Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

A Declaration by the Mother, dated 25 April 1954

RY Deshpande — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:56:41 -0700

Sri Aurobindo always loved deeply his Motherland. But he wished her to be great, noble, pure and worthy of her big mission in the world…

15 August 2008

RY Deshpande — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:04:52 -0700

Sri Aurobindo in his Room, 25 April 1950
Photo taken by Henri Cartier Bresson

To give oneself is the secret of Sadhana,
not to demand and acquire a thing.

The more one gives oneself,
the more the power to receive will grow.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo and the Future of Humanity

Debashish — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:36:47 -0700

This article attempts to sketch out Sri Aurobindo's contribution to the future of humanity as carried in his major texts. In doing so, it also tries to underline the cross-cultural nature of these texts and the disciplinary redefinitions implicit in them.

Aspects of Amal Kiran: Part IV—by Anurag Banerjee

RY Deshpande — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:20:52 -0700

Some people are blessed to have the touch of Goddess Saraswati on their fingers and Her kiss in their hearts; as a result they are able to compose remarkable verses. Due to this special blessings, they can dive into the ocean of thoughts and realizations and bring out the most precious pearls which they knit together to form a priceless necklace. This necklace is also known as “poetry”. There are some who think, analyze and evaluate subjects and occurrences of incidents from a different angle or perspective. They are the intellectuals and researchers who not only think but make others think as well. There is another class of people gifted with the special power of speech. They are superb conversationalists who mesmerize the audience whenever they speak. They have the touch of the Goddess of Learning in their tongue. In the fourth category of people there are the seers, the Yogis—who, despite being a part of this world, belong to the Divine. They are here to guide us, help us, lead us from Darkness to Light and from Falsehood to Truth. They enlighten us with their wisdom (practical and spiritual) and we feel secure when we are in their company. But is it possible to have these four traits in a single person? Yes, it indeed is possible. We still have such great men amidst us—K.D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran, who is not only a great Yogi but also a poet par excellence, a researcher, an Indologist, a prose-writer, a critic and what not! In this article, we shall try to discuss the various aspects of Amal Kiran, the universal genius…

Aspects of Amal Kiran: Part III—by Anurag Banerjee

RY Deshpande — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:29:11 -0700

Aspects of Amal Kiran: Part II—by Anurag Banerjee

RY Deshpande — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:55:12 -0700

Aspects of Amal Kiran: Part I—by Anurag Banerjee

RY Deshpande — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:28:26 -0700

Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Poems—by Sunayana Panda

RY Deshpande — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:50:35 -0700

Poetry is truly a complete expression of beauty because it combines many different kinds of beauty: the beauty of sounds, of images, of thought, of emotions and of expression. And yet, unfortunately, the word “poetry” conjures up only images of school life. Those images often have in the background the voice of an unkind teacher or the stress of having to struggle with incomprehensible or archaic words. Most people think that one bids goodbye to poetry when one steps out of the student life. This may be why poems don’t usually form a part of our general reading. A combination of factors has made the poems of Sri Aurobindo so little appreciated. English poetry was a natural part of his education and therefore helped to form his mental make-up. In the late 19th century, a school like St Paul’s taught Greek and Latin from the lowest level of classes, and the entire focus was on literature. Education for the upper classes in England was structured around acquiring general culture, and this is why poetry was given a place of great importance at school level and was also commonly studied at colleges. It was an age when science, commerce and technology were generally considered to be inferior to literature. Having studied poetry so thoroughly, it was a natural step for Sri Aurobindo to compose his own poems. Yet there is a puzzle, and we could continue to look for less evident reasons to justify why so enjoyable a book as Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Poems remains so little known.

Literature and Consciousness—by Shruti Bidwaikar

RY Deshpande — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:24:59 -0700

There are numerous genre of literature, yet more are the schools of criticism aiming at appreciating and analyzing literature. Like every poet and writer differs from each other, similarly every critic and school of criticism differs from the other. The basis of these differences for the poets and writers may be of that of temperament, style and other techniques; critics differ on the subject and method of appreciation. Even in each school of criticism every critic differs from the other due to the subjective elements and temperamental differences that come in. The focus in the present essay is on the method of appreciation more than the subject, the tool of appreciation being consciousness. We see how consciousness plays an important role in creation and reception of a text. The words, as they have power, create the corresponding vibrations and can deliver this vibration into the creation and subsequently into the recipient if he or she is prepared to receive it. We see how beautifully consciousness binds the author, the text and the reader. All the disputes and differences of opinions end when we find these three (the author, the text and the reader) as parts of a continuum and not as distinct entities.

The Significance of Colours through Flowers: Palash

RY Deshpande — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:55:17 -0700

In the supramental realisation, each thing will carry in itself a truth which will manifest at each instant without being bound by what has been or what will follow. --The Mother

Palash is a native tree of tropical southern Asia, commonly found in Indian forests. It is a medium sized, dry season, deciduous tree, growing up to 15 m. Each leaf consists of three leaflets and is velvety to the touch. The tree goes bare during winter. But from January till March, when the flowers bloom, it really looks like flame of the forest, with its bright orange flowers covering the whole tree. Flowers are medium-sized with one central beaklike petal and two smaller lateral recurved pointed petals and a recurved pointed lower petal. The flowers contain nectar and many species of birds, like sunbirds, mynahs and babblers can be seen hurrying from flower to flower. A brilliant colouring matter can be obtained from the flowers which may be made into water-paint or a dye...

Prose and Poetry: The Essence of Poetry. Sri Aurobindo

Rich — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:03:00 -0700

In the preceding post on Speech versus Writing the following comment was made:

This also seems to be what Derrida means when he refers to the prose book as a corpse of language which must be exited from or transcended [54] -- the delimiting of the multisignificant roots has been pursued to its logical conclusion, and the power of the word has been exhausted. The aim of the project of deconstruction, says Derrida, agreeing with Aurobindo, is to get back to metaphoric, poetic language, where the power for signification has not yet been used up

Here is Sri Aurobindo on prose and the word

Ordinary speech uses language mostly for a limited practical utility of communication; it uses it for life and for the expression of ideas and feelings necessary or useful to life. In doing so, we treat words as conventional signs for ideas with nothing but a perfunctory attention to their natural force, much as we use any kind of common machine or simple implement; we treat them as if, though useful for life, they were themselves without life. When we wish to put a more vital power into them, we have to lend it to them out of ourselves, by marked intonations of the voice, by the emotional force or vital energy we throw into the sound so as to infuse into the conventional word-sign something which is not inherent in itself. But if we go back earlier in the history of language and still more if we look into its origins, we shall, I think, find that it was not always so with human speech. Words had not only a real and vivid life of their own, but the speaker was more conscious of it than we can possibly be with our mechanised and sophisticated intellects. This arose from the primitive nature of language which, probably, in its first movement was not intended,—or shall we say, did not intend,—so much to stand for distinct ideas of the intelligence as for feelings, sensations, broad indefinite mental impressions with minute shades of quality in them which we do not now care to pursue. The intellectual sense in its precision must have been a secondary element which grew more dominant as language evolved along with the evolving intelligence....

The Word: Two Poems—by KD Sethna (Amal Kiran) and by RY Deshpande

RY Deshpande — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:51:16 -0700

Reference that prompted this posting is Rich's The Origin of the Words check at http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2008/6/25/3762846.html

Amal Kiran on the Mind of Light—by Anurag Banerjee

RY Deshpande — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:13:37 -0700

In 1949, when the Bulletin of Physical Education was launched, Sri Aurobindo was requested by the Mother to initiate it with an article of his. On her request Sri Aurobindo dictated a series of eight articles. The initial articles were meant to reveal the value and importance of sports and gymnastics, but the later articles took a different and new turn and revealed some extraordinary facts in detail regarding the functioning of the Supermind. The articles were brought out in the form of a booklet titled The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth in 1952, that is, two years after the departure of Sri Aurobindo. This booklet was rightly termed as the sequel to The Life Divine by K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran). In the sixth article titled Supermind in the Evolution, for the first time we come across the term ‘Mind of Light’. The chapter begins with the following words: “A new humanity would… be a race of mental beings on the earth and in the earthly body but delivered from its present conditions in the reign of the cosmic Ignorance so far as to be possessed of a perfected mind, a mind of light which could be a subordinate action of the supermind or Truth-Consciousness and in any case capable of the full possibilities of mind acting as a recipient of that truth and at least a secondary action of it in thought and life. It could even be a part of what could be described as a divine life upon earth and at least the beginnings of an evolution in the Knowledge and no longer entirely or predominantly in the Ignorance...”

93: Night in her bosom nursed a greater dawn

RY Deshpande — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:16:25 -0700

Then all eyes turned their wondering looks where stood
A deepening redder gold upon her cheeks,
With lowered lids the noble lovely child,
And one consenting thought moved every breast:
“What gleaming marvel of the earth or skies
Stands silently by human Satyavan
To mark a brilliance in the dusk of eve?
If this is she of whom the world has heard,
Wonder no more at any happy change.
Each easy miracle of felicity
Of her transmuting heart the alchemy is.”
Then one spoke there who seemed a priest and sage:
“O woman soul, what light, what power revealed,
Working the rapid marvels of this day,
Opens for us by thee a happier age?”
Her lashes fluttering upwards gathered in
To a vision which had scanned immortal things,
Rejoicing, human forms for their delight.
They claimed for their deep childlike motherhood
The life of all these souls to be her life,
Then falling veiled the light. Low she replied:
“Awakened to the meaning of my heart,
That to feel love and oneness is to live
And this the magic of our golden change
Is all the truth I know or seek, O sage.”

92: What high change is in thee, O Savitri?

RY Deshpande — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:49:38 -0700

What high change is in thee, O Savitri? Bright
Ever thou wast, a goddess still and pure,
Yet dearer to me by thy sweet human parts
Earth gave thee making thee yet more divine.
My adoration mastered, my desire
Bent down to make its subject, my daring clasped,
Claiming by body and soul my life's estate,
Rapture's possession, love's sweet property,
A statue of silence in my templed spirit,
A yearning godhead and a golden bride.
But now thou seemst almost too high and great
For mortal worship; Time lies below thy feet
And the whole world seems only a part of thee,
Thy presence the hushed heaven I inhabit,
And thou lookst on me in the gaze of the stars,
Yet art the earthly keeper of my soul,
My life a whisper of thy dreaming thoughts,
My morns a gleaming of thy spirit's wings,
And day and night are of thy beauty part.
Hast thou not taken my heart to treasure it
In the secure environment of thy breast?
Awakened from the silence and the sleep,
I have consented for thy sake to be.
By thee I have greatened my mortal arc of life,
But now far heaven’s unmapped infinitudes
Thou hast brought me thy illimitable gift.
If to fill these thou lift thy sacred flight,
My human earth will still demand thy bliss:
Make still my life through thee a song of joy
And all my silence wide and deep with thee.

91: Human she was once more, earth's Savitri

RY Deshpande — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:03:23 -0700

Out of abysmal trance her spirit woke.
Lain on the earth-mother's calm inconscient breast
She saw the green-clad branches lean above
Guarding her sleep with their enchanted life,
And overhead a blue-winged ecstasy
Fluttered from bough to bough with high-pitched call.
Into the magic secrecy of the woods
Peering through an emerald lattice-window of leaves,
In indolent skies reclined, the thinning day
Turned to its slow fall into evening's peace.
She pressed the living body of Satyavan:
On her body's wordless joy to be and breathe
She bore the blissful burden of his head
Between her breasts' warm labour of delight,
The waking gladness of her members felt
The weight of heaven in his limbs, a touch
Summing the whole felicity of things,
And all her life was conscious of his life
And all her being rejoiced enfolding his.
The immense remoteness of her trance had passed;
Human she was once more, earth's Savitri,
Yet felt in her illimitable change.
A power dwelt in her soul too great for earth,
A bliss lived in her heart too large for heaven.
Light too intense for thought and love too boundless
For earth's emotions lit her skies of mind
And spread through her deep and happy seas of soul…

90: A crimson seed of God’s felicity

RY Deshpande — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:45:32 -0700

…Then from a timeless plane that watches Time,
A Spirit gazed out upon destiny,
In its endless moment saw the ages pass.
All still was in a silence of the gods.
The prophet moment covered limitless Space
And cast into the heart of hurrying Time
A diamond light of the Eternal's peace,
A crimson seed of God's felicity;
A glance from the gaze fell of undying Love.
A wonderful face looked out with deathless eyes;
A hand was seen drawing the golden bars
That guard the imperishable secrecies.
A key turned in a mystic lock of Time.
But where the silence of the gods had passed,
A greater harmony from the stillness born
Surprised with joy and sweetness yearning hearts,
An ecstasy and a laughter and a cry.
A power leaned down, a happiness found its home.
Over wide earth brooded the infinite bliss.

89: The superman shall wake in mortal man

RY Deshpande — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 07:20:16 -0700

More and more souls shall enter into light,
Minds lit, inspired, the occult summoner hear
And lives blaze with a sudden inner flame
And hearts grow enamoured of divine delight
And human wills tune to the divine will,
These separate selves the Spirit's oneness feel,
These senses of heavenly sense grow capable,
The flesh and nerves of a strange ethereal joy
And mortal bodies of immortality.
A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell
And take the charge of breath and speech and act
And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns
And every feeling a celestial thrill.
Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come
Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind;
A sudden bliss shall run through every limb
And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.
Thus shall the earth open to divinity
And common natures feel the wide uplift,
Illumine common acts with the Spirit's ray
And meet the deity in common things.
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.

88: Descend to life with him thy heart desires

RY Deshpande — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 06:54:50 -0700

…when the hour of the Divine draws near,
The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time
And God be born into the human clay
In forms made ready by your human lives.
Then shall the Truth supreme be given to men.
There is a being beyond the being of mind,
An Immeasurable cast into many forms,
A miracle of the multitudinous One.
There is a consciousness mind cannot touch,
Its speech cannot utter nor its thought reveal.
It has no home on earth, no centre in man,
Yet is the source of all things thought and done,
The fount of the creation and its works.
It is the originer of all truth here,
The sun-orb of mind's fragmentary rays,
Infinity's heaven that spills the rain of God,
The Immense that calls to man to expand the Spirit,
The wide Aim that justifies his narrow attempts,
A channel for the little he tastes of bliss.
Some shall be made the glory's receptacles
And vehicles of the Eternal's luminous power.
These are the high forerunners, the heads of Time,
The great deliverers of earth-bound mind,
The high transfigurers of human clay,
The first-born of a new supernal race.
The incarnate dual Power shall open God's door,
Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.

87: O beautiful body of the incarnate Word

RY Deshpande — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 05:52:24 -0700

…O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
And bring down God into the lives of men;
Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,
My garden of life to plant a seed divine…
Awakened from the mortal's ignorance
Men shall be lit with the Eternal's ray
And the glory of my sun-lift in their thoughts
And feel in their hearts the sweetness of my love
And in their acts my Power's miraculous drive…
In the heart of my creation's mystery
I will enact the drama of thy soul,
Inscribe the long romance of Thee and Me…
I will pour delight from thee as from a jar,
I will whirl thee as my chariot through the ways,
I will use thee as my sword and as my lyre,
I will play on thee my minstrelsies of thought…
Who hunts and seizes me, my captive grows:
This shalt thou henceforth learn from thy heart-beats.
For ever love, O beautiful slave of God!
O lasso of my rapture's widening noose,
Become my cord of universal love.
The spirit ensnared by thee force to delight
Of creation's oneness sweet and fathomless,
Compelled to embrace my myriad unities
And all my endless forms and divine souls.
O Mind, grow full of the eternal peace;
O Word, cry out the immortal litany:
Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born.

86: O living power of the incarnate Word

RY Deshpande — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:10:51 -0700

…Two are the Powers that hold the ends of Time;
Spirit foresees, Matter unfolds its thought,
The dumb executor of God's decrees,
Omitting no iota and no dot,
Agent unquestioning, inconscient, stark,
Evolving inevitably a charged content,
Intention of his force in Time and Space,
In animate beings and inanimate things
Immutably it fulfils its ordered task.
It cancels not a tittle of things done;
Unswerving from the oracular command
It alters not the steps of the Unseen.
If thou must indeed deliver man and earth
On the spiritual heights, look down on life,
Discover the truth of God and man and world;
Then do thy task knowing and seeing all.
Ascend, O soul, into thy timeless self;
Choose destiny's curve and stamp thy will on Time.

85: O miracle, where thou beganst, there cease!

RY Deshpande — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:12:01 -0700

…Heaven's light visits sometimes the mind of earth;
Its thoughts burn in her sky like lonely stars;
In her heart there move celestial seekings soft
And beautiful like fluttering wings of birds,
Visions of joy that she can never win
Traverse the fading mirror of her dreams…
Above her little finite steps she feels,
Careless of knot or pause, worlds which weave out
A strange perfection beyond law and rule,
A universe of self-found felicity,
An inexpressible rhythm of timeless beats,
The many-movemented heart-beats of the One…
There is the All-Truth and there the timeless bliss.
But hers are fragments of a star-lost gleam
Hers are but careless visits of the gods.
They are a Light that fails, a Word soon hushed
And nothing they mean can stay for long on earth.
There are high glimpses, not the lasting sight.
A few can climb to an unperishing sun,
Or live on the edges of the mystic moon
And channel to earth-mind the wizard ray.
The heroes and the demi-gods are few…
Few are the silences in which Truth is heard,
Unveiling the timeless utterance in her deeps;
Few are the splendid moments of the seers.
Heaven's call is rare, rarer the heart that heeds...

84: I am the inviolable Ecstasy

RY Deshpande — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:13:14 -0700

O human image of the deathless word,
How hast thou seen beyond the topaz walls
The gleaming sisters of the divine gate,
Summoned the genii of their wakeful sleep,
And under revelation’s arches forced
The carved thought-shrouded doors to swing apart,
Unlocked the avenues of spiritual sight
And taught the entries of a heavenlier state
To thy rapt soul that bore the golden key?

In thee the secret sight man's blindness missed
Has opened its view past Time, my chariot course,
And death, my tunnel which I drive through life
To reach my unseen distances of bliss.

I am the hushed search of the jealous gods
Pursuing my wisdom’s vast mysterious word
Seized in the thousand meeting ways of heaven.

I am the beauty of the unveiled Ray…
I am the inviolable Ecstasy;
They who have looked on me, shall grieve no more…

83: Transfigured was the formidable shape

RY Deshpande — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:04:43 -0700

A marvellous sun looked down from ecstasy's skies
On worlds of deathless bliss, perfection's home,
Magical unfoldings of the Eternal's smile
Capturing his secret heart-beats of delight.
God's everlasting day surrounded her,
Domains appeared of sempiternal light
Invading all Nature with the Absolute's joy.
Her body quivered with eternity's touch,
Her soul stood close to the founts of the infinite.
Infinity's finite fronts she lived in, new
For ever to an everlasting sight…
Twilight and mist were exiles from that air,
Night was impossible to such radiant heavens…
Ecstatic voices smote at hearing's chords,
Each movement found a music all its own;
Songs thrilled of birds upon unfading boughs,
The colours of whose plumage had been caught
From the rainbow of imagination's wings…
In the harmony of an original sight
Delivered from our limiting ray of thought,
And the reluctance of our blinded hearts
To embrace the Godhead in whatever guise,
She saw all Nature marvellous without fault…
Realm upon realm received her soaring view.
Then on what seemed one crown of the ascent
Where finite and the infinite are one,
Immune she beheld the strong immortals' seats
Who live for a celestial joy and rule
The middle regions of the unfading Ray…

82: The Shadow vanishes into the Void

RY Deshpande — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:24:30 -0700

…Awhile the Shade survived defying heaven:
Assailing in front, oppressing from above,
A concrete mass of conscious power, he bore
The tyranny of her divine desire…
Her mastering Word commanded every limb
And left no room for his enormous will
That seemed pushed out into some helpless space
And could no more re-enter but left him void.
He called to Night but she fell shuddering back,
He called to Hell but sullenly it retired:
He turned to the Inconscient for support,
From which he was born, his vast sustaining self:
It drew him back towards boundless vacancy
As if by himself to swallow up himself:
He called to his strength, but it refused his call.
His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.
At last he knew defeat inevitable
And left crumbling the shape that he had worn,
Abandoning hope to make man's soul his prey
And force to be mortal the immortal spirit.
Afar he fled shunning her dreaded touch
And refuge took in the retreating Night…

81: Her Goddess self grew visible in her eyes,

RY Deshpande — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:23:20 -0700

…truth and knowledge are an idle gleam,
If Knowledge brings not power to change the world,
If Might comes not to give to Truth her right.
A blind Force, not Truth has made this ignorant world,
A blind Force, not Truth orders the lives of men:
By Power, not Light, the great Gods rule the world;
Power is the arm of God, the seal of Fate.
O human claimant to immortality,
Reveal thy power, lay bare thy spirit's force,
Then will I give back to thee Satyavan.
Or if the Mighty Mother is with thee,
Show me her face that I may worship her;
Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death,
An imperishable Force touching brute things
Transform earth's death into immortal life.
Then can thy dead return to thee and live,
The prostrate earth perhaps shall lift her gaze
And feel near her the secret body of God
And love and joy overtake fleeing Time.

80: It is the storm bird of an anarch Power

RY Deshpande — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:10:59 -0700

…Arise delivered by the seeing gods.
If free thou hadst kept thy mind from life's fierce stress,
Thou mightst have been like them omniscient, calm.
But the violent and passionate heart forbids.
It is the storm bird of an anarch Power
That would upheave the world and tear from it
The indecipherable scroll of Fate,
Death's rule and Law and the unknowable Will…
The wise are tranquil; silent the great hills
Rise ceaselessly towards their unreached sky,
Seated on their unchanging base, their heads
Dreamless in heaven's immutable domain…
Be still and tardy in the slow wise world.
Mighty art thou with the dread goddess filled,
To whom thou criedst at dawn in the dim woods.
Use not thy strength like the wild Titan souls!
Touch not the seated lines, the ancient laws,
Respect the calm of great established things…

79: A slope that downward sank

RY Deshpande — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:34:35 -0700

Once more arose the great destroying Voice:
“Dream not to change the world that God has planned,
Strive not to alter his eternal law.”
But Savitri answered to the sophist God:
“Once more wilt thou call Light to blind Truth's eyes,
Make knowledge a catch of the snare of Ignorance
And the Word a dart to slay my living Soul?
Offer, O king, thy boons to tired spirits
And hearts that could not bear the wounds of Time,
Let those who were tied to body and to mind,
Tear off those bonds and flee into white calm
Crying for a refuge from the play of God,
Surely thy boons are great since thou art He!
If in the meaningless Void creation rose…
How shall the nameless light not leap on men,
And unknown powers emerge from Nature's sleep?
Even now hints of a luminous Truth like stars
Arise in the mind-mooned splendour of Ignorance;
Even now the deathless Lover's touch we feel:
If the chamber's door is even a little ajar,
What then can hinder God from stealing in
Or who forbid his kiss on the sleeping soul?
Already God is near, the Truth is close…”

78: Earth cannot flower if lonely I return

RY Deshpande — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:31:40 -0700

Intent upon her silent will she walked
On the dim grass of vague unreal plains,
A floating veil of visions in her front,
A trailing robe of dreams behind her feet.
But now her spirit's flame of conscient force
Retiring from a sweetness without fruit
Called back her thoughts from speech to sit within
In a deep room in meditation's house.
For only there could dwell the soul's firm truth:
Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,
It flamed unquenched upon the central hearth
Where burns for the high house-lord and his mate
The homestead's sentinel and witness fire
From which the altars of the gods are lit.
All still compelled went gliding on unchanged,
Still was the order of these worlds reversed:
The mortal led, the god and spirit obeyed
And she behind was leader of their march
And they in front were followers of her will.
Onward they journeyed through the drifting ways
Vaguely companioned by the glimmering mists;
But faster now all fled as if perturbed
Escaping from the clearness of her soul.
A heaven-bird upon jewelled wings of wind
Borne like a coloured and embosomed fire,
By spirits carried in a pearl-hued cave,
On through the enchanted dimness moved her soul.
Death walked in front of her and Satyavan,
In the dark front of Death, a failing star.
Above was the unseen balance of his fate.

77: O dark-browed sophist of the universe

RY Deshpande — Sat, 31 May 2008 21:34:05 -0700

O Death, not for my heart's sweet poignancy
Nor for my happy body's bliss alone
I have claimed from thee the living Satyavan,
But for his work and mine, our sacred charge.
Our lives are God's messengers beneath the stars;
To dwell under death's shadow they have come
Tempting God's light to earth for the ignorant race,
His Love to fill the hollow in men's hearts,
His bliss to heal the unhappiness of the world.
For I the woman am the force of God,
He the Eternal's delegate soul in man.
My will is greater than thy law, O Death;
My love is stronger than the bonds of Fate:
Our love is the heavenly seal of the Supreme.
I guard that seal against thy rending hands.
Love must not cease to live upon the earth;
For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven,
Love is the far Transcendent's angel here;
Love is man's lien on the Absolute.

76: O soul suffer what thou must

RY Deshpande — Sat, 24 May 2008 22:32:10 -0700

…How shall the Ideal's unsubstantial hues
Be painted stiff on earth's vermilion blur,
A dream within a dream come doubly true?
How shall the will-o'-the-wisp become a star?
The Ideal is a malady of thy mind,
A bright delirium of thy speech and thought,
A strange wine of beauty lifting thee to false sight…
O soul misled by the splendour of thy thoughts,
O earthly creature with thy dream of heaven,
Obey, resigned and still, the earthly law.
Accept the light that falls upon thy days;
Take what thou canst of Life's permitted joy,
Submitting to the ordeal of Fate's scourge
Suffer what thou must of toil and grief and care.
There shall approach silencing thy passionate heart
My long calm night of everlasting sleep:
There into the hush from which thou cam'st retire.

75: The Avatars have lived and died in vain

RY Deshpande — Sun, 18 May 2008 03:43:23 -0700

O human mind, vainly thou torturest
An hour's delight to stretch through infinity's
Long void and fill its formless, passionless gulfs,
Persuading the insensible Abyss
To lend eternity to perishing things,
And trickst the fragile movements of thy heart
With thy spirit's feint of immortality…
The ideal never yet was real made.
Imprisoned in form that glory cannot live;
Into a body shut it breathes no more…
If heavens there are they are veiled in their own light,
If a Truth eternal somewhere reigns unknown,
It burns in a tremendous void of God…
The Avatars have lived and died in vain,
Vain was the sage's thought, the prophet's voice;
In vain is seen the shining upward Way.
Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun…

Atlantis—True Story or Cautionary Tale?—by Willie Drye

RY Deshpande — Sat, 17 May 2008 03:22:16 -0700

If the writing of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato had not contained so much truth about the human condition, his name would have been forgotten centuries ago. But one of his most famous stories—the cataclysmic destruction of the ancient civilization of Atlantis—is almost certainly false. So why is this story still repeated more than 2,300 years after Plato's death? "It's a story that captures the imagination," says James Romm, a professor of classics at Bard College in Annandale, New York. "It's a great myth. It has a lot of elements that people love to fantasize about." Plato told the story of Atlantis around 360 B.C. The founders of Atlantis, he said, were half god and half human. They created a utopian civilization and became a great naval power. Their home was made up of concentric islands separated by wide moats and linked by a canal that penetrated to the center. The lush islands contained gold, silver, and other precious metals and supported an abundance of rare, exotic wildlife. There was a great capital city on the central island.

74: My God is will and love

RY Deshpande — Sat, 10 May 2008 17:21:42 -0700

World-spirit, I was thy equal spirit born.
My will too is a law, my strength a god.
I am immortal in my mortality.
I tremble not before the immobile gaze
Of the unchanging marble hierarchies
That look with the stone eyes of Law and Fate.
My soul can meet them with its living fire.
Out of thy shadow give me back again
Into earth's flowering spaces Satyavan
In the sweet transiency of human limbs
To do with him my spirit's burning will.
I will bear with him the ancient Mother's load,
I will follow with him earth's path that leads to God.
Else shall the eternal spaces open to me
While round us strange horizons far recede,
Travelling together the immense unknown…
Wherever thou leadst his soul I shall pursue...

73: A sound pealed through the monstrous realm

RY Deshpande — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:56:30 -0700

...Back from the grandeur of my perilous realms
Go, mortal, to thy small permitted sphere!
Hasten swift-footed, lest to slay thy life
The great laws thou hast violated, moved,
Open at last on thee their marble eyes…

The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs (available May 2, 2008)

Rich — Fri, 02 May 2008 09:38:28 -0700

Available Today May 2nd 2008. "Here are details that are not only reliable but transparent in letting their sources speak. Throughout we hear the voices of Sri Aurobindo and his contemporaries. Peter Heehs has written the definitive biography and a superb introduction to the life and thought of Sri Aurobindo." — Stephen Phillips, professor of philosophy and Asian studies, University of Texas at Austin

72: On the dreadful edge of Night

RY Deshpande — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 22:36:08 -0700

Awhile on the chill dreadful edge of Night
All stood as if a world were doomed to die
And waited on the eternal silence' brink…
Hungry beyond, the night desired her soul.
But still in its lone niche of templed strength
Motionless, her flame-bright spirit, mute, erect,
Burned like a torch-fire from a windowed room
Pointing against the darkness' sombre breast.
The Woman first affronted the Abyss
Daring to journey through the eternal Night.
Armoured with light she advanced her foot to plunge
Into the dread and hueless vacancy;
Immortal, unappalled her spirit faced
The danger of the ruthless eyeless waste…

71: At first in a blind stress of woods she moved

RY Deshpande — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:03:24 -0700

At first in a blind stress of woods she moved
With strange inhuman paces on the soil,
Journeying as if upon an unseen road.
Around her on the green and imaged earth
The flickering screen of forests ringed her steps.
Its thick luxurious obstacle of boughs
Besieged her body pressing dimly through
In a rich realm of whispers palpable,
And all the murmurous beauty of the leaves
Rippled around her like an emerald robe.
But more and more this grew an alien sound,
And her old intimate body seemed to her
A burden which her being remotely bore.
Herself lived far in some uplifted scene
Where to the trance-chained vision of pursuit,
Sole presences in a high spaceless dream,
The luminous spirit glided stilly on
And the great shadow travelled vague behind.
Still with an amorous crowd of seeking hands
Softly entreated by their old desires
Her senses felt earth's close and gentle air…

Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: Photographs by Gangaram Malwade

RY Deshpande — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:33:26 -0700

These 111 photographs of the Samadhi, seven inches by ten inches in size, taken at different times of the day and from different angles, have been collected and printed on art paper in this volume. They evoke the presence of this sacred place with its atmosphere of deep peace and serenity. Many of the photographs capture the beauty of the floral decorations and designs that are created twice daily on the Samadhi. A short introduction records how the care of the Samadhi and its environs developed from December 1950 to the present and includes many of the Mother's instructions on how things were to be kept and arranged.

Arjava—an Impression by Amal Kiran

RY Deshpande — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:22:29 -0700

This pencil-sketch of Arjava, with the caption below it, is by Amal Kiran drawn on a piece of paper. It is kept by him as a frontispiece in his copy of Poems by Arjava (J A Chadwick) published in 1941. The copy contains, in Amal’s hand, Sri Aurobindo’s comments on a fairly large number of poems. These poems were mostly written during the 1930s. It is significant to note that Arjava the logician-philosopher started writing poetry after joining the Ashram.

70: Another luminous Satyavan arose

RY Deshpande — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:09:59 -0700

The dim and awful godhead rose erect
From his brief stooping to his touch on earth,
And like a dream that wakes out of a dream,
Forsaking the poor mould of that dead clay,
Another luminous Satyavan arose,
Starting upright from the recumbent earth
As if someone over viewless borders stepped
Emerging on the edge of unseen worlds.
In the earth's day the silent marvel stood
Between the mortal woman and the god.
Such seemed he as if one departed came
Wearing the light of a celestial shape
Splendidly alien to the mortal air…
Between two realms he stood, not wavering,
But fixed in quiet strong expectancy…
But now the impulse of the Path was felt
Moving from the Silence that supports the stars
To touch the confines of the visible world.
Luminous he moved away…

69: All in her mated with that mighty hour

RY Deshpande — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:29:54 -0700

The two opposed each other with their eyes,
Woman and universal god: around her,
Piling their void unbearable loneliness
Upon her mighty uncompanioned soul,
Many inhuman solitudes came close.
Vacant eternities forbidding hope
Laid upon her their huge and lifeless look,
And to her ears silencing earthly sounds,
A sad and formidable voice arose
Which seemed the whole adverse world's. “Unclasp,” it cried,
“Thy passionate influence and relax, O slave
Of Nature, changing tool of changeless Law,
Who vainly writhst rebellious to my yoke,
Thy elemental grasp; weep and forget.
Entomb thy passion in its living grave.
Leave now the once-loved spirit's abandoned robe:
Pass lonely back to thy vain life on earth.”
It ceased, she moved not and it spoke again…

Goodbye To All That: Nature and the Future Body in Sri Aurobindo

Rich — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:08:20 -0700

This is the first part of a longer meditation on the future bodies. I have entitled this section “Goodbye To All That” which is the title of Robert Graves autobiography in which he recounts his experiences in the trenches in WWI. What he is saying goodbye to is the passing of an era: of the naive, carefree, class based culture of Edwardian England, which did not survive the war. Sri Aurobindo wrote the passages referenced here at about the time the Edwardian era ended and the great war began. Because our views and valorization of nature are cultural constructions, to appreciate why Sri Aurobindo extrapolates a certain form of naturalism into the future body we must first excavate his conceptions of “what is natural.”

The context of his writing referenced here on evolution and the future body seems to flow naturally out of a post-romantic protestant view of Nature he must have been exposed to growing up in England which lived on well into the Edwardian era. To the British upper classes it was a view of nature as pristine, which they enjoyed in well manicured English country gardens, not yet smeared with the blood of the trenches. Above all nature was clearly distinct from the machinery given to us by culture.

In forming his view of nature Sri Aurobindo took account of Ruskin's, Carlyle's, and Arnold's critique of industrialism. This view of nature was certainly valuable for sacramentalizing nature at a time when the Industrial Revolution was rapidly desecrating it. Today however, the interpenetration of nature by information technologies and genetic engineering has added enough complexity to what it means to be natural/human that we can no longer escape environments which are increasingly mediated by technology. Electricity undergirds much of our phenomenological experience of the world, bio-technology sustains our physical presence in it. In such a brave new world the continuity of the already developed evolutionary form with all its biological naturalism seems to be a reality to which we have already said goodbye

But, what is important for us in Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future body ....

68: There came on her a change

RY Deshpande — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:44:31 -0700

So was she left alone in the huge wood,
Surrounded by a dim unthinking world,
Her husband's corpse on her forsaken breast.
In her vast silent spirit motionless
She measured not her loss with helpless thoughts,
Nor rent with tears the marble seals of pain:
She rose not yet to face the dreadful god.
Over the body she loved her soul leaned out
In a great stillness without stir or voice,
As if her mind had died with Satyavan.
But still the human heart in her beat on.
Aware still of his being near to hers,
Closely she clasped to her the mute lifeless form
As though to guard the oneness they had been
And keep the spirit still within the frame.
Then suddenly there came on her the change
Which in tremendous moments of our lives
Can overtake sometimes the human soul
And hold it up towards its luminous source…
The voice of life is turned to infinite sounds,
The moments on great wings of lightning come
And godlike thought surprise the mind of earth.