Thoughts and Aphorisms 27

27. God is a great and cruel Torturer because He loves. You do not understand this, because you have not seen and played with Krishna.   [Sri Aurobindo: Thoughts and Aphorisms]   According to Sri Aurobindo, The Divine has three aspects:  Transcendental, Universal and Individual. The Original Supreme, beyond all Manifestation, is the Transcendental aspect of the Divine. Pure Existence — to be more exact, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss i.e. Sat-Chit- Ananda  — is the Transcendental aspect. It is Existence by Itself and stands alone, though really It is beyond all manifestation and also includes all that is manifested.   In the Individual aspect, the Transcendental Divine links Himself with the Universal Manifestation. The Individual is the link between the Transcendental and the Universal.   All that is manifested is the expression and creation of the Universal aspect of the Divine. The Divine is immanently present in each particle, each atom the Universe manifested. The entire Manifestation is the Divine.   He sleeps in the atom and the burning star, He sleeps in man and god and beast and stone: Because he is there the Inconscient does its work, Because he is there the world forgets to die. He is the centre of the circle of God, He the circumference of Nature's run. [Savitri: Bk XI, Co I]   OOOOO   Krishna is the Immanent Divine, as said by The Mother. The entire Creation is His play, the play of the Eternal Divine, who is the Player along with all His playmates. He Himself is the Play, which is full of Joy and Love. He is the Expression of Ananda and Love of the Supreme. So, anyone who knows Krishna is His playmate and is one with Him. Krishna is the Symbol of the aspect of the Supreme Divine that stands for Joy and Love. Anyone who realizes the Divine, who reaches Truth beyond Mind, shall and can also realize that that he or she is a playmate of the Supreme Player.   To find and realize Krishna is to realize within us That which is always residing within us as the Inner Divine. To play with Krishna is to realize the Self. When one realizes the Divine, one finds oneself as a playmate of the Divine and one finds also that the world is only a play, a game — a Leela — of the Divine.   On earth, people find sufferings, woes, sorrows, pain and torture. So long as we limit ourselves with the ordinary consciousness, with the utterly limited observation and interest and attention, we find sufferings, we undergo pain and torture and sorrows. In our everyday life, we find this. Because of our ego, our attachments, our self-centered understanding and preferences, because of our limited involvements and limited scope, we face sorrows and unhappiness and failure, we undergo difficulties and sufferings. We then call the Divine the Torturer.   That is all because we live in Falsehood, because we live with a half-conscious existence. Hence, whatever may seem to our ordinary sense and understanding to be torture and a cruelty, that gets changed when one realizes the Divine; the pain and torture and cruelty are no more there — and there is only Joy, unlimited Joy, and then there is only the Love of the Divine, the unlimited Love. The question of cruelty and torture are no more there.   Even after the Divine Realization, one may transform or change one's external mode of consciousness and may keep in a part of his being and consciousness the ordinary perception and sense and understanding of the creation and the happenings. As long as one continues to live in and dwell with the ordinary consciousness, one may continue to find experience whatever may seem to be the cruelty and the torture.   But whenever one goes beyond Mind into the Higher Consciousness, one finds Joy and Love — for, one then sees the Goal and the Luminous Future and the Result intended by the Divine. And the Future and the Result and the Goal is one of Joy and Love — the elements of sufferings and sorrows ands pain are no more there, not to be there anymore. The New World of the Luminous Future is one of Joy and Bliss, of endless Ananda, of victory and success in journey towards the New Supramental Becoming.   We should then become playmates of the Divine. Life will then have a different meaning for us and give us Joy and Happiness and fulfillment and the real Progress. The Divine will no more appear to us to be a Torturer. We will find then the Divine of Joy and Love.   The Known released him from its limiting chain; He knocked at the doors of the Unknowable. Thence gazing with an immeasurable outlook One with self's inlook into its own pure vasts, He saw the splendour of the spirit's realms, The greatness and wonder of its boundless works, The power and passion leaping from its calm, The rapture of its movement and its rest, And its fire-sweet miracle of transcendent life, The million-pointing undivided grasp Of its vision of one same stupendous All, Its inexhaustible acts in a timeless Time, A space that is its own infinity. A glorious multiple of one radiant Self, Answering to joy with joy, to love with love, All there were moving mansions of God-bliss; Eternal and unique they lived the One. There forces are great outbursts of God's truth And objects are its pure spiritual shapes; Spirit no more is hid from its own view, All sentience is a sea of happiness And all creation is an act of light. [Savitri: Bk XI, Co I]   The Mother has given us a Ray of Hope:  "But a day will come when this apparent suffering will no longer be required to stimulate the advance and when progress can be more and more in harmony and delight."   Barindranath Chaki 29-12-2009 —     Please visit   ASPIRATION  The New Horizon  All choice  The New Platform  Barin Chaki

Thoughts and Aphorisms 26

26. Sir Philip Sidney said of the criminal led out to be hanged, "There, but for the grace of God, goes Sir Philip Sidney." Wiser, had he said, "There, by the grace of God, goes Sir Philip Sidney." [Sri Aurobindo: Thoughts and Aphorisms]   Sir Philip Sidney was a successful statesman and a poet, and yet he was a man of humility. He was famous for his humble nature. Once, when he saw a criminal when he was going to be hanged, he expressed: "There, but for the Grace of God, goes Sir Philips Sydney." As The Mother has interpreted, Sir Philip Sidney had expressed that he could have been at the place of the criminal to be hanged, but for the Grace of God, that did not so happen. What Sri Aurobindo states here, according to The Mother, is that Sir Philip Sidney would have been wiser, if he would have then said that by the Grace of God, he could have been the said criminal.   Sri Aurobindo is expressing here that whatever happens, it happens by the Grace of God. The Grace of God is behind all happenings, whether it seems to be beneficial or catastrophic. If some happening seems to be catastrophic, it will be then creating some opportunity in future which will prove to be beneficial; for, the World is marching ahead towards a Great Future, a luminous Future, which will definitely be an expression of Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Joy, of satyam-shivam-sundaram, of Ananda.    The Mother has inspired us: "Leaving the past far behind us, let us run towards a luminous future."   The Mother has further said: "For it is only our shortsightedness, our too limited perception and our misguided sensations that, for us, change into suffering what is a possibility and an opportunity for progress."   Some happening may appear to us to be cause of sufferings, but that may create for us some hope and possibility some opportunity for the better and greater Future, for progress towards the luminous Future towards the New World, the New Creation.   OOOOO   The humankind, which is evolving, is moving towards a Luminous Future, as The Mother says. And in the Luminous Future, the Supramental Consciousness shall reign over this Earth.   Nature shall live to manifest secret God, The Spirit shall take up the human play, This earthly life become the life divine. [Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]   Sri Aurobindo and The Mother came upon this Earth in order to lead us all to the next step of Evolution — from Man to Superman. To manifest the Supramental Consciousness and Force upon earth is the Divine Will and the purpose of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother — the Dual Power. The mortal human being will be transformed into the superman —into the supramental being.   The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door, Eternal supermind touch earthly Time. The superman shall wake in mortal man And manifest the hidden demigod Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force Revealing the secret deity in the cave. [Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]   Sri Aurobindo has expressed the purpose of Their coming as follows: To raise the world to God in deathless Light, To bring God down to the world on earth we came, To change the earthly life to life divine. [Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]   According to Sri Aurobindo, Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls; Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield,… [Savitr: Bk XI, Co I]   And Sri Aurobindo has also given us the call : Ascend, O soul, into thy timeless self; Choose destiny's curve and stamp thy will on Time. [Savitr: Bk XI, Co I].     Barindranath Chaki 26-12-2009 Please visit   ASPIRATION  The New Horizon  All choice  The New Platform  Barin Chaki

Thoughts and Aphorisms 25

Thoughts and Aphorisms 25   25. When I see others suffer, I feel that I am unfortunate, but the wisdom that is not mine, sees the good that is coming and approves.  [Sri Aurobindo: Thoughts and Aphorisms]   When others are suffering, one may feel that one is unfortunate, because one has to see and experience others' sufferings. That may be the example of a kind heart, where there is sympathy and feeling for others. But it does not have the touch of a Higher Wisdom. It is the Wisdom of the Supreme, which a person will have after he goes beyond Ignorance and has the Divine Realization. When one has this Wisdom, one can see the Past, the Present and the Future, as one is in touch with the Supreme Consciousness. And in that Wisdom, one finds that all that happens is for the Good, as the world is marching ahead towards Perfection. In this connection, The Mother has said that because of our shortsightedness, limited perceptions and misguided sensations, whatever is a possibility and an opportunity for progress gets changed into suffering. And when we cooperate with whatever is happening, there is no more of suffering. OOOOO Why do the humans suffer? Because, they have forgotten and lost their Divine origin. They have, individually and collectively, lost their contact and connection with the Supreme Consciousness, of which they are portions. They have lost their higher Consciousness and their capacities and capabilities, their Joy and Omniscience and Omnipotence. Indeed, they have a great Fall. Their happiness and joy are enslaved to the calls and needs of the flesh and the senses and the vital instincts and pulls — bereft of their conscious origin. They have succumbed to a life of division, difficulties, diseases and Death. They live by and following the dictates of "The Force that works by the light of Ignorance." [Savitri Bk II, Co IV]   If we look at the ordinary human behaviour, we find that the human being lives mainly with his body — a body that perishes.   A body that knew not its own soul within, There lived and longed, had wrath and joy and grief; A mind was there that met the objective world As if a stranger or enemy at its door: Its thoughts were kneaded by the shocks of sense; It captured not the spirit in the form, It entered not the heart of what it saw; It looked not for the power behind the act, It studied not the hidden motive in things Nor strove to find the meaning of it all. Beings were there who wore a human form; Absorbed they lived in the passion of the scene, But knew not who they were or why they lived: Content to breathe, to feel, to sense, to act, Life had for them no aim save Nature's joy And the stimulus and delight of outer things; Identified with the spirit's outward shell, They worked for the body's wants, they craved no more. [Savitri Bk II, Co IV] Though Mind is there in Man, he does not even has the proper use of it. He lives mainly by the vital impulses and the physical needs and the cravings. The human being is defined as a rational animal — but the animal nature is more prominent in him than the mental being.                                                                                                                                              An animal in the instinctive herd Pushed by life impulses, forced by common needs, Each in his own kind saw his ego's glass; All served the aim and action of the pack. Those like himself, by blood or custom kin, To him were parts of his life, his adjunct selves, His personal nebula's constituent stars, Satellite companions of his solar I. A master of his life's environment, A leader of a huddled human mass Herding for safety on a dangerous earth, He gathered them round him as if minor Powers To make a common front against the world, Or, weak and sole on an indifferent earth, As a fortress for his undefended heart, Or else to heal his body's loneliness. [Savitri Bk II, Co IV] Thus we find that Man lives mainly with the ignorant vital nature, confined to the flesh and the senses and the desires, making the least and limited use of mind and having almost no concern with the Soul within, with the psychic being. OOOOO Suffering will not be there, if we rise beyond the body and the senses and the unbridled vital nature. Man has to be conscious beyond the Life and and beyond the the Mind. He must understand what he is and what the World is moving towards. He must find the Soul within — he must unveil the Psychic Being within himself. And it is the Psychic Consciousness that will lead him on the true Way. Man has to understand the higher Goal he has to live for; he should be conscious of the Higher Evolutionary progress that the World is to make. Man must understand what he really is and what is his Task.                                                                                                                                              Thus man in his little house made of earth's dust Grew towards an unseen heaven of thought and dream Looking into the vast vistas of his mind On a small globe dotting infinity. At last climbing a long and narrow stair He stood alone on the high roof of things And saw the light of a spiritual sun. Aspiring he transcends his earthly self; He stands in the largeness of his soul new-born, Redeemed from encirclement by mortal things And moves in a pure free spiritual realm As in the rare breath of a stratosphere; A last end of far lines of divinity, He mounts by a frail thread to his high source; He reaches his fount of immortality, He calls the Godhead into his mortal life. [Savitri Bk VII, Co II]   To put an end to the Darkness and the Ignorance and the sufferings, the human being has to mould his / her life and existence with the Psychic Presence.   Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven Or Heaven descend into earth's mortal state. But for such vast spiritual change to be, Out of the mystic cavern in man's heart The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil And step into common nature's crowded rooms And stand uncovered in that nature's front And rule its thoughts and fill the body and life. [Savitri Bk VII, Co II]   Let us have a Hope that we shall change ourselves and change this World of ours, too.   A Will, a hope immense now seized his heart, And to discern the superhuman's form He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights, Aspiring to bring down a greater world. The glory he had glimpsed must be his home. ******** The Ideal must be Nature's common truth, The body illumined with the indwelling God, The heart and mind feel one with all that is, A conscious soul live in a conscious world. [Savitri, Bk I, Co V]   Let us, thus, start living with this grand and sublime Hope.   Barindranath Chaki 12-12-2009   [Simultaneously published in Selecta, All choice and ASPIRATION] Please visit ASPIRATION  The New Horizon  All choice  The New Platform  Barin Chaki

Sri Aurobindo is with us

To the ordinary human understanding and sight, Sri Aurobindo is said to have passed away on the 5th day of December 1950. Several persons have described this as the passing away of The Master— an Event that seemed to bring huge shadows of sorrows on the followers of The Master and The Mother. People in huge numbers paid their last respects to Him, till the 9th day of December 1950.   To men in general, it was only, or mainly, a departure, a passing away, as billions and billions of humans have passed away since the beginning of the human race.   However, indeed, it was a sacrifice — a sacrifice of the physical being of The Master, a sacrifice made by Himself, so that the Supramental Consciousness and Force may descend to the physical plane. The Supermind descended and the consequence was the Sacrifice of the physical being of Sri Aurobindo, mainly due to the lack of receptivity of the earth and the people.   The Mother said on 8th December 1950: The lack of receptivity of the earth and men is mostly responsible for the decision Sri Aurobindo has taken regarding his body. But one thing is certain: what has happened on the physical plane affects in no way the truth of his teaching. All that he has said is perfectly true and remains so. Time and the course of events will prove it abundantly.   The Mother has again said 29th December 1950: Our Lord has sacrificed himself totally for us … … He was not compelled to leave his body, he chose to do so for reasons so sublime that they are beyond the reach of human mentality … … And when we cannot understand, the only thing is to keep a respectful silence.   The Mother has also told that Sri Aurobindo is always present on earth for the progress and advancement of the Evolution — from Man to the Supramental Being.   On the 7th day of December 1950, She said: Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistaken terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave the earth atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be worthy of this Presence and henceforth everything in us be concentrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime work.   Again on 18th January 1951, She said: We stand in the Presence of Him who has sacrificed His physical life in order to help more fully His Work of Transformation.   He is always with us, aware of what we are, of all our thoughts, of all our feelings and all our actions.   OOOOO   On His leaving of His Physical body, the Supramental Consciousness descended in the physical being of  The Mother — and then began the preparation for the Descent of the Supramental Consciousness on earth, which actually took place on 29th February 1956.   The purpose for which Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry was the Descent of the Supramental Consciousness on earth and make Supermind a part of the earthly nature, as Life and Mind are parts of nature on earth. Nature is evolutionary and as Life and Mind have manifested through an evolutionary process, so will Supermind manifest on earth. And that is the Work of Sri Aurobindo — a Total Transformation.   The Descent of Supermind had a requirement that there shall be an Ascent to the Supramental Plane. Only after the Ascent, the Task of the Supramental Descent was taken by The Master. Even in 1938, Supermind used to descend in the physical being of The Master. But It was not settled then in His physical Mind or in His physical being.   When Supermind descends into a human being, It creates a Mind of Light, a Pure Mind reflecting and radiating the Light and Consciousness and Force, as stated and explained by Sri Aurobindo in The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.     The Mother said that "as soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from His body, what He called the Mind of Light got realized here." And the Mind of Light manifested in The Mother.   As soon as the Supramental Consciousness descended on Him, Sri Aurobindo left His body with a view to concentrate on His Work: The Supramental Manifestation on earth. The Work of the Supramental Manifestation intensified with the so-called passing away of Sri Aurobindo. And Sri Aurobindo's  physical Withdrawal was greatly successful when on the 29th February 1956, The Mother caused an uninterrupted flow of the Supramental Consciousness and Force upon earth.   The Work of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo is going on, led by Them.    The Mother has said on 15 April 1972 : The transition from man to the supramental being is accomplished through the superman. There may be a few superman - there are - who will actually make that transition. [Mother's Agenda, vol. 13]   The Mother differentiated between the Supramental Being and the Superman. The Supramental Being will have a Supramental Body.   Barindranath Chaki 05-12-2009 Please visit   ASPIRATION  The New Horizon  All choice  The New Platform  Barin Chaki