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"

The Second Law...

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the disorder of all those systems which are isolated of the universe always increases (it is curious: the entropy increases only in those isolated systems from the rest of the Universe. For those not isolated systems, entropy or disorder does not increase*) In fact, this law is so incontestable that, based on it, we say that exist one thing called "arrow of time", that is, the time pass always in the direction in which the entropy (or disorder of the system) increases. In this way, it is not possible for a physical system goes backwards in time, because such a thing would lead to a decrease of entropy (or a decrease in its internal disorder)

For example, if we drop one glass full of water on the floor of our kitchen, we can be sure that it will be broken into a thousand pieces and water will be poured on the floor. We can ensure that the opposite event will not happen in a natural way: the glass will not fill with the fallen water, neither will be rebuilt again nor will jump suddenly from the floor of the kitchen towards our hands. Science says that this situation would violate the second law of thermodynamics because would reduces the disorder of the system.

Now we may consider the "living systems" and its slow but sure evolution towards forms more and more complex, that's to say, towards more organized forms through which consciousness can express herself more effectively. It seems clear that an increase in the complexity of the nervous system is against of an increase in the disorder of the system. And so, we have a problem with the second law of thermodynamics...at least if we do not introduce an inner force that compels the physical system (or living system) to go in a direction of increasing complexity beyond their natural tendency towards chaos, disorder and dispersion (We need only contemplate what happens to the human body over the years)

Science says that this strange occurrence is due to a mysterious "adaptation to the environment" But that assertion offends reason and common sense. Only consciousness, referred to as a force in action and not as a mere effect of the matter, can satisfactorily explain this apparent contradiction...And Sri Aurobindo saw the Ariadna's thread that allows and is beyond the same physical laws.

In another post I will try to explain briefly the theory of dissipative structures of Illya Prigogine.This theory attempts to resolve the contradiction to which I have referred...from the Science, avoiding any allusion to the Divine, but, curiously, pointing to its existence and necessity from the beginning.

(*).: One of the essential features of Supramental consciousness is the disappearance of the consciousness of separation. Supramental consciousness, as Sri Aurobindo and Mother have told us, is a consciousness of Unity in which have disappeared the "viewpoints" and have been replaced by a kind of spherical vision. A Conciousness like this, would have broken the premise of "isolated system from the rest of the Universe" and therefore would not be affected by an increase in entropy (or disorder). Death would be then ancient history.

15-08-2009

I will be brief, in fact, only a few words are necessary.

Sri Aurobindo came upon the Earth to give a boost to the slow march of Evolution. However, many of disciples believed that immortality had already been conquered by Him. And not only in his own body (or in the Mother's body) but in their own bodies too.
Yes, many of them watched the Work of Sri Aurobindo through mental eyes, indeed through a infantile look. Only a few of them knew (or were aware) that immortality was not the beginnig of the path, the first conquest, but the effect of a long and slow path that Sri Aurobindo and Mother had came to open to Humanity.

The slow march of Evolution was accelerated by Sri Aurobindo and Mother, this was their labour like Avatar...And our main contribution to their Work is to try to be aware of the new world into ourselves and through ourselves. This is our better homage to Them...to Mothersriaurobindo (And do not see them as leaders of a new, strange and exotic religion).

On Himself II

"But what strange ideas again! -that I was born with a supramental temperament and that I know nothing of hard realities!- Good God! My whole life has been a struggle with hard realities, from hardships, starvation in England and constant and fierce difficulties to the far greater difficulties continually cropping up here in Pondicherry, external and internal. My life has been a battle from its early years and is still a battle: the fact that I wage it now from a room upstairs and by spiritual means as well as others that are external makes no difference to its character. But, of course, as we have not been shouting about these things, it is natural, I suppose, for others to think that I am living in an august, glamorous, lotus-eating dreamland where no hard facts of life or Nature present themselves. But what an illusion all the same! "

Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, "On Himself" (Volume 26, p.153-4)