concentration on the external being and on the divine being in us
The difference between a genius and an ordinary man is the concentration that the genius brings to his work, whatever he may be doing. The genius does not waste time. With his power of concentration he learns a lesson, does a work which an ordinary man with a dispersed mind would take far longer to do. In this way, that is to say, by developing your power of concentration you can shorten the time of learning or working and thereby gain more time to increase your power of expression and your capacity for work. There are many methods of developing your concentration, but as far as I know the best method is to concentrate with all your mind and heart and body on the work you are doing at the instant, on the lesson you are learning at the moment with an insatiable thirst for perfecting what you have already learnt, what you already know, what you can already accomplish. Your creative abilities and your efficiency in work are your true invaluable assets.
Alongside this concentration on your external being there must be the concentration of the development of the divine being in us. We should concentrate in a prayer for a purification of our being, rejection of all that is undivine, most of all, rejection of violence from every part of our being. Our thoughts must be truly benevolent, the heart large and wide which has no enemy, the body full of peace and harmony where the least manifestation of anger, jealousy, envy, hatred, greed, ambition, lust and violence must be gradually eliminated till there is only a joyful peace in the body. This is the best condition for the growth of the Divine Being in us. Violence and hatred must be at all cost eliminated from every part of the being, however long that work might take. It is when the violence and hatred are practically eliminated from our consciousness by the inflow of the Divine Force in our entire being that the true Divine Life can begin. It may take a lifetime or the work may be spread out over a number of lives but as long as the violence is not totally eliminated from the being, the instrument cannot be satisfactorily used for the greater Divine purpose.
Niranjan Guha Roy
Thoughts and meditation - We travel from ignorance of our identity to the absolute Consciousness.
There is one Being, one existence, one movement, one will.
The Being in its totality is the absolute consciousness, force and delight.
The material universe is the same Being indrawn, self-oblivious, self-absorbed.
The journey is from the Being self-absorbed in the material existence to the Being of absolute consciousness through a gradual, progressive manifestation of the consciousness.
We travel from ignorance of our identity to the absolute Consciousness.
We travel from infinitesimal consciousness to the infinite indivisible Consciousness.
We travel from limited, divided, separate consciousness to infinite, eternal, one and unique Consciousness.
All limitation is suffering, falsehood, death, and denial of inalterable Bliss.
Man, as a race, is the highest point reached in time by the material universe in terms of consciousness which is the universal Spirit or the Absolute involved in matter.
The matter also is an ascending form of inconscience or the ultimate nescience or the Absolute self-absorbed and indrawn.
But man lives in the mind which is a limited consciousness unaware of the original identity with its source and others.
So, man, as long as he remains man in the mental consciousness cannot be free from falsehood,, death, suffering, incertitude, conflict and division.
When man discovers his identity with the Transcendent and the Absolute, he discovers at the same time the One existence, the one Will, the one movement
He discovers his identity with the u niverse, with all other beings.
He discovers that at every instantthe universal Being or the total manifestation is moving towards a greater light, consciousness, power and joy.
Nothing and nobody can intervene or deviate the universal Being from its appointed course or journey.
At every instant, for every element in the universe, whatever may be the appearance, it is the very best that happens individually, collectively, in a global universal way.
The universe as a whole is proceeding from darkness to the absolute Light, from suffering and death to immortal delight of existence.
In this universal movement, there is no chance-action, no error, no deviation in the absolute sense.
The Divine Himself is becoming conscious in a few human beings who will form the nucleus of the Divine race who shall inhabit the earth.
The aspiration is the presence of the rising Divine.
The surrender is the path and the journey.
The perfection of surrender is the yoga of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
To see, to know, to feel and to accept that whatever the Divine is doing for us and for the world is the best under the universal conditions at the moment, is the heart of surrender.
A surrendered soul and being is the most powerful instrument for the manifestation of the Divine on the earth.
A loving confident ever-progressive surrender to Mahashakti, the Force of the Transcendent, is the Key, the passport, the magnificent journey and the supreme consummation of the yoga.
N.Guha Roy -1978
Some quotations
The grace is pouring down into each heart, mind , body and soul
and our physical being nailed to the cross of unconscious matter
will be freed forever from the least trace of animality.
Let us remain as open as possible
to the incoming light and do nothing to prevent its transforming action.
There is a great joy, a pure delight in wishing the very best for everyone
O boundless love, unite us all
O imperishable Light, give us the true sight
As the presence of the Light will grow,
pain will be replaced first by peace
then by a deep serene delight of existence.
Only the soul in our deepest heart
responds to the Light spontaneously
as a sunflower to the sun.
So first of all we must discover the inmost soul in us.
A strong aspiration for the truth is essential to enter the spiritual life
Often when we are very ill, we become detached from everything in this world and Ihave a very strong aspiration to belong only to the Divine. His Will becomes the only worthwhile motive of life, His Presence the only reality in this life and forever. But too often when we are well, we lose that intense aspiration. A thousand little things of life assert their importance and we get submerged in them and I have to constantly remind ourselves of the unimportance of the material things and events and draw back our concentration from these things to the essential aspiration. Uptil now all spiritual disciplines laid an exclusive accent on the inner development and left the natural man or the ordinary human consciousness, untouched and untransformed. They imposed on the outward existence a minimum of discipline for they were convinced that the human nature could never be transformed, so they sought liberation in extinction in the Absolute or in some distant Heaven. Our yoga is extremely difficult for it lays an equal accent on the transformation of the human nature. Here the difficulty is great, complicated by two factors: Firstly, we are as if enamoured of our present self or physical makeup, of its perfection and beauty, of its great value, we are unwilling to admit the necessity of any change in are character and nature. Secondly, until the light grows, we have no precise idea of the transformation to be. We are told that one day through transformation we would acquire a divine nature, but on the practical field we equate the divine nature with our ideal of moral and ethical perfection.
True spirituality exceeds by far the moral and ethical ideal and is entirely something different from and vastly superior to the human consciousness and its ideals. So where to begin in order to have a clear understanding of the spiritual demand? When there is a simple and strong aspiration for the Truth, for the Divine, then we have in us the only qualification for admission into the spiritual life. Truly nothing else is required. The presence of the aspiration in a human soul is the presence of the rising Godhead, the Divine Mother aspiring for the manifestation of Truth in a human body in the material universe. This aspiration is also an all seeing and all knowing divine power. Our aspiration will gradually reveal to us the true meaning of our life, show us exactly what we are and what we have to be. In the aspiration we shall discover the presence of the Mother Divine. To be true to our aspiration, to follow its guidance, to work out its demands will gradually lead us into deeper and wider regions of higher consciousness.
The path of yoga is extremely difficult and long. What has been built in us over thousands and thousands of years has to be undone and newly made by the Divine Power within a lifetime or in a few lives, so the pace is alarmingly high and a little mistake, one flies off the highway like a car running at very high speed. There is only one security in yoga and truly there is nothing else which can protect us. It is the sincerity of our aspiration. Our imperfections do not matter. Our limitations and incapacities are of little consequence as long as there is a little flame burning day and night in the secret chamber of our life aspiring for the Divine, for the Truth, the good and the beauty for the most mysterious person who forever calls and draws us to his charm and love, we cannot fail to recognise Him, serve and love Him. We shall be liberated in His infinity and eternity of wonder and delight. We shall discover Him in all forms yet ever self-existent, wonderful and intimate person without any name or form. This realisation will be just the beginning of other great realisations as man will evolve into a greater and greater divine being. Such is the inevitable destiny of the aspiring soul.
There is one little thing - if we wait always for the right moment and the opportunity to do what we want to do we might as well wait for eternity. On the other hand if there is a strong inner urge and we begin to do straight away in the given circumstances, even a little of what we want to do some day, then miraculously what is far comes near and becomes realisable.
The world is entering an era of growing illumination. May we some day become true childs of the Mother Divine, selfless disciples of the supreme Teacher and Lord, humble and dedicated servants full of love and gratitude for the Master of Existence.
N.Guha Roy
In a future evolution, a better body will appear.
When we are young and full of energy we do not think of our body, we utilise it thoughtlessly, in the most careless way, drive it like a racing horse or a rocket forgetting the extreme fragility of the human body. During the last war when I was a pilot, I realised that my body was the weakest part in the plane. The mind and the vital push the body like a slave driver without ever considering its limits and its modest demands. Once we are passed sixty, seventy we begin to realise the extreme fragility of the body. With the growing age we become gradually immobilised. The spirituality has always condemned the body and the tragic life on earth – the body and the earth cannot be transformed. All our dreams and visions of a better world must end in the death of the body. As a matter of fact, the health of the strongest man is precarious, at any moment anything can happen – accidents or diseases can break the body. So is there no hope of a better body? Sri Aurobindo says, yes there is hope. In a future evolution a body will appear which will be free from fatigue, disease and decay with old age, even death at will will be possible, one could prolong the span of life at will. All this will come by following a new psychic spiritual physical discipline. Unless the psychic being is sufficiently developed through evolution, this transformation may not be possible. When we become conscious of the Supreme Spiritual reality, the primordial creative power, supramental Mahashakti through the psychic being, then by a progressive surrender to the Mother Divine there is a possibility of having a partial transformed body. The mind and the vital being must be already much transformed by the Divine Force through the intervention of the psychic being, then only the Divine Force can work on the transformation of the body cells. This is a very long, laborious and difficult discipline with its ups and downs, but Sri Aurobindo says that however difficult it may be, there is no other way of transforming the body.
The Divine help is always there, will always be there for all those who undertake this strenuous difficult journey under the leadership of the supramental Mahashakti, our Mother. This is the work She has undertaken to accomplish in whatever degree possible as Her next step in the evolution of the Gnostic being.
Om Mother Divine, may our surrender be perfect.
Give us faith and trust in Your luminous leadership.
Om Sri Aurobindo, Pranam, pranam, pranam
July/25/04 N. Guha Roy
Desire dead, the soul like a polished mirror, reflects the Sun.
I am bad in arithmetic and suffer from poor memory.
I always forget to count my blessings.
My colleagues seem to earn more then I do.
I forget, I have free boarding and lodging with my mother.
I forget, I have two hands, two legs, two eyes and two ears in good shape.
I forget, my brother has created a job for me out of love.
I forget to look at others, the terrible hardship they have to face.
Long ago, in my childhood, a lady gave me a sound advice,
When you don’t have shoes, look at the poor devil without legs.
I forget to count my blessings even now years after.
Once I saw a miserable leper eating from a fine Chinese bowl,
With a spoon, for he had no fingers left in his hand.
Something greedy in me, envied the owner of the bowl.
I always forget to count my blessings, so poor is my memory.
I curse my luck by looking at my neighbour’s new car,
His new property, forgetting conveniently his broken back.
The Buddha found out two thousand years ago,
The root-cause of all our endless suffering, the enemy.
Desire is an unholy fire, never satisfied, grows fast
And burns our body and soul, gives us no respite even after death.
O Seeker of Truth, nothing material has a durable value.
Aspire for the Eternal, the highest blessings are immaterial, -
Peace, love, beauty and harmony, compassion, God’s infinity,
And above all, the constant Presence of the radiant Mother.
Desire dead, the soul like a polished mirror, reflects the Sun.
******
Niranjan Guha Roy 1995
Soham, soham, soham God is in all,all is in God-All is divine, sustained by the Divine
God is all, All is in God, each and everyone, everything is God.
Whatever may be the form or nature, inert or active, disguised, masked
Hidden or partly revealed, sleeping or awake, now, yesterday, tomorrow,
Near or far, dead or alive, all existence visible or invisible or extinct,
All is the divine, sustained by the Divine, inhabited by the Divine.
If there is a Nothingness, a Void, a Nihil, that too is filled with the Divine.
All exists in God's body, like the incalculable fishes and animals in the ocean.
Each insect, animal, fish, aquatic bird is a mystic symbol of the ocean.
They have no existence without the ocean, but the existence of the ocean
Does not depend on all it contains yet the germ of all life hides in its womb.
The evolution is the gradual awakening and ascent of the sleeping God,
Towards his own supreme heights covered with silent dazzling light.
God in man has become a conscious seeker of his endless perfection,
Keeps the man running without respite, makes his heart burn with desire,
Feeds him with a strong brew of discontent to the edge of precipice.
The Godhead in the immortal soul of man grows stronger every moment,
By numberless births and deaths and ever shifting dramas of human life.
When the inner light shines brightly, flooding his mind, life and body
With its transforming radiance, man emerges out of darkness,
Suffering and agony of death into a luminous ocean of divine felicity.
The mortal man steps into a blissful deathless, timeless Infinite life,
One with all creation, all living beings in a clasp of identity,
United in a boundless wordless undeviating divine rapture.
All the man-made barriers of clan, creed, family, race, colour and religion
Like so many chains preventing the mighty soar of his soul simply fade away.
God calls him from all sides, all eyes and flowers, the sun, the moon and the stars,
Soham, soham, soham, I am this one, that one, everyone, love me ever more.
O my Lord, Sweet Mother thrice welcome, remain with us,
so much as yet is to be done.
Thy gracious Will be done, Victory of Thy blissful Love in all yearning souls.
Om Douce Mère, Sweet Mother, saranam mama
Om Sri Aurobindo, our kindly master, saranam mama.
******
Niranjan Guha Roy 2000
The Spirit- Space, vast limitless domain of eternal peace
Life is changing at each instant like the flowing waters of the Ganges.
Nothing remains, foes, family, friends, husbands, wives and children.
One never knows where one would end up, nothing is sure.
In this wild rush of events, is there a safe corner anywhere?
Men are swept away by hurrying time uncaring,
Like dry leaves in a strong wind helplessly, topsy-turvy.
Where can we find a secure platform under our feet!
Behind this dizzy race of today chasing tomorrow forever,
There is a Spirit-Space, a vast limitless domain of eternal Peace,
The infinite Mother-Presence rapt in blissful trance.
When we take refuge with utmost faith at Her Feet,
The moving and the unmoving, the mobile and the immobile,
Fuse together into Something mysterious, soothing,
Ecstatic, marvellous like the serene face of the Mother
Breaking into a soul-bewitching ravishing Smile.
Rushing, breaking, roaring, advancing in a cavalcade,
Or calm, unmoving, flooding, reposing in a wide lake,
The goddess Ganga is a tiny reflection of the Eternal Mother.
Nothing moves, impossible to catch up when we run after it.
Remain immobile, the world takes delight in a frenzied dance around us.
Mobile or immobile, the Mother remains the most irresistible Mystery.
Niranjan Guha Roy 1987
meditation- prayer - Om Tat Sat
May Your sovereignly benevolent Will be realised by the manifestation of a world of truth, peace and divine harmony
May our surrender become total, perfect without any personal preference.
All is eternally the Divine, one and infinitely multiple. Each one is Thyself. You are at the center of each one and all. Whatever be the change, the Substance is always the same.
Om tat sat
Everything existing on earth, natural or created by men is the earth itself under different forms. Your Presence in each and all, everywhere behind the most obscur beings, the deguises, deformations, the terrifying forces, the dynamic energies in perpetual changes even in the void and the nothingness is the only constant reality. How can You manifest such a beauty, tenderness, power in some fragile earthen vessels so ephemeral! What a wonderful spectacle, stupefying, endless passes at each instant in front of our soul as witness.
O Magician, Om Mahamaya paramarahasyamayi-amrita chaitanyamayi ananté.
All those actors and actresses each one playing their roles on the scene are Yourself innumerable.
There are still moments of forgetfulness and we fall in an abyss of abscurity. There are still a very great quantity of weeds in the consciousness, a huge work remains to be done and this is why I adress to You this prayer:
May I see You more and more with Your own eyes.
May I let You spreak through my mouth, love through my heart.
You have become the absolute adored Master of my consciousness, of my existence
You are my beatific paradise, the ocean of eternal peace beauty, harmony, felicity.
Carry me in Your current atccording to Your Will
Be without pity if I loose the way. Put me back forcefully on the track of grace
Be free with me. I want to belong entirely to You outside, inside at all moments.
You are the supreme benediction in the life of each and all
******
Niranjan Guha Roy 2000
meditation on the Supreme Lord and His play
O Lors Supreme, You do not come or go away. You are eternal, infinite, always trying to fathom Your own depths.
There is no one else but Yourself, You are All.
This world manifestation is Your fanciful play.
O Lord Supreme, Thou art all, each one, everyone now and ever. There is no one apart from Thee here or anywhere.
O happy earth, you are no other than the Lord himself
*******
All is Thy play... an eternal unending Felicity binds us all in Thy embrace.
Amazement upon amazement piled sky high, blissful.
*****
O Secret Self from You I am born, Your body's portion,
In You I disappear like the exalted sprays falling back into the Ocean.
When I contemplate the endless sacred procession of Your fugitive names and faces on the screen of Time,
Then only I vibrate and my life even so insignificant glows and burns in ecstasy like a meteor in explosion.
****
You send down the rays of a new Sun penetrating our bain, every cell of our body.As our surrender grows, You pour Yourself more and more into our heart, mind, body and soul and become the luminous, compassionate sovereign of our life.
*****
When we feel the thrill of immortal bliss in all touches, when we see nothing, no one but the supreme auspicious divine Presence, then and then only we are free.
*****