Daily Offerings from Alokda

Man has buried himself under the superstructure of “civilization” that he has built by his very own body and brain. This mind has played with mud and unleashed out of it a power of matter whose potency has become a threat to himself. Or else, he lies encrusted under the arches of a toy-city, feeling himself safe and comfortable till some giant hand smashes it to the ground throws him under the rubbles and ruins of his own works. In spite of all his “perfection”, in spite of all his pride and the arrogance of his ignorance, death, disease, disaster continue to strike him at will, through one means or another, through one route or another. Nay, paradoxically enough, the very forces he has roused and chained for his service turn against him. He becomes, as if trapped, within the cocoon of his own perfection. Sitting inside his air-conditioned rooms, he sweats with unknown fears. His safe castles are haunted by unseen ghosts that hold him at ransom within his own house. His comfort zones have become his prison-houses. The fetters that bind him are those he has built with great care with his own hands. In a way man’s mind has built an empire that he cannot manage. Each new knowledge leaves the previous one a doubt and a guess. Each new discovery smashes the neat old world and its paradigm like a house of cards.

So where are we heading through all this? A “civilization” buried under its own weight or a humanity struggling to break free from its own inner limits? But the limits are within us and not outside. The heaping of more and more external superstructures in the name of development is like the caterpillar swelling in its size due to the cocoon he has built around itself. To heap more and more of it externally is to bury itself more and more. Yet this pressure, this constriction, this state of tension generated by a life growing increasingly mechanical is only making us aware, as if by a contrast, our inner smallness. Till something in us… breaks free… tearing the shelter of its cocoon and the neat boundaries of its dimensional world… it spreads beautiful wings and courts with the boundless and sports with the timeless.

But for this he has to discover other locked energies than what his limited matter bound mind can conquer. Not only the material energies but also the energies of life and the powers of mind that man has just begun to discover, cannot eventually set him free. The wings of life and the power of thought can no doubt carry him beyond what the steeds and engines of material energy can even dream of, yet these are not enough. For there lies, sleeping inside the very bodily house of man, an infinite source of energy, an illimitable potency of will and action, a power and force that only his soul can arouse and command. It is to this that man must turn his gaze, now, to this inner empire of which he is presently hardly even aware and yet it is this which determines in the end how much he will actually possess and enjoy his outer empire. Swaraj before Samrajya (conquest over the world outside) is the word given by the wise ones. The inner conquest must proceed the outer. Man must first find and know and master himself before he can find, master and enjoy the world in a lasting and true way.

Alok Pandey

The first things needed is that we do not yet know everything about anything. Rationally speaking, it is absurd to ‘believe’ that man is simply a lump of clay or a bundle of neurons ticking away to glory or a clock set in the heart to tick us slowly towards inevitable death. I refuse to believe that man is just a bunch of chemicals or animalcules. This too is a kind of faith that many ‘scientists’ unwittingly have and I find it worse than a blind faith in totems and taboos that at least admit of something more than the two-legged worm called man. For what else would we be if we are nothing more than a bag of chemicals and physiology? Both Science and Reason demand of us a humility that we do not know and may never know all the mysteries of existence. This keeps us open to new vistas and horizons of discovery. One may say that but Science is after all making new discoveries. Well, yes on the face of it. But a closer look we shall see that unable to shed its obsession with chemistry and biology and physics it is simply running the bullock of effort in the same groves of matter around the same physical tracks despite increasing evidence that the mind (forget about higher consciousness for a moment), our thoughts and feelings and faith and will all have an impact upon our physical health. Can you tell me why research does not go in these directions as much as it should? Simply because this would mean empowering the people, of giving health in their hands which would mean closing down many pharma industries which are big business now (among the top ten in the world). are these people saintly and doing all their research with a selfless motive for the sole purpose of the good of humanity in their heart? One has to be too naïve to believe it.  So much for our beliefs and non-beliefs.

Coming back to the healing process, let us admit that it is a complex affair and to reduce it to one simple cause is not doing justice to science or reason. at any given point there are many factors involved including physical such as heredity and constitutional vulnerability of specific organs, exercise and lifestyle, food habits, sleep and rest balance, etc. Then there are vital factors such as the will to live, the joy of life, the strong instinct to survive or simply a tremendous vitality with which some are born. Besides these, there are a host of several other mental, occult and spiritual factors. All these different factors form a hierarchy of determinism. It is by bringing in a higher determinism that one can alter the usual course of the lower plane. Practically, this means that a strong mental or vital will can change the course of an illness, make it milder or less complicated than it may have turned out. Since spiritual consciousness is still higher its intervention can seem almost miraculous. But the highest of all is Grace that can completely change fixed destiny.

However, the cosmic play involves the creation as well as the Creator. Though the Creator can override all rules and laws, it is with His sanction as the Cosmic Being that these things have come into existence.  A responsiveness, a receptivity is needed on the side of the creation as well. What we experience as pain is an acute response to the contact with world forces. Its purpose is indeed to awaken and open and make the hard crust of matter more receptive. It is here that we must understand the role of faith and fear. Faith opens the doors wide to the workings of the healing forces that can use even a material medium to act. The Divine is least bothered (to use a human expression) whether we believe in this or that. It is enough that we have faith in the recovery, or faith in destiny, in the doctor,  the system,  the medication,  or just faith in ourselves.  It is enough to provide support to the higher forces that are always ready and willing to act if we simply allow them to. 

However isn’t it also true that mankind opens much more readily to the lower and darker forces through anger, revolts, agitation, lust for money and power, aggressive ambition, greed, above all distrust in higher things, fear and despair? It is not just a question of belief in God but the kind of forces to wh8ch we are open.  Leave aside those who are not yet ready for higher things and are genuinely in ignorance,  but even those who have some kind of opening towards greater things. They too so readily shrink back into a selfish fear focused around preserving their physical body so that they can continue devouring nature and exploit others for their selfish ends and brief pleasures! Not that the Divine abandons them. The Grace is equally for all but we shut our doors by putting ourselves in a small hole of fear and doubts. That is what makes life so needlessly complicated by the human mind that has a natural tendency (being on top of the food chain) that he is the highest and best and surrounds his ignorance with armour of arrogance. 

If only we could learn to be simple and humble and open like a flower to the Grace, then life would be so much wonderful. But the sceptic mind stands in the way and an aggressively selfish consciousness opens doors to fear and closes it to the Grace.

Alok Pandey

Knowledge, love and will are the three mystic keys hidden in our nature which can, if applied steadily with faith and in the right way, open the doors of the Supreme Divine Mystery in us. Of these, bhakti is indeed the simplest and the most direct since the Divine Presence dwells in the heart of man and hence is most easily accessed by the power of love. In fact, bhakti is nothing else but the turning of love in the human heart towards its Divine Origin.

Bhakti, very simply is, to take joy in the Divine. It may start with a Name, a Form, a Manifestation of the Divine. The bhakta finds joy in It. But slowly this universalises until he finds the Divine in all names, all forms and the entire Manifestation. Each element of creation begins to yield the Divine element within it until the Divine Beloved is felt and seen everywhere and in everything. Each name and form become a mask, some beautiful, some terrible, yet nevertheless a mask of the Divine who inhibits It and shines through it. Universal love and compassion, maitri-karuna, become the hallmark of the bhakta. Even as the Divine whom he adores, the bhakta is a friend to all creatures and hence he is ever engaged in doing good to all.

The core of bhakti is love, its master movement is love and surrender. Love may start with longing bearing the stamp of the ego at first with all the movements to which the human vital is prone including pride and possession, joy of union and the pain of separation or even dark emotions such as fear and jealousy and anger thrown upon the Divine. But sooner or later these get purified by the Divine touch and a sacred longing that waits upon the Lord, an adoration, the wish to serve the Divine begins to replace the lower emotions. Love changes into sweet intimacy, a constant nearness and eventually a growing union and identity with the Divine.

Surrender may start with the will to offer something of oneself, – money, work, life to the Divine. It may start with offering that which one has in excess, with the desire self-eyeing upon the fruits of this offering or else the ego diluting and polluting the offering by making claims and demands from the Divine, or tainted with pride and ambition of being an instrument or someone special to the Lord. The Divine touch purifies these too until the giving and offering is for the joy of giving with no other demand except the nearness of the Divine and the joy of His service. Eventually all life becomes a ceaseless worship and all one is and has and does is given to the Divine, for His joy, for His work and service.

The actual method of bhakti is cannot be systematised just as love cannot be turned into a mechanical routine or a soulless ritual. Yet in the early stages of the soul’s contact with the Divine these outer forms of rituals and worship, bahya pooja, may have its place. But as the soul grows and our consciousness deepens and we become aware of our subjective self through the inner being, then the flame of bhakti grows quietly in our inner self, often unseen and unrecognized to the outer eye of man until one day the flame bursts through the mask, burns the covering and trappings of the ego and all all discloses the unseen Beloved. It finds joy in taking and hearing the Name of the Lord, reading and meditating upon Him, speaking and listening about Him, thinking of Him, serving Him, living for Him and according to His Will.

Bhakti is all about love for the Divine, the joy of the love, the self-forgetfulness and the new self-finding of oneself in the Divine, the union that comes through the force of love and as a consequence of this union, a progressive transformation of the bhakta into the being and nature of the Divine, samipya, sayujya, sadharmya gati. But unlike the path of knowledge, love is not a monotone of self-absorption in the Self, nor like the path of works, a simple and single-hued relationship with the Divine of the servant and worker with the Divine as Master. Instead, we see here a manifold relationship with the Divine that breaks every barrier of distance until all in us belongs to God and exists only for His joy and His service and His sake. Sri Aurobindo reveals to us:

‘Discipleship to God the Teacher, sonship to God the Father, tenderness of God the Mother, clasp of the hand of the divine Friend, laughter and sport with our Comrade and boy Playfellow, blissful servitude to God the Master, rapturous love of our divine Paramour, these are the seven beatitudes of life in the human body. Canst thou unite all these in a single supreme and rainbow-hued relation? Then hast thou no need of any heaven and thou exceedest the emancipation of the Adwaitin.’

Since love and surrender to the Divine Mother are the central keys to the transformation in the Supramental Yoga, therefore true bhakti and self-giving are its master movement. Love is indeed the key, the crowning movement, the swiftest way and the easiest means to the fulfilment of the integral yoga. The easiest means to develop it is to open to the Mother, call the Mother, pray to the Mother, love the Mother, think of the Mother, serve the Mother, read and dwell upon their books especially Savitri along with Prayers and Meditations. For indeed, as the Mother says, ‘Consciousness has built the worlds but Love is its saviour’.

Alok Pandey