The glory of life
Heaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure.
There could have reached our divinised sense and heart
Some natural felicity’s bright extreme,
Some thrill of Supernature’s absolutes:
All strengths could laugh and sport on earth’s hard roads
And never feel her cruel edge of pain,
All love could play and nowhere Nature’s shame.
But she has stabled her dreams in Matter’s courts
And still her doors are barred to things supreme….
Only to be was a supreme delight,
Life was a happy laughter of the soul
And Joy was king with Love for minister.
The spirit’s luminousness was bodied there.
Life’s contraries were lovers or natural friends
And her extremes keen edges of harmony:
Indulgence with a tender purity came
And nursed the god on her maternal breast:
There none was weak, so falsehood could not live;
Ignorance was a thin shade protecting light,
Imagination the free-will of Truth,
Pleasure a candidate for heaven’s fire;
The intellect was Beauty’s worshipper,
Strength was the slave of calm spiritual law,
Power laid its head upon the breasts of Bliss….
All was a game of meeting kinglinesses.
For worship lifts the worshipper’s bowed strength
Close to the god’s pride and bliss his soul adores:
The ruler there is one with all he rules;
To him who serves with a free equal heart
Obedience is his princely training’s school,
His nobility’s coronet and privilege,
His faith is a high nature’s idiom,
His service a spiritual sovereignty.
[Savitri: Book 2 Canto 3]
Prayers and Meditations
Thy Law may be fulfilled
February 8, 1914
O Lord, sweet Master of love, Thou who bringest us out of the darkness to awaken us to consciousness, who deliverest us from suffering to make us commune within Thy eternal peace, every morning my aspiration soars ardently towards Thee, and I implore that my being, integrally awake to Thy knowledge, may now live only by Thee, in Thee, for Thee; I implore that more and more perfectly identified with Thee, I may now be only Thyself manifested in word and act; I implore that all those who come to us, all who are in contact with us, may awaken to the full knowledge of Thy divine presence, Thy sovereign law, and let themselves be definitively transformed by it; I implore that all men upon earth, in spite of their bitter suffering, may feel dawning in it the sublime consolation of Thy light and love, and the marvellous comfort of Thy peace; I implore that every substance impregnated more and more by Thy sovereign forces may put up an ever-diminishing resistance of blind ignorance against Thee, and that triumphing over all darkness Thou mayst transfigure definitively and integrally this universe of strife and anguish into a universe of harmony and peace….
So that Thy law may be fulfilled.
[Prayers and Meditations of the Mother]
From Their Writings
Surrender of the will
You have a will and you can offer that will. Take the example of becoming conscious of your nights. If you take the attitude of passive surrender, you would say, “When it is the Divine Will that I should become conscious, then I shall become conscious.” On the other hand, if you offer your will to the Divine, you begin to will, you say, “I will become conscious of my nights.” You have the will that it should be done; you do not sit down idle and wait. The surrender comes in when you take the attitude that says, “I give my will to the Divine. I intensely want to become conscious of my nights, I have not the knowledge, let the Divine Will work it out for me.” Your will must continue to act steadily, not in the way of choosing a particular action or demanding a particular object, but as an ardent aspiration concentrated upon the end to be achieved. This is the first step. If you are vigilant, if your attention is alert, you will certainly receive something in the form of an inspiration of what is to be done and that you must forthwith proceed to do. Only, you must remember that to surrender is to accept whatever is the result of your action, though the result may be quite different from what you expect. On the other hand, if your surrender is passive, you will do nothing and try nothing; you will simply go to sleep and wait for a miracle.
Now to know whether your will or desire is in agreement with the Divine Will or not, you must look and see whether you have an answer or have no answer, whether you feel supported or contradicted, not by the mind or the vital or the body, but by that something which is always there deep in the inner being, in your heart.
[The Mother: CWM 3]
Songs of the Soul (2024 09 14)
Maa, human life seems to be perpetually torn between the true calling of his soul and the various apparent needs and demands exerting contradictory pulls upon his different parts. We accept the inner contradictions as part of life but this blind acceptance of life as it is, driven mechanically by the forces of ignorance, keeps us tied to the outposts of lower nature holding back our flight, building a huge gulf between what we are in the present moment and what we aspire to be.
But Thou hast come and this old scheme of a slow tortuous evolution will surely change. Thou has built the bridge and with the help of Thy Name we can not only cross all gulfs but bridge the gap between our true aspiration and the limited force of nature. Thy Name sets us free, lays the foundation for the New Life, builds the New Creation within us and makes us complete and whole. It is Thy Name that protects us and shields us through our journey and makes even the greatest of challenges seem easy. Thy Name is indeed the bridge between the Eternal and His Play in time, Thy Name is the link that connects the Infinite and our finite life. Thy Name helps us cross through every difficulty, turning them into an opportunity and eventually it is Thy Name that carries us safely through the perilous passages that the soul undertakes when it passes through the dark nights and the ambiguous fields of death.
Oh let Thy Name resound in our depths and echo in every corner of our being. Let Thy Name vibrate and reverberate everywhere from the smallest cells and atoms to the farthest galaxies in Space and the yet greater worlds beyond.
Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa Maa
Notes and Reflections
The birth and death of suffering and sin (a parable)
The Master was taking a stroll in the garden. The group of disciples surrounded him like bees around a flower that had turned the Light and Power of the sun into a sweet and strengthening nectar for their thirsty struggling souls.
Feeling the mood of the moment, one among them asked as to how come in this world of beauty there came to dwell evil and suffering. The Master became pensive and took them to a nearby place where the gardener had just thrown some seeds into the ground. Pointing to the soil and the seed below it he asked them why must the seed of this beautiful flower destined to partake of the sun be put underneath the soil into a dark space and breath the waste and the mire and rot on the surface and struggle to reach the top against the heavy resistance of the earth.
‘To throw its roots deep’, said one. ‘To cast off its hard shell’ said another.
The Master smiled and exclaimed ‘That’s the answer to your question. Suffering is like the waste and the mire and Evil like the darkness and the resistance that man’s soul must face so that it can also throw its roots deep into the earth and its surface crust soften in due time. The surface crust is the ego-self, that source of all evil and suffering. When inner being is ready by the pressure of the world forces, when it has cast its roots deep and strong, then the ego-self slowly dissolves and the deeper soul emerges into Light and Freedom. It is delivered out of the womb of darkness and is ready for a new adventure into Light and its climb towards the sun. But if the seed is stripped bare of its hard crust prematurely and exposed too early to the light of the sun and the immense freedom of space then it may simply burn off and be blown away by the strong winds before its roots have steadied it. So also what we call error and evil and suffering are simply necessary intermediary steps and stages in man’s ascending growth towards Light and Freedom.’
‘What then is sin and what then is virtue and good’, enquired another.
The Master observed as he moved from one flowering tree to another: ‘Look at the buds, their petals closed upon each other, their fragrance trapped inside. That is the first stage of the flower. It is as if it was trying to not only feel and hold but also to capture and possess the light it so badly needs and to keep the fragrance to its solitary self that is meant to be its gift to the world. So also with man. Selfishness is the only sin since it induces man to try and appropriate things for its solitary self and give out nothing in return to the world. The result is that it remains dark inside and closed outside. But a time comes when the bud begins to trust the Light that it feels and opens out to it and all that surrounds it in a spontaneous gesture of self-giving. And, lo and behold! – its self-giving is instantly rewarded by the fullness of its bloom and its generous uncalculating gift of fragrance turns into sweet nectar inside. Man is selfish in his early stages of growth but soon he must realise that selfishness is a trap since it prevents him from getting the very thing that he most needs and wants. With this awakening and the pressure of Light and its own secret nature there comes in him the trust and the confidence to open out and reach out and give itself first to the world around it which alone he sees with his half open eyes and then to the sun that it begins to perceive as its eternal source, the secret master of its journey, the fosterer who turns all things to honey within him. Then man becomes a link between the earth and the heaven.’ Then with a mystic pause he added, ‘Selfishness too, that origin of all sin, is a preliminary stage in human growth. This too must pass away as man begins to trust God within and His play around and gives himself freely to both or rather to God and His play in the world.’
The Master sat down quietly on a little rocky promontary in the garden, his gaze as if fixed into infinity, his look encompassing the whole of space in a single glance, his heart one with all things in their eternal essence. And the disciples sat around him wondering whom to admire, the sweet fragrance of the flowers that gave themselves generously to everything around them or like the earth that shared the joy and the struggle and the sorrow of all things giving shelter and place to each thing that must wait for its season to turn ripe and to blossom emerging out of the darkness into the Light, or like the sun that gave itself to the creation and though far and high beyond the reach of earth and its creatures yet was the secret source and support of all. And as they thus contemplated their inner and outer gaze was fixed upon the Master who was to earth and men, at once the flower and the earth and the sun.
Alok Pandey
Question of the Day
How can I make my will strong?
The will, like any other part, can be developed like any other part by exercising it. Several exercises can be undertaken for developing the will. For example, a very simple exercise is just being regular and punctual. This simple practice develops the will and trains our nature to act in an organized manner.
Such simple practice can be to take a decision to read a passage from Sri Aurobindo every day at a fixed time and then stick to the decision regardless of whatever difficulty one meets on the way. Or if one has to wait for food or water because it is not ready or available, then instead of getting impatient and angry one practices inner calm until one has freed oneself from the acute pang of hunger and thirst. Or if one has decided to do something but one is feeling lazy doing it, may be taking a walk or reading something or sitting for meditation, one refuses to listen to the laziness and instead goes ahead and does what one must despite the tiredness. Similarly, if one feels an impulse rising within oneself which one is not meant to express then one holds on and holds out rather than giving in to the impulse. Or if one meets with various challenges or difficulties then instead of giving up, one keeps persevering with patience never giving up until one achieves the intended goal. By doing all this one slowly develops one’s will.
Yet there are limits to which human will can strive and strain itself. Therefore, what is advised is to supplement one’s individual human will by offering it to Her Will. This way one goes beyond the limits of one’s own will by joining to the limitless. These are some of the ways that one can augment the will and with practice and Grace strengthen it beyond one could imagine.