Video and audio recordings of the concluding class of the Savitri Study Camp No 21 with Alok Pandey. Recorded at Sangham Hall of the Savitri Bhavan, Auroville, in Aug 2017.
Devotional chanting and rotating dance, Dervish style, of Parvathy Baul, dancer, singer and storyteller from Bengal.
A video clip from her performance in Auroville in 2011, produced by Manohar.
This passage about a chosen human vessel should not be taken as if others are excluded. Chosen simply means that the time has come for this soul to realize the Divine or to become a conscious and willing instrument of the Divine Work.
To live within means to live in a state of constant aspiration for the Divine, and if we do so, we can look at life with a smile and live in peace, whatever may be the outer circumstances.
Behind the surface life of man, below the threshold of his waking awareness there lies a whole mysterious world and its powers and energies and beings.
There are fake and false persons who imitate spirituality, who unfortunately can damage faith and lull the soul. It is important to distinguish these and know the subtle reasons and the forces working behind them.
This morning my prayer rises to Thee, always with the same aspiration: to live Thy love, to radiate Thy love, with such potency and effectiveness that all may feel fortified, regenerated and illumined by our contact.
"My life is the life of village and continent,
I am earth’s agony and her throbs of bliss;
I share all creatures’ sorrow and content
And feel the passage of every stab and kiss."
We are told that there are vast domains of Light and Peace and Bliss, which lie beyond the ken of our normal perceptions, while accessible to all who so aspire. But ordinarily we are too much preoccupied with the surface life to even think about it.
This New Consciousness is the Supramental Consciousness that negates nothing but takes up everything to its utmost truth. There is no possibility of error here and all contraries unite in a harmonious embrace.
In this canto we are given a glimpse of the secret knowledge discovered by the yogi and seer Ashwapati. A higher light, a deeper seeing must emerge to lead us to the doorway of this secret knowledge hidden in the heart of creation.
The very first step towards the discovery of our soul is to observe our nature as a witness and a student. What do we find there? A constant restless movement of Nature in different domains of our being. It is the surface of our life. Here we cannot find the soul.
Man is Nature's laboratory. If a point in man's consciousness changes, the change will be carried over in the whole of the universe. Inevitably, because man is the point of concentration on the earth as the earth is a concentrated form of the universe.