The Descent into Night

A mind absolved from life, made calm to know,
A heart divorced from the blindness and the pang,
The seal of tears, the bond of ignorance,
He turned to find that wide world-failure's cause.
Away he looked from Nature's visible face
And sent his gaze into the viewless Vast,
The formidable unknown Infinity,
Asleep behind the endless coil of things,
That carries the universe in its timeless breadths
And the ripples of its being are our lives.
The worlds are built by its unconscious Breath
And Matter and Mind are its figures or its powers,
Our waking thoughts the output of its dreams.
The veil was rent that covers Nature's depths:
He saw the fount of the world's lasting pain
And the mouth of the black pit of Ignorance;
The evil guarded at the roots of life
Raised up its head and looked into his eyes.
On a dim bank where dies subjective Space,
From a stark ridge overlooking all that is,
A tenebrous awakened Nescience,
Her wide blank eyes wondering at Time and Form,
Stared at the inventions of the living Void
And the Abyss whence our beginnings rose.
Behind appeared a grey carved mask of Night
Watching the birth of all created things.
A hidden Puissance conscious of its force,
A vague and lurking Presence everywhere,
A contrary Doom that threatens all things made,
A Death figuring as the dark seed of life,
Seemed to engender and to slay the world.


Savitri, Book II "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds"
Canto VII "The Descent into Night"

Sri Aurobindo

Desert

The first lights seem to have disappeared.
Now, I have the impression of traversing a vast and barren desert.
Only my faith in Her-Him allows me to keep walking.

I shall continue, although the darkness of the night is around me and the stars have disappeared from the sky.

Always at His-Her feet and under Her-His protection.

Rabindranath Tagore

The year was 1907. The freedom movement in India was gathering momentum. Its leader was detained by the police. The poet Rabindranath Tagore paid him a visit and wrote the now famous lines:

"Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee! O friend, my country's friend, O Voice incarnate, free, Of India's soul....The fiery messenger that with the lamp of God Hath come...Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee."

The year was 1928. The leader had now left politics and had gone to Pondicherry where he had plunged himself into the practice of yoga. The poet Tagore once again paid him a visit and declared: "You have the Word and we are waiting to accept it from you. India will speak through your voice to the world, `Hearken to me!'...Years ago I saw Aurobindo in the atmosphere of his earlier heroic youth and I sang to him: `Aurobindo, accept the salutations from Rabindranath.' Today I saw him in a deeper atmosphere of a reticent richness of wisdom and again sang to him in silence: `Aurobindo, accept the salutations from Rabindranath! 'How does one describe or speak about such a personality? Sri Aurobindo has been called a scholar, a literary critic, a philosopher, a revolutionary, a poet, a Yogi and a 'Rishi'. He was all these and much more. To have even a glimpse of the true Sri Aurobindo we have to turn to the Mother: "What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme" Therefore Sri Aurobindo declared, in no uncertain terms that nobody could write his biography: "Neither you nor anyone else knows anything at all of my life; it has not been on the surface for men to see" But he was not altogether averse to this effort and even made corrections when some biographers made the attempt. In the process the veil that hid the divine mystery was lifted a little.

from: http://www.sriaurobindosociety.org.in/sriauro/aurolife.htm

Stones...

Q: Are these forces of any use when they come out from the stones?

A: Certainly, yes! The stone can preserve the force almost indefinitely. There are those stones, which can serve as a link; there are stones, which can serve as a battery. There are stones, which can hold a force for protection. That indeed is remarkable, my child. One can accumulate in a stone (particularly in amethysts) a force for protection, and the force truly protects the one who wears the stone.

It is very interesting. I have experienced it. I knew someone who had a stone of this kind, charged with the power of protection, and it was wonderful when he wore it…There are stones, which can be used to foretell events. Some people know how to read in these stones events, which are going to happen. Stones can carry messages. Naturally, this requires ability on both sides: on one side, a sufficiently strong power of concentration; on the other, a power to see and read directly, without using very precise words either. Consequently, because they can serve as
batteries, it means that they carry within them the source of the force itself; otherwise they wouldn’t be receptive. It is a force of this kind that is at the origin of crystallisations, as in rock crystals, for instance, which form such magnificent patterns, with such a complete harmony, and that comes from one thing alone, this Presence at the centre. Now, one doesn’t see because one has no inner sensibility, but once one has the direct perception of the forces of love behind things, one sees that they are the same everywhere. Even in constructed things: one can come to understand what they say.

Mother’s Agenda 10

20th September 1969

The Lenses

From the observatory I can see the depths of the Cosmos.

I see how the matter obeys (or seems to obey) the laws of physics. But I see in the night through two lenses: the lens of the telescope and the lens of my own mind. I observe the Cosmos from the division, from the part. I realize that the laws made by mind only serve to explain a small portion of the spectrum of existence.

And I wonder how will be the perception of a Supramental Being...

I wonder how will be the rhythm of a Being who has subdued the laws because he himself is the law.

I realize how wrong we are when we think immortality inside the rhythms of time.

Supramental Being is inmortal. He is immortal because he is, and he is because he is beyond time.

Time and its rhythms is only a mental concept.

"I used Savitri as a means of ascension..."

Q: We have been wondering why you should have to write and rewrite your poetry (for instance, "Savitri" ten or twelve times) when you have all the inspiration at your command and do not have to receive it with the difficulty that faces budding Yogis like us.

A: That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level. Moreover I was particular -- if part seemed to me to come from any lower levels I was not satisfied to leave it because it was good poetry. All had to be as far as possible of the same mint. In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own Yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative. I did not rewrite Rose of God or the sonnets except for two or three verbal alterations made at the moment.

From Volume 26, p.239. Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, "On Himself"