say that what about those deer who are already sacrificed in the belly of the tiger? It is here that the real purpose of the immortal soul comes into play. Forms are destroyed, our outer being and personality suffers but the inner being and the soul grows in power and wisdom and strength through all this. One may say that well we do not know about the soul since we have not seen it. We see only what is happening on the surfaces of life. But can we ever understand life by looking at the surfaces alone? Don’t these events that make us suffer also raise questions about life and push us out of our comfort zones? These are golden moments when detaching ourselves from the flow we step back and try to find the soul, the meaning and purpose of our existence, the true value of our life. If we can do this then we may well feel grateful for the ordeals since they change us for good. Then we also understand the deep utility of suffering that only helps to hasten our progress. But unfortunately, most of us lose the moment and waste the opportunity.

We may ask could there have been a better painless process. Well then there would be no process, no evolution but beings fixed in certain happy moulds from beginning to end like the gods. It would be like artificial ready-made tree replicas that may look even better than the original but there will be no challenge, no difficulty to conquer, no new possibility to realise. Such a world with its limited joy and perfection within boundaries may be liked by the ego and desire self in us but the soul of man will find it insipid and prefer to be driven out of such heaven and build something beautiful out of base material. Our souls have chosen this and not some arbitrary God has pushed us forcibly into it. And the Divine too enters into the play with us, takes our wounds upon Himself, bleeds upon the cross, steers us through the Mahabharata, faces the danger and leads us through it all to the predestined Victory. When we see this way things become clearer.

Q: How to get forgiveness from a person whom I hurt out of some bad will, deliberately, but now really feel sorry and want forgiveness? If  forgiveness is granted by the Divine, then can it also be taken as forgiveness from the person?

ALOKDA:

Forgiveness from the person is really not necessary as long as one seeks it from the Divine. Forgiveness from the person serves the purpose of satisfying oneself and also cutting off the bad will that may have been generated in the person due to our thoughts and deeds.

But the real harm we do through our bad will is towards the Divine Work that is going on in everyone. We contradict the Divine Will when we think ill of someone because the Divine is labouring ceaselessly to bring peace, harmony, love and beauty in this world.

Besides by harbouring hate and jealousies we repel the Divine Presence in us and put an extra thick veil which sometimes needs a great blow to be removed.

What would help us and help the person as well as the Divine Work is not forgiveness (which is often just a word with little truth in it) but to do these four things:

1) Recognise our error in harbouring, nurturing and throwing ill will on others.

2) Never to justify it under any pretext. No one else but we are responsible for what we do and how we react .

3) See things as they are and not as the trickster mind and emotions make them seem. Look for the inner causes within us which is generally rooted in the ego, selfishness and pettiness of nature combined with a lack of generosity and kindness.

4) Offer this part of one’s nature and aspire persistently for it to change.

As a preventive for future one should practice the Buddhist and the Raj Yogic way of substituting wrong responses with the right ones. For example replace consciously feelings of hate with love, jealousy with generosity, anger with kindness etc.

This becomes easier if we understand that everyone has their difficulties which are part of human nature in its present stage of imperfection. And yet everyone has the Divine Presence within them and some divine quality that should be our main point of contact while ignoring the others.

Q: I have done so many mistakes, will Maa forgive me? I have impure desires, may be I am not fit at all for yoga?

A: If the Divine were to judge then there would be no hope for anyone. Even the highest human goodness is almost always motivated by selfishness or for some personal gain, here or hereafter. Could there be any greater sin, if you want to use this word, than selfishness?

Besides all our deeds are done in ignorance of the Divine Will thereby causing much misery in the world. Can there be any greater error, if error we may call it, then doing things not aligned to the Divine Will? Besides whom will She judge? Is not the entire universe Herself moving towards the intended Divine Perfection?

So while it is good to note our insincerities and weaknesses and try to correct them by a steady application of our will, we must not mistake this need for developing sincerity into the sense of sin and forgiveness etc.

Here are a few words from the Mother Herself that give us hope as always:

“What value have our impulses and our desires, our anguish and our violence, our sufferings and our struggles, all these inner vicissitudes unduly dramatised by our unruly imagination—what value do they have before this great, this sublime and divine love bending over us from the innermost depths of our being, bearing with our weaknesses, rectifying our errors, healing our wounds, bathing our whole being with its regenerating streams?

For the inner Godhead never imposes herself, she neither demands nor threatens; she offers and gives herself, conceals and forgets herself in the heart of all beings and things; she never accuses, she neither judges nor curses nor condemns, but works unceasingly to perfect without constraint, to mend without reproach, to encourage without impatience, to enrich each one with all the wealth he can receive; she is the mother whose love bears fruit and nourishes, guards and protects, counsels and consoles; because she understands everything, she can endure everything, excuse and pardon everything, hope and prepare for everything; bearing everything within herself, she owns nothing that does not belong to all, and because she reigns over all, she is the servant of all; that is why all, great and small, who want to be kings with her and gods in her, become, like her, not despots but servitors among their brethren.” The Mother, CWM 2:42-43

Q: If material things are not the reason for happiness, and forcing a smile each day no matter what goes on in my life is not an answer, then how do I remain happy? How can one stay happy without practically doing something?

A: It is true that ordinarily we need either to do something or meet someone to feel happiness. In other words our happiness is most often object-dependent.

But if we look carefully these events or activities are actually triggers that opens some inner door to happiness within us. If it was the object itself then everyone would be happy with the same things and in the same way or through the same event. But that is not the case. The triggers often differ. Also much depends upon the value we give to the object. This value itself depends a lot upon the objective we have in life. Now if we take just one step further we shall see that this valuation and objectives are often merely a conditioning received from society and others. In other words a lot of happiness and its association with some outer activity or event is merely a habit or a conditioning. It is like some are happy reading a book, others doing exercises whereas still others eating food. There are again many variations in the type of book or food or exercises that will open the door to happiness. This is one type of happiness which though seems like object dependent yet has its real reasons within, in our unique conditioning and habit and values.

However we all experience another kind of happiness as well, though perhaps not too often (or more likely we just fail to notice it). These are simply moments when a breath of freshness passes over our life and we feel a peace and a joy for no apparent reason. Here we may say that the inner door to happiness opens spontaneously as an act of Grace and for no known reasons. Experience suggests that when this happens we can experience happiness even when the circumstances are most contrary to it.

Mystics have found the ways and means to open this inner door or even to keep it open all the time. If one can do it then one perfects the art of being happy all the time even if one is apparently doing nothing. However this doing nothing simply means doing nothing tangible and visible. Yet there is an inner action going on. It is in the shifting the needle of consciousness and applying the key to open this inner door. This too is an action. Later of course when the door is permanently open then the action may shift to other fields and one has to do nothing for feeling happy. This does not mean that one does not play or eat or do exercises or enjoys the food one takes. One does all this but no more to get happiness. They may be done to diversify or multiply the inner joy or for other reasons but not for finding joy. The possibility of opening this inner door is within everybody’s reach. The key is also given to all of us. we just have to learn to apply it and persist until the door opens. Then all depression is chased away and there is peace and joy evermore and many other things besides.

Affectionately, Alokda