Daily Offerings from Alokda

Our limited receptivity is one issue when we turn towards Sri Aurobindo’s words. There is another issue that arises from the vast and complex nature of the Truth he brings to earth and man. The Supramental Truth is the truth of the Infinite. It cannot be bound or limited by any one-sided formula or understanding of things. Nor even can it be bound by any process or technique for which we may be eagerly looking for. Sri Aurobindo would rather give us the fundamental understanding of how things are and work. He leaves the rest to be adapted by each individual given his or her evolutionary stage. As he points out in the Synthesis itself about the workings of the Divine Shakti:

“In the first place it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga….

What is his method and his system? He has no method and every method. His system is a natural organisation of the highest processes and movements of which the nature is capable. Applying themselves even to the pettiest details and to the actions the most insignificant in their appearance with as much care and thoroughness as to the greatest, they in the end lift all into the Light and transform all. For in his Yoga there is nothing too small to be used and nothing too great to be attempted. As the servant and disciple of the Master has no business with pride or egoism because all is done for him from above, so also he has no right to despond because of his personal deficiencies or the stumblings of his nature. For the Force that works in him is impersonal—or superpersonal—and infinite.” [CWSA 23: Pp. 46 – 47, 61 – 62]

Or else he would give us some luminous and helpful hints, some uplifting strains of divine music that carries us deep and high into hitherto unknown realms of the Spirit. Then mere reading with a quiet concentration and receptivity to the power contained in the words itself becomes a yoga. The word here becomes not just a messenger bringing to us divine tidings from high and luminous worlds but also a vehicle to carry us back to the Source from where the Word has emerged. Ordinarily, we dissociate understanding from doing. Therefore men have a tendency to first read, then reflect, then act in accordance with what is written. This is of course needed since mere reading a Teaching without a sincere will to live it is at best a stage of development prior to the beginning of the yogic journey. Here we read with our active mind and the outer consciousness receives the impacts of the word-meanings as our mind understands. Slowly these multiple impacts begin to create a dent and an opening for the inner being to open up and receive the Light. But once the opening has come then the reading itself becomes a yoga since now it is no more the active external mind but the inner being and the inmost soul that hears and receives the Word. The Word then becomes a representative of the Divine Master, a power and force of the author who created it like the Rishis of yore, or brought it down from a higher Source embodying the higher states and the vibrations of Truth into a rhythmic expression wearing the body of sound and letter and word. Sri Aurobindo reveals this power of the Representative Word in The Synthesis:

“Ordinarily, the Word from without, representative of the Divine, is needed as an aid in the work of self-unfolding; and it may be either a word from the past or the more powerful word of the living Guru. In some cases this representative word is only taken as a sort of excuse for the inner power to awaken and manifest; it is, as it were, a concession of the omnipotent and omniscient Divine to the generality of a law that governs Nature….

But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra,—some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins,—it may be practiced either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.”  [CWSA 23: 23: 54 – 55]

However he also cautions us not to bind ourselves rigidly in a dogmatic manner to the written or spoken word, however great and helpful it may be. The sadhaka is, in his words, ‘not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite.‘

Alok Pandey

In an autobiographical poem, Sri Aurobindo reveals the deeper truth behind his own writings:

Seer deep-hearted

Seer deep-hearted, divine king of the secrecies,
Occult fountain of love sprung from the heart of God,
Ways thou knewest no feet ever in Time had trod.
Words leaped flashing, the flame-billows of wisdom’s seas.
Vast thy soul was a tide washing the coasts of heaven.
Thoughts broke burning and bare crossing the human night,
White star-scripts of the gods born from the book of Light
Page by page to the dim children of earth were given.
[CWSA 1: 655]

This very much applies to the words of Sri Aurobindo. They are mantric in nature and their action is not confined to the limits of our understanding. In fact, our human understanding is a double-edged sword. It can clarify the inner sense of the word if the mind is quiet and receptive to the one who has released the word-power. Or it may, indeed very often in normal human life, obfuscate the understanding and even create confusion by sieving the words through the net of our preconceived ideas and opinions about things. This is a common problem that many encounter when they read Sri Aurobindo. When the mind is in a dull state because the mental faculties have not been adequately used, it tends to fall asleep. The idea-forces contained in these powerful words then sink into some subconscious terrains of our complex nature and then work their way upwards from there. There is an action but a slow and one and the reader, living in the surfaces of life may not be fully aware of the occult action of the words going on within. But something else within him knows and therefore returns again and again to the writings even though the mind is unable to comprehend what is being revealed through the words. The soul still hears and if it is sufficiently awake, responds.

Or the mind may be restless, disorganized, filled with all sorts of ideas and opinions gathered from here and there and everywhere thinking that by doing so it will grow in wisdom and knowledge. Little do we know that wisdom is as far from knowledge as knowledge is from information! Wisdom is the light that grows within the soul; in that Light we see our self and the world anew. Knowledge, as it is used in the spiritual parlance (and not a scholarly knowledge which counts for little from the spiritual point of view) is the reflection of this growing Light in the inner being of man. This knowledge frees us from ignorance and bondage to fixed ideas and opinions and rigid dogmas and narrow views of existence. On the other hand, Wisdom leads us to Oneness. As to Information, it is merely a raw data, often inadequate data that conceals more than it reveals (leaving apart the falsifying and distorting action of the limited and imperfect human instruments). It cannot lead us to knowledge. Rather when knowledge awakens and an inner sight leaps out of Wisdom’s eyes then alone we can make the right use of information, understand its true import and the distortion lent to it by our own sensory apparatus. That is why the wise have always insisted on first clearing the obstructions in our understanding, purifying the mental instruments, awakening to the Truth within rather than losing ourselves in the maze and haze of the first raw data that is presented to us through the inadequate senses and the mind.

But even when we have carefully overcome these two difficulties we may still be caught and trapped by an idealized mentality whose shadowy brilliance breaks the Sun into multiple rays adding which we cannot constitute the original plenitude of the Light contained in Sri Aurobindo’s words that are vehicles of the Supramental Truth. Of course, still lower down the ladder of and idealized Mind we have our own ideas of what this World and God and Spiritual thought is or should be. These ideas are most often not the product of any patient reflection but merely the gathering of flowers from the garden of Religious scriptures and musings of someone else plucked from the tree of Philosophical thought. These things, useful aids as they may be in their own domain and at a certain stage of our mental evolution, interfere with the deeper spiritual understanding.

Sri Aurobindo reveals the various kinds of impurity that arise in our instruments of understanding itself. 

“The first cause of impurity in the understanding is the intermiscence of desire in the thinking functions, and desire itself is an impurity of the Will involved in the vital and emotional parts of our being. When the vital and emotional desires interfere with the pure will-to-know, the thought-function becomes subservient

to them, pursues ends other than those proper to itself and its perceptions are clogged and deranged. The understanding must lift itself beyond the siege of desire and emotion and, in order that it may have perfect immunity, it must get the vital parts and the emotions themselves purified….

The second cause of impurity in the understanding is the illusion of the senses and the intermiscence of the sense-mind in the thinking functions. No knowledge can be true knowledge which subjects itself to the senses or uses them otherwise than as first indices whose data have constantly to be corrected and overpassed. The beginning of Science is the examination of the truths of the world-force that underlie its apparent workings such as our senses represent them to be; the beginning of philosophy is the examination of the principles of things which the senses mistranslate to us; the beginning of spiritual knowledge is the refusal to accept the limitations of the sense-life or to take the visible and sensible as anything more than phenomenon of the Reality….

A third cause of impurity has its source in the understanding itself and consists in an improper action of the will to know. That will is proper to the understanding, but here again choice and unequal reaching after knowledge clog and distort. They lead to a partiality and attachment which makes the intellect cling to certain ideas and opinions with a more or less obstinate will to ignore the truth in other ideas and opinions, cling to certain fragments of a truth and shy against the admission of other parts which are yet necessary to its fullness, cling to certain predilections of knowledge and repel all knowledge that does not agree with the personal temperament of thought which has been acquired by the past of the thinker. The remedy lies in a perfect equality of the mind, in the cultivation of an entire intellectual rectitude and in the perfection of mental disinterestedness.”    [CWSA 23: 313 – 315]

That is why the Mother advises us to remain quiet and not try to understand the words but simply wait for the understanding to develop in a receptive state:

“To read my books is not difficult because they are written in the simplest language, almost the spoken language. To draw profit from them, it is enough to read with attention and concentration and an attitude of inner goodwill with the desire to receive and to live what is taught.

To read what Sri Aurobindo writes is more difficult because the expression is highly intellectual and the language is much more literary and philosophic. The brain needs a preparation to be able truly to understand and generally a preparation takes time, unless one is specially gifted with an innate intuitive faculty.

In any case, I advise always to read a little at a time, keeping the mind as tranquil as one can, without making an effort to understand, but keeping the head as silent as possible, and letting the force contained in what one reads enter deep within. This force received in the calm and the silence will do its work of light and, if needed, will create in the brain the necessary cells

for the understanding. Thus, when one re-reads the same thing some months later, one perceives that the thought expressed has become much more clear and close, and even sometimes altogether familiar.

It is preferable to read regularly, a little every day, and at a fixed hour if possible; this facilitates the brain-receptivity.”   [CWM 12: 203]

The word has power, even the ordinary word releases into the psychological and occult atmosphere certain energies that have concrete and lasting repercussion upon earth. The physical scientists would perhaps even say that the word contains within it certain vibrations that have an impact and influence on the very structure of matter and its behaviour. The biologists would note the influence of sound upon the cells. The psychologists of course know very well the power of words and its impact upon building (or destroying our lives). For the spiritual seeker, it has always been said that one must be careful about not only what one speaks and writes but also about what one thinks. It not only impacts those around us but also the person who uses speech as an instrument for expressing certain states of consciousness. Surely a spiritually realized person can pass on his influence even in silence, but not all are ready to open and receive this silent influence that is often much more potent than words. Man lives largely in the external consciousness and needs something to touch him there and through that penetrate deeper into his inner layers. The word does this work. A word of Wisdom and Power not only penetrates the inner being but also touches the outer surface layers of life with sound impact and moulds not just the inner but also the outer character of man. This was the secret of the mantra that the ancient Rishis knew so well. The mantra was the highest possibility of speech and by its power could unlock an inner door as well as create a powerful outer atmosphere that would prevent the entry of all sorts of forces and energies that are harmful to the seeker of a higher life. Very simply, the word is a vehicle that contains within it the state of consciousness of the person who has used it as a means of expression. It is a capsule of rejuvenating Light or benumbing poison depending upon how it is used, the person used it and the secret purpose towards which it is directed.

The Mother beautifully explains this in one single word, in response to a query:

Q) You put something in Your words which enables us to see the Truth that words cannot convey. What is it that accompanies Your words?
A) Consciousness.
[CWM 13: 27 December 1967]

And Sri Aurobindo has written the following autobiographical poem:

The Word of the Silence

A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,
A world of sight clear and inimitable,
A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,
A greatness pure of thought, virgin of will.

Once on its pages Ignorance could write
In a scribble of intellect the blind guess of Time
And cast gleam-messages of ephemeral light,
A food for souls that wander on Nature’s rim.

But now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence’ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day.

All turns from a wideness and unbroken peace
To a tumult of joy in a sea of wide release.