Meditation -The Sun looks at itself through its myriad fragments.
I try to reach the utmosconfines of time till my consciousness bursts the boundaries of past, present and future and enters a state of timelessness, eternity, a consciousness which always is separate from, unaffected by the passing show, the endless procession of names and forms, swimming universes rising and disappearing in the flood of time.
There is nothing stable. Time flows ceaselessly carrying in its current the eternal wonder of dawns and sunsets. The base is stable, subtler than the subtlest substance, yet substance of all the time flow. The show is perpetual and forever renewed. The tiniest flower, which for a morning glows in a meadow with its fugitive blue and pink petals, is an eternally recurring refrain in the vast symphony of time ... it will come back again on another earth in another distant cycle, when our earth disappears or is transformed into something else. All is contained in all. The highest divinities and the darkest monsters are made from the same unseizable primordial substance. Masks and facades, multi coloured wave patterns rushing through time before some witnessing eye do not hide the One Player, so intimate, yet forever unknown and unknowable.
Look into the Past. Probe the future. Scrutinise the Present. There is the same friendly face, the bewitching smile of the utter Stranger. In this vast, boundless, timeless indivisible Sameness, do I exist? Do you? Does anybody indeed? Can a dewdrop see the Sun? A sunflower feels and turns to the Sun. So here and there through the ages there have been souls who could perceive this hidden indivisible unique Sun. Always the same, indivisible, unfathomable, mysterious, eternal, infinite Light.
Shine evermore in our consciousness. May you get reflected without distortion, deformation in our purified transparent mirror of the soul. The Light has been, is, and will be always there, for there is nothing else. Did I say masks and wave patterns? I am wrong. Each blossom, each face, each form, dark and dangerous, delightful and ravishing is a sculptured poise of that immutable Light. My soul is numb and silent before that ineffable Oneness which pervades all time, all existence. There is only the One and the timeless manifestation of the One. O soul, forever contemplate the One intimate, yet forever impossible inaccessible. Let me get lost in the marvelous One.
Let our limited, divided consciousness dissolve in the all sustaining, original Mother Consciousness.
Om namo, Om namo, Om namo.
Om Douce Mère, Om Sri Aurobindo.
N.Guha Roy 1982
The divine will is the law of love - part two
As our surrender attains some perfection even without coming to an absolute condition as a crowning movement, as a marvellous gift of heaven , a veil is lifted from our consciousness. It is the veil of ignorance which kept hidden until now the face of Truth, in the words of Sri Aurobindo "all is now God and Sky." The Supreme One has revealed Himself to our soul. All we see, all we feel here, perceive, seize with our thought, with the silence of our soul, all is truly a supremely conscious Being, His Substance eternal, The limitless ocean of a boundless conscious Being and Existence. The veil of disfiguring names and forms, the veil of distorting feelings, sensations, thoughts and perceptions are gradually torn away from our soul. There is left the infinite Ocean and ourselves as some magic drops of water in the bosom of the Ocean, indivisibly one with the Ocean yet enjoying a active personal existence. A cell one with the body yet enjoying its boundless unity from a little corner of Infinity. All is verily Brahman. Wherever we turn our eyes in all forms, in all objects, in all movements, in all events and circumstances, we meet the Eternal. We are delivered from the ignorance, the darkness and the endless suffering, once and for all. We live constantly in His Presence through all, in spite of all, beyond all, until nothing is left in our consciousness which is not Divine, which does not see everything as Divine. We live constantly in His Presence in union with the supreme Mother Consciousness and grow more and more, endlessly more and more conscious of the Divine and His unfathomable Infinities.
This third stage of self-surrender leading to the complete unveiling of the Divine in our consciousness has three progressive stages.
In the beginning we begin to feel, perceive and truly see the Divine in each object and in each thing, in the tiniest conceivable particle of force and in the most stupendous system of universes. We see the Divine as the animating Fire, the supreme Source in each object and being and force.
In the second stage, our vision deepens. We become aware that the Divine is not only the animating Fire, the Source that inspires, sustains and gives life and forms to each object and being, but He is the constituting substance of everything, of every name and form, everything is made out of an infinite eternal divine substance of Consciousness, light and delight. We begin to feel every name and form as a fixity of a magic moment, of this eternal Divine Consciousness. We see nothing but the Divine in all forms and movements. Everything is mysterious yet very intimate to our being and consciousness. We are no longer haunted by separation, division, and death has no fear for us anymore. The Divine is all. Everything is in the Divine, there is no coming, there is no going. It is only a change of poise of the Divine in movement.
this perception and experience deepen on the crest of Felicity, we are admitted into an unbelievable, inconceivable splendor of divine beauty, harmony and perfection. All that we have experienced before becomes dull and drab and practically a state of inconsciousness compared to this glory. Everything in existence, from the tiniest meadow flower to the most resplendent form of Godhead, takes on another light, another lustre, another fathomless effulgence and perfection. Everything becomes perfect, perfect, absolutely perfect at each instant. There is nothing more to be attained, : whatever exists, whatever moves through eternity is absolutely perfect with all the hidden absoluteness manifested in all the forms. It is a succession of magnificent dawns. There is no sense of movement from inferior perfection to a superior perfection. The Divine is utterly perfect at every instant in everything. There is nothing to accomplish for He is ever fulfilled. There is only an eternal miraculous succession of absolutely perfect self-revelations.
But for this God-state to be achieved, even partially, there has to be an immense transformation of our life, mind, soul and body. This state takes us away once and for all definitively, conclusively from the state of ignorance and division to the utter fullness of Divine Existence. But then when we will be there, we will perceive a goal still more mysterious and marvellous, beckoning us from the irresistible Beyond.
N.Guha Roy
The Divine Will is the supreme law of Love
Question: How can we feel absolutely secure in all circumstances, at all times, in any case?
Answer: This sense of total security, this confidence comes by an absolute surrender in love and knowledge and will to the Supreme Divine. There are many stages which progressively lead us to the state of perfect surrender. And at each stage there is a development of the consciousness which could be taken as indications, as confirmation of our spiritual progress.
_ As soon as there is a general state of surrender in our being to the Supreme, we become intensely and convincingly aware that only the Supreme and nobody else and nothing else in this world or in other worlds is the Lord and Master of our destiny, whose protection is inviolable. The Supreme becomes the living, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient Person, the Divine Being, our master, our friend, guide and teacher, mother and the beloved of our soul. Nothing can destroy this relationship or even come between the Divine and ourselves and interfere in our spirituality and our work.
_ By a still greater perfection of self-surrender we now become aware that the Lord, the Supreme, the Mother, is not only the master and protector of our destiny, but He and She, the Eternal, is the absolute master of all this . It is only his will that is executed in the universe. Whatever the individuals do or nature's forces execute is sanctioned and permitted by his will. Everything happens within the framework of this supreme Wwll though with our limited consciousness we may not be able to seize the immediate significance of a world movement or action or something which might seem even insignificant at the time. We become aware of a mother -consciousness, of a supreme wisdom which guides the destiny of the individual, the collectivity, the race, the entire earth, the universe, in fact, all manifestation with limitless love and wisdom towards a more and more perfect divine destiny. Nothing happens which is not a movement of Her wisdom, a necessary step in Her forward march, an inevitable link in the chain of development. Not even a blade of grass in this universe can move or tremble without Her presence, power and sanction. We see Her as the overwhelming supreme Power, Mahashakti, the supreme Wisdom, the Supreme Executrix. And we discover gradually the unity of Her will in all world movements, collective movements and individual movements. We also discover the unity of Her purpose. She has a single purpose. To take gradually each and every element in the universe towards a more and more sublime divine fulfillment.
_ As the self-giving deepens and the last traces of ego disappear, a greater and greater union with the Divine is accomplished and accompanied by a greater possession of the being by the sublime powers of the Divine . The vision of oneness, of absolute unity, of the one single divine Being, the Eternal, the Infinite becomes stable, permanent and the intensity of this vision grows continuously. This vision is the power of oneness, the power of supreme love, which knows everything as the One, as the single existence and substance and being. This supreme power of Love brings a tremendous pressure of obligation, necessity and organic need on all the elements of the universe to unite, to become one and to express the unity and the Oneness. The power of this force of Love is irresistible, invincible, its action is a decree irreversible. The results are steps leading to unity and each step is irrevocable and in the divine vision, since oneness is the very essence of manifestation, the realisation of oneness is only a playful process inevitable by the very nature of the utter truth of our existence. God vision is the vision of this utter oneness of which the very substance is delight. The Supreme Love or the Power of Oneness is the Supreme Delight and in the world existence, in the midst of the ignorance, its manifestation on earth will compel all the elements to unite through attraction, necessity, obligation and through conscious choice and awakening to the spiritual reality. To become the manifesting centres of this supreme power of Love is the key sine-qua-non of a new creation - the Divine Life on earth. The divine will is the supreme law of Love, the absolute compulsion towards unity and Oneness.
N.Guha Roy 1975
There is a magical substance all around us.
There is a magical substance all around us. It becomes anything and everything ~ out of fire mimosa is born, through the forest of bamboo the wind flows enthralled by the magnificence of subtle majestic symphonies, all around is a sacred greatness, the marvellous Face of a mysterious Mother ~ in the color of the rusty leaves, in the fireworks of a sunset, in the iris of a stranger ~ we catch a glimpse of a mystery which forever eludes u, yet irresistibly, hopelessly draws us forever to some shrouded love, compassion, beauty and immortal sweet and charming Presence. Train your eyes, your thoughts, your feelings and senses to see and feel and profoundly enjoy that eternal becoming, that One who is taking all these million shapes and forms, continuously tricking us with His incalculable masks and movements, delighting in this mad, intoxicating divine revelry. Nothing is true what you see, all are appearances, faces and fronts of a marvellous Reality. There is no haste, there is no death, there is only change, transformation, transmutation. From the fire came the unicellular body which has developed into the living human being. The so-called master of the earth is but the magician's momentary flash of His art; even the highest gods, the most powerful ones we can conceive of, the most beautiful ones we can think of are dream figures and wave faces of an ocean of unbounded fathomless delight and mystery. Time and space are His magic substance and means for play: Lila. We live a hundred years, the Universe lives a numberless billion years. New isotopes live for a billionth of a second. Alice can create a universe bigger than this universe in the boundless space of the heart of an isotope which lives for a billionth of a second. It is all the magic of the relativity; but this is not all - as in a dim light, you see only a little around the room, and in the starlight a little more, and in the sunlight the clear continents, so too there are so many eyes which go through wall after wall in unexplorable mystic dimensions. Let your mind be strong, your heart steady, your nerves and body peaceful like the granity of the Sphinx, then you will not be afraid when the Eternity from its fathomless depths will begin to look at you and reveal its courtyards. When Moses saw the Divine, he too was afraid. The Eternal has to hide Himself from our eyes for a long, long time. He has to strengthen our path, fortify our spirit and steel our nerves so that one day we can bear His compassionate touch.
One day we will see that at each instant, everything in the universe is determined by the Divine, for there is nothing else except the Divine and everything in the universe is exactly what the Divine wants it to be for His universal delight of existence.
******
N.Guha Roy 1975
Vision of the Future
A little patience and everything will be all right;
the Mother is at work.
The wars of religion, class and colors will disappear
Carried away by the tide of the Divine Force, without leaving the least trace.
A little patience and everything will be all right; the Mother is at work;
People will forget their natural egoism, their innate violence.
They will discover the divine unity in their unique Origin.
Man, close to the animal, will not be carnivore any more.
Famine, disease, shipwrecks, accidents will be rare.
We will not any more hear the tears of the starved, mistreated children,
Nor the sobs of the dishonored, tortured women.
Man will be touched by the spirit, or he will disappear as the dinosaur.
Nature will become sweeter, less whimsical.
There will be a place for each under the blessed Sun.
Birth and death will be at will.
The modern, decadent mega poles, centers of crimes and intrigues,
Will fall into ruin without leaving much souvenir or regre.t
Temple-Cities of a spiritual era will welcome the aspirants.
An intimate occult communication would make the travels useless.
Nobody would be a stranger anywhere, but a brother.
The Mother is at work in the heart of every human being.
The universal Love would connect everybody by a golden thread.
The awakened soul would find enjoyment in the blossoming
Of his brothers, in their fulfillment, his own growth.
Seized by a heavenly passion, people will form communities
According to their affinity, so many orchestras of harmony and beauty.
Pain and suffering, torments of agony, cruelty
Will reveal the secret they hide behind their facade.
Everything is the incalculable magic of the Mother enjoying Herself.
Only she can cancel the curse, which presses on our fate.
In a wink, this terrible world would reveal a Reality,
An unlimited, eternal existence, a luminous Bliss,
A plenitude, which contains all the absolute, and even more.
One is eternally everything, everywhere, immersed in the Divine.
Only She lives, acts, works, unchanging, immobile, unknown, blissful.
****
N.Guha Roy1993
Poem - The Delegate to the Festival of light
Bring me the opal cups of the bloom of Morning
Fill them with the wine brewed from the Divine Ecstasy;
I have been named a delegate to the Festival of Light.
Bring me the crown of fire,
Sprinkle silvery dust of the stars in my hair;
The spring tide has verily flooded my soul.
Bring me a psyche-rose, love-fed source of perennial delight,
Make up my lips with the yearning of the pomegranate seeds;
Glad hymns of a realised dream haunt my ears.
Bring me the sandals that tread the path of the tenderest love,
And the mystic flag, blue and gold of undying hope;
Summon the crescent-moon to take me to the Carnival.
******
N.Guha Roy 1960
21 February - Darshan
Who can ever reach Thou, Mother Divine?
Active, puissant and immobile, Thou art all around us, within and above.
Who can ever contain Thee, Mother Divine?
Like water through the mesh, Thou escapest from the strongest wit,
Yet choosest to abide in the heart of Thy children.
Mother Divine, Thou only art, Thou only hast been,
And Thou only shalt be, Origin self-born, Supreme.
In Thee we move and live and have the bliss of our being.
My heart in gratitude bows down at Thy feet.
*****
The Divine Love only can redeem.
The Divine Love It will not become operative, it will not act unless we are willing to surrender our humanity, its obscurity and ignorance, its animal life, its ego‑bound existence. The new life cannot be realised within the human framework. For the aspirant to the divine life, it is very important to understand that nothing in him must hanker even in the least degree after the human existence. He must utterly renounce the human world, if to live the divine life be his intention. One who is fortunate to have a glimpse of the divine life, its peace and joy, its beauty and harmony, its vast unity, its abiding sense of infinity, the concreteness of eternity and above all, the fulfilling experience of the divine Presence, feel no difficulty at all in giving up the human existence. But for most, the fascination of the human love and relation seems to be the insuperable difficulty. A thousand times deceived and duped, tortured and humiliated, torn to shreds and massacred, love seems to survive in the human breast. Be it blessed. For the human love, though disfigured and made ugly and brutal beyond recognition, has its origin in the divine love. It is only the divine love that can redeem it and release it from its dreadful limitations. It is only the true divine love descending from the transcendental heights that can transform matter progressively. It descends if there is an exclusive call to the Divine. In simple words, all our love must be turned exclusively to the Divine and only then there can be a transforming response from Above.
Our whole being must be unified in a single call for the Divine. The Divine must become the sole reality by the breaking down of all veils and barriers. In every being and thing we meet the one limitless Person, the Friend and the Beloved, the Mother and the Source. Our heart, mind, body and soul join in a single yearning for the constant flow of love that streams from Anandamayi, the Mother of Love and Felicity. When She descends, then matter at her contact will gradually undergo the divine transformation.
May we live for Thee alone, O Divine Mother
Niranjan Guha Roy 1985
The Mother and Sri Aurobindo tell us that if we can get in contact with the divine consciousness beyond mind, the supramental Truth Consciousness and open ourselves to the supramental Divine Shakti, then She will gradually transform our mind, life and finally the body into a divine mind, a divine life and a divine body.
In my early youth, I became aware of the tremendous suffering of the human race. I observed that every one suffered big or small, rich or poor, young or old, even the very best had some hidden cancer and I used to wonder and pray how this suffering could be alleviated, eliminated. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have given the answer. The human consciousness must be sublimated, transformed and replaced by the spiritual and divine consciousness. The suffering is an inseparable intrinsic attribute and substance of the normal human consciousness. That is to say, as long as we are human with the human consciousness, the suffering is inevitable. True happiness, delight, ananda is an attribute, an intrinsic dynamic principle and substance of the spiritual and Divine Consciousness. Unconditional, unalloyed, ever present, luminous joy is inherent in the spiritual and divine consciousness, its very substance. It is only by the discovery of the Divine Consciousness and by the gradual and increasing union with the Divine that we become ultimately free from suffering once for all. The suffering is the inevitable result and consequence of all our inferior human attributes, qualities and actions and of unillumined movements of mental and vital consciousness. Desires, search and satisfaction of sensual pleasures, attachment to sex, greed, jealousy, ambition, search for power, position and name, falsehood, self assertion, anger, cruelty, violence, all these elements are natural attributes of the human consciousness and they cannot be eliminated or suppressed, controlled by the mental vital effort alone. Even by high spiritual powers, high spiritual consciousness, they are refIned, controlled but not eliminated. Only the Grace of the Mother Divine, the supramental consciousness, the Divine Consciousness, gnosis has the absolute power of transmuting them into its own substance of force, delight and consciousness, its inalienable unity and oneness. Man must become divine in order to be entirely free from the mental, vital consciousness and its natural attributes and qualities. That means, to be entirely divine, his mind, life and the body too must be divinised. Even if we attain spiritual peace and calm and other higher realizations our body remains subject to pain, thirst, hunger, disease, decomposition and death. Even in the Vedas, we find recorded such lamentations. So, to be truly happy, we must have a body free from pain, thirst and hunger, fatigue and disease, degeneration and if possible death, at least, accidental death, that is to say forced or unwilling exit from life. Death too must become a willful act of the soul, not imposed on us. It is here that the yoga of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is fundamentally different from the traditional spirituality in India and elsewhere. Just because nobody could find a real way of divinising mind, life and especially the body, the handy solution of illusionism was adopted, which completely paralyzed life and eventually all spiritual endeavour. To be really happy, we must have a divine body, transformed radically in its form and function, in its very substance and constitution. Up till now some yogas have attempted to achieve the physical immortality. In ancient Egypt the attempt was made over thousands of years to find the secret of physical immortality, which they achieved but in a sad way, through mummifcation of dead bodies. In Greece, there was an attempt to find physical perfection and beauty and harmony. In ancient China, Japan, there have been various attempts of prolonging the life of the body through physical and spiritual means, specially by bringing a universal calm and tranquility and peace in their mind, life and body. Though man has always dreamed of an immortal glorious body, in actual practice in all these attempts, we find that there is no conception of transforming the actual body and its functionings, but only an attempt of prolonging the life of this body as it is, probably with a little refining of its actions, reactions and functions. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo tell us that if we can get in contact with the divine consciousness beyond mind, the supramental Truth Consciousness and open ourselves to the supramental Divine Shakti, then She will gradually transform our mind, life and finally the body into a divine mind, a divine life and a divine body. Through much experience it has been found that the body of an aspirant, though animal in its character and origin, can open and receive the Divine Shakti far more easily and with greater positive consequences and effectivity than the mind and the vital part in an ordinary man can do. Since we are primarily embodied souls, that is to say, our soul, mind consciousness, vital consciousness are expressed or manifested through the body, the body itself is the expression of the soul and the mental and the vital consciousness in evolution. So, if we can open the body directly to the infuence and power of the Divine Consciousness, the body will necessarily be transformed though gradually and extremely slowly by the descent of the higher consciousness into the body. The mental and the vital powers and faculties can be considered as attributes of the present body and if the transforming Divine Shakti comes in the body, they too will be necessarily transformed. The mental and the vital consciousness in man being nearer to the subtle substance of the Divine Consciousness can and will undergo a relatively quick transformation. The body though it is more receptive has been built on such a solid and stable basis, that transformation may take centuries. Though once started the process will lead to the final result inevitably, if that be the intention and destiny of the individual soul. The problem here is two-fold, first and foremost, to prepare the body and the consciousness in such a way as one would be able to live long enough to get in touch with the supramental Divine Shakti. The second part of the problem is the natural consequence of the spiritual realization. Once we are in contact with the supramental Divine Shakti and once Her Power, Force, Light and Consciousness are pouring down into the body, how best to collaborate with the supramental transforming Power is a vital problem, for the simple reason that this has not been done before and many attempts will have to be made till a general line of development and evolution is clearly seen. But this second problem, that is to say, transformation of this present body into the divine body is not our principal preoccupation for the moment, at least for the majority. Our problem is how to prepare the body, how to make it more and more receptive without risk and danger, immune and free from unpleasant even disastrous consequences. How to prolong the life in good, strong and healthy condition, at least so long as required for getting in contact with the supramental divine Shakti, for, once the contact is established the first indispensable phase of the great journey, the ascent to Truth will be accomplished. It is this first phase which is of utmost importance to us as a community of spiritual seekers. We will discover that if we are sincere in our aspiration, the Power will begin to work perceptively in our body from the very first day we turn towards the Divine Mother. The Power is our teacher, guide and master. The supreme Shakti, the Mother Divine will take us step by step, each one towards the great fulfllment and all She requires from us is an illumined obedience, a conscious collaboration and a joyful confident surrender to the Divine Force and Her working.
Niranjan Guha Roy 1967
The human consciousness and the spiritual consciousness
In a state of meditation, we become conscious of the Divine in all, beyond all, in the normal state of consciousness, we are very much human and see everything in a human way. There is as if a thick covering on it through which no light can come in. At times, everything becomes divine but the experience does not last for long. When we see the Brahman in all and everywhere, then there is no problem. We are uplifted into a world where there is no problem at all. It is a world of total harmony and beauty. All is truly divine eternally. The disguise of forms falls away. We see the players in their costumes for the drama. It is so strange and unfamiliar to the human consciousness that the physical mind is unable to accept it as real. The difference between the two states of consciousness is so great that they seem to have no connection or bridge between them. There is no transition like white becoming gradually blue or red. These two states can alternate for years and years, sometimes one can be stronger than the other.
There is another great difficulty. When one lives in the divine consciousness, one cannot not really, fully act in the divine way for the physical mind of other people would never understand it. Also, when one lives in the physical consciousness, one cannot act in the divine way. It would be an imitation, ineffective, not genuine. With the emergence of the psychic being, most of the violence and folly of the untransformed human nature could be avoided but as long as the physical consciousness is not wholly transformed, there is a double nature - sometimes divine, at other times undivine, even antidivine. As the Divine consciousness transforms the physical consciousness, as one acquires more and more the divine nature, one has to face a new problem. How to live and act in a world which is not conscious of the Divine. Unless one lives in the divine consciousness, one cannot truly recognise another person living in the divine consciousness. Human beings generally cannot tolerate anyone claiming to live in a higher consciousness. History is a faithful witness of this tragic human feature. Christs big and small have most often been burnt and crucified in all countries throughout the ages. Earth is not yet quite a safe place for the divine beings.
The psychic being is easily covered up with the diabolic upsurge of all the dirt and filth accumulated over ages. Yet if one lives in the Divine consciousness even for a moment, one realises how absurd and distorted, twisted and dangerously perverted is the human point of view. The spiritual Sun emanates constantly the light, power , ananda, peace and harmony and the riches of the divine consciousness. It is partial to none, rejects no one, spreads Its Light equally on everyone. It all depends on our receptivity. The more we receive , the closer we move to oneness, light and immortality. The single purpose is to create a divine race. The more one is receptive, the more he is likely to become a spiritual being.
The Divine is not far or near according to the ordinary human standards. We can live constantly in His gracious presence. It all depends how far we are willing to give up our ego and its incurable blindness. When we live with the Divine, we live in a different world. There are no problems whatsoever. The Divine alone is real. He lives and acts in numberless bodies. It is His play, His manifestation -: this hairy caterpillar, that majestic swan, this lovely horse, that monstrous tyrant, this bird-loving saint, this blind woman, that murdered child, this pure white lotus are sketches from His unfathomable mysterious Lila. For Him there is no birth nor death, no going or coming. A single infinite Being, incalculably numerous, ever changing, ever unfolding its hidden marvellous contents through eternity. When the golden lid over the human ignorant mind is removed, then we are admitted into this ineffable Splendour.
Only the Divine Mother can do it if our aspiration is sincere and our surrender perfect.
Om Sri Aurobindo, Om Douce Mère.
*******
Niranjan Guha Roy