Daily Questions

Everything can be made use of for the spiritual life including ritualistic worship (पूजा पाठ). It all depends on the inner attitude with which we approach things. One may engage in the most ordinary seeming act and do it with love and care and devotion as a means of worship and service to the Lord. On the other hand, one may do pooja everyday, visit places of worship, even sit for meditation as a mechanical duty or else for some personal selfish gains. It is the spirit that is most important and not the act alone. Religious life stops with belief and action in tune with the belief. Spiritual life goes on to discover and become one with God through various means and processes that are generally termed as yoga.

It is true that certain actions make a person more easily connect with God. Worship of God in a concrete physical way can be a beautiful preparation of the heart for awakening devotion and faith. But for this to happen it should be felt as a spontaneous need within and the relation formed with the Deity we worship should be living and real. This cannot be if the pooja is enforced too much as a ritual for all to follow, especially when fear and desire is associated with it to a large extent. If done as part of conformity to a religious group to which one belongs by birth then it can often stifle the spiritual impulse by giving one the false satisfaction that one is doing what one is supposed to do as prescribed in the religious text and enforced through a narrow, rigid dogmatic belief system. True Spiritual growth, on the other hand, invariably requires a certain degree of freedom and plasticity to evolve towards a genuine change. After God is free and infinite. He is everywhere and in everything. One cannot limit His workings and intelligence to a simple set of dos and don’ts, however useful these things may be at a certain stage of our evolution.

The core of spirituality is not the act but the motive force and the idea behind it. True spiritual life begins with an aspiration, a seeking for the Divine, to discover and become one with Him. Whatever helps in process is good whether it be a ritualistic worship or doing one’s work with dedication to God for the joy of serving Him. Besides it will also depend upon the stage of evolution. Most need a tangible outer support such as idol worship and scriptural reading for their growth. Others prefer the way of inner meditation and prayer. What counts in the end is the inner sincerity, the will and faith behind that supports the outer movement rather than the outer action itself, be it pooja or something else.

Perhaps you are referring to Sri Aurobindo’s letter to his Barin in 1920 where he speaks of the importance of Sangha saying that what one can achieve collectively is much more than what one can achieve individually. Later he himself clarified that the Ashram is not a Sangha but a field of growth individually. It is only in 8 after the Supramental Manifestation that the Mother spoke of the Ashram having become a collectivity. She added that this collectivity was not limited to the Ashram but contained all who had turned towards the teachings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

‘For a very long time the Ashram was only a gathering of individuals, each one representing something, but as an individual and without any collective organisation. They were like separate pawns on a chess-board—united only in appearance—or rather by the purely superficial fact of living together in the same place and having a few habits in common—not even very many, only a few. Each one progressed—or didn’t progress—according to his own capacity and with a minimum of relations with others. So, in accordance with the value of the individuals constituting this odd assemblage, one could say that there was a general value, but a very nebulous one, with no collective reality. This lasted a very long time—very long. And it is only quite recently that the need for a collective reality began to appear—which is not necessarily limited to the Ashram but embraces all who have declared themselves—I don’t mean materially but in their consciousness—to be disciples of Sri Aurobindo and have tried to live his teaching. Among all of them, and more strongly since the manifestation of the supramental Consciousness and Force, there has awakened the necessity for a true communal life, which would not be based only on purely material circumstances but would represent a deeper truth, and be the beginning of what Sri Aurobindo calls a supramental or gnostic community…. He has said, of course, that, for this, the individuals constituting this collectivity should themselves have this supramental consciousness; but even without attaining an individual perfection—even while very far from it—there was at the same time an inner effort to create this “collective individuality”, so to speak. The need for a real union, a deeper bond has been felt and the effort has been directed towards that realisation.’

In other words this collectivity is not limited to the physical Ashram which itself is a condensation of the subtle Ashram which is in the subtle Space that connects all who are turned towards and trying to live the truth of Sri Aurobindo’s teaching regardless of their physical location. In fact even before 1950, in fact right from the beginning there have been as many disciples of Sri Aurobindo living outside Pondicherry as in the Ashram.

What is true however is that it helps immensely to visit the Ashram and breath the atmosphere around the Samadhi, recharge oneself and then return back to the place where one is engaged in the sadhana of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Anxiety is primarily due to the sense of uncertainty about the future.  The uncertainty may arise either because of the sense of inadequacy within or the enormity of the world around us. This is the root.

How are we to get rid of this? By constantly reminding ourselves that in our origin and essence we are not small, limited, helpless creatures but a portion of the Divine.  If that is difficult, then anything that can help us give the sense of the Divine Power is good, for example prayers.

You can also divert the mind from anxious foreboding through work and games. Games especially help build confidence by increasing the secretion of endorphins. Calming methods such as deep breathing, mantra, music, calling peace are all helpful in anxiety management.

A simple practice is to step back and see the relative importance of the events and circumstances that we anticipate and get worried about.

Regular practice of asanas and especially deep relaxation with or without imagery can be one of the most effective means of eventually saying goodbye to anxiety. 

The Divine Mother always exists in Her Universal and Transcendent, JagatJanani and ParaShakti aspects, but She incarnates in a human body with a specific purpose and for a special work when it could not be done otherwise. It is the same as with the Avatars of the Ishwara wherein each Avatar takes up a special and specific work for which he alone has the mandate.

The Yoga of transformation can only be undertaken and fulfilled by the Mother. In this way and for this reason the Avatar, even though an aspect of the Ishwara, is in certain ways greater in terms of the specific work that he comes to fulfil.

The Divine Mother is always available to help, to bless, to heal, to succour or to give freedom, peace, wisdom, love and bliss as well as countless other boons and gifts which equally can be granted by the incarnate Mother in human form.

The Superman is the intermediary between Man as he is now and the Supramental being. The Superman is someone who is born in the usual normal human animal way but his inner consciousness is transformed enough to belong to the higher kind. It is the Superman who will subsequently lead the way to the fully transformed (inner and outer, including physical transformation) Supramental being.

As with any mantra, the pronunciation and meaning are helpful for the fullness of the effect of Savitri. For that matter the rhythm is even more important and that depends more on the right pauses and intonation than pronunciation alone.

However if that were a precondition very few, including many English speaking readers, would qualify to read it. What is much more important is to read a little everyday, to read slowly and with sufficient quietude and then meditate upon the lines that have been read.

There is another way which can be combined with the former. It is to read with faith and aspiration in the heart knowing that it is the Word-body of Sri Aurobindo, a living reality draped in word and sound. If one does it with sufficient faith then the rhythm begins to emerge from within and the mantric power works bypassing all the rules and cannons of reading.

If one wants to know how to read it is best to hear the Mother’s readings of Savitri that are available on this website.

QUESTION:

How do you define feminine and masculine? If the Divine is genderless, does it affect rigidity of gender qualities of those on the path? You mentioned that Sri Aurobindo said that the psychic being is on the feminine side – how opening to it affects the aspirant?

ASNWER FROM ALOKDA:

Surely the Divine is beyond gender. He or She or That or It or the Self of self, Sacchidananda, cannot be defined or confined to the human mental categories. Yet this much we can say that there are two sides to the One Divine Reality, the passive Witness who watches over the Creation in a state of utter Transcendence. He is the Eternal and Infinite beyond Time and Space, the Knower who becomes the object of Knowledge. He is the Silence that is behind everything aa well as in everything. He is the Self of self, pure Existence, the One without a second. But there is another aspect of the One. It is the dynamic impulsion, knowledge and power that brings out and weaves creation in a stupendous dance. She conceives the One in innumerable ways giving form and name and qualities for the One to dwell in Space and Time. It is to these two aspects of the One that the terms masculine or Ishwara and feminine or Shakti is given.

In creation it takes the form of apparently static (in a relative sense) such as sky, mountains, stars, space that the masculine gender is used. It is associated with qualities and attributes of wideness, knowledge that holds the Idea within, strength that provides stable basis. Love that is wide and Impersonal, Perfection that is static and preserves the type, the Peace of the Immutable. The feminine is associated with creative conception that throws out a million idea-forces in the manifestation, the Wisdom that governs each element of creation, the Power that builds and destroys through a dynamic ecstatic dance, the Love that binds all things in a stupendous harmony and charm of beauty, the perfection that is ever evolving towards greater and higher possibilities, the bliss that runs as a sap in creation.

So as we see masculine and feminine are not two different set of qualities but two different modes of functioning of each quality. Wisdom watching from above and looking upon creation from the poise of Knowledge is masculine whereas the same Wisdom leaning upon earth in Compassion to heal and save is feminine. Strength self-contained, held back in a supreme quietude is masculine whereas Strength rushing to battle and protect and change the slow trudge of Time into a swift movement is feminine. Love that glows as an Impersonal beatitude is masculine whereas love that leans into the abyss to build the home of beauty in a house of stone is feminine.

However, in the course of evolution, Nature, for the sake of her inferior play builds some forms with a predominantly masculine and other with predominantly feminine tendencies. It creates a natural attraction between the passive and dynamic aspects that are in affinity with each other. In human beings it takes the form of idealised mentality in men and the idealised emotions in women thus completing and supporting and fulfilling each other.

As to the spiritual consciousness when contacted through the psychic door it brings in the feminine aspects of dynamic love and service to the Divine with an urge for progress and help in the Divine Work. When contacted through the idealised mentality it leads to the experience of the Self, the eternal Witness who watches through the luminous Silence of the Spirit.

QUESTION (abridged):

Should all verses of the Gita be understood and followed literally, even if some appear be outdated or even not authentic, or they are rather symbolic rather than absolute truths and allow interpretation? Is it true that anybody passing during the six months the Sun travels north, attains the Supreme Brahman [Shlokas 8.24-25]?  

ANSWER FROM ALOKDA:

Your question regarding a few verses of the Gita raise two deeper question which are implied within it. They need to be dealt with before coming to the specific verses.

The first question is about the criteria that would decide whether a given scripture is the word of God or not. According to you either everything that it contains must be applicable for all times for a scripture to be the word of God. True it is that all scriptures, including the Gita have certain truths that are fundamental to our existence as well as unchanging and eternal. But to say that a scripture should not concern itself with the temporal events and prevalent practices is to say that God is unconcerned with the earthly play that takes place in Space and Time. All scriptures therefore contain and must necessarily contain both temporal as well as eternal elements. Not knowing the difference has led to so much confusion in the history of religions. Either the adherents blindly believe that everything in a scripture is meant for all times and thereby become rigid, orthodox and fanatics trying to impose it forcibly upon all. Or else declaring that the scripture is totally false in all its parts because some of it is not understandable. The logical fallacy is the assumption that God must not concern himself with the events and circumstances, beliefs and practices of the Time in which the scripture is given. Well, if this was so then God would not need to speak only once for all times. It is this logical fallacy that has led to and continues to harden Islam into a militant religion and has led many to leave Christianity because both ignorantly believe that God speaks only once and that is final with nothing to be added or subtracted from it. Hindu thought instead takes its stand on the evolutionary idea that as human consciousness evolves new scriptures are needed. Therefore, it believes in the new Avatar developing over the old in a progression of Divine embodiments and new scriptures replacing the old in certain respects even though the fundamental truths are the same. Sanatan Dharma also believes that there are bound to be a number of scriptures since the Divine is Infinite and hence He would convey or rather reveal the same truths differently to people in different stages of inner development. That is how we developed a truly inclusive rather than a cancel culture or a privileged exclusive club of a particular religion. In fact, it goes even further. Thus, Sri Krishna declares that while scriptures are a help, sometimes a great help, yet one should eventually go beyond every scripture, sabdbrahmativartate.

The second fallacy similarly concerns the use of symbols. We are again assuming that either everything must be symbolic or else physically factual to be true. Without going into the argument about what is factual we can easily see that there are things that need to be expressed symbolically using prevalent physical objects or actions to make them comprehensible. This applies especially to subjective and psychological as well as occult and profound spiritual experiences. Thus, for example a romantic poet uses the symbol of moon to express the intensity of his feelings. However, it is equally true that the moon does trigger heaving of sentiments in some people much like the water heaves during full moon nights leading to a high tide. The word yajna is used in the Gita most of the time, in fact consistently in this symbolic sense. How else do you understand when Sri Krishna says that it is by yajna that the world is created and by yajna it is governed. Yajna as fire bringing down rain is still understandable if you don’t limit yourself to the limited frameworks and discoveries of modern Science but how does one understand when Sri Krishna asks Arjun to offer his actions into a yajna. Do you mean he should light up a fire in the middle of the battlefield and keep looking at it or point his arrows thereby before shooting? Obviously not. It is only if you take yajna in the sense of a sacrifice or offering to the inner Fire of aspiration and the Divine Will and Energy that the word will fit everywhere and make sense consistently. Thus, when you offer your will and actions to the Divine Power within then it brings down the rains of God’s bounty from above. Incidentally a friend of mine, an extremely brilliant scientist who once worked on supercomputers and networking of banks did invent a device which would burn certain chemicals for cloud seeding from below. He called it the Varun yantra. So, we don’t know what technology was in use then but surely the image had been known to the Vedic seers who always associated fire with human aspiration supported by the Divine Power rising upwards and rain as Divine Forces pouring from above. I could go on describing so many such beautiful symbols in the Gita and the Vedas but that would make a very lengthy answer. If you are interested in a deeper study, you can check out Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita as well as The Secret of the Vedas.

As to the effect of solstice on the soul’s further journey the Gita surely gives it as a passing suggestion where one has to apply the symbolic sense that the Uttarayan is simply a soul that was already ascending upwards and hence after death it continues to ascend and become one with the Supreme Brahman. That Sri Krishna intends this is abundant if we see other verses wherein he states how the evil doers are cast into Asuric births and the importance of the aspiration at the moment of Death is so important. Again, it does not mean that the time and place of departure makes no difference at all. In the cosmic play, Time and Place have their own relative importance. For example, darkness and night is known to be a period when the Asuric and Rakshasic forces are at their worst. We can ourselves feel the difference in our inner state between early morning, midday, evening and at night by noticing what kind of thoughts and feelings pervade us, generally so to say. Of course, it will be an error to convert these temporary and relative truths into an absolute one like dying in Kashi to get moksha.

To sum up, the greatness of the Gita does not lie so much in its conceptual framework wherein Sri Krishna naturally uses prevalent ideas of Sankhya, Chaturvarnya, Yajna etc. but in its being a book revealing to us the principle of action so that our everyday life turns into a Karma Yoga, a Godward turning of our entire existence. It is not a handbook of ethics or a rule book of moral science with its strict dos and don’ts (and thank God or Krishna for that). Its concern is to lay down certain general principles of action following which the soul can arrive at inner freedom even while engaged in all kinds of activities. It leaves the rest for us to follow and make our choices rather than spoon feeds or forces us into blindly obeying its word. In the end it in fact says be full of God, follow Him give up yourself to Him rather than remain tied to even dharma and the scripture. God is greater than His Gospel and the law of action is an evolving dharma rather than a set of rules to be followed by all and for all times.

Alok Pandey

2024/06/24

QUESTION: 

The Mother says that Savitri alone is enough to guide one on the path. How can it practically help a Sadhak? 

ANSWER FROM ALOKDA:

Savitri helps to grow in consciousness through the consciousness contained within the words. It is something similar to the action of a mantra. When we read Savitri we come in contact with the consciousness of Sri Aurobindo (the author) and the Mother (whose story is being primarily told). This contact starts acting upon us and changing us along the lines indicated in Savitri.