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Volume II Chapter 18: Lydia is Invited to Brighton

Chapter 18: Lydia is Invited to Brighton

 
Summary: After the officers leave Meryton, Kitty and Lydia are quite upset and set Jane and Elizabeth to task for not caring as much themselves. They push for Mr. Bennet to take them to Brighton, but as soon as Mrs. Forster invites Lydia to stay with her family in Brighton, the entire matter is forgotten as she was pushing the hardest. Elizabeth attempts to tell her father how Lydia is not mature enough to go alone, but he thinks it will be good for her to see how she fits in at Brighton. When Wickham visits on the final day of their time in Meryton, Elizabeth makes a point of pointing out her improved feelings toward Darcy so as not to let him believe they are leaving on good terms. Lydia leaves with the officers back to Meryton to travel with Mrs. Forster.
 
1
The first week of their return was soon gone. The second began. It was the last of the regiment's stay in Meryton, and all the young ladies in the neighbourhood were drooping apace. The dejection was almost universal. The elder Miss Bennets alone were still able to eat, drink, and sleep, and pursue the usual course of their employments. Very frequently were they reproached for this insensibility by Kitty and Lydia, whose own misery was extreme, and who could not comprehend such hard-heartedness in any of the family.
  1. Members of a community enjoying the benefits of the discipline of it long for the right to break the rules.
  2. Hard-heartedness of any family.
  3. Most of the inhabitants there are of lower middle class where girls are after grooms of £200 annual income. Obviously, the locality does not have enough such men. The officers are far better than a brewer or butcher husband. No wonder the young ladies are drooping. As Mr. Bennet does not take his girls to London their bridal openings are next to nil
  4. “The first week of their return was gone”.
    One’s capacity for steady organized behaviour is seen after a work is over.
    An army’s inherent power is witnessed while it retreats defeated.
    Clarity in defeat is a measure of idealism.
    Available steadiness, values, ideals in adversity show the real inner Man.
    Love of the couples is seen in their middle or old age.
    Consecration that lingers when one is most tired is of the real consciousness.
    A devotee of Shiva prayed that his devotion must remain even if he went mad.
    He took a fruit that made him mad. He still remembered Shiva. He, in his madness, composed one hundred Sanskrit verses on Uma, Shiva’s consort. As per instructions, his disciples observed his devotion in his insane period. He took an antidote to that poisonous fruit and regained sanity. To this day “Uma Sahasranama” is famous.
    The Bible says Judge another at his best.
    To judge oneself at his worst is realistic.
    • He who consecrates an issue every time it presents to his memory will  solve it.
    • Consecrating an opportunity like that, it will yield fruits.
    • Solving all his problems only by consecration, vast wealth will move towards him.

    These are ways by which the many-sidedness of Man’s personality is known.
    Consecration only initiates one’s energy into yoga.
    Its scope extends horizontally to the ends of the universe, vertically to the Transcendent before yoga reaches its goal.
    To find every aspect of yoga in one’s own life is ‘All life is Yoga.’
    To find all of them in Pride and Prejudice is our endeavour.
    The capacity of Lydia and Wickham to act as ever before after their wedding speaks as much of the Bennet family as Elizabeth in Pemberley.
    To see one as the counterpart of the other, to praise neither nor blame either is wisdom.
    It is one thing to realize that Lydia is as important to the story as Elizabeth.
    It is another thing, a far more valuable response from Sri Aravindam, to know that Lydia is as wonderful as Elizabeth.
  5. “All the young ladies in the neighbourhood were drooping”.
    An opportunity is as much a danger.
    Neither of them arrives singly.
    Man accepts the right part of it; the wrong part imposes itself on him.
    To accept the right part knowing only to it can he relate now and also knowing the other is not wrong but right in the long run, is the best way of accepting a mixed event.
    All events are thus mixed.
    Man accepts one, the other imposes on him which he knows as a problem.
    Anything is an opportunity in its own time and in its own context.
    Things are neither right nor wrong but either in their context or not.
    An event is an event in Life.
    It moves along the lines of life to ripen and mature to that of divine life.
    Only our ego does not find its course acceptable.
    One who knows the lines of divine life, accepting events of life as they are will find by his right human choice events move as they ought to move.
    The ego asserts, deflects its course.
    The strained course apparently obliging the ego insistently moves towards the divine goal.
    Some realize the force of the course and keep quiet.
    Others choose to change their courses to the right ones.
    These are the ones who are frustrated and resent.
    Still others, even after the results arrive, try to deflect it again.
    In every one of them we can see the invariable progress made at every moment.
    Man thinks, society thinks and acts, life thinks, acts and determines, Spirit witnesses quietly all through.
    Man shifting to the Psychic releases the Supramental force which arrests all movements, turns them upwards, gives a miraculous result and withdraws.
    It cannot, in our conditions, act for more than a minute.
  6. “They were abused for their insensitivity by Kitty and Lydia”.
    Social approval is psychological elation.
    Society is there around at home.
    Non-appreciation is a criticism.
    Self-criticism is compunction.
    Absence of compunction generates criticism from outside.
    Psychological self-confidence ensures social success.
    Spiritual self-awareness makes human life a trifle.
    To appreciate Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Love is a step towards Spiritual awareness.
    To appreciate their opposite is spiritual progress.
    We take Mother not only as infallible but one who expresses the deepest Marvel of creation in her actions and words.
    To take our boss, elders, spouses, children, outsiders, rivals, enemies as we take Mother is a total fulfillment of Spirit in life.
    Bennet gave his silent approval to his wife’s actions.
    Bingley gave active consent to the orders of Darcy.
    Caroline could see no flaw in Darcy.
    Elizabeth saw truth and goodness in the looks of Wickham.
    Mrs. Gardiner saw a stateliness in Darcy’s mouth.
    To review the consequences of each of these views is a measure of understanding life.
    Lydia was not abused by anyone at home after the elopement.
    She really expected to be admired for her daring and left to herself would expand endlessly her fifteen day experiences, all the time expecting every listener to praise her sky high.
    What is excitement to one is insensitivity to the other.
    What is the process by which one becomes the other?
    The fact is one is in the other; the excitement is there in the elder ones, the insensitivity in the younger ones.
    To see the excitement as insensitivity is wisdom.

    One who is insensitive to the low is excited about the high.
    He who is not excited about the high will appreciate the excitement about the dissipation of the others as a valid sensation in them.
    It is equality or at least patient understanding of wide life.
    One’s equality quells the excitement of the younger ones.
    Mr. Bennet’s non-interference is patience compelled by circumstances.
    Caroline’s congratulations to Elizabeth are mature appreciation of the social realities of life whose benefits she had been enjoying so far.
    The only two options for her are to compromise or lose visits to Pemberley.
    She is cultured enough to compel herself to compromise.
    Lesser intelligences would quarrel and suffer social loss.
    Her fawning on Darcy and compromise with Elizabeth are the same.
    The patience of a husband of a fully liberated modern woman is more than human patience, almost spiritual equality.
    He is a fit candidate to take up yoga on that one qualification when it is not an external appearance but a real inner poise.
    More than women, children growing up and taking freedom into their own hands has made the parents realize the hardest blows of life that can fall on their emotional sensitivities.
    The idea of a father that it is his child and he is responsible for the boy’s welfare gets all the blows and pressure.
    It is a measure to make the parent shed the blood ties, the hardest for Man.
    As the society grants no superiority to birth, sense of superiority moves to capacity and values.
    Values that concede superiority are no values.
    Values are vehicles of equality.
    To conceive that a child born and reared into survival has its own right to education and aims of life, will make any parent now in any culture mad. Society is moving towards that goal.
    It is a collective yoga of a thin density.
  7. “Kitty and Lydia could not comprehend the hard-heartedness of any of the family”. (p. 203)
    The separation effected by the ego has reacted to details so that one does not know the other.
    Our miseries are unseen and unfelt by others, and vice versa.
    Now we are able to see the other bodies, not their feelings or thoughts.
    In a non-ego status all bodies, all emotions, all thoughts are one.
    Each will know others thoughts and feelings and feel identified with other bodies.
    Hatha yoga purified the body as well as the subtle body beyond which no scientific possession of knowledge can go and discovered the Annamaya Purusha who led to the central being and moksha.
    It is a science which has power to suspend the heart for days on end.
    Scientific mastery cannot go beyond that stage.
    It has a rare treasure of knowledge of health which no microscope can reveal.
    The world does not have a greater treasure for sound health.
    It is a system of perfected balance of physical energies.
    A qualified doctor can appreciate that knowledge if he learns Hatha yoga.
    In that case he may know both but not how to use the one for the other.
    Specialization has gone so far that an ENT specialist is unable to appreciate how general health can be used to cure his patients.
    Memory has all the information but has no knowledge.
    Knowledge is in the coordinating intelligence.
    The doctor who learns Hatha yoga, if endowed with coordinating intelligence, can devise yogic cures for all the diseases.
    Memory is a part that stored observed information.
    Ego, the coordinating intelligence, comes out with what to do, how to use one faculty to serve the other.
    Pranayama can do the same thing with greater ease, but with less access to physical energies.
    Pranayama has access to nervous energies, not physical energies.
    One has to act on the body through the other.
6
"Good Heaven! What is to become of us? What are we to do?" Would they often exclaim in the bitterness of woe. "How can you be smiling so, Lizzy?"
  1. “Good heavens, what is to become of us”
    Society compels everyone to conform to itself.
    Otherwise Man does not have any guidance.
    Look at the departure of the militia from Kitty’s point of view.
    It is all her existence.
    She forgets she could not be out, the militia is only a fortuitous occasion.
    To consider an occasion which arose like that as one’s right is our attitude.
    Charlotte married like that.
    To avail of an opportunity is one’s birthright.
    To Elizabeth the militia is disagreeable after Wickham was exposed, not before that.
    One who lives by the society can avail of any opportunity within socially permissible limits.
    Bingley is a rare opportunity within social limits.
    Darcy is a non-social, rare, psychological opportunity to Elizabeth.
    A higher opportunity for the family comes along with a lower opportunity.
    It is inevitable as one balances the other.
    A higher attitude can avail of a lower opportunity as a higher opportunity.
    Dr. Thorne consistently takes the highest attitude at all times. It gives him the noblest response from life.
    We know the service Wickham does. We must know him as a Marvel.
    Darcy’s attitude towards Elizabeth released the potential in her.
    She had not done it herself. There was no such external help to Wickham.
    The revolutionary force, in the story, has become the evolutionary fervour by one Man’s effort towards one human target.
    In the social transition of 1900 in USA, today in India we see many like Wickham turning over a new leaf.
    An evolutionary consciousness enters the individuals of the population and acts from inside in the majority.
    Literature depicts in all periods.
    Mahabharatha fights evil, Hamlet lets Mind emerge.
  2. “…exclaim in the bitterness of woe. How can you be smiling, Lizzy?” – Lydia.
    What is bitterness to one is not a slight disturbance to another.
    The intensity of woe depends upon the person.
    The infinity is in the woe or bliss.
    It is ego that converts the bliss into woe.
    Bitterness and woe are ego’s experience of darkness.
    Darkness is light for another.
    Several egos treat any experience variously.
    The bitterness of ego is intense delight to the Divine in the involution.
    The Divine as the human being becomes the ego to experience the woe.
    The ego, by a human choice, can come out of the woe.
    By a further choice the ego becoming the Psychic can change woe into delight.
    The human choice is a choice of several successive moments.
    The child that enters the educational system has the opportunity of becoming a world famous scholar.
    It has a million choices along the way.
    Its choices split into two. One is in the subject. There are thousands. The other is personal. Whether it learns from the teacher, the book or thinking or observation or silence there are thousands of choices. They are in succession.
    Successions are in Time.
    Human choice is exercised outside from among many options; from inside it is exercised in its methods and in choosing the plane. Such choices are in any given moment infinite.
    They relate to ego, Time, Mind, finite, surface, depth, subliminal, etc.
    Spiritual awakening decides one’s choice.
    To know the million surface options and not to respond to them in favour of the very best choice for him at that moment, is the human choice we consider.
    Human choice decides human progress.
3
Their affectionate mother shared all their grief; she remembered what she had herself endured on a similar occasion, five-and-twenty years ago.
  1. Mrs. Bennet’s sympathy with the refractory daughters, and her own youthful experience open a gate in the subtle plane for the elopement.
  2. Mrs. Bennet shamelessly speaks about her own experience with the officers. Obviously Mr. Bennet was a big fish when she caught him
  3. “Their affectionate mother shared all their grief”
    Parents are biological primarily, secondarily social.
    Society changes by the time the child grows up.
    Parents, especially the mother, not only do not change, but become more conservative by the time the children grow up.
    In times of transition the gap between the child and the parent is greater still.
    The child himself does not catch up with the changing society.
    Most children bring up the rear of the advancing society.
    At the end that breaks out of the crust of society, that is at the farthest height of social change we find none, not even a few.
    At that end there is the energy of turbulence impossible to admit any semblance of organization.
    Without organization there is no foothold.
    Society that changes, changes on all the hundred fronts.
    The best of the new generation accept a few changes, usually one, while to be in the vanguard one cannot miss even on one front.
    Social changes come into vogue, ironically, when they are absorbed and assimilated into the society.
    By that time the freshness of the change is lost.
    Man desires the benefits of change within the boundaries of the society.
    The benefits lie outside its boundaries.
    Small social changes do not make themselves felt always.
    Only radical changes come to stay.
    Old is gold is valid even today in many areas.
    Sri Aurobindo offers us what will come after a thousand generations.
    He gives us a method by which it can be accomplished.
    He gives that method in every small detail.
    It is a source of delight of the soul the world has not known.
    Every devotee receives the material benefit at the lowest end.
    Sadhaks are shown the highest end all the time.
    It remains to us the hour before the Gods awake.
4
"I am sure," said she, "I cried for two days together when Colonel Millar's regiment went away. I thought I should have broke my heart."
  1. “I cried for two days when Col. Miller’s regiment went away”.
    Age outgrows the experiences of early years.
    When it does not, old experiences organize themselves powerfully in acceptable ways today.
    Such experiences emerging out of children are irresistible.
    Growing society creates a recoil in equal measure.
    This is natural to the society.
    The principle of the lower willingly submitting to the higher neutralizes this natural possibility initiating transformation of the lower.
    Mrs. Bennet, instead of outgrowing propensities of youth, wants to relive them with the privilege of age like the Amish community.
    This too serves an evolutionary need.
    Social organization avoids that which is unhelpful.
    It learns to protect itself from what it avoids.
    Sometimes circumstances bring some complementary aspects helpfully.
    Occasionally society appreciates the indispensable use of what is avoided.
    Never the role of Marvel reveals itself from the avoided part of society.
    Computers were developed for military purposes originally.
    English that was created as an instrument of domination by one such process has turned into an instrument of Freedom.
    Man exists subconsciously, tries to grow consciously, but his existence is in the inconscient.
    His conscious, subconscious urges create growth in his inconscience in the opposite direction in his children.
    The evolution of being in one generation reflects in the evolution in Non-Being in another direction.
    It comes in the next generation or a few generations after, but it does come.
    Mrs. Bennet has no shame about her activities.
    Her energy is great as shame itself is not born.
    Shame consumes a great amount of energy.
    She has no idea that shame is part of one’s modesty.
5
"I am sure I shall break mine," said Lydia.
 
6
"If one could but go to Brighton!" Observed Mrs. Bennet.
  1. Mrs. Bennet pleads for sea-bathing.
  2. She does get it in the shape of the express message.
7
"Oh, yes! -- if one could but go to Brighton! But papa is so disagreeable."
 
8
"A little sea-bathing would set me up for ever."
 
9
"And my aunt Philips is sure it would do me a great deal of good," added Kitty.
  1. Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Philips are like Kitty and Lydia.
  2. There are adults who can only be disciplined by the society, not by their own restraint.
10
Such were the kind of lamentations resounding perpetually through Longbourn House. Elizabeth tried to be diverted by them; but all sense of pleasure was lost in shame. She felt anew the justice of Mr. Darcy's objections; and never had she before been so much disposed to pardon his interference in the views of his friend.
  1. Sense of pleasure was lost in the shame.
  2. Culture makes shame pleasure by inner self-restraint.
  3. Elizabeth had not noticed this behaviour till Darcy pointed it out.
  4. Or, Lydia’s FORCE takes wings with Wickham activating inside.
  5. Elizabeth now feels the justification of Darcy’s accusations. Note she has not felt so earlier. She was in it, of it, a part of it so far
  6. “Elizabeth tried to be diverted by them, but all the sense of pleasure was lost in the sense of shame.”
    To see crime as ignorance is ultimate wisdom.
    To see disgusting behaviour as unbridled use of unlimited energy is to be indulgent to vulgarity.
    To witness in her mother unpardonable behaviour in Lydia it is impossible not to be ashamed.
    Society does not permit freedom to exhibit substandard behaviour.
    One who is in debt, if not thrown out of society, loses the level of respectability he has been enjoying.
    Life too is exacting in this regard.
    The moment one’s human choice is for a higher value, the members of the higher echelon at once greet him with appreciative smiles.
    Existence is exactly like that.
    One who writes a poem of higher devotion sees invisible life smiling on him uplifting his personal emotions.
    He meets in his travel one who alone can fully reward his higher poetic emotions.
    Society, life, existence all have invisible senses and act at once.
    Subtle cultures have defined their languages’ omens.
    Omens are the most prominent events which all can recognize.
    One in whose consciousness royal emotions are born invites a cobra to spread his hood over his sleeping head.
    Shakespeare said the stars themselves recognize the passing away of great souls that ruled the world.
    Someone in Trichy sees in the atmosphere that Sri Aurobindo was heading towards Tamilnadu months before he arrived.
    Great souls await in the celestial worlds for suitable human wombs in which they could descend.
    Krishna’s birth smiled all over Brindavan for years.
    Mother heard the voices that rose for help from all over the world.
  7. “Elizabeth felt anew the justice of Darcy’s objection.”
    The Mind understands the accusation against it.
    The vital is angry at an accusation and finds the accuser accused.
    The physical understands only the touch.
    What touches it is its own.
    The spirit receives an accusation as a relationship to be absorbed.
    Mind, vital, body act through opinion, attitude and motive.
    One can form an opinion, but cannot become free of it.
    An opinion dissolved releases enormous energy. It is of an open Mind.
    Mind that constructs an opinion has the power to emerge out of it.
    Mind cherishing what it constructs, loses its freedom to change or overcome the opinion.
    True, Elizabeth has the native faculty of Mind alive to recognize the truth of Darcy’s accusation.
    Her interest in Darcy enables her to see his justice.
    Internet has put into the hand of humankind enormous power, though it has not yet scratched the total power.
    Man can use this power only when he comes out of opinion.
    The anonymity of the Internet renders seniority valueless.
    To that extent ego is blighted.
    The ego of the opinion contributed is there in a subtle form.
    It is formidable.
    Many things on the net are free, thus removing the ego of possession.
    One who consciously sheds an opinion or dismantles it can feel the vast power in his Mind.
    Opinion is the Mental unit for constitutional ignorance.
    Jnana yoga taps only the energy of thought silenced to achieve moksha.
    Opinion is one of the five Mental attributes to be shed.
    Of them – opinion, idea, habit, construction, preference – preference has the vital strength, habit the strength of substance, idea the strength of formation from above.
  8. “Never before she had been so much disposed to pardon his interference in the view of his friend.”
    Capacity to pardon one who has offended is evolutionary progress, a divine attitude.
    The value of a thing is appreciated in its absence.
    Darcy’s value is appreciated now as all hopes of his proposal are lost.
    Her total giving up of Darcy made him come back.
    Wisdom is to see the higher justice in injustice.
    In this sense she appreciates Darcy’s injustice to Jane.
    That which so appreciates is the Psychic.
    Elizabeth had never felt ashamed of her mother and sisters as she felt now.
    Her mother’s urges of which she was ashamed now offered her a great service.
    Bingley’s submission that was despicable had this positive service to Elizabeth.
    It might be of service. Still it did not picture Bingley in the best of lights.
    Divine sight sees in every despicable act a service to the cause of the Divine.
    Taking such service better than positive service brings in grades and thus misses total vision.
    Grades belong to partial vision.
    Total vision admits of equality, not grades.
    In a machine all parts are of equal importance when the highest possible efficiency is aimed at.
    One small part missing or defective can prevent that perfect efficiency.
    That explains absence of waste in Nature.
    In a great music performance we see every particle of sound is of the greatest significance.
    In a great work of art not only every line and drop of paint assume significance but the frame and the wall on which it is hung.
    Integration raises perfection to perfect perfection.
    Creation has always been a perfect work of art.
    It is our egoistic vision from the plane of Nature that sees evil or imperfection.
    The practicing yogi faces the obstacles at a great many levels.
    Mother said She was able to accept everyone except those who loved cruelty.
    In trying to accept Mother, the tradition resists which can be overcome by idealism.
    Idealism becomes real by a passionate devotion to it.
    Idealism reverses the revolting sensitivities into adoring sensitivities.
    It happened to Mahatma Gandhiji. He stayed with the Harijans.
    Often, rather invariably, it arises out of a fad.
    It has the capacity to disillusion itself at the end as it is of consciousness and not substance.
    The maximum the world knows is the overmental transformation, not supramental transformation.
    Mother gives the devotee one lightning flash of the supramental transformation where organized falsehood upholds Truth.
    The worst that has happened on earth is Truth submitting itself to evil and delighting in it. The devotee can experience that evil denying itself and singing the praise of Truth.
    Such an experience can restore to the vital Money power given full freedom to betray.
    It makes the low sex indulgence abdicate in favour of spiritual Truth.
    The first major obstacle is mental sensitivity.
    SHE suppresses it, bypasses it, overpasses it or reveals fully.
    Mother howled when Her physical sensitivities were cruelly exposed.
    Vital sensitivities reveal in Money, power, sex.
    Whatever one gives up, Mother protects the devotee from being hurt by discovering a law, offering an intervention.
    It is here ‘Let Thy Will be done, Not my will’ arises in stark nakedness.
    ‘Not my will’ changes grace into Supergrace.
    Thy Will acts when one moves from Shakti, Viryam, deiva Prakriti to Shraddha – Faith.
    He who moves there creates equality in the consciousness.
    Acting in Faith in the plane of equality transforms Mind into Supermind.
11
But the gloom of Lydia's prospect was shortly cleared away; for she received an invitation from Mrs. Forster, the wife of the Colonel of the regiment, to accompany her to Brighton. This invaluable friend was a very young woman, and very lately married. A resemblance in good humour and good spirits had recommended her and Lydia to each other, and out of their three months' acquaintance they had been intimate two.
  1. The lamentations are real, forceful enough to evoke Life Response.
  2. Invitation from Mrs. Foster arrives.
  3. “Lydia received an invitation to Brighton”.
    The gloom at home energises negatively by bringing this invitation.
    Bingley arrives when Lydia goes away married.
    The success of the gloom at home removed brings a higher atmosphere.
    It is difficult for us to concede that our cheerfulness or gloom decides the outer event – Lydia’s elopement or Bingley’s arrival.
    Trace the preceding events in succession – wedding, Darcy finding Lydia, Elizabeth’s disclosure to Darcy, Caroline’s provocation, Darcy’s civil reception, Elizabeth’s decision about Pemberley, Darcy’s letter, her abuse, Colonel’s news of Bingley, etc.
    Review the whole story stationing yourself at each of these points, you will see more and more revealing.
    Each review of events reveals one more shade of the process of transformation.
    [Devotees taking up this exercise or at least raising questions that help complete the review will be of immense help.]
    Not only this review, but each such decision – to be the mistress of Pemberley – splits into number of simpler parts, each, again, reveals a little more. It extends till the Marvel is seen as a glimpse. It goes up to full Marvel.
    As one thus progresses in his greater appreciation of the story, the reader sees these visions or scenes as visions.
    Writers who have this vision write stories that deeply touch the vital of the reader.
    Sri Aurobindo speaks of ‘that wonderful Mind’ of Shakespeare.
    The poet creates in his vision.
    God creates in his spiritual vision.
    Man thus visualizing his own past life has the knowledge of his past lives.
    Here the distinction between the past and future shades off.
    One can see his future or determine his future or even the future of the world.
    Mother saw how the world will be a thousand years hence in Her meditation when Sri Aurobindo will have been fully accepted.
  4. “This invaluable friend is a young woman lately married” – Mrs. Colonel Forster.
    One who enters into security is no source of security to another.
    One can trust another in a crime if he too has a part in it.
    Crime is prevented by the danger of punishment.
    Friendship in entertainment is lasting.
    Joint enjoyment of any pleasure binds friends tightly together.
    The more questionable the pleasure, the greater is the friendship.
    People are not good or bad, they are so by circumstances.
    Good humour for Mrs. Bennet is wild pleasure.
    Life in the militia calls for discipline.
    Discipline while on duty demands greater relaxation while off duty.
    This invaluable friend is the lately married wife of Colonel Forster.
    Her need to let off stream, being a colonel’s wife, eminently suits Lydia.
    The army barracks are organized places of relaxation that is dissipation.
    Lydia in her company is vulnerable as she is married and thus safe.
    A secure person is tempted to enjoy at the expense of an insecure person.
    Mrs. Bennet can spread her silly wings only under the protection of her husband.
    Wickham can borrow safely as Darcy will pay off his debts.
    An apparent safety is often a real source of danger.
    Human choice gains infinite significance as at every moment the choice can have infinitely variable results.
    The infinitely variable oneness is the consciousness of the Absolute.
    Lydia’s one aim is not marriage, but a Man.
    It opens up a non-social dimension of evolution outside the society.
    Wickham’s dissipation is an aspiration centred in himself outside the society.
    To unite them to remain within society is the true reflection of the revolution across the channel.
    The French Revolution destroyed the present society to create another society.
  5. “Out of the three months acquaintance, they had been intimate two”.
    Intimacy is more due to temperament than duration.
    Common purpose springs intimacy.
    The depths at which the personality is open ministers to intimacy.
    Intimacy is out of the milk of human goodness.
    Power of consciousness, Joy of Ananda unite to create intimacy.
    Intimacy issues out of similarities or complementarity.
    Good humour is similarity of temperament.
    People’s relationship is functional, not ideal or moral.
    Three months is a long enough time for any intimacy to form.
    Jane and Bingley took to each other in less than a month.
    Darcy was wounded and smitten by Elizabeth without the service of any time.
    Energy of youth, better still urges of youthful initiative forge intimacy readily.
    Intimacy emerges in intense enjoyment.
    Enjoyment here led to elopement. From Lydia’s point of view the energy of enjoyment gave her Wickham.
    Socially elopement is ruinous of the family of which Lydia is oblivious.
    The excessive energy of enjoyment was available for Darcy to convert it into positive social results.
    Darcy did so by the good will of wealth and status of one who is in love.
    Man looks at any act from one focus.
    An act explains itself from the individual’s surface views, subconscious urges, family’s social power, community’s interest, aim of life, etc.
    On the surface these may vary or conflict.
    Below there is no variation where the surface serves the subconscious.
    Elizabeth’s desire to meet Jane and the subconscious response to Darcy converted a few hours visit into four days stay.
    Charlotte’s desire to relieve Elizabeth of Collins and her own basic need born out of the urge of an old maid happily meet and produce a lasting happy result.
12
The rapture of Lydia on this occasion, her adoration of Mrs. Forster, the delight of Mrs. Bennet, and the mortification of Kitty, are scarcely to be described. Wholly inattentive to her sister's feelings, Lydia flew about the house in restless ecstacy, calling for every one's congratulations, and laughing and talking with more violence than ever; whilst the luckless Kitty continued in the parlour repining at her fate in terms as unreasonable as her accent was peevish.
  1. Insensibility goes with callous selfishness.
  2. Lydia never feels sorry for Kitty.
  3. An act appears on the scene as energy earlier while still in the subtle plane.
  4. Read the last para in the page with the elopement in mind.
  5. ‘Talking with violence’. Achievement or its anticipation does it.
  6. Lydia does not care for Kitty. She is obliviously selfish, but Kitty toes her line. Hence Kitty is more vulnerable than Lydia
  7. “The rapture of Lydia on this occasion, her adoration of Mrs. Forster, the delight of Mrs. Bennet and the mortification of Kitty are scarcely to be described”.
    Rapture, adoration, delight supplied the energy for the elopement.
    Mortification of Kitty gave the antisocial colouring.
    It ended in marriage as the positive aspect was in excess.
    Kitty being in the secret of Lydia is the link that made this conversion possible.
    Energy wise the elopement is eminently understandable.
    The vast illimitable energies released here by the mother, daughter, Mrs. Forster essentially made two other marriages possible.
    The fact that the last born successfully aspired for marriage explains the easy consummation of the other two weddings.
    Lydia’s elopement to be converted into wedding is a negative becoming positive, which occasions release of much energy.
    To make Wickham accept to marriage is equally energy consuming.
    Such energies came from Elizabeth moving to Mind, Darcy’s status, Darcy’s transformation.
    The fact Wickham came back to the army indicates that Mrs. Forster had no endorsement of Lydia’s plans.
    Colonel Forster’s search for Lydia, his visit to Longbourn are positive contributions that ended in finding her, marrying, and his joining the army.
    Lydia released the maximum energy as she was in rapture.
    Mrs. Bennet was asking for sea bathing. Its expectation is the physical pleasure. Her delight is the energy of that physical pleasure.
    Lydia was in gloom before the invitation arrived.
    Gloom converts into rapture thus increasing the supply of energy.
    Elizabeth was overwhelmed by what was happening around her and felt totally helpless indicating the flood that was released.
    Her pleading with the father was mental against the forces of the vital and physical.
  8. “Wholly inattentive to her sister’s feeling, Lydia flew about the house”.
    Idealists never can take into account others’ feelings.
    Lydia, in pursuit of pure pleasure, uninhibited from any side, is an idealist.
    Her own mother had all the makings of such an ‘idealism’.
    No one could have sparked off this great energy if Lydia had not done it.
    An accomplishment has two sides, actually many sides.
    Human initiative releases one side, making it lopsided.
    Life is more comprehensive than society.
    Society is not so severely unidimensional as the Individual.
    Lydia released the energies of non-social dimensions.
    Hence the immense quantity of it.
    Had it been a marriage where Wickham proposed, so much of energies would not have been available.
    The elopement is partially on her initiative.
    He is blatantly false.
    A false Man consenting to elopement is a simple negative act.
    His consenting to marriage is a conversion to the positive social side.
    Converting non-social forces into social energies, vast energies are available.
    They are energies required for social evolution that avoids social revolution.
    We can see this character in each small act directly connected with it.
    The most important of which is Elizabeth’s speaking to Darcy.
    Her speaking is an exercise of human choice.
    His coming at that moment is life’s sanction.
    His regret at the cancellation of her visit to Pemberley was an unseemly exhibition of coarse selfishness which was neutralized by his hunt, humiliation and payment.
    Mrs. Gardiner’s etiquette in regard to that brings her on a par with him, does not elevate him to her level, indicating her desire in that direction.
  9. “Lydia was laughing with violence. Kitty was repining as her accent was peevish.”(P. 204)
    Violent laughter is for the boisterous.
    Her disregard for Kitty arises out of the intensity of her ambition.
    The choice of friends appears as a freak.
    Voice is vital. Affinity or attraction for the voice is the best qualification to be a friend.
    There are subtle bodily movements no one notices, but everyone responds to.
    There are perceptible bodily smells that exercise powerful influences.
    Psychology being a deeper centre of being than voice, smell, movement, or psychological attitudes controls all this.
    When these shifts in attitude are non-egoistic, they are invincible.
    Laughter is the sound of energy one’s culture is unable to control.
    A laughter under control is a vital power that controls others.
    Laughter can be coarse, not violent.
    Violence in laughter is the energy from the bodily centres.
    Body is tickled into action by physical sensations.
    The invitation never entered her as a thought.
    It entered her as a vital sensation.
    The physical being more receptive, the bodily centre was activated.
    Hence she flew across the house.
    The Physical does not see, it feels the touch.
    Kitty not being in physical contact with her, ignores her.
    The physical alone can demand congratulations.
    She scarcely listens to anyone as the voice does not touch the body.
    Kitty is described here as luckless.
    Luck is to be in the same wavelength of Mrs. Forster and Wickham.
    Kitty certainly is not of that wavelength, though she is led by Lydia.
    Lydia is unmindful of her sisters as she is physical.
    The physical knows what touches it.
13
"I cannot see why Mrs. Forster should not ask me as well as Lydia," said she, "though I am not her particular friend. I have just as much right to be asked as she has, and more too, for I am two years older."
  1. Kitty’s disappointment then qualified herself to enter the superior society of Bingley and Darcy next year.
  2. She cries to be included, does not say “Why am I not invited instead of Lydia?” Inherently, her mind is more than fair. That is why she escaped the invitation.
  3. Kitty asks why she too was not invited. She does not say why she was not invited instead of Lydia. She is less selfish than Lydia
  4. Elizabeth is reasonable, Jane resigns herself to events.
  5. Each advises Kitty from her own temperament.
  6. “I cannot see why Mrs. Forster does not ask me also”.
    These words show absence of selfish jealousy in her.
    Generally growing up in plentiful abundance prevents jealousy to form.
    She does not ask why she was not asked instead of Lydia.
    Absence of competition from Elizabeth with Jane is another such indication.
    Mind does not so much compete as the vital.
    The physical only wants to join.
    Kitty even claims seniority by two years.
    It was a period when any girl got married regardless of her elder’s position.
    Still we see Kitty recognizing her seniority.
    Collins too in his proposal honours seniority.
    Seniority is biological.
    Narasimha Rao who was not an M.P. was chosen leader because of his seniority.
    Nehru became the Prime Minister disregarding several seniors.
    Age giving way to merit is a measure of civilization.
    It is true in matters of leadership age is overlooked in exceptional cases.
    Still in all others seniority is honoured.
    Merit, qualification, expertise, education, independence override age which is biological.
    March of civilization is the individual coming into his own.
    Still age rules as much as it can.
    It is significant that all those who followed Gandhiji and Sri Aurobindo were younger to them.
    Forms persist in spite of the outstanding value of the content.
    Persistence of form is the insistence of the substance.
    We see Latin terms predominant in the medical field as a clear superstition.
    Doctors recommending a light meal prefer bread instead of idli, unable to wean themselves from the superstition of 150 years.
    Mrs. Bennet speaks against new acquaintances.
14
In vain did Elizabeth attempt to make her reasonable, and Jane to make her resigned. As for Elizabeth herself, this invitation was so far from exciting in her the same feelings as in her mother and Lydia, that she considered it as the death-warrant of all possibility of common sense for the latter; and detestable as such a step must make her, were it known, she could not help secretly advising her father not to let her go. She represented to him all the improprieties of Lydia's general behaviour, the little advantage she could derive from the friendship of such a woman as Mrs. Forster, and the probability of her being yet more imprudent with such a companion at Brighton, where the temptations must be greater than at home. He heard her attentively, and then said --
  1. The feeling that the invitation is death warrant is not enough in her to speak a warning of Wickham.
  2. Mr. Bennet does not want to cross his wife till the tragedy precipitates.
  3. He has allowed her to spend £2000 a year not only on the seven of them but even when they were alone. He would not allow her to borrow. That is the limit. He practiced self-restraint up to the point of his choice which brought two great marriages. Had he exercised his domestic authority, the girls would have married army officers. Non-interference with the wife demands greater restraint.
  4. Elizabeth tells him what he should speak to her.
  5. Mr. Bennet does not want to confront his wife and allows Lydia to go. In defence of it, he abuses the squeamish youth who frown on Lydia’s behaviour. They are not squeamish youth. Any youth will disapprove of it. The truth is he is a weak husband before the dynamo of Mrs. Bennet. She obeys him always though she is insistent. He put her down after Lydia ran away. Clearly he took the line of least resistance and the whole family unpardonably paid for it
  6. At this point, 1) Elizabeth refuses to expose Wickham; 2) Mr. Bennet refuses to stop Lydia; 3) Mrs. Bennet fully instigates Lydia. Kitty breaks down which forewarns the tragedy. Every event positive as well as negative can be fully traced beforehand. Its footprints will be there invariably
  7. “In vain Elizabeth tried to make her reasonable, Jane resigned”.
    Each tries according to her own character.
    In offering to console another in distress, whether we succeed or not, we arrive at a relationship with him.
    It is a measure of trying to outgrow one’s ego.
    A leader creates his pattern in his followers.
    Or the followers try to fall into the pattern of the leader.
    This will never work, as it is not the intention of Nature.
    Each Man really grows according to his character.
    But, it is a great truth a leader creates his pattern in hundreds of thousands.
    The pattern is on the surface.
    Each Man follows the leader’s pattern according to his own character.
    Outgrowing the leader’s pattern is the real growth of the follower.
    The growth of many for many years or decades lies within the pattern.
    Forcing oneself into the pattern, the Man becomes dead, making his organization dead.
    That is the history of religions.
    Religions are dead organizations whose impulse of death is alive and active.
    The dead covering is so great that it can deny the boon prayed for.
    A devotee prayed to Parvathi asking for a boon of poetic genius.
    The goddess came down as an old lady carrying the boon in her mouth, as betel.
    The devotee was ‘dead’; saw not the goddess, but the old lady.
    He was revolted and refused the spittle with betel and nuts.
    Next to him was an idiot, who offered to take it. He became the poet.
    Consolation is asking another to follow the advisor.
    It never works.
    When it works, the results are interesting to follow.
    Jane resigns herself to any outside situation.
    It is difficult for others.
    It is the only course she can think of.
    So, she offers it.
  8. “She considered it as a death warrant to all common sense pointed”.
    Elizabeth gets this knowledge after Wickham was exposed.
    Mrs. Bennet refused to see it even after Lydia ran away.
    The two ends between which the movement takes place is one who gets the knowledge after experience and the other who cannot get it even after the event.
    Elizabeth moved from the vital to the mental.
    Mrs. Bennet remained in the vital itself.
    Experience giving knowledge is progress.
    Inability to get knowledge out of experience is habit reinforcing itself in the physical.
    The physical organizes energy into skill which is physical skill.
    Once the skill is formed, it can repeat endlessly which is Mrs. Bennet.
    Skill repeats till it is saturated.
    Once it is saturated it moves to form another skill.
    Within one’s life the body is fixed, changes slowly by experience as its experience is among the old circumstances.
    In the next generation the child is the product of two people.
    The newborn child brings with it its experience in the previous birth.
    There is a three fold change: 1) one’s own fresh experience, 2) Another parent’s contribution, 3) the child’s previous experience.
    In the same birth, changes are little in the physical, more in the vital, most in the Mental.
    Elizabeth is able to change by one experience as she is Mental.
    Even after the tragedy Mrs. Bennet was unable to change as she was physical.
    The physical too can change enough by education which she does not have.
    Lydia was a worse extension of her temperament.
    Not only Mrs. Bennet did not learn, she wanted to extend her present constitution in the child which was Lydia.
  9. “Detestable as such a step must make her were it known, she could not help secretly advising her father”.
    Lydia’s elopement is a more important event than anything else in the story.
    This event needs a certain energy for that to take place and that energy should organize itself into power for the completion of this act.
    Energy is preceded by an aspiration; it is followed by a direction that makes it into a force. It needs a structure that organizes it into power. It is followed by the attitude and skills necessary before the result issues. Though the text cannot give all these details from all the characters, some can be gathered.
    1. Energy is positively -- positive to the elopement -- released by Lydia and her supporter Kitty.
    2. It is augmented from the other sides from everyone by attitudes on either side.
    3. Prior to the release of energy is the aspiration for it from so many people in so many ways.
    4. Direction of energy into force is by the determination of the will behind.
    5. Organisation must be looked for in the characters and circumstances.
    6. We have only Kitty’s secret for attitude.
    7. Skill comes from the previous plan of Wickham.

    Bingley’s submission to Darcy’s ruse supports wrongdoing.
    Caroline’s triumph by an inverted mechanism strengthens Wickham’s hand. Her triumph is over Elizabeth. When Elizabeth goes down, Wickham who planned for it, goes up.
    Jane’s disappointment strengthens Caroline, hence Wickham.
    Bennet gloated over Jane’s failure, a vicarious satisfaction over his wife. He could not act till an extreme was arrived at. That activated his wife, hence Lydia. Kitty supported by her secrecy. Her disappointment gave Lydia energy of triumph over Kitty. Letting the girls out before time generally boost the atmosphere. Now that Charlotte was married and triumphed she sought for more. Collecting all this and qualifying it, we will see the moment it was complete, she would have left the camp.
    It is a difficult task but theoretically not impossible. Once it is done, the reverse movement starts, the mother’s breakdown, her own actions reaching an absolute consummation, bringing an antisocial result. To her it gives a nervous breakdown during which she laments for not going to Brighton. That stands in the way of Lydia’s discovery. Her loud lamentations to her brother bring the exhaustion of her energies to near completion. Mr. Bennet, an indolent gentleman spends all his possible effort in searching for Lydia.
    Till then he is unqualified to take the right decision. His decision reverses the course. Kitty receives the force of his decision, takes it literally, breaks down. The decision is accepted by life. He criticizes his wife for the first time effectively after the elopement. That cancels his wife’s role of encouragement to Lydia. Jane is disillusioned by Caroline which weakens the energies released by her. Pemberley impresses Elizabeth. She chooses the property. Darcy comes in response, goes away in a few minutes, comes back, expresses solicitude, walks back from the coach love-lorn. Georgiana invites Elizabeth. Caroline provokes Elizabeth. The provocation is the final straw for Lydia to run away. Though she had disappeared earlier, this is the point in subtle sequence we can get. Elizabeth breaks down, confides in Darcy. Jane too shares the danger. Every event can be weighed in terms of the aspects of the energy chain.
    Should such an equation be worked out, the moment she left the camp, the time Darcy found them, the hour when he agreed to marriage, the day when the debts were paid off, the hour the Money left Darcy, the hour it reached the creditor, every one of them will reveal their exact role in quantity and quality. This will, incidentally, explain the delay, the suddenness of the events. Many phrases in the book can give us some essential but isolated glimpse.
    After a fashion a certain precision within that context can be achieved for each item on the chain. Occasionally we may stumble upon some time coincidences, space coincidences – Janani’s Vellore experience – will emerge strikingly.
  10. “She represented to him all the improprieties of Lydia’s behaviour”.
    A gross neglect occasions the obvious to be explained.
    Representing injustice to a boss who enjoys it is a futile job.
    In that case, directly or indirectly he will be the source of injustice.
    Organisation perpetuates destructive forces of organisation.
    A virtue turning into a vice is the ultimate secret of life.
    Organisation is a neutral instrument.
    Organisation in growth organises growth.
    Organisation in decay organises decay.
    Human choice is capable of converting one into another.
    Organisation is neutral, choice originates power.
    In a crisis as of today in finance, he who comprehends its course can place himself at the point where the forces ultimately organise themselves and can exercise his choice converting the course of crisis into one of creative plenty.
    Such a thing can be done in life or in subtle life.
    Prayer from such a junction makes miracles commonplace.
    People who newly enter an old organisation can preside over it, if they can reach the subtle centre of the organisational existence.
    Churchill and FDR did so in crises.
    Romance Eternal can give this knowledge. He who reaches there singly will meet with great success.
    The first step is non-reaction.
    The final step is the sensational knowledge that the incoming disturbance is a vibration of joy.
    Darcy unconsciously reached that place in the Bennet family and accomplished. We see all forces are under his control.
    To trace everyone’s contribution to Darcy’s success is to know the story as Jane Austen conceived it in her genius.
    The Psychic occupies that centre.
  11. “He heard her attentively and then said” – Mr. Bennet heard Lizzy.
    Mother says Man does not learn from another.
    There is a rule to give suggestions, advice, hints, etc.
    A Man readily receives ideas that will achieve his own goals quickly.
    In case a danger is pointed, out Man pays heed to that suggestion.
    In the absence of an issue of import, as Bingley and Darcy conversed at Netherfield, it is evident no one wanted to accept the least suggestion from anyone else.
    In Wickham’s first talk with Elizabeth, he told her what she readily wanted to believe and she was thankful to receive it from him.
    Darcy could not accept one thing from Caroline’s long description of Elizabeth at Pemberley.
    No one ever talked to Lady Catherine. Anyone listened to her.
    Collins was full of his opinions. He never noticed whether he was listened to.
    Elizabeth would not take any advice from Charlotte.
    Jane would not agree with anything such a loving sister spoke.
    The rest was table talk, small talk.
    All that Lizzy learnt from her father was silently received.
    Ideas are accepted subliminally, subtly, never directly.
    Direct communication raises the spirit of contradiction.
    Ideas are well received by direct communication when they endorse the existing conviction, conscious or subconscious.
    It is the greatest joke that great scholars have concluded Sri Aurobindo has relied on the Indian tradition.
    His ideas are in direct opposition to the tradition.
    The tradition never conceived of His great ideas.
    Mr. Bennet’s listening attentively was in deference to his affection, not for the purposes of accepting it.
    It is a great thing that he later acknowledged the value of her words.
    Apart from all the main issues, we see Mr. Bennet was anxious to refuse a suggestion from someone.
15
"Lydia will never be easy till she has exposed herself in some public place or other, and we can never expect her to do it with so little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the present circumstances."
  1. “Lydia will never be easy till she exposes herself in some public place”.
    An empty head longs for shameless exhibition.
    The woman loves to be on display.
    Immature men love to display, not knowing it will hurt them.
    The yearning for display overcomes the shame in display.
    Of the much initial inexperience this is one.
    Urge for growth in the physical is love of display in the vital.
    A new thought fashioning in the Mind enjoys the nascent pleasure of it.
    The violence of nascent energy is virulent.
    Mrs. Bennet’s entry into gentry gave birth to that nascent energy.
    Man of rank marrying a commoner endows on her his rank.
    A woman of rank is not permitted to do so.
    Hence the vehemence of the woman in rising to status.
    Mr. Bennet gave an attentive listening, gave the above as a considered opinion.
    Any such event lends itself to be traced on either side several steps.
    It is the inaction of a determined Man.
    Going into action, his decision will be a determination.
    He feels exactly like Elizabeth.
    Speaking it out secretly to her father is her maximum.
    Not acting is his maximum at that moment.
    Older, mature religions do not go out and preach.
    Immature, shallow religious take to preaching as a mission.
    Communism was militant, democracy was not.
    Aristocracy does not campaign for greater strength.
    Civilised people do not go on conquering others.
    To them conquest is their civilization spreading.
    To a realized Guru, sishyas come seeking.
    A realized Guru seeking a valuable sishya is a spiritual wonder.
    Greatness, says He, must learn to live alone.
    The above is the penultimate decision of his prior to the anticlimax.
  2. “We can never expect her to do it with so little expense or inconvenience to the family”.
    Global or universal problem for the ego is understood from its point of view.
    Human ego seeing the ocean of energy thinks how it can use it.
    Ego takes an egoistic view.
    To find infinity, it must take the view of the infinite or at least a universal view.
    Evolution compels within the limits of evolution.
    Elizabeth is not compelled to a greater transformation than moving to the Mind.
    Darcy was not compelled to a wider transformation.
    Bennet is not compelled to act in prevention.
    The descent of 1956 compels now to act for others – give results free.
    Outer compulsion is limited to the evolutionary atmosphere.
    Inner compulsion can be endless limited only by aspiration.
    His mentioning expense is an indication of his attitude to Money.
    The inconvenience he mentions shows a life of discomfiture.
    Lydia’s going to Brighton is Elizabeth going to Pemberley.
    Elizabeth opposed it.
    Elizabeth was reluctant to visit Pemberley.
    Each is in different directions.
    In all directions Elizabeth was opposed as the invitation to Hunsford.
    Is there a knowledge that can make Elizabeth see Brighton is Pemberley?
    She sees her father should stop Lydia. Beyond she cannot see.
    Can we know what Elizabeth should see and how?
    She could see with mercenary eyes Charlotte’s idea of marrying Darcy.
    Can she see the same thing in a non-mercenary view?
    She could have had she not turned it down out of prejudice.
16
"If you were aware," said Elizabeth, "of the very great disadvantage to us all which must arise from the public notice of Lydia's unguarded and imprudent manner -- nay, which has already arisen from it, I am sure you would judge differently in the affair."
 
17
"Already arisen?" Repeated Mr. Bennet. "What, has she frightened away some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy! But do not be cast down. Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret. Come, let me see the list of the pitiful fellows who have been kept aloof by Lydia's folly."
  1. “Has she frightened away some of your lovers?”
    He did not feel the outrage Lydia was himself.
    It is an unpardonable comment of his, almost in tune with his wife.
    Other things apart, these few comments justifying Lydia’s behaviour are his sanction for the elopement.
    Man gets used to bitter drinks and comes to love them. Mr. Bennet has got used to his wife’s style of functioning and is oblivious of Lydia’s defects.
    Officers were acceptable to Elizabeth till then. They are an opportunity to Mrs. Bennet. Living in that atmosphere, how can Mr. Bennet resent Lydia’s behaviour?
    We see the invitation to Brighton is related to the invitation to Pemberley.
    Socially Lydia is an abomination.
    In life she is powerful, positive or negative.
    In existence Lydia is a positive force.
    Darcy’s being in love with Elizabeth suddenly erupts in the proposal.
    Lydia’s attraction suddenly bursts forth in the elopement.
    Bingley’s arrival, Lydia’s elopement, Darcy’s proposal, Collins’s wedding are sudden occurrences.
    They all signify the charged atmosphere in Meryton.
    It is Wickham who brought in a highly charged negative rumour.
    The placid atmosphere of the village could not uphold these high events.
    Hence the positive and negative charges.
    Mr. Bennet’s insensitivity to Lydia’s unguarded, imprudent behaviour incidentally reveals the cultural level of the place.
    We never witness any resentment of Lydia’s behaviour.
    Obviously Elizabeth belongs to the next generation to her parents.
    True, it is Darcy who resents it, not even Bingley resents it.
    Actually Bingley chose a bride from there.
    Being a principal family in Meryton, the Bennets had a certain social impunity.
  2. “Such squeamish youth as cannot be connected with a little absurdity”.
    Self-righteousness that blurs over an enormity never passes.
    To justify a criminal blemish for self-defence never goes unpunished.
    Nehru’s high tone of self-righteousness was punished again and again by Suez, Hungary and China.
    Mr. Bennet did not find Lydia’s little absurdities ‘intolerable’.
    One can fly in the face of facts and pay for it.
    To make a moral of one’s absurd weakness, life punishes.
    The strong presence in the subtle plane a stark reality makes Man speak tauntingly to another.
    A caustic joke at another’s expense is the subtle urge when the opposite fact awaits to be delivered.
    The weak are impelled to challenge the strongest on the eve of results.
    The occult service of the mean and perverse arises in this area.
    A cultured sensitive Man cannot be an instrument of perfection to one who is on the verge of perfection.
    Mean perverse depravity serving one with a vengeance shows he is on the borders of perfection.
    The mean Man robs the other of honour, inflicts humiliation.
    Honour is the soul of an honourable Man.
    The mean Man pays with his job or life as they are his own equivalents to the other man’s honour.
    The ruse robbed Bingley of his girl.
    Darcy was hotly abused by his girl in return of Pemberley.
    Wickham scandalized Darcy in the village.
    Wickham was stripped of the last vestige of shame there itself.
    Lady Lufton found fault with Lucy for taking a fine stand.
    She was compelled to solicit Lucy’s good wishes going to her.
    Lady Arabella fainted about Dear Mary.
    One of the ways life is unsparing is this response.
  3. “Let me see the list of pitiful fellows kept away by Lydia’s folly”.
    Man is good at strengthening the hands of forces that destroy him.
    This is not only his sanction but also his seal for the elopement.
    Growth of spirit stopping at moksha, and confined to a caste, has initiated decay.
    Its symbol is Kashmir.
    It became the symbol of the Superpower contention.
    The final refusal of Brahmin, fortified by the growth stopping is to be resolved by the leader of the world, the USA, destroying those who invaded the land of Spirit.
    Capitalism whose death signals were rung in 1825 first shifted its arena to Money. Socialism operating through democracy can stave off the crisis.
    It is a provisional solution to the malady, not a final resolution.
    Mr. Bennet from a long habit of acquiescing with his wife, had started justifying her.
    Man becomes an instrument for the cause he long opposes.
    The principle of physical recoil explains it.
    Elizabeth moved rightly, but partly.
    Past perfection pays in the same plane, not in the next plane.
    Increasing capacity yielding proportional results is incapacity, in the same plane. Results in the next plane, are results for value. Nothing short of perfection produces the results.
    Mrs. Bennet works in the physical plane for results in the vital plane and is totally frustrated.
    Mr. Bennet stays in the mental plane waiting for vital results. It comes after 25 years.
    Wickham using falsehood gets the opposite results.
    Elizabeth moving to the Mind from the vital gets all the results wanted.
    Darcy’s transformation yields the expected results.
    Jane’s silent will foolishly followed, gives results when folly is given up.
    Charlotte at a crucial moment seeing the enormous energy at work could commission them for her use silently by a mercenary understanding, bringing about instantaneous miraculous results.
    Meryton was in a great positive crisis.
    Revolution is by other circumstances transformed into evolution.
    Disintegration was converted into development at a grand scale.
    The flood of forces seeks out lets.
    Obstacles in the way will be destroyed.
    Any aperture, regardless social value or moral content, will be field to overflowing.
    Charlotte’s common sense is excessively precise and powerful.
    In normal times her endowment has no value.
    What is mercenary to us is luck in her view.
    She rises in monetary value higher than Longbourn.
    (Longbourn is £ 2000; she will have £ 1000 more than that).
    The energy is of the nation, the benefit for Charlotte is personal. Hence its magnificence.
    The result of a value is determined by its rightness, not character.
    Life does not respect ethical, moral, social values.
    Low values serve capacities in proportion.
    Higher values refuse to serve capacities, look for values.
    Mr. Bennet unpardonable statement about Lydia’s absurdities directly charged her absurdities and presented the results to him.
    How life responds depend upon the person, the plane, the act, the motive, the context, making human choice infinitely valuable.
    Human choice has infinite power.
    Human choice is the infinitesimal from which infinity can be released if the human intends to become the Divine.
    It is done in two stages 1) unegoistic 2) Psychic.
    Thus human choice is spiritual awakening.
    Human choice is capable of unraveling the Everlasting Day as Savitri did.
    That is one Man’s perfection.
18
i"Indeed, you are mistaken. I have no such injuries to resent. It is not of peculiar, but of general evils, which I am now complaining. Our importance, our respectability in the world, must be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark Lydia's character. Excuse me -- for I must speak plainly. If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character will be fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt that ever made herself and her family ridiculous; -- a flirt, too, in the worst and meanest degree of flirtation: without any attraction beyond youth and a tolerable person; and, from the ignorance and emptiness of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of that universal contempt which her rage for admiration will excite. In this danger Kitty is also comprehended. She will follow wherever Lydia leads. Vain, ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrouled! Oh! My dear father, can you suppose it possible that they will not be censured and despised wherever they are known, and that their sisters will not be often involved in the disgrace?"
  1. Mr. Bennet feels Lydia’s behaviour is not impermissible. He calls the growing youth squeamish. That is his mind. No wonder she ran away.
  2. To him it is a little absurdity.
  3. Wisdom lies not so much in the cure as in prevention.
  4. Mr. Bennet raises the dangerous portion of the issue – scaring away men – still Elizabeth avoids the warning. The other side of scaring away men is luring away Wickham.
  5. Her warning is blunt but in general.
  6. She refused to say Wickham has a bad past.
  7. As he refused to act, she refuses to expose Wickham.
  8. “I have no injuries to resent” – Elizabeth.
    Elizabeth’s retreat from her presentation shows the strength of Lydia’s urge and the indolent strength of the father who had slid into isolation.
    Insularity gives indolence strength of inaction.
    Mr. Bennet who is outraged by his wife’s behaviour could not let her down to another, even his pet daughter.
    In defending Lydia, certainly he does not endorse her outrages.
    He, out of long habit, in defending the status quo, unconsciously becomes warm in his support to Lydia.
    Opposition in politics often finds themselves serving the cause of their political opponents.
    Neither support nor opposition means totality in its stand.
    Their convictions ooze out to the opposite side considerably.
    Material poverty keeping company with cultural richness, cultural shallowness with material plenty is a known phenomenon.
    Each serving its apparent opposite is an invisible fact.
    It is better seen in the materialist and spiritualist denouncing each other.
    The idealism that actuates the materialist is purely spiritual.
    ’The agnostic announces a higher religion’.
    To safeguard its spirituality, one has to resort to ceremonies that acquire material significance.
    This is so one is the successor of the other.
    The first person Jane wants to tell her engagement to is her mother, who literally did her best to destroy it, though not intentionally.
    Good and Evil are not fully mutually destructive.
    Both affirm life each in their own way.
    Their relationship is not a well defined opposition.
    One penetrates the other at points of vulnerability.
    The mutual destruction is also mutual reinforcement.
    Only that we do not always see the real role played by people.
  9. “Our respectability in the world must be affected by her wild volubility” (P.205)
    Elizabeth’s maturity had out grown her father’s.
    Social growth that is evolution is furthered by each generation and is checkmated by leaving the authority in the hands of parents.
    Bennet has the authority, Elizabeth has the knowledge.
    Bennet who has the authority, parted with it in favour of his wife.
    The net result is determined not by the respective decisions but the flow of events outgrowing the individual wisdom.
    The balance of progress between two generations is decided by the outer pressure and the inner strength.
    The inner truth finally translates into outer reality.
    Elizabeth does not want any tragedy, nor her father.
    The inner truth of her mother is not that she seeks any tragedy, but her pursuit of joy does not consider such a tragedy an obstacle. It rarely comes out in the story except as Austen’s comment upon the public urge.
    She was afraid their respectability might be affected but it rose sky high, first dipping low.
    It is the work of the atmosphere.
    The temperament of each character is fully recognized by society as well as life. There can be no flaw in it.
    The population has this knowledge.
    They cannot comprehend the nature or power of the atmosphere.
    At such times the common comment is, “They are lucky”.
    Luck is used to replace our ignorance of the laws of life.
    What happened in this story, every little development, can be explained according to the laws of life.
    It is the contribution of Sri Aurobindo to the body of the world’s knowledge.
    That knowledge is power, a power that can change the world, dissolve Evil.
  10. Excuse me, I must speak plainly.”
    Explanation never conveys experience.
     Man does not easily give up his own selfish advantages.
    Selfishness is fortified by indolence, as any other low trait.
    Just now he has to act against his wife on the advice of his daughter.
    He does not want to stir himself to action. A daughter carries no weight.
    Human choice becomes acute facing these alternatives.
    The danger is real to Elizabeth who has information.
    In the absence of that information the danger is not real to him.
    A subtle sense can discern the danger she perceives.
    He does not have that subtlety.
    Examining from all sides, we can know why Elizabeth failed.
    So far the loss Bennet faced was only money. Shame accrued to him, but no tragedy or danger came his way. His dullness was not to be shaken by words, but events could stir him to action. The one great force that could have made him act was the character of Wickham. Her ardent desire not to harm Wickham’s emotions prevented the release of his energy. Her own work for Jane was a failure. In the scheme of things it was Wickham who was wielding the weight of Pemberley in his favour, not Darcy. From the vehemence of his refusal we see the spirit of contradiction took hold of him. He was not anxious to know her view, in spite of his attentive listening. He was arming himself to disoblige her. Just now on her, the force of her own refusal of Darcy was there powerfully.
    Her exultation in having refused Darcy was live in her. It could only evoke a refusal from her father. Already she evoked a lack of sympathy from Jane about Darcy’s proposal. Kitty’s holding Lydia’s secret weakened the cause of Elizabeth. Mr. Bennet did not sympathize with Jane in her disappointment and forecast one for Lizzy. He already prophesied Jane’s death in pursuit of Bingley. He was temperamentally ill disposed to act positively.
  11. “She will become the most determined flirt”.
    It is very true that by voicing a danger it comes true.
    It is not absolutely inevitable.
    A stronger atmosphere to the contrary can prevent it.
    In this case Elizabeth’s fears came true.
    Mrs. Bennet saying Jane would die of a broken heart, never came true.
    Her wish that Jane would be settled at Netherfield was first cancelled and later became true.
    Darcy would be the last Man she would marry never came true.
    In a war, millions of prophecies on either side arise. Only half of them can be true.
    It is true wishes are powerful, can help the event precipitate.
    There are counter ideas which carry their own power.
    Acts are more powerful.
    What happens at the end is the resultant of all these.
    Each Man in his own affairs is a determinant, can be a determinant.
    One’s own affairs are largely under one’s control.
    In many such issues he knows he is the determinant.
    (He can bring all his issues under such sole determinism).
    In that context, what he speaks, or what he thinks matters most.
    Once he gains such a vast control, one single doubt to the contrary for a second, totally shifts the balance, often very quickly.
    One can study his own speech, thought, not only in his own affairs, but even in wider context.
    Sri Aurobindo saw all His thoughts about the world came true sooner or later.
    Speech has power. Its extent is determined by other things.
    Acts too are representative and carry a greater power still.
    A powerful thought expressed with determination in a charged atmosphere with malice proves its truth at the expense of the speaker.
    Churchill spoke thus about India and had his career destroyed.
  12. “And flirt too the worst and meanest degree of flirtation”.
    Love or hatred is eloquent, expressive, almost creating wonderful phrases.
    Also love can use the power to minimize the venom of the beloved.
    How accurately Elizabeth exposes Lydia cruelly in all nakedness.
    She did not once speak such appropriate words about Wickham.
    It was all understatement: elopement was the power of Wickham, hatefully mercenary was imprudence, scandalous falsehood was casual lapse.
    The original fervour of her infatuation was never mitigated after his heinous treachery of a sacred household.
    The heart never thinks, but feels, in exact emotions.
    The heart never chooses the object of love, it chooses its own intensity.
    But the heart has the power to be chosen by the most right heart.
    It comes from purity.
    Purity is entire dependence on the Divine.
    Such a heart of purity does not choose any object for its love.
    It waits for the purest of hearts to come to it.
    Love is the soul’s response to Ananda.
    It can never be the love of a Glencora who cherishes a Burgo. She is a wife, not love.
    Emily Wharton, Lily Dale had that attitude, and were qualified to love.
    In their scheme of things or in their atmosphere, there was no Divine to raise them to the purest of purity.
    One fell for a Lopez, the other betrayed herself into betrayal.
    The atmosphere of their community did not assist their attaining perfection.
    There is no question about Elizabeth Bennet rising to that level as she is the daughter of the Bennets.
    A pure heart can create a page of fiction hitherto unknown.
    Elizabeth has sprung from the soil which she describes about Lydia.
    The goodness of a woman rises from self-denial.
    Self-denial that is general, becoming particular towards a Man of Generosity of Goodness or some other great quality rises to heights of purity.
    It is not said in vain that Man worships the ground on which She walks.
  13. “Without attraction beyond youth and a tolerable person” – Elizabeth about Lydia.
    Greed does not have any qualification.
    Anything is a qualification for greed.
    Man demands, takes for granted everything is due to him.
    Left to himself he can take anything from anybody with a sense of right.
    This is the attitude of the physical where the vital is born.
    War is the national institution that symbolizes this attitude.
    Only Lydia and her mother have this naked, blatant attitude.
    Greed not only feels its right to exist, it celebrates its existence, demands a prize for its service! Nobel Prize goes to its theoretical formulation.
    Evil too parades itself not only without shame, but with great pride.
    It celebrates its power to destroy.
    Perfect sincerity for a period will discover our inner status as well as outer functioning like this.
    Darcy justifies the superiority of Mind and takes pride in it.
    Mr. Bennet who extends great freedom when he acts in his own zone is autocratic.
    Collins’s humility is in display, not his actions.
    Man’s ego is presently subjected to the collective ego.
    All leaders use the power of the collective ego personally.
    Law blunts the edge of this performance.
    He who does not parade himself, thinks he is egoless, not knowing what is denied expression on the outside organizes more strongly inside.
    A moment of sincerity is a moment of spiritual birth.
    Spirit can be realized as egoistic realization.
    To cleave through the crust of ego is a great effort as Buddha did.
    Shedding the ego, even the hardness of the body goes.
    The greatest perfection of ego is unawareness of the world around.
    Ego and selfishness mutually strengthen each other.
    Asura is the personification of the ego magnified.
  14. “Unable to ward off any portion of the universal contempt which her rage for admiration will excite”.
    Idealists, utterly insensitive selfish people are as much centred in themselves as the yogi lost in samadhi for days on end.
    Lydia’s rage for admiration evokes universal contempt.
    Bennet is not one to whom this must be explained. But, even after such explanation, he refused to act.
    It shows his indolence and the extent to which he was steeped in it.
    Again his desire not to cross his wife took such a contemptible form.
    The text never indicates the universal contempt she speaks of which shows the preeminent position the family was in.
    Physically the split atom revealed the infinite energy it holds.
    Religious fanaticism saw a whole village of the other community killed.
    This is the vital infinitesimal of fundamentalism.
    Once the safety is there in some measure, the havoc that can be done by indulgence can be infinite through an infinitesimal aperture.
    The financial crisis which still sees the society unshaken has resorted to havoc on an infinite scale.
    The emergence of the Psychic, the Individual, the human choice, a touch of transformation, action in the Hour of God, awakening of the soul at the appropriate time, can now bring us out of this crisis, create infinite abundance.
    In theory every moment is one such, but we cannot see it.
    All great turning points have in one fashion or another revealed this phenomenon.
    Man has the monumental ignorance capable of not seeing such an event.
    1857 was one such moment. As India was essentially united in 1878, the Mutiny could have liberated the country.
    In England 1688 was such an Hour. It rose to the occasion of history thus escaping Revolution in 1789.
    Evolution spreads over the community the intensity of Revolution in a few years.
  15. “She will follow wherever Lydia leads” – Elizabeth on Kitty.
    The many sheep of the fold that followed the one that fell into the pit, jumped into the pit with eyes open.
    Leadership is powerful; following too is as powerful.
    Buddha conquered the whole of India and beyond.
    Shankara conquered the whole of India.
    In 150 years, half of Europe turned Protestant.
    In 60 years the world is fully invaded by American culture.
    The physical instinct of following is universal and strong.
    The world is largely physical and the physical urge of conformity rules.
    The two World Wars shattered the very bodies that imprisoned that instinct.
    A unique vibration in Man to make him stand out is the physical basis of Individuality.
    In language each word gains a special significance.
    Sometimes one word acquires several different meanings.
    Each is unique. They acquire a unique pronunciation too.
    Uniqueness is the tether end of the physical formation of the finite serving as an evolutionary terminus or landmark.
    The conception of Infinity of the Absolute Sri Aurobindo speaks of goes beyond the boundless finite. It is the first glimpse of Mind of its growing into Supermind.
    It is a vibration capable of extending in all fashions and all directions.
    He says It can be born in us, not in the Mind, but in the immutable Soul making it mutable.
    It can be born in all parts of the being or all parts of the body.
    It is the ever Present in Simultaneous Time.
    It is in the plane of the supreme Ishwara where the Force of Consciousness and Force of Being are the same.
    It is the poise where the Divine delights in Himself.
    The physical universe we see is not the real universe to one who can see inside all the dimensions of all the universes in the cosmos.
    The Mind divides it into the infinitesimal.
    Nature coats it with ignorance and steeps it into it.
    The ego separates it from others and gives a sensation it is really separate.
    Objectivity gives it the sense of inert physicality in space.
    Subjectivity gives it the sense of movement to it in Time.
    Insight provides a thin escape out of it.
    Intuition offers a greater escape into a world movement.
    A Supreme Intuition penetrates the Movement to reach the Stability.
    Further one can see that Stability expressing itself in Movement.
    Again in that Movement there is the finite, the infinitesimal, uniqueness, etc.
    Cosmic consciousness where everything is energy is knowledge.
    Transcendent consciousness where no form or no content remains is an exalted state at the gates of the Absolute.
    That Absolute carries its absoluteness even in the infinitesimal.
    How can we see, feel, sense, perceive that absoluteness.
    Darcy saw it through the abuse.
    Can we see it through Wickham’s falsehood and Lydia’s running away?
    We certainly do not see it.
    He says this creed is given to humanity. Till that faith is born one has to accept this creed.
    One who concentrates and directs the power of concentration towards consecration moves away from the surface to the subliminal via the inner Mind.
    Consecration reveals the Absolute which concentration cannot.
    Elizabeth’s forceful representation did not move Bennet.
    Had she not spoken to him and silently went inside through consecration, she would have touched an aspect of the Absolute which was the same in Mr. Bennet.
    He would have acted.
    It was actually done by the external forces moving precipitating the elopement.
  16. “her sisters will be involved in the disgrace” – Elizabeth.
    Lydia is a disgrace to herself.
    She is ruining the family.
    She will ruin her sisters.
    This is obvious from Lydia’s view, family and personal views.
    He is immovable to all this. It must be obvious to him.
    Trying to move one who is not moved by an obvious danger is obvious folly.
    A position once taken is not easy to come out of.
    The opinion will argue in favour of the status quo.
    The preference will work against the change.
    The physical consciousness will not give up easily what it possesses.
    Change is ever present; resistance to change is equally powerful.
    Age is in favour of inaction. She is a daughter trying to move a father.
    Age is a reality in all societies, at all times; only its power varies.
    Age has a prerogative.
    In the measure that privilege proves to be power, one fully exercises it.
    Age was once considered a synonym to wisdom.
    It was a period when longer life meant greater wisdom.
    It was a physical period where right was decided by might.
    Life that stayed longer in the body grants a social power to the possessor of the body.
    In an indolent Man, opinion that is a mental formation has the force of a physical mould and the power of an act.
    To such a Man changing an opinion is as difficult it is for a mental Man to change a subconscious act – e.g. handwriting.
    It was a time when such behaviours were considered aristocratic habits and adored.
    Social sanction is power. Social veneration is universal power.
    Elopement was necessary to move Bennet to action.
    The outer necessity arose out of the inner immovable status.
    Hers was an argument; his was a tamasic act.
19
Mr. Bennet saw that her whole heart was in the subject, and affectionately taking her hand, said in reply --
  1. “Bennet saw her whole heart was in it. Affectionately taking her hand,..”
  2. Affection cannot effectively replace action.
    Still, this affection was not lost.
    Later, he recognized the value of her advice.
    That formed the basis for reversing the elopement in the subtle plane.
    Her words, taken in the context of elopement rang true, each of them.
    She could do it only secretly, showing the lack of strength for her words.
    Her problem was to save the victim without punishing the offender.
    The Rishis shunned pleasure as it came along with pain.
    This was so because pleasure and pain are dualities. The Rishi was in ego.
    Coming out of ego, pleasure and pain give way to Joy.
    Joy is the vital response to Ananda.
    He who seeks Joy cannot have the bad effect of pain.
    She wanted to protect Wickham from his real bad name and still save Lydia.
    The lack of reality in her emotional convictions showed as her ineffectivity and her father’s inaction.
    Later the results show how Wickham exposed himself nastily.
    With her father, had she taken him into confidence about Wickham’s unreliability, the exposure would have been limited.
    A solution postponed multiplies in quantity as well as quality.
    The story does not take us to see how the present evil has great good fortune inbuilt into it.
    Mary Thorne, incarnate evil in the eyes of Lady Arabella, became
    ’Dear Mary’ who gave her a faint.
    In this story it is left to our imagination.
    The theory is Wickham has inbuilt potential good of great value.
    Darcy’s ruse, a sting to Bingley, turned out to be a boon to Elizabeth, his future wife’s sister.
    Today’s evil is tomorrow’s Marvel to see which we have to pass through eight reversals.
20
"Do not make yourself uneasy, my love. Wherever you and Jane are known you must be respected and valued; and you will not appear to less advantage for having a couple of -- or I may say, three very silly sisters. We shall have no peace at Longbourn if Lydia does not go to Brighton. Let her go, then. Colonel Forster is a sensible man, and will keep her out of any real mischief; and she is luckily too poor to be an object of prey to anybody. At Brighton she will be of less importance even as a common flirt than she has been here. The officers will find women better worth their notice. Let us hope, therefore, that her being there may teach her her own insignificance. At any rate, she cannot grow many degrees worse, without authorizing us to lock her up for the rest of her life."
  1. Mr. Bennet takes the line of least resistance, he suffers.
  2. In that village, his not restraining the wife is to be ideal, grant her ideal freedom. In spite of suffering, his restraint later brought rewards.>
  3. The line between tragedy that ruins the entire family and domestic peace is so thin.
  4. All the advice Mr. Bennet gave about Mr. Forster being a sensible man, etc. proved futile. Lydia disappeared. The family has come to a turning point. Luck in the shape of Bingley and Darcy is around the corner. It cannot come in without an inner effort at progress. So Lydia ran away
  5. “Do not make yourself uneasy, my love”.
    Human observation can be selective or even in the reverse.
    Writing on the wall does not always move Men to action.
    It is true Men in public life are keenly aware of even distant symptoms.
    Man does not see what is before his eyes; he sees what he chooses to see.
    Repeated past experiences do not have the least effect on some Men.
    Bennet refuses to be uneasy and asks his daughter not to be uneasy.
    He is myopic, indolent, negligent, refuses to see the facts.
    Let us look at his attitude as one reflecting her attitude till then.
    She was more than guilty in giving life to Wickham’s scandal.
    As she was to Wickham, Bennet is to Lydia.
    As the elopement was going to be a source of luck, we can say Bennet does not prevent it now. For that we have no support within the text.
    It can only be an extension of our beliefs to the story.
    He took the least line of resistance.
    He fully paid for his guilty attitude.
    When the events reversed, he was to bear the least responsibility.
    Should the change not have come, it would have been a total ruin.
    The rules hold good even if the course reversed itself.
    He was completely oblivious of his misfortune and his luck.
    Even when it was explained to him, he never gave thought why Darcy should have done it.
    He took it for granted that it was done for the love of Lizzy.
    It never struck him the course of events could have been contrary.
    He never gave a thought to what had happened at home.
    He never stopped to think how it all came about.
    Had he exercised his Mind, he would not have arrived at the truth.
    Thought comes into play when acts move compellingly in the opposite direction.
  6. “Wherever Jane and you are, you must be respected”.
    The good compensating for the presence of the bad is not a valid law.
    The strength of character cannot directly or adequately compensate weak temperament.
    There are situations where one rotten apple spoils the rest.
    The good ones have no power to make the rotten ones good.
    A loss can be offset by the gains in an overall scheme.
    The good name of the family is a delicate structure and is susceptible easily.
    Here is a family which has no positive central authority.
    The authority is usurped by a negative dynamo.
    As it is, if the family had no social ambitions and would be satisfied by the girls marrying at their levels, all girls may be easily married.
    The mother has strong ambitions, the father legitimate aspirations.
    The mother’s expectations are based on beauty which is illusory in a marriage market.
    The father puts his trust in merit which is more illusory than beauty.
    Whatever it is, much united thought that should go into it and a greater direction into the channeling of energies if anything is to be achieved.          
    Now it is a wild goose chase.
    The leadership has gone from Mrs. Bennet into the hands of Lydia.
    This is the best strategy to wreck the family.
    There is neither a centre nor is there direction.
    What actually happens is a New Force enters the family in a wrong fashion.
    A jewel melted remains gold to be made anew.
    A family dismantled will be on the streets.
    Lydia has done it with a glee. Mr. Bennet hopes against hope about the elder ones.
    The wave from across the channel brought a new welding force, to heal the wound and raise two daughters sky high.
    It is not luck but revolution transforming itself into evolution.
    Indolence generates illusions; illusions pious wishes.
    It is Elizabeth who wrecked the family. It is Darcy for her sake who reoriented the family. The great significance of Wickham is worth discovering.
  7. “We will have no peace in Longbourn if Lydia does not go to Brighton”.
    Peace for Mr. Bennet was to let the wife have her way.
    Authority must be exercised by the appropriate person in the family.
    Authority exercised by the wrong or inappropriate person in the family organizes tragedy and catastrophe.
    Mr. Bennet was irresponsibly negligent.
    In times of transition all those on the border or intermediate zones receive undeserving punishment or undue reward irrespective of their action.
    The periods of communal carnage provided negative examples.
    The period between 1850 and 1900 in America was a period when overflowing social energy spilled over into individual lives and conferred vast benefits.
    Mr. Bennet’s family was poised for social annihilation by Lydia’s action.
    Elizabeth’s evolved status, through Darcy, transformed tragedy into a transcending luck.
    Mrs. Bennet rudely usurped the power of her husband for 25 years.
    He was a helpless victim pathetically witnessing his position.
    He called it peace in Longbourn which is the unmerited slavery of the proper authority, the husband.
    Progress is power exercised properly.
    Improper exercise of power is the opposite of progress.
    Mrs. Bennet is totally unaware of the presence of her husband.
    He is like an Indian wife, a tongue-tied creature.
    To appropriate power and authority that is not theirs is the history of creating the class and caste systems.
    For long they thrive on a social scale.
    At the level of the family the system meets a crisis when responsibilities are to be fulfilled.
    Mrs. Bennet is the tail of the family wagging the body.
    It is unseemly, tragic, and unpardonable.
    Mr. Bennet acts like a Muslim wife, helpless.
    The lucky atmosphere saves him through his pet daughter.
  8. “Colonel Forster is a sensible Man. He will keep her out of mischief”.
    This is not a world where sensible Men can keep ardent girls out of mischief.
    Mischief is biological. Sensibility is of the Mind.
    A sensible Man may not instigate a girl to mischief.
    There is no provision in life to protect one from an inner urge by an outer mechanism.
    He forgets he egged her on the wrong course.
    Idlers dissipate and like Micawber wait for something to turn up.
    The final stroke of spiritual wisdom lies in seeing Lydia as the bringer of luck.
    It is Wickham who by his own strategy made Elizabeth know the value of Darcy.
    Wickham gave her the knowledge, Lydia gave her the husband.
    That was not the intention of either, but it was life’s intention.
    Not to resent Lydia-Wickham is an opening; appreciating them is receptivity.
    Offering gratitude to what they have done avoiding their personality is to see the Marvel in their life.
    Offering gratitude to them will release the infinity of tragedy.
    To recognize evil serving the cause of Marvel and not giving any scope beyond that is the evolutionary strategy needed.
    Caroline’s letter to Elizabeth must be replied to its spirit only.
    The asuras worked to find amrita, but giving them amrita will make them immortal.
    Wickham and Lydia offer a service which can be accepted, not them.
    We eat what the spoon carries, not the spoon.
    The woman conceives to the Man, accepts the child, not the Man.
    A tyrant or a betrayer leads us to Mother, we receive the knowledge, not the Man.
    Discovering Mother in the evil instrument, the instrument is dissolved.
    Attachment to the instrument is attachment to the Form, counterproductive.
    We cannot be attached to our bodies or Minds and how to be attached to a human instrument.
  9. “She is luckily too poor to be an object of prey to anybody”.
    What can be gained from an event is never seen fully.
    Man has a greater love of destroying something for somebody than of gain.
    It is easier to destroy than to construct.
    One like Mr. Bennet may not easily see that source of pleasure. It is like transgression which is itself a temptation.
    Instead of thinking what the other man will gain, thinking what we will lose, one more dimension will arise.
    This sentence implies an impermissible pleasure in her if she became such a prey.
    Mr. Bennet certainly became perverse having allowed his wife her way.
    That perversity expresses mostly in his native sarcasm.
    He is frustrated beyond measure.
    Unexpressed frustration is the raw material for perversity of feeling and sarcasm of speech.
    He makes a theory of girls being crossed in love when Jane was sore about Bingley.
    A faculty seeking expression is insensitive to others.
    A faculty is a formation of force.
    Sarcastic speech is the unformed expression of a sarcastic faculty.
    The compulsion of the instrument Mother speaks of regarding the atom bomb is the power of a faculty.
    Sarcasm did become a formed faculty in him over the years, maybe it was built on his native trait.
    His negative comment on Jane being crossed in love and a farfetched justification of it was, to say the least, unpardonable.
    He extended it to a prophesy to Lizzy which came true.
    He did not have the penetration into Wickham’s character to advise Lizzy.
    His incapacity to welcome the greatest good luck that came his way is partly due to this sarcastic temperament.
    Darcy’s engagement not giving scope for any sarcastic statement disappoints him and therefore he refuses consent.
  10. “The officers will find women better worth their values”.
    Low culture does not give sensational value to a woman.
    Sensational value is that which makes something real to a Man.
    Earth going round the Sun is not sensationally real to us.
    Hospitality is not a reality in sensation to people of low culture.
    Pain is thus real. But a prick need not pain as the body and the pin are the same.
    It is the same to the philosophy of the Mind, not the sensation of the vital.
    The descent of Mind on the vital or the body makes pain unreal to the vital.
    Its descent to the body makes death unreal to the body, especially when it is the spirit that descends or the Supermind.
    Bribe hurts a sensitive Man.
    Incorruptibility is a mental value.
    Its descent to the vital makes the vital sensitivity possible.
    Chastity is a mental value, often raised to spirit.
    Woman often marry out of compulsion Men they abhor.
    A woman who marries a debauchee finds her very body sensitive enough not to conceive for him.
    A pure man of high values of mental idealism will be sensitive to the very words of a wife physically pure, but mentally not chaste.
    He cannot stand the touch of the woman.
    In a similar situation a chaste wife’s flesh will creep at an impure touch of the husband.
    Ego has made selfishness vitally sensitive.
    Money and social status have so become sensational values in human kind.
    In the future evolving humanity, Men and Women given to animal behaviour will be written off.
    Viewed from this point of view, Lily Dale and Emily Wharton stand out as shining examples of feminine virtue of purity. Mercedes may not qualify.
    Elizabeth has not sought entry into the qualifying list.
    Chastity in India raised to the spiritual level has acquired a cultural value.
    Women who violate the culture in a modern atmosphere will develop compunction in later years.
  11. “Her being there may teach her her own insignificance”.
    Man instinctively knows his own great significance.
    If there is something Man stubbornly refuses to learn, it is his own folly or wrong.
    Another excellent peculiarity of Man is he readily expects from all others what he is unable to be – rational, fair, selfless, good.
    What makes him act like that is his ego.
    Ego is separative, with a vengeance.
    Selfishness is an inward movement.
    Egoistic selfishness at its perfection prides in accusing everyone else of being what he is.
    Man makes his own capacity not to see what he is an outstanding ideal.
    Mr. Bennet here rises to that ideal.
    He could be like that for various reasons, one of them being a great reader.
    Most books of that period instinctively uphold the rightness of condemning a Papist, a Frenchman, one who does not belong to his class or party.
    It was a period where prejudice was a policy, even an ideal.
    His constant reading reinforced his convictions.
    Reading thus became a means to fortify his superstition.
    Innovations, instruments in any period serve the aims of the period.
    He was an indolent landowner who loved the country and hated London.
    Land makes Man tamasic; retiring into the library organizes indolence; hatred of town is shunning change.
    He shunned his wife which made him cherish what he was by reading.
    Conservation is cherishing the essence of experience.
    In practice it matures into adoration of superstition.
    His expecting Lydia to learn her own insignificance was his flying in the face of a stark fact that he had never learnt his own meaninglessness.
    Society had formulated itself to his consciousness and withdrew.
    Society does not compel anyone to change as long as he does not cross it.
    Man calls it peaceful life or mental peace.
    It is one of the cherished social ideals.
  12. “She cannot grow many degrees worse”.
    Man never sees that there are several grades lower than his worst.
    When grace comes, he is similarly overwhelmed.
    Consciousness overtakes unconsciousness in this fashion.
    Technology has always taken Man by such a surprise.
    Man who has traversed so many degrees of life below the worst he can now conceive of forgets the stages he has crossed.
    He who forgets his own experience cannot imagine what is beyond him.
    At every stage in the last three hundred years, the American was thus positively surprised.
    Stock market prices rising is of this fashion.
    Refugee camps are of the opposite side of this character.
    A weak Man, the weakest in his society at every turn faces these alternatives.
    The untouchable, the outcaste has a life full of these sudden revelations.
    At the time of founding an empire, a clerk rises to the level of Governor–General.
    Robert Clive, accused of plunder, declared that in the situation he had been in, he must be appreciated for his self-restraint. So great the world opens to the trail blazer.
    The world is wide on either side of Man, infinitely wide.
    The dog by the side of a river in spate can only drink by licking the water.
    Life opened to Jane like that, to Elizabeth it showed greater heights.
    Charlotte’s mercenary wedding, Lydia’s impulsive non-wedding were the direct causes of Jane and Elizabeth’s joy.
    The evil Man’s active impulse to demolish goodness is employed by Life to construct great good luck unimagined.
    The evil Man subconsciously longs for dissolution, not knowing there is an evolutionary opportunity waiting.
    Human beings in a well established organization unable to grow with its growth choose to dissolve themselves. Life, if it chooses, can use them for positive purposes.
    He says Life grows through good as well as evil.
    God has nothing but enjoyment. We cannot condemn any of these enjoyments.
    We must try to understand them. Mind cannot. Soul can. The Psychic has only the right understanding all the time.
  13. “without authorizing us to lock her up”.
    He cannot lock her up. He can lock himself up in the library.
    He is unable to act, wants an external sanction for him to act.
    He would like to lock up his wife; he is not authorized to do so now.
    Locking her up for any length of time, will have no effect on Lydia.
    More than one in ten children in USA fall out of the social groove.
    It is out of this population the future Individual has to emerge.
    For one Individual to emerge, one million must disintegrate.
    Those who disintegrate provide the foundation in the subconscient of the society. In USA we see that foundation is being created in the inconscient.
    Every great emperor stood on such foundations laid centuries ago.
    During those centuries Men thus lost were totally lost.
    Nowadays institutions spring up to save them from utter ruin.
    Now that knowledge is there, parents cannot only save the children, but as Darcy did, can make them wonders of the future.
    The parent must be willing to undergo in his inner life the corresponding changes.
    Darcy did it all, Elizabeth cooperated.
    Had Darcy commissioned all the forces of Pemberley, spent an enormous amount of Money, without that inner change he would not have traced them.
    When traced they might not marry. If married they would not stick together. In the meanwhile Darcy would have developed the same problem at home.
    Locking her up is no solution.
    It is the only solution Mind can conceive of.
    At best it will solve no problem. At worst it will complicate a simple error into a complex insoluble tangle.
    There are moments Life acts at once.
    Dantes on his way to the altar was led to jail.
    Life precipitated results when Dantes took no initiative.
    Bennet locking her up in a room may find himself locked up behind bars.
    Shortcuts of Mind are sure roads to eternal ruin.
21
With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content; but her own opinion continued the same, and she left him disappointed and sorry. It was not in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was no part of her disposition.
  1. Mr. Bennet’s authority is great. Elizabeth does not protest.
  2. Elizabeth accepts his refusal as she has her own arrears
  3. “It is not in her nature to increase her vexations”. (P. 206)
    Resilience from disappointment and sorrow augers well.
    Her own nature is buoyant. The forgotten proposal of Darcy and the lingering adoration of Wickham were additional sources of her revival.
    These may be subconscious.
    Invitation to the Lakes was a live source of liveliness.
    Mr. Bennet relied on his capacity to ward off a necessity to stir.
    She, as she gave up Darcy, gave up hopes of moving her father.
    Life moved him in shameful, painful circumstances.
    Life is a movement that cannot be stopped.
    If the highest faculty in him fails to move him, lower possibilities compel him to move his lower possibilities.
    His refusal and her giving up both moved him out of his house through the elopement.
    At all points forces co-ordinate.
    At all points forces exhibit complementarity.
    At all moments, rules are obeyed.
    Every moment is live.
    Life moves inertly by itself.
    Man gives that movement a conscious direction.
    He is himself moved and his world too is moved by an inconscient energy.
    His conscious movement is by employing the inconscient energy.
    Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth acted out of practical ignorance.
    She partly overcame that by moving to Mind.
    It was not enough in her to move him.
    Material forces obey mechanical laws.
    Forces of Spirit or Mind are not mechanical.
    Hers was an argument, mental argument.
    Her mental argument was unable to move his lazy vital.
    In moving him, she was really trying to move her mother who was then energized by the invitation.
  4. “She was confident of having performed her duty and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety was no part of her disposition”.
    Performance of one’s duty permits of several definitions.
    People perform their duties differently when they are differently affected.
    Duties can be mental or emotional or even physically threatening.
    She acted from her very subconscious depths when Lydia ran away.
    Whether she could have done more with her father is a question, as everywhere there is a limit to a person’s endeavour.
    It is true that one moves his most if his interests are at stake.
    Not to fret over the unavoidable, of course, is a great asset, she had.
    It is equally true that there was nothing compelling her to give up her solicitude to Wickham which, of course, she did not give up even after the elopement.
    Performance of duties depends upon understanding and capacity.
    She never had the understanding that her solicitude for Wickham could hurt Lydia.
    Had she had it, there is the question whether she had the capacity to give it up.
    At those points, such an ununderstanding or incapacity has a wider purpose to serve.
    This seems to be one where the service of Wickham was necessary to all.
    To be able to know precisely the service of the worst for the best is wisdom.
    Lady Arabella’s persecution generated in Mary the intensity of consciousness that could receive the fortune.
    Dantes deserved a purer love and the greatest possible wealth. Life gave them to him through jail life.
    Dantes’ loyalty to his captain brought him a wealth that was as great as the French Revolution and a love that was so pure as to disregard that wealth.
    Evil persons serve the good cause by betrayal, self destruction, deceit, etc.
    In certain cases as Lady Arabella the persecutor was rewarded.
    The rules of psychological strength passing to another, social status changing hands expressing through wealth, luck, goodness, power are, though complex, within our complete reach.
22
Had Lydia and her mother known the substance of her conference with her father, their indignation would hardly have found expression in their united volubility. In Lydia's imagination, a visit to Brighton comprised every possibility of earthly happiness. She saw, with the creative eye of fancy, the streets of that gay bathing place covered with officers. She saw herself the object of attention to tens and to scores of them at present unknown. She saw all the glories of the camp -- its tents stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet; and, to complete the view, she saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six officers at once.
  1. The well-formed idea of elopement was not in Lydia’s mind, but the energy, motive, imagination, urge to enjoy are there.
  2. No one at home is combative or is capable of stirring up domestic discord.
  3. Mrs. Bennet moved up socially but now is trying to pull her family down instead of raising it. Lydia is a miniature of Mrs. Bennet. So, she indulges her daughter. Whether the family is going to maintain its status or will move up or slide down is given to the human choice. As she was determined to dissipate, Mr. Bennet rose to the occasion and through Jane and Elizabeth raised the family sky high. In a positive atmosphere a determined negative initiative has its opposite effect
  4. “Had Lydia and her mother known her secret meeting with her father their indignation would have found expression in their united volubility”.
    The rule of accomplishment says that any work that is given the maximum sincerity one is capable of giving will smoothly be accomplished.
    Before meeting her father Elizabeth had recognized the source of danger was Lydia but, of course, she never suspected any vicious plan on her part. Or she had no special reason to suspect Wickham in that context. Her fear was Lydia’s attitude.
    Sincerity is more than subtle, can even touch the causal.
    No doubt, it is capable of reminding her of the presence of Wickham there.
    Such a reminder would have fully alerted her to the real danger.
    Had she given up Wickham from her vital, approached her father with the sincerity the situation demanded, events would have taken another course.
    Sincerity is to condemn what deserves condemnation.
    Palliser took Glencora to Europe refusing the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
    The Duke told Palliser those offers were rare, not to be repeated.
    On his return it was again offered to him in honour of his sincerity.
    Sincerity never knows defeat.
    She totally believed Wickham as he was sincere to his falsehood in that falsehood in him was not a behaviour or belief but a real existence.
    Sincerity goes with the commitment of determination in the substance.
    Today one can be more sincere as the spiritual atmosphere supports it.
    As civilization increases ease of existence and functioning, technology offers greater comforts, the Spiritual atmosphere enables a small Man to exhibit greater sincerity today.
    Sincerity is the voice of the awakened soul.
    Sincerity that is total is the attitude of the Being; the darkness of that Being can vitiate one’s sincerity as Elizabeth’s sincerity was ineffective as long as she cherished the falsehood of the scandal.
    Darcy was sincere to his Quest; his quest was pure.
    His sincerity to her abolished his pride, selfishness, meanness, etc. at one stroke.
  5. “In Lydia’s imagination a visit to Brighton comprises of every possibility of earthly happiness”.
    A consecrated act comprises of every possibility of divine joy.
    Certainly this is not the consecration vocally voiced to solve problems.
    It will be interesting to consider consecration at the levels of Mind, emotions and sensations.
    Only Mental consecration will lend itself to words.
    To consider the other levels of consecration, one has to enter subtle life, use insight and touch upon intuition.
    Open Mind, a Mind of fresh perspective, an alert Mind are daily used concepts.
    We are alert, have a fresh view, enjoy an open Mind when we are serious.
    As our usual exercise of Mind is vastly different from this seriousness of Mind, the latter is far far removed from the Mind Original unencumbered, ready to consecrate fully.
    There are occasions where a leader of volunteers is asked to lead the party, the richest Man speaks to you recognizing your integrity and capacity, the lady you love speaks the same language of your heart. Man involuntarily goes to the original depths of his Mind. Life threatening fears also give the same opening for a second. A serious Man can see outside his opinion. If he tries he can dismantle one opinion and feel the freedom of Mind. Mental habits are encrustations. Ideas are thoughts our Minds have sanctioned and formulated. Preference can be given up with difficulty. Constructions are what we put in. They can be deconstructed. Such an exercise fully engaged in will give glimpses of the fresh Mind. There in its freshness there will be irresistible urges to call a brother, to consider an important issue or not to do something. These movements are beyond manners, censor, thought. Only Silence can give us access to it. Our mental sensitivities will be entrenched there, the value of my family, the sanctity of chastity, patriotism, the sacredness of purity. These are great, but even they are obstacles as mental sensitivity. Consecration reaching there can have instantaneous results. If it does not, the whole issue may not have received the benefit of this consecration. Memory disappearing, Silence taking possession, Force entering the body, the body thrilling are signs of the right measure of consecration. To reach there is a total effort. To remain there is yoga in Mind. Yogic credentials come to us when the consecration covers thoughts, emotions, sensation and the physical sensation. The very best indication of its being right is to forget the issue we started the consecration for.
    A further real question arises. One waits for long months or years, but no opening comes.
    What is his alternative? It happens for several reasons. The most common is the aspiration to consecrate does not have sufficient concentration. Consecration needs a greater concentration than to go to the inner being to meet the witness Purusha. The concentration needed for consecration is one whose intensity will help him cross the surface Mind to subliminal Mind via the inner Mind. Any consecration not backed with sufficient concentration flounders, does not take off. Concentration on the thought fully will meet the Jnana yogic requirement. Here it must have overcome the ego and Time, not only Mind. One who has come to Mother has Her help, if only he surrenders to Her, not relying on his own capacity to concentrate – an egoistic effort – by which he by a slip would allow the ego to become strong by his concentration. It is very deceptive, but deception will give way before sincerity. Ego cannot cheat sincerity. Opening, receptivity, Sincerity are the watchwords. On seeing his consecration not yielding the result, he should realize that it cannot be done by his unaided efforts. He must understand he walked into the trap of ego. A simple but totally sincere prayer will get over the obstacle.
    The most common obstacle is to make the effort, i.e. egoistic effort thus defeating the purpose. This is a case of subconscious insincerity. Such a Man cannot be helped. We have to wait till he realizes it. Mr. Bennet cannot be made to prevent Lydia from going to Brighton. We must wait for the elopement. Yoga is not for all. Simple devotees delude themselves they are doing yoga by reading or meditating. Such people are to be disillusioned.
    There are those who mistake their vital or Mental as the Psychic and try in vain are those who have not entered the zone. I have listed 140 indications as signs for fitness for yoga, e.g. meditation descending on us, Silence seeking us, Mother’s subtle Darshan, etc. To them there is a spiritual possibility. Yoga is for those to whom it has become the one and the only aim. Anything less than that cannot make a beginning. He is not one who prays to solve a problem or seek an opportunity. It is a subconscious awareness that is always aware of the presence inside and outside. A serious effort if rewarded in thirty years, says Mother, is lucky. In Her atmosphere, complete Faith and total effort She says will give the opening in three months.
    Yogic concentration demands the consecration of each heartbeat. Thus the subconscious becomes conscious. Heartbeat is a physical act. Before that there is the vital life. Mental life precedes it. There is a mental life, a life of thought that belongs to the body. It is the body in the Mind. The two earlier stages are the vital in the Mind and the mental functions in the Mind.
    When the running thoughts stop in the Mind, Memory and Thinking are active. Memory will remain as long as we are in the surface Mind. Only when we reach the subliminal, memory ceases to function. Thinking is a faculty. It can be a habit. As long as we believe thought is valuable we cannot get over that faculty. We all have, especially the devotees, many experiences where non-thinking proved to be more powerful than thinking. That should move us to Silence, the value of Silence. Till then the faculty of thinking will be active. The Memory of that faculty is what He calls the censor. Its conquest is preceded by the conquest of the vital and body in the Mind. Before the thought forms at any level – Mind, vital, body – it rises as an urge which splits into innumerable impulses. Consecration proceeding on right lines arrives at the consecration of mental impulses. It will be an attempt to catch air with our hands. General Silence can quiet them. Now we are face to face with the Mental urge. To get behind that and consecrate it is to win a major initial battle in Silence. It should be followed by the conquest of the vital urge – vital urge in Mind. Finally we face the bodily physical urge in the MIND. To get behind that urge and then consecrate it is a stupendous task that brings Silence permanently. All these various functions are functions in the Mind relating to itself, the vital and the Mind. In the Mind itself these exist at its level of consciousness and at the level of substance. Thought at the level of substance is power. Silence at that level moves Matter. One who is working to control his expectation will find it at all these levels. All these stages are to be repeated at the vital, physical level for the subconscious to become conscious. Consecration of the heartbeat is the physical function of the body now fully under the control of the subconscious. It is a prolonged effort requiring enormous patience, not to be rushed through in human haste.
    One who has seen the urge at once knows it is not something at his disposal like the current in a river in spate.
    It cannot be handled ordinarily, but it is true Man has dammed the river and utilized the water for other purposes.
    Consecration of the urge needs a similar psychological effort, never anything less.
    It is the urge or force of the ego. Ego will not on its own offer surrender.
    It is the will of the Soul, the Psychic, that can surrender the ego.
    The will acts on its knowledge.
    The will of the soul surfaces when the will of the Mind exhausts itself.
    Such a will is the commitment of determination in the substances.
    Conception – clarity – organization of ideas – belief – conviction – decision – determination – commitment is the process of its maturity.
    Man cannot do this yoga. It is the Divine that does the yoga. Man’s part is surrender is the primary idea to be conceived.
    Mind conceives of an idea which it sees.
    Even at the level of conception, a clarity is necessary.
    Clarity gives strength.
    Before the will launches on a belief based on it, the idea that has gained clarity must be organized into power through the structure of one’s character.
    Belief matures by experience into conviction.
    A decision based on it is powerful in the consciousness.
    The decision moving to the substance becomes the determination.
    The whole Mind accepting the determination is commitment.
    A commitment to consecration by itself matures into surrender.
    The sense of surrender is a freedom of the cool emergence of the Psychic.
    All this can be done by human effort, better still by the withdrawal of it.
    Elizabeth forgetting that Darcy proposed, Mother forgetting that He wanted to leave are the exact phenomena we can witness inside when the sincerity is awake and active.
    Sincerity is an opening given to receptivity.
    We surrender to it to which we are sincere.
  6. “She saw with the creative eye of fancy officers, herself the object of attention, herself tenderly flirting with six of them”.
    All great people are creative at their own level.
    Lydia is poetic, creative, imagines possibilities that could be made actualities by the strength of her personality.
    It is pure physical energy released in infinite abundance lacking any direction or organization.
    An aspirant for the Chief Minister’s post while alone in that office was concentrating his gaze on the chair of Chief Minister for half an hour till his friends who missed him came around and collected him. He aspired, his aspiration was focused.
    Lydia aspired, her aspiration was not focused.
    On receiving the invitation she flew around the house.
    She was irresistibly speaking dropping Wickham often.
    Irresistible speech is that of energy that cannot be controlled.
    She was not looking for marriage or a husband; she was seeking pure enjoyment for enjoyment’s sake.
    Her mother was fully in tune with this vibration and wanted the daughter to enjoy.
    From this physical resource one has to travel through the vital to mental personality which Elizabeth had done.
    The mental effort is like that of a breeder of plants who grows his plants for experiment.
    The physical energy is that of a goat that eats those plants for food.
    Surely the mental height achieved by Bennet must have been great to have produced Elizabeth and that too out of Mrs. Bennet, a bundle of physical energy which produced Lydia.
    No wonder even in Elizabeth there was an abundant residue of her mother’s falsehood to readily fall a victim to Wickham in spite of her great mental endowment.
    Jane Austen allots Lydia six officers for tender flirting!
    Unless and until we find the greatness of Lydia’s personality and its serious significance to the story, we will fall short of our goal.
    To that we must add the heroism of Wickham.
23
Had she known that her sister sought to tear her from such prospects and such realities as these, what would have been her sensations? They could have been understood only by her mother, who might have felt nearly the same. Lydia's going to Brighton was all that consoled her for the melancholy conviction of her husband's never intending to go there himself.
  1. “Had Lydia known Elizabeth had tried to prevent her going to Brighton, what would be her sensation”.
    Habitual offender psychologically matures into a rightful owner.
    This is an age old sensation of humankind.
    Children pluck away your toy and declare it cannot be sold for less than
    Rs. 5/-.
    It is a crude, silly joke but it graphically expresses the thought of humanity.
    The Arab story of the camel’s head let into the tent illustrates it. The camel feels a right to eject the owner.
    Physicality functions by strength.
    That was the rationale of the duel.
    The Mind of the physical Man thinks that if he is right he must win.
    Thought certainly originates in the body.
    Today the world believes Man is mental.
    Mind is the seat of thoughts.
    The thoughts that govern the life of Europe were all born in Greece 2500 years ago.
    Mankind follows those thoughts; in following Man thinks he is Mental.
    Only Hamlet saw Mind was born in the common Man.
    One cannot count more than twelve or thirteen governing ideas, if he is looking for original ideas.
    The entire thinking of European life is an effort of the Mind of the common Man rising to the level of Greek thought.
    In the last two hundred years there is no evidence – outside Sri Aurobindo – of Man trying to understand his social existence. Even the effort too is not there.
    The sole effort of Mind in economics in society is that of Marx.
    Science and economics are part of life, not life as a whole.
    The Rishis had not theoretically applied their Minds to life. They shunned it. Their knowledge of life is shining sparks, not a flame. America that lived so successfully for four hundred years does not even try to apply her Mind to their life, nor Europe.
    Life is physical vital, not yet Mental in its own sense, a life guided by thought.
  2. “They could have been understood only by her mother who felt like her”.
    People consider institutions are there only to serve them.
    Even the ocean of energy Man wants for his petty personal use.
    After shedding the egoistic view, Man feels like this.
    To get rid of ego is a great yogic siddhi.
    Mrs. Bennet feels strongly to go to Brighton oblivious of the consequences.
    To her family is not a vehicle of culture.
    To her there is no danger around, only enjoyment.
    She is blind, boorish, and full of initiative.
    Thieves, who came to Ramanashram finding no valuables, beat Maharishi for not having them.
    Mrs. Bennet is like these thieves.
    It is all right for her to live among thieves.
    She is the wife of a gentleman who did not control her. His life was one of tapas.
    One Man invited as a manager of a newly formed company asked for the company after five years.
    Is it possible for us to enter into his scheme of things and take his point of view, as his point of view does matter for the whole.
    The country was then poised and many things – capital, technology, expertise, information, free communication, etc. – were offered almost free. The greed in him responds to that. Politicians feel the freedom to loot the treasury, bankers do so with public deposits. More and more things become cheaper and cheaper. Some come free. Society’s resources are becoming plentiful. Man senses that. Wickham was aware of the abolition of the aristocratic privileges. His scandal about Darcy was his way of announcing what came to pass two hundred years later. Lydia with a foresight of the 20th century became a girl of our times. She was a futurist. The future horizon she and Wickham opened brought to two sisters social benevolence. We see that benevolence as upward social movement.
24
But they were entirely ignorant of what had passed; and their raptures continued, with little intermission, to the very day of Lydia's leaving home.
  1. “They were entirely ignorant of what had passed”.
    Mind’s vision is ignorance of everything except the one thing before it.
    It holds up one and holds back all the other things.
    That way the infinite can emerge out of the finite.
    To make the potential capacities of Mr. Bennet actualities in the society at the highest possible level, Mrs. Bennet intensifies the other side. A Jane and Elizabeth were possible by his withdrawing into the library. A Bingley and Darcy could not be brought there by Mr. Bennet. He had no ambition as his values frowned on ambition. His indolence would maintain the status quo as he had no energy for aspiration. She had tremendous ambition which became the aspiration of the entire village. It is her intense aspiration that brought Bingley and Darcy to her. Having achieved her ambition of bringing those youth there, she was unable to retire into inactivity. Her part was over. It came as a submissive Bingley and proud Darcy. Wickham came to make Elizabeth appreciate Darcy. Of course, he could work for his own appreciation. Elizabeth could never deserve Darcy without her overcoming her mother in her. Jane could never get Bingley on her own merits. As Elizabeth aspired in good will for Jane, Wickham aspired for Darcy in ill-will. The developments in the story are the steps by which Elizabeth overcame her mother in her. Elizabeth had to do it on her behalf as well as on Jane’s behalf. A tail was added to it by way of Lydia. Elizabeth was to take on herself Lydia too on behalf of the family. The mother’s ambition brought the opportunity. Her forcing Elizabeth to receive Collins took her to Hunsford. Life allows each person to act as he can so that ultimately its purpose will be served. Had not Wickham gone away with Lydia Mr. Bennet would not have stopped Mrs. Bennet’s exuberances. Wickham’s precipitation of the elopement made Darcy rise to such noble heights that enabled him to accept Elizabeth as the sister of Lydia and a daughter of Mrs. Bennet. A social view will reveal the story to us. Only an evolutionary view, a view that fully appreciates the role of everyone will reveal the higher intentions of the story.
  2. “their raptures continued with little intermission to the very day of Lydia’s leaving”.
    Everything in creation understood as it came will reveal its Marvel.
    Mrs. Bennet is a Marvel. To see her otherwise is our ignorance.
    Ignorance is so constituted to hide the play of knowledge, and perfected on the surface by ego, Mind, Time is, He says, greater than knowledge.
    A greater character in a play is the creation of genius.
    To act his part in the right spirit is to recreate in human existence the creation of genius in his own imagination.
    That part can be that of a king or a non-entity, a beggar.
    To act any of these parts requires the same genius.
    The Divine casts itself into the part it assumes and lets itself flower as that part.
    We call it the creative genius of the actor.
    It is the divine creativity of genius in each speck of earth.
    The actor lets the part blossom through him receiving it in his genius.
    Human choice is to choose with the attitude that the divine creativity is made possible.
    Not to prefer any human attitude is the essential qualification.
    Devotion to the Divine is the human solicitude to invite the Divine to emerge in the human.
    Initially the ego is to be surmounted.
    Later the three modes of Self are to be given up and the will in it surrendered.
    That enables the Psychic to emerge.
    Man chooses so that he may survive, grow and progress.
    Human choice becomes effective when Man makes the choice so that he – ego – may no longer be there.
    Mr. Bennet’s unwillingness to refuse permission to Lydia is egoistic.
    Mrs. Bennet’s delight is that of expansive ego.
    Elizabeth’s complaints to her father, her sense of resignation to his refusal are egoistic acquiescence.
    Choice is between ego and soul.
    Human choice chooses to become Divine.
25
Elizabeth was now to see Mr. Wickham for the last time. Having been frequently in company with him since her return, agitation was pretty well over; the agitations of former partiality entirely so. She had even learnt to detect, in the very gentleness which had first delighted her, an affectation and a sameness to disgust and weary. In his present behaviour to herself, moreover, she had a fresh source of displeasure, for the inclination he soon testified of renewing those attentions which had marked the early part of their acquaintance could only serve, after what had since passed, to provoke her. She lost all concern for him in finding herself thus selected as the object of such idle and frivolous gallantry; and while she steadily repressed it, could not but feel the reproof contained in his believing, that, however long, and for whatever cause, his attentions had been withdrawn, her vanity would be gratified, and her preference secured at any time by their renewal.
  1. Agitation in the company of Wickham is still there after Darcy’s letter.
  2. It is an enjoyment of low falsehood.
  3. ‘Idle frivolous gallantry’ is now blatant and flat. Still her agitation is there a little. She could not bring herself to let him know that he was exposed to her fully. She maintains the old level of politeness. She does not seem in her behaviour displeased with him
  4. Affectation to sameness and disgust too do not subside the agitation.
  5. His idle frivolous gallantry reveals itself now.
  6. “Elizabeth now saw Wickham for the last time”
    Liking of a person is never sufficiently neutralized by his disgusting parts.
    One who has received his values in his sensitivity will feel like the heroine of ‘wreck’.
    Even the original flutterings had not fully subsided in her.
    Wickham came to her as she could be approached through falsehood.
    She could be approached through falsehood as Darcy was overlaid by mental falsehood of pride, etc.
    She was not one who could be approached by the pure families of aristocracy.
    Whether such families exist is a question.
    Aristocracy rose to great heights of purity and culture but it was always built on cruelty, falsehood, roughness.
    Royalty too was like that.
    The great Rishis had not gotten rid of the evil foundations.
    The Rishis aimed at security from evil, not transformation of evil.
    The relationship of good and evil in daily life is an important topic.
    The tongue is served by teeth but the tongue has learnt to use the services of teeth without being bitten by it.
    Like electricity every great force serves when Man has mastered his relations with it.
    There is no morality in it; there is functional skill.
    Mother’s formula of great rewards for small effort captures it.
    Mr. Bennet’s effort is one right decision overdue.
    Elizabeth’s one little effort is to call a spade a spade.
    Charlotte’s greatest contribution is patient silent attentive listening.
    Jane’s most commendable greatness is to disbelieve an intrigue.
    Elizabeth cannot grow calm in Wickham’s presence much less feel an aversion, being the daughter of Mrs. Bennet who is still excited by the red coats.
    Human material is made for service and utility, not for change or transformation.
    In a mixture of good and bad, bad has all the power of attraction.
  7. “The agitation of former partiality entirely subsided”
    The value of Man is he does not forget what he once loved.
    It is a physical value, but still the world worships it.
    Should we cherish it, give it up; if so, how to do so?
    Any value in the ascent is to be overcome.
    Any value in the descent is to be preserved and cherished.
    If we want to cherish a value let us convert it from one of ascent into one of descent.
    Elizabeth was charmed by his manners, sweet voice.
    They represented in him the innate false character of his.
    Sweet voice, charming manners are to be cherished, not when they represent falsehood.
    You should cherish them in a good character.
    Or, if you can, when it falls to your lot, change this false character into good character and then cherish those values.
    With Wickham it was not her part or duty.
    Darcy took upon himself to accept her abuse and change her by changing himself.
    When all is said and done the charm of falsehood is more attractive than the charm of truth.
    A woman readily appreciates not the Man of perfect gentlemanly behaviour, but one who takes liberty with her.
    It is not only woman’s nature, but it is human nature, seen more often in women.
    One should dissociate himself from such vibrations.
    Integral yoga tells us that those vibrations are still of value.
    It is a double edged sword.
    Mastery is of value because it is a double edged sword.
    It is not only a key, but a Master key as one He speaks of in Savitri – a Master Act, a Prayer, a King Idea will make miracles commonplace.
  8. “She saw in the very gentleness which had first delighted her, an affectation and a sameness to disgust and weary”.
    A changed view gives a changed sensation.
    In moving from the physical to the vital, to the mental understanding does not matter. What matters is the sensational value.
    In all important discussions, a subtle sense – an insight – matters.
    Sensational values of cosmic consciousness reveal the earth going round the sun.
    Gaudy rich dress thrills vital sensation.
    Mental sensation is shy of it.
    Spiritual sensation does not feel the pain.
    To the Psychic pain is joy.
    Lydia gloated over her marriage which was abominable to Elizabeth.
    New ideas accepted from Romance Eternal can have a reverse sensation
    i.e. a dull relationship can suddenly become live.
    He who effects such a change can mentally concede that such a change is possible at every step.
    Knowledge for change of each step is there.
    That knowledge becomes a sensation.
    Once a step is experienced and the principle conceded, Man has to decide to receive his receptivity.
    Facts made Elizabeth change as above to give up falsehood.
    In another place as with Mrs. Bennet an event – Lydia’s marriage – brought about such a change.
    What made Darcy see wonder in place of ‘tolerable’ was new values.
    Those who come to Romance Eternal must know the knowledge for each level, acquire the appropriate values to reach the real goal.
    Pemberley first, next Lydia’s elopement – Mrs. Gardiner’s letter – gave Elizabeth new values.
    Jane was disillusioned by the visit of Caroline to Cheapside.
    Such changes are better received from inside.
  9. “She had a fresh source of displeasure, for the inclination he soon testified of renewing those attentions”.
    Changed understanding changes the attitude.
    What was pleasing earlier is now a game seen through, displeasing.
    One can know the difference in the other between the pre-marriage and post marriage attitude.
    He can know the same in himself, but it never occurs to him.
    Introspection, self-criticism, the other man’s point of view, self-awareness can unearth inconceivable realities about oneself.
    There is a natural disinclination of knowing oneself.
    One likes to imagine non-existing endowments in oneself.
    Self-knowledge is part of inner life.
    The entire institution’s history is in records, but it is not the real institution. It consists of people, materials, events, growth, activities.
    Our surface life is one of records.
    Real life, the real world is inside.
    The surface is too small to hold the universe, how can it house the Transcendence?
    What one sees before marriage is the surface life, real life is after marriage.
    Man does not know his own inner person. Where is the question of knowing another?
    Life moves by ebbs and flows. We know one at a time, not both.
    Even in reading a novel he who reads for the story misses a good deal.
    Behind is the character.
    Life and character of life are still behind.
    It rarely strikes a reader that the entire world is in the story.
    He who knows that never for a moment can conceive that what is in the story is a precise, direct, well defined description of what he is.
    The missing tenth Man can never be found, nor can one know the pencil is not broken. These are blatant facts. Life has subtle faculties, occult facts, causal realities.
    Rarely readers see the play of human choice in a story.
    No story can ever reveal to Man that he is the determinant.
  10. “She lost all concern for him in finding herself thus selected as the object of such idle and frivolous gallantry”. (P. 207)
    Attention is a fine art that finally matures into affection.
    Interest is vital energy released in another.
    Attention is a higher, focused form of interest.
    In the court where the king is the centre of attraction, attention developed as a human skill at its resourceful readiness becomes a qualification to receive rewards.
    The story of a visitor identifying the king who played a trick on him putting a courtier on the throne, himself sitting in his place suggests the level of alertness in the court to receive the attention of the king.
    The best of attentions is to know where another’s attention will go next.
    People popular with children know all about attention.
    He who gets all the attention of a child can secure anyone’s attention.
    Those who skillfully save others from an accident are those whose attention will be on everything simultaneously.
    Capacity for full sympathetic attention comes from a capacity of selfless self-giving.
    It is constitutional ignorance where the Mind is different from the vital.
    Attention to be alive must constantly vary in its expression.
    Attention, as every other thing, is infinite.
    Good manners can be described as the capacity to secure everyone’s attention.
    His gallantry was idle and frivolous, but his charm arises from the fact it is idle and frivolous.
    Had he been serious, he would not have caught everyone’s attention.
    Being idle and frivolous, he is emotionally accessible to everyone.
    One can be either frivolous or serious.
    Pleasantness combines seriousness with shallowness.
    Pleasant behaviour can be false.
    Truth that is pleasant to all is Simplicity.
  11. “While she steadily repressed it”.
    What is repressed is the vital reaction. It is repressed by Mind.
    Repressed urges resurface strengthened, often in inverse form.
    This is the result when the vital is strong and the Mental is weak.
    An enlightened Mind denying a weak willing vital vibration is self-restraint that is self-discipline.
    Society progresses by progressive individuals.
    The majority waits for the society to endorse the pioneers.
    The basic secret is the subconscious maturity is expressed by the progressive individuals.
    The spiritual truth is beyond this interdependence of the Individual and the society.
    The Individual is the key to evolution.
    He includes the universe in himself.
    He also includes the Transcendent in him.
    The Absolute descending into the universe and the Individual is a prior truth.
    Mental individuality of thought of Europe matured into the physical individuality of action in America whose earlier form was in production while its present acme is in technology.
    The Mind of Greece born in Socrates as a personal possession in 2000 years resurfaced as a public possession – the birth of Mind in the common Man.
    Spirit born in individuals in India must be born in the common Man and reveal itself as a personal possession as Mind revealed itself in Hamlet.
    Einstein’s formula is out of spiritual intuition.
    It is Spirit being born not in the field of spirituality but in the field of Mental knowledge.
    Spirit is to be born in vital – political, economic - knowledge.
    It would be completed when the Spirit is born in physical knowledge – knowledge of physical objects.
  12. “Her vanity gratified”.
    Vanity is what Man wants others to think of him.
    Pride is his own estimation of himself.
    One grows by achievements physical, vital, mental or spiritual.
    Achievements are inner and outer.
    He who has not achieved desires the result of achievement – popularity.
    Vanity is the illusion of expectation based on non-existent achievement.
    It is a phase through which real growth passes.
    A great poet in his indulgence called it the last infirmity of human Mind.
    Even solid achievements have a vain fringe sometimes.
    There are great characters who do not have the taint of vanity.
    It happens when one is not aware of social values.
    He may have vanity in other areas.
    Human foibles are often human necessity.
    One exercises his own faculties for the joy of it whose results come to be valued greatly in later ages.
    Such people have no way of comparing their attainments with others.
    They are oblivious of their merit.
    Shakespeare’s works were not valued for their worth for centuries.
    If he had been unaware of his genius and the merit of his works, there is no wonder.
    Sri Aurobindo says all great men know of their greatness.
    Jane Austen received £ 40 for Pride and Prejudice and that left no scope for gloating.
    Vanity is the vain exertion of one who has no strength or knowledge for any achievement while his ambition is to achieve all.
    He is one who gives himself what the world legitimately denies him.
    The world has a way of giving the opposite of what he seeks if his seeking has an energetic empty insistence.
    Vanity can be proud; pride can be vain.
  13. “And her preference secured at anytime by their renewal”.
    Preference is the vital choice.
    The physical has less choice. Almost it accepts what touches it.
    The vital quickly chooses according to its bent.
    Mind sees before it a wider choice as it sees more than the vital.
    The Spirit accepts all positively, generally, it does not choose.
    The Supramental chooses to transform irrespective of the condition of what is accepted.
    Choice arises out of the play in life.
    A rich Man has a wide enough choice; a poor Man is denied.
    A wise Man has several options to choose from while a stupid Man sees no choice.
    Choice expands life.
    The Spirit inside has infinite choices.
    A small Man never stirs out of his place.
    He has a horror of leaving the place where he was born.
    At the other extreme the explorer explores all over the world.
    An ordinary Man finding marriage is slavery accepts it as such.
    A resourceful Man explores other possibilities.
    One in quest of Romance never stops exploring and innovating.
    To make the best of a bad job is what life teaches us.
    Spirit does not see anything bad.
    Darcy found nothing bad in Elizabeth.
    His assumption became true.
    That is the power of spiritual belief.
    Elizabeth had no such assumption, belief or faith.
    All her interest was in Jane, not in herself.
    Once Darcy proposed again, Elizabeth came into her own.
    Her own is the highest best anyone can assume.
    In her joy she could forget her aunt for three days.
26
On the very last day of the regiment's remaining at Meryton he dined, with others of the officers, at Longbourn; and so little was Elizabeth disposed to part from him in good-humour that, on his making some enquiry as to the manner in which her time had passed at Hunsford, she mentioned Colonel Fitzwilliam's and Mr. Darcy's having both spent three weeks at Rosings, and asked him if he were acquainted with the former.
  1. She sees through his belief, how she is a mere thing for his ruse.
  2. “On the last day Wickham dined at Longbourn”.
    Two people meeting is life.
    Meeting emotionally is a landmark in life.
    First of such meeting, the last of such coming together are lasting marks in one’s emotional life.
    Emotional memory is neither factual nor rational.
    Once a lover, a lover forever.
    To love is to live fully.
    Those who have no heart or a heart that is dry cannot know what love is.
    Those who have a heart know nothing but love. Nothing else matters to them.
    Trollope’s heroines rise to their emotional heights.
    Love makes emotion powerful.
    Indian girls believe in past and future lives.
    The ideal belief is a girl has been wedded to a Man in his every birth.
    This is not spiritually true.
    It is emotionally comforting as an ideal, as well as a way of life.
    Popular beliefs about karma, rebirth, reward are vastly different from spiritual facts.
    Religion gives Man a superstition.
    He adorns it in a hundred ways.
    There is a great fulfillment in being superstitious whether it is true or not.
    Man lives by his beliefs.
    In time he raises them to the status of faith.
    The word faith has no such dimension.
    The Gita advises us not to relieve Man of his superstition.
    One – a girl or a follower – can believe in a murderer.
    Murder at the hands of a husband or leader is pleasantly acceptable.
    Moksha awaits such faith.
    It is a spiritual justification.
  3. “So little was Elizabeth disposed to part from him in good humour”.
    Any situation gives rise to a humour in Man.
    Good humour is the result of good circumstances.
    Good humour arising out of inner disposition raises Man above his circumstances.
    Her knowledge of the Man is damaging in the extreme.
    It has made her sour towards him.
    Her sensations were not sour as her conversation reveals.
    His skill in sensing the change in her is a skill in deceit.
    He would have made a great diplomat, had he been a gentleman.
    He has sensed the danger, danger of frequently meeting Darcy and living in the atmosphere of Darcy’s aunt. Still she is not sour. He relates to her expressed behaviour.
    He is one who kept his countenance after elopement.
    It means all his actions are Mental.
    Even his voice, facial expressions, physical gestures are Mental.
    Mind in him has fully mastered his vital.
    And that Mind is false.
    Gambling is the natural relaxation he seeks as his vital has been under a severe discipline all day long.
    The intensity of that Mental effort enhances the value of his charm.
    Imagine the cruel tyranny his vital was under while in Pemberley.
    He is immune to feminine charm, prone to destroy their character.
    What he needs is not an affectionate vital exchange that expands the being.
    He needs an outlet for his corked up physical energy, denied natural expression as it normally formulates itself.
    His sense of deprivation as he grew up among the plenty of Pemberley with absolutely no right to it, is a frustration in the extreme.
    He does not want to possess any woman, as his experience is any woman readily gives in.
    What is readily available is naturally not attractive.
    The life of a clergyman is certainly not for him.
  4. “She mentioned Colonel. Fitz Williams”.
    For a rumour-monger any person is a potential source of rumour.
    Wickham’s first unexpressed fear is what the colonel would have told her about him.
    We are sorry that rumour can often be false, negative.
    News spreading in the society is rumour. It can be positive or negative. No vibration can exist half. It needs both sides.
    Family members speak only the positive side. That creates relationship, not binding intimacy that longs for frequent revivals.
    News travels along the length and breadth of a country in a few days.
    It is not possible when the vibration is only positive – half.
    The foundation of a building is coarse, ugly. It is the nature of the other side.
    It never occurred to Wickham that Darcy’s daily visits to the Parsonage could have meant anything more than company.
    She was not socially or personally polite to him. She was romantically soft to him in her eager politeness.
    He was, in his turn, taken in by her unintended courtesy.
    He was a diplomat par excellence.
    Now that her mind was fully disillusioned, his master stroke about his joy knowing the improved manners of Darcy had no effect on her at all.
    Revenge, as love, is causeless. We see it in Dante.
    The intensity of revenge, even if it is frivolous in its consequence can be real to him who feels it.
    He was trying to retain the ground he had gained with her earlier.
    She was trying her feminine best not to let him see her changed Mind.
    The psychological meeting ground was as delicate as the meeting of lovers.
    He was an adept in making her come out with information.
    She was more than willing to supply information inoffensively.
    Social intercourse maturing into personal intimacy is a passage valuable to students of psychology in literature.
27
He looked surprised, displeased, alarmed; but with a moment's recollection and a returning smile, replied that he had formerly seen him often; and, after observing that he was a very gentlemanlike man, asked her how she had liked him. Her answer was warmly in his favour. With an air of indifference he soon afterwards added --
  1. Elizabeth’s acquaintance with the colonel raises a fright in him.
  2. Sensing no harm from her, he quickly smiles.
  3. Now that she has seen the colonel, he is truthful in the description.
  4. Her formal behaviour which is not unpleasant is her sanction to elopement.
  5. “With a moment’s recollection and a returning smile”.
    One of the main assets of human nature is its resilience.
    Rats survive in millions in spite of equal number of cats threatening their lives.
    A threat is no reason to withdraw from the field.
    A threat makes Man equip himself to survive in spite of it.
    Man’s civilization is a series of overcoming challenges.
    Every advance in technology is used for anti-social purposes.
    Even pests become immune to pesticides.
    Every reform is found to have loopholes effectively exploited by malicious Minds.
    Good manners came to existence as the pleasant exterior of benevolent gentle souls.
    It was taken by Wickham to entice Elizabeth.
    After fifteen days of confinement to bed Mrs. Bennet was ready to announce to the world her triumph in a trice.
    Today the basic human material is pessimistic about its future, comfort-minded in existence, cumbersome clumsily in thinking out a way out.
    He says the best ideal pursuit of Man is the discovery of God in Life.
    That will engage all his energies.
    Nothing else demands the energies of all the parts of his being.
    The need of the Hour is an integrated personality.
    This quest united all the parts of his being and further demands their integration.
    To a question Nelson Rockefeller replied there was nothing other than the Presidency for him to aspire to.
    All other efforts are partial, smaller, beside the point.
    Great international organizations speak of limits to growth.
    There are no limits to growth for one who wants to develop and evolve.
    Man uses an otiose, narrow, ossified, outmoded, inert instrument, intellectuality. Limits to growth are the limits to intellectuality.
    Man is infinite, Life is infinite, growth is infinite. There are no limits.
  6. “Wickham asked Elizabeth how she liked him”.
    One fundamental attribute of diplomacy is to remain relevant.
    One cannot afford to raise a suspicion in the other.
    An appearance of innocence, innocuousness is essential.
    This question is one such.
    Wickham wishes to know whether she has learnt anything of him from the colonel.
    Elizabeth did not even touch upon the essential information about Jane which the colonel gave her.
    Not like in the first meeting, she has grown alert.
    Except that she retained her affectionate solicitude for him, she has grown cautious. This time she never walked into his trap.
    To set a trap for another is the most resourceful method of mean people.
    He is an adept in it.
    The first time she was a victim which he fully exploited to his advantage.
    Now she saw through the Man, his game.
    Pleasantly, but cautiously, she dealt with him.
    The priestly class has developed this strategy all over the world with the rulers and ruled the world till democracy was born.
    Outside in society this approach has become the norm in the high councils of life.
    Logic and reason thus served Man, his purposes of psychological triumph.
    It has ended in self-deception and the annihilation of that class and that method.
    Still, rationality is not fully emancipated from that thralldom.
    Population is so sensitive that international fora cannot directly deal with it.
    Hence the approach ‘Limits to Rationality’.
    The most universally accepted theme of evolution of Darwin is not rationally justifiable.
    It is never sufficiently pointed out.
  7. “With an air of indifference he soon afterwardly asked how long Darcy was there.”
    Not to be interested is the sure way of getting things done.
    Women adopt this strategy, having it as a biological endowment.
    Man resorts to it when he, for whatever reason, forgets a work.
    One of Man’s social endowments is to adopt it artificially.
    Acting as if he is not interested –
    QµõUQ - he has learnt to get his work done.
    Law of life gives an opposite result when it is overdone.
    Civilised behaviour is to act readily without making one scarce.
    Culture is to behave as if you are receiving when you are giving.
    At least we must not resent those who adopt
    QµõUQ – this attitude.
    Understanding him from his point of view is better.
    The fullest appreciation of
    QµõUQ – giraki is to see its rightful place in the scheme of things and feel cheerful.
    Here one handles one’s sensitivity – mental or physical.
    For a normal goodness, it is the hardest part of reversal.
    To have the knowledge as a sensation that Mother deals with such a sensitivity as if it never existed will enable him to give it to Her.
    He who can do so knows Mother as human nature can know fully.
    Such a Mental knowledge of sensation can be taken up by his vital and even his physical.
    Success at those levels is successful overcoming of ego.
    Beyond this stage whatever capacities that accrue in him he may not be consciously aware of.
    Unself-awareness of outstanding capacities belongs to greatness.
    It is a condition when consecration turns into surrender.
    It is surrender becoming an attitude and moving to become a motive of the being.
    Now one realizes the truth of Her idea that there is no greater joy than a consecrated living.
    Consecration becomes a constant companion reminding us when we forget.
    This perception helps us see the sacredness of the feet of the criminal.
28
"How long did you say that he was at Rosings?"
29
"Nearly three weeks."
30
"And you saw him frequently?"
31
"Yes, almost every day."
32
"His manners are very different from his cousin's."
33
"Yes, very different. But I think Mr. Darcy improves on acquaintance."
  1. “Mr. Darcy improves on acquaintance” – Elizabeth to Wickham.
    Simple lack of knowledge can give us an opposite opinion.
    Democracy insists on knowing the other side; hence the opposition in the Parliament.
    Lack of knowledge may be due to lack of opportunity to know or hasty impatience.
    Elizabeth not knowing Darcy’s Mind, basing on the first comment, angrily interpreted his abiding interest in her.
    Nature’s way of making our ignorance discover more fully is to create an opposite opinion.
    This is so because Nature is the objective part of the Spirit.
    After Darcy proposed to her, she speaks of him as an acquaintance.
    Mentally she keeps the same original distance even after the proposal.
    Darcy is not real to her emotions, because of the social distance.
    Money alone cannot create that gap.
    She felt no such gap between Bingley and her family.
    It was not the wealth as the status of Pemberley.
    Wickham knew no calumny would emanate about him from Darcy.
    But, in these sensitive moments, anything could happen. He was cautious.
    A false character spends most of his energy in being cautious.
    Truth in him will make all those energies for progress.
    To be true is to be entirely free.
    Dishonesty, smallness, and fear consume all one’s energies.
    A false man of deceit renders the society his enemy in his imagination. Hence the suspicion.
    Wickham is like a cat on its expedition for rats constantly cautious about the jackal after him.
    At the highest level of creativity such as painting, the work is the reward.
    Scandal, malice, falsehood, lies when indulged in as a game dispense with any goals and have a way of becoming an end in itself.
    Falsehood puts one on eternal alert.
34
"Indeed!" Cried Wickham with a look which did not escape her. "And pray, may I ask -- ?" But checking himself, he added, in a gayer tone, "Is it in address that he improves? Has he deigned to add ought of civility to his ordinary style! -- for I dare not hope," he continued in a lower and more serious tone, "that he is improved in essentials."
  1. Elizabeth takes the trouble to soften her new understanding of Darcy. It is not as if Darcy is changed as in Pemberley. When the letter was given, his air was haughty.
  2. Wickham does not spare a shade of his understanding to be turned to his advantage. She is soft to him.
  3. “Is it in address that he improves?”
    One can improve in his address but remain the same in character. Wickham at that moment does not know what he accuses Darcy of is something exactly describing himself
    The exterior vastly differs from the interior.
    Together the exterior and the interior constitute one’s conscious personality while his subconscious he is not aware of.
    Mother alone explained the mystery of the opposite character between parents and children as in Nehru and Indira.
    All that one is not in his life expresses itself in the children is her explanation.
    Social life can be ethical or moral.
    Not life which is neutral.
    It allows itself to be served by good and evil.
    Man is so much human that he cannot sanction evil.
    The Divine is so true to itself that it cannot discountenance any aspect of Nature, because Nature is nothing but Divine.
    There is nothing undivine in existence is Sri Aravindam.
    When we think of Nehru, our sensitivity will not admit deceit to be a part of his character.
    In our view he is purity itself.
    When someone accused him of jealousy in the Parliament, an opposition Member was quick on his legs to contradict it and declared that no one could teach it to him.
    Still human character is incomplete without jealousy and all similar things.
    It is proudly claimed that there can be nothing in life not found in the Mahabharatha.
    This bit of knowledge of human nature is not in that epic.
    Mother claims there can be nothing in the world of present or future that is not in Savitri.
    It is true because His Life is whole life.
  4. “Has he deigned to add ought to civility to his ordinary style” he continued in a lower and more serious tone.
    A message is more conveyed by its tone than words.
    In fact the facial expressions, all the bodily movements, the voice, its various fluctuations give the content to the words.
    The words themselves are picked out of a range.
    We can go further. The entire physical, vital, subtle atmosphere in the room fixes the character of the message.
    Above all, the rasi of the person who brings the message matters.
    The time of the day, the particular spot, from whom it comes, to whom it goes, what the message signifies, etc. matter.
    A message is a world of its own, having a personality with all those components.
    Such a message has a function of communication, a social value, another psychological value, a spiritual significance, etc.
    One who knows fully all these significances can give this message a force of determinism.
    Such powers are endless. Those powers are subtle, occult, causal, evolutionary, universal, cosmic, spiritual, etc.
    Infinite literally means infinite.
    One can see the Absolute in the event that is apparently relative.
    An event is a cosmic evolutionary unit.
    It is a crystal into which one can gaze, see the past or future of the world.
    Trikala drishti is that power.
    What senses that is the Supramental sense.
    Consecration that initiates us into yoga has a glimpse of all this.
    Knowledge, works, love are triple forces; the perfection of one spills over into the other two.
    In any event, one can see its physical form, vital force, mental formulation, spiritual purity.
    The message of any event can be received by any one of the five senses or all the senses as we choose.
35
"Oh no!" Said Elizabeth. "In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was."
  1. “In essentials, he is very much what he ever was” – Elizabeth.
    Man does not change in his essentials, unless transformed.
    Wickham tells her that he has always been right and there is no reason why she should suspect him, not knowing she was past suspicion, she was in certainty.
    No method however perfect it is, will be valid in another plane.
    The effectivity of a method is confined to its plane.
    In this statement she is anxious to tell him that she never questioned his veracity.
    The desire not to offend the object of love when he is mortally offending you is one capacity of human nature.
    Settling ancient scores, revenge, wreaking vengeance are activities of one’s sensitivities.
    They are all very real to themselves eternally.
    Time may pass, but they will live in the memory fresh.
    Long after the Man is dead, the desire for revenge against him will be alive.
    In a place where one has committed suicide, the spirit will live for endless number of years.
    Perhaps they too are infinite.
    Even when you have triumphed, his sense of revenge may not be extinguished.
    Formations have vitality. They are formations, not rational or utilitarian.
    They outlive their utility.
    No instrument can disappear when its utility is over as instruments are created not only in consciousness but also in substance.
    When you migrate to a foreign country your own language is not forgotten.
    So also your culture.
    Wickham is moving away. Darcy is not there, but his interest in the scandal is very live, active and energetic.
    His attempted elopement when thwarted did not disappear. It lived in the subtle plane to revive in Lydia.
    To unlearn is more difficult than learning.
    Transformation is possible only by the descent of the higher.
36
While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to rejoice over her words, or to distrust their meaning. There was a something in her countenance which made him listen with an apprehensive and anxious attention while she added --
  1. “While there was something in her countenance that made him listen to her with an apprehensive and anxious attention” (P. 208)
    With all her solicitude for him, he grew apprehensive and anxious.
    No one can pretend in the subconscious.
    The subconscious communicates itself automatically.
    This is how Elizabeth was drawn to Netherfield when Jane was there.
    She was drawn there by Darcy.
    The traveler with Money announces himself to the robber by this vibration.
    A nation’s weakness communicates itself to her enemies by this sense.
    Man gravitates to a woman who waits for him centred in the subconscious.
    When such concentration reaches saturation we see Life Response instantaneously, as Darcy arrived at Pemberley. From the beginning she was fully attracted to Darcy subconsciously. Her decision saturated the concentration. Hence Darcy’s arrival. The subconscious goes into work slowly, gradually.
    One can certainly know where his subconscious interests are by the symptoms, but full awareness is not possible.
    A devotee’s sister fell down from the stairs and broke her hand. He knocked his toe against the door at the same time. 150 miles of separation does not matter. The communication is in the subtle plane.
    A phone call from a close friend from across the ocean announces at that exact moment as an emotional richness in the heart.
    Spouses who desire the closest relationship can develop their emotional attitudes towards each other concentrated to saturation and reach this stage. A decision to change the attitude into motive will make the relationship permanent.
    Lydia’s attitude to Bingley, Wickham, Collins examined even in the text will reveal itself clearly. Only with Collins it was in the reverse. Hers was not an emotional attitude. It was one of physical sensation.
    Sri Aurobindo, speaking of Richard losing the Silence He gave him, says in those days He had not enough patience. A study of subconscious movements, its symptoms, a capacity to ‘tolerate’ Mrs. Bennet, an attitude to take Elizabeth’s abuse as advice, needs such a Patience.
37
"When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that either his mind or manners were in a state of improvement, but that, from knowing him better, his disposition was better understood."
  1. “From knowing Darcy better, his disposition is better understood” – Elizabeth to Wickham”.
    Knowledge at its best can know anything as the very best.
    The yogic rule is any defect seen in another is a defect in the one who sees.
    This means Wickham’s falsehood is only the falsehood of Elizabeth.
    It is in this sense Darcy took her abuse of him because of his love for her.
    Mother in her effort in this direction has succeeded with everyone except those who loved cruelty.
    Sri Aurobindo says He could not hurt the mosquito that bites him.
    We can accept good people readily, but be neutral to bad people.
    It never occurs to us that bad people are instruments of perfection to us.
    Not to react to people of venomous character is no mean struggle.
    When their venom is directed at us, the struggle is a direct failure. If we succeed, it is a greater struggle.
    Even such success will give way when meanness is inflicted on us.
    One can steel oneself against venom, but meanness is detestable, disgusting.
    A yogic attitude makes us discover the meanness buried in us.
    Mind cannot justify the meanness that came to us in response to what little we discovered in ourself.
    One who has endeavoured yogically to uproot that meanness in himself will know the valuable service meanness from outside does.
    Even after the struggle succeeds in uprooting the last vestige of meanness by the service of the meanness that came from outside, our emotions will not readily forgive the other. The question of love is no possibility.
    It never strikes us that such an outside meanness tells us we are capable of a love that would ignore their meanness, that our love will not be wounded even by such venom, meanness, depravity, etc.
    Such irritations announce to us the unwounded LOVE in us awaiting to surface if only we do not activate our habitual reaction.
    Doing so the experience of Love is greater still.
38
Wickham's alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and agitated look; for a few minutes he was silent, till, shaking off his embarrassment, he turned to her again, and said in the gentlest of accents --
  1. “Wickham’s alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and agitated look”.
    She was full of solicitude for Wickham, but he was touched by life.
    To touch a person in his most sensitive point, one word is enough.
    Even without that word, one sensation is enough. He is shaken to his very roots.
    He was alarmed. It showed as heightened complexion.
    This is OPENING, receptivity, sincerity -- a condition in which a devotee should find himself all the time but positively.
    She tried her best not to disturb him.
    But, the issue, his understanding touched him.
    Positively or negatively, Wickham opened to life.
    Darcy opened like this to her abuse.
    Such openings achieve according to their character.
    Referring to Mother an issue each time it comes to mind, it is solved.
    It is the subconscious becoming conscious.
    Man can do it by his effort.
    He can respond to it when it rises from the subconscious.
    Personal issues are small incidents.
    The world’s problems, if retained in the subconscious, present themselves similarly to the awakened Spirit of Man.
    Consecration at that moment solves the problem for the world.
    Seeking it egoistically, ego may hurt the Man.
    Responding to it when it presents is the right method.
    His own needs of evolving consciousness responded to by a devotee, makes him a sadhak.
    It is an action befitting the Hour of God.
    Such a condition for three months, says Mother, brings the Psychic forward.
    At that moment Time enters into Simultaneous Time.
    The Life Divine or Savitri requires this opening for reading.
    World saving ideas emerge at that moment.
    Should the vital or physical open like that, world saving movements or actions will be released.
    Should Wickham’s apprehension be reception of truth instead, his own false being would have been apprehensive.
    A true opening in him, instead of false opening, would have given Georgiana to him.
    True or false opening gives the progress.
    The false apprehensiveness took a longer route of progress the story does not tell us.
    Caroline, in accepting Darcy’s wedding, gave a supreme effort to reverse herself by adopting a human attitude.
    Instead of the vital human response of a pleasant compromise, had she given a true divine response recognizing the truth of Elizabeth, her own life would have witnessed what Elizabeth received.
    Bingley’s submission to the ruse retained his own loyalty to Jane deep down and in time his truth worked itself out.
    Loyalty to Truth as well as loyalty to Falsehood works out each in their own way.
    Haidee’s instantaneous, truthful, idealistic action had an instantaneous miraculous emotional reward.
    Mercedes was not capable of such a truth.
    Charlotte’s action is described by Elizabeth as mercenary. It is true.
    From her own point of view, even from her own life convictions, Collins was the greatest social occasion in her life.
    Her wish to relieve Elizabeth was genuine.
    To stand Collins for 24 or 48 hours is the sacrifice of a lifetime.
    Her own good will to Jane and Elizabeth was fully uncompromisingly true.
    He rose to the occasion and raised her in the social horizon.
    The inner receptivity, under the eloquent bombardment of Collins was enough to open her whole being.
    In all the rest of her life, she would not have made an equal sacrifice.
    Lydia’s flying through the house is such a physical opening, an opening of her physical consciousness.
    Darcy’s great opening over months was enough to meet her for two minutes at Pemberley. The second meeting for longer duration was on her inner initiative.
  2. “Shaking off his embarrassment”.
    Embarrassment is the need to act differently from what you feel.
    Embarrassment is emotional manners.
    Mind alone can overcome embarrassment.
    To overcome embarrassment Mind has to espouse another emotion.
    It is histrionics.
    One can do so for reasons of culture or falsehood.
    Wickham has the capacity. He uses it for falsehood.
    His further speech is in the gentlest accents.
    It is the accent, in the measure that succeeds, which conveys the message, not the content or the words.
    Elizabeth is trying the very opposite.
    Her accents were of the finest solicitude while her words speak the language of rationality. Her inoffensive intention gets communicated, not her rational explanation.
    Benevolence cannot be communicated by a belligerent tone.
    No punishment can be delivered by a sweet voice.
    Means and goal must tally with each other.
    Harmony accomplishes.
    Conflict cannot consummate.
    Now that she knows the truth of his conduct, all his diplomacy was lost on her.
    Her response physically removed him for the rest of the day.
    She was never an emotional object for him ever.
    He came there only in response to her deeply felt desire to meet him once before parting.
    Good will and ill-nature going together as in Charlotte, parting and solicitude as in Elizabeth are natural phenomena if the relationship is to survive. Otherwise one totally forgets the other and he disappears from the scene.
    Nothing is abrupt in Nature.
    Any event gradually develops.
39
"You, who so well know my feelings towards Mr. Darcy, will readily comprehend how sincerely I must rejoice that he is wise enough to assume even the appearance of what is right. His pride, in that direction, may be of service, if not to himself, to many others, for it must deter him from such foul misconduct as I have suffered by. I only fear that the sort of cautiousness, to which you, I imagine, have been alluding, is merely adopted on his visits to his aunt, of whose good opinion and judgment he stands much in awe. His fear of her has always operated, I know, when they were together; and a good deal is to be imputed to his wish of forwarding the match with Miss De Bourgh, which I am certain he has very much at heart."
  1. She allows him to talk of the foul misconduct of Darcy in spite of her fresh knowledge.
  2. He further fouls Darcy about his ‘foul conduct’. She listens patiently. This is the attitude of Romance. Knowing the evil of the man, she disregards it in the hope of seeking Romance in a life with him. Done superstitiously, she is wiped out. Taken to it idealistically, the strength of her ideal makes him turn around. Romance begins to flower. Darcy does it. Elizabeth turns around. To some extent Darcy does it to Wickham. The story ends there. It does not seek eternal Romance or even Romance in life. Only Darcy seeks it in Elizabeth
  3. “You, who well knew my feelings towards Darcy” – Wickham to Elizabeth.
    To enlist one’s sympathetic support, the best method is to make him the standard.
    Now, she knows his true feelings for Darcy – vengeful jealousy.
    In his first meeting he told her his father was an attorney, “as your uncle is”.
    False opposition is very successful till it is exposed. Once exposed the tricks turn upon the user. The whole world opposed socialism. On seeing the wide spread waves of socialistic movements, Capitalism stole its thunder and deprived the socialistic movement the power to expand or even survive.
    The Congress in India on seeing the communistic trend in Kerala took a stand in favour of labour and introduced land ceiling depriving the Communist party its energetic impetus for growth. Wickham was now exposed. Not knowing he was exposed at Hunsford, he resorted to the old weapon which turned on him and hurt him.
    Europe’s aristocracy sent her population to USA. Equality of the French Revolution was not enough to establish equality in Europe. The immigrants went to America and established complete equality which made them rich and powerful. It made them steal a march over Europe. Now Europe imitates America. The biggest aspect of imitation is the founding of the EU. All this does not prevent the Europeans from talking the old language of aristocracy in a hundred different ways. That is the fixity of the physical of human nature.
    Wickham emptied in vain all his old armour on an Elizabeth endowed with fresh information. But he persisted. We see his art in practice. The gentle voice, the sweet accent, the assumed sympathy, the commissioning of commiseration was all tried in vain. She was unmoved but sympathetic.
    All that was achieved on that day of parting was he was physically removed to another part of the house for the rest of the day.
    As the physical separation of Wickham was effected, Jane Austen tells us Lydia was preparing to leave for Brighton. Lydia was waiting for Elizabeth to quit Wickham to occupy her place.
  4. “His pride in that direction may be of service”.
    Man is the prime mover; every other thing is his instrument.
    Education at Oxford did him a great service.
    Ego is the Man here; Man’s ego is his social ego. The personal turn is given by his temperament. It is the force of Nature. His own temperament gets a unique expression in each Man. That uniqueness is at the first stage of Nature and next of the ego. That uniqueness is the basis of his spiritual Individuality. Shedding the ego, overcoming the force of Nature, the spiritual element comes into its own to expand into the universe and rise to transcendence.
    Darcy readily saw the need to shed his vital ego.
    Elizabeth moved from the vital to the Mental.
    Darcy had a well developed vital ego and decided to shed it.
    To that extent the Force of Nature was shed equally.
    It is transformation, but limited.
    Even farmers can breed a new variety of flowers.
    Language creates its best phrases, sometimes, at the ordinary level of the population.
    Glenn Doman is no educationist or thinker or a genius in education.
    His practical experience created a very original method of education.
    The ten rules of psychic education fully followed in routine acts releases the Psychic, the result of a yogic effort of fifty years or more.
    Democracy empowers any voter to rise to any part. The first Lok Sabha had five illiterates as Members.
    With third grade education, one became a Chief Minister.
    A clown ruled the world for eight years. Stalin presided over a Superpower for thirty years with the education of a worker.
    Akbar was illiterate.
    Khrushchev learnt reading and writing at 29.
    Life remains open fully at all levels.
  5. “Such foul misconduct as I have suffered”
    The response was a smile in Elizabeth which she suppressed, not disgust.
    He was able to indulge in that insinuation as he sensed her underlying sympathy.
    Here we see the inner outer correspondence.
    Nothing comes to us that is not there in us.
    The variations are many.
    A little anger unconquered in us makes another angry at us.
    My timidity, incapable of anger, is temptation for another to be angry at me.
    Someone abused the Buddha at length as he had fully dissolved anger.
    The Man came to the Buddha as he was one in whom his own anger could be dissolved.
    Mr. Bennet’s freedom tempted Mrs. Bennet to exploit it.
    Elizabeth’s falsehood brought Wickham to her.
    Jane’s capacity to be deluded made Caroline play her tricks on her.
    Elizabeth’s strength invited Lady Catherine’s strength to quarrel.
    Stupid Collins was attracted by the stupidity of Mrs. Bennet.
    Lydia’s resourcefulness at the level of physical initiative and energy went to Wickham who was equally resourceful at the vital level.
    Bingley’s weakness attracted Darcy’s strength.
    One can be neutral and reflect the outer event without contributing to the quality positively or negatively.
    Meryton reflects the French Revolution.
    Civilised India was invaded by barbaric Muslims.
    Hitler attacked France and England as they egged him on in his criminal attitude.
    USA was attacked by Japan because Japan wanted to be conquered.
    USA was provoked by Germany as she was insular and isolated while poised for world leadership.
    The rule of action and reaction is one, variations are many.
    Pondicherry attracted Sri Aurobindo as the Psychic was well developed in the Southern parts of India.
  6. “the sort of cautiousness you have been alluding to is merely adopted on his visits to his aunt”.
    Behaviour can be adapted to a situation, not character.
    One cannot think of a defect in another which is not in him.
    Unquestioning faith, unsuspecting nature, single minded devotion are phrases expressive of social culture.
    Man is like air which is the same everywhere in some aspects, like a tree which differs from other trees in other aspects, while he is unique in his being human.
    Man is a miniature of the world or even the universe.
    To understand another Man, one has to pay attention to all these aspects.
    One who understands himself can understand others.
    Those in whom Mind is not developed will have the sense mind awake.
    They can feel as others feel.
    One whose sense Mind is awake coming into an intellectual atmosphere will impress everyone as a genius as he understands what no one among them perceives.
    In the field of acting, music, art, literature, this essential defect is a valuable asset.
    Oppressed people having social opportunities will have this tremendous advantage.
    Wickham has this advantage.
    Enjoying the strength of weakness will go a long way as an opportunity, if positively used.
    A temperamental advantage becoming a social opportunity depends upon another factor, any of the social assets, e.g. secretive nature.
    Social upward movement throws open its avenues to these people readily.
    A proper combination has taken rare individuals to rare heights.
    Moksha itself is achieved by many by such routes.
    As the Psychic is the spiritual centre, there are similar centres of the whole plane in the vital, mental, planes. They rise like this even if these are not a whole personality.
  7. “On whose good opinion and judgment he is much in awe”.
    Good opinion of another is generally well founded.
    Judgment is not a faculty people have, but in the long run we see the judgment of the public or even an individual is usually sound.
    He who is in awe of another does not win that good opinion.
    When awe arises, the natural tendency is to look down upon one in awe.
    Judgement is of an open Mind which no one possesses.
    Judgement is the impression produced on the whole of Mind when it is still.
    Opinion is what the coordinating intelligence arrives at.
    Various faculties are formed in Man in various measures.
    Such formation leaves a residue in the Mind as neutral mental capacity.
    When not interfered with, that capacity arrives at a conclusion that is its judgment.
    In language, these concepts are well sensed, but not precisely defined.
    The dictionary says it is the critical faculty, an exact description.
    It also says judgment has a dimension of opinion.
    Opinion is personal, judgment is a critical impersonal faculty.
    The precise sense of the language far exceeds its capacity for exact definition.
    Sense is vital, definition is mental.
    One is No. 2 and the other is No. 1.
    The defining capacity of language is defied because the distance between the vital and mental takes ages.
    Sense is better appreciated in poetry.
    Definition belongs to precise prose of philosophy.
    Sri Aurobindo wondered whether philology will ever become a science.
    Idiom conveys the sense.
    Grammar conveys the definition.
    Idiom is born defying grammar.
    Should grammar be again passed over and its precise nature embodied in an idiom, definitions may rise in precision.
  8. “His fear of her has always operated.” Wickham about Darcy’s aunt.
    If anything operates without fail, it is fear.
    Fear is a negative vibration of courage.
    A positive vibration is incomplete in life without its negative part.
    Love is great. Without the experience of hate, love cannot acquire the intensity at which alone it can be fully enjoyed and appreciated.
    The various ways in which one completes the other are seen in nut and bolt; sword and handle; paper and pen; Man and woman; day and night; wealth and poverty; life and death.
    A day that is without night allows no recharging of energies.
    Ebb and flow permits movement.
    Death, He says, makes Life immortal.
    A fuller enjoyment of the positive side is made possible by the other.
    Without Man and Woman the species cannot reproduce itself.
    Being and Non-Being emerge out of the Absolute. If one were without the other the Absolute could not enjoy its present freedom in its fullness – of losing its freedom.
    Love seeks eternity and intensity.
    Without the experience of hatred, love can enjoy the eternity of Time, not the eternity of Timelessness.
    In life love and hate reinforce each other.
    In Supramental love hatred is transformed into eternal love that is self-existent.
    Its existence is with respect to Self, not in reference to something outside.
    Love in life can grow insipid with the passage of Time.
    Supramental Love is in Simultaneous integrality of Time, i.e. it coexists in Time and Timelessness. It cannot grow insipid. It is capable of charging itself at higher and higher levels. Or, by choice it can cease to exist in its present form.
    It is a stage where the relative is Absolute.
  9. “Forwarding his match with Miss De Bourgh”
    The follies of a lover are pleasant nothings.
    The falsehood of a lover is still a strong touch on oneself.
    The heinous crime of a lover is casual lapses of youth.
    Love does not have the capacity to be offended by a lover.
    Love is born after disgust is lost as well as disagreement.
    Mental love is capable of not being offended by the lover.
    Spiritual love is capable of transforming the lover.
    One cannot have supramental consciousness and be disgusted by the folly, falsehood, abuse of the lover.
    In its interaction this consciousness penetrates the abuse of the other and transforms it into words of appreciation.
    Mind sees the abuse.
    Supermind senses the abuse transformed as it receives the abuse into its own dark spots and senses the process of transformation.
    Trikaladrshti sees in Lydia’s elopement the other two marriages.
    The welcome Lydia received had the outer expression of the higher vibration.
    Elizabeth’s solicitude towards Wickham during the last meeting has that outer expression which is disgusting to us.
    Wickham talks of forwarding the match with De Bourgh because in a subtle sense he perceives Darcy forwarding the match with Elizabeth.
    In creation for every formation that comes into existence an infinity of their possibilities perish.
    Mind dwelling on it by imagination, fantasy, ambition, aspiration gives life to it and at some future time it comes into existence.
    It does not mean one should indulge his imagination.
    Of the many ways Man levels off, this is one.
    A mechanic who enters into the world of splendour and is well on the way to supermanhood stumbling on an opportunity and leveling off as a producer of cars cannot know he has leveled off.
    Man usually levels off becoming the owner of a workshop.
40
Elizabeth could not repress a smile at this, but she answered only by a slight inclination of the head. She saw that he wanted to engage her on the old subject of his grievances, and she was in no humour to indulge him. The rest of the evening passed with the appearance, on his side, of usual cheerfulness, but with no farther attempt to distinguish Elizabeth; and they parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.
  1. “She was in no humour to engage him on his old subject of grievances”
    For him it was the old subject of his grievances.
    For her it was her earlier subject of forging a relationship of emotional solicitude.
    Suppose Wickham was not a false character and carried no scandal, who could wean Elizabeth from him.
    Because he was false, she could move away from him.
    Falsehood has that service in it.
    Grievance creates sympathy.
    Sympathy is an excellent door for the halls of love.
    He certainly created in her intensity, for what or for whom it matters not.
    Darcy responded to that intensity.
    That is the climax of the story.
    The proposal was the first anticlimax and the elopement second climax.
    To work out their temperament through the developing events is the course of the story.
    Temperament expressing through positive circumstances is instantaneous.
    Temperament working out through negative circumstances takes a detour in life.
    Social evolution is the growth of temperament through events of life.
    Mental evolution is growth of ideas through thought and mental experience.
    Spiritual evolution is growth of the aspects of Spirit through the experiences of the parts of the being.
    Supramental evolution is the transformation of any event in any plane into its supramental counterpart.
    Elizabeth abuses, learns the facts, develops shame, removes herself from the attraction of falsehood, decides to accept Pemberley, faces the reality of her family, abjectly surrenders to him whose property she accepted but not him, speaks out her right to marry him, asked him to propose again.
41
When the party broke up, Lydia returned with Mrs. Forster to Meryton, from whence they were to set out early the next morning. The separation between her and her family was rather noisy than pathetic. Kitty was the only one who shed tears; but she did weep from vexation and envy. Mrs. Bennet was diffuse in her good wishes for the felicity of her daughter, and impressive in her injunctions that she would not miss the opportunity of enjoying herself as much as possible -- advice which there was every reason to believe would be attended to; and in the clamorous happiness of Lydia herself in bidding farewell, the more gentle adieus of her sisters were uttered without being heard.
  1. Mrs. Bennet is shameless.
  2. “The separation of Lydia from the family was rather noisy than pathetic”.
    Noisy separation is that of the physical.
    The moment Elizabeth was physically removed from Wickham, the role of Lydia – a physical movement from home – began. It has spatial significance.
    Time and Space go together.
    Often one is self-evident, the other is not.
    Sometimes Time goes with space.
    Elizabeth meeting Darcy at Pemberley is seen as soon as she decided and there itself. We see Time and space synchronizing.
    Space shows the outer events evident to senses.
    Time shows the inner decision evident only to the Mind.
    Mrs. Bennet’s ruse to leave Jane alone with Bingley at Longbourn failed the first time and succeeded the next time.
    Her inexcusable initiative succeeded.
    Her failed initiative on sending her on horseback had a lingering momentum and showed itself in the failure of the first time.
    The second time, I said earlier, succeeded by the power of the atmosphere.
    It was created by Lydia’s elopement and the coming engagement of Darcy.
    A strong atmosphere overcoming other factors is the known phenomenon.
    Grace achieves more by overcoming obstacles from the devotee than by his cooperation.
    Here we see no relationship between Time and Space.
    One acceptable explanation is Bingley who accepted the apology of Darcy had not fully moved into his own independence yet.
    It is significant that Bingley as well as Darcy proposed on the premises of Longbourn, showing the physical reality of Mrs. Bennet.
    Collins too proposed at the Lodge, showing the greater strength of the woman.
    Darcy’s first proposal was at Hunsford, second at Longbourn, but the real subtle inner proposal was at Pemberley and more effectively at Lambton.
  3. “Kitty was the only one who shed tears” (Page 209)
    Tears are the physical symbol of the reality of vital defeat.
    She does not have the mental restraint of Mary.
    Jane and Lizzy were vitally and mentally against it.
    Kitty wishes to go to Brighton but was thwarted.
    Tear of joy express the vital’s triumph of love.
    The only instrument of the vital is tears. It responds with it both in triumph and in defeat.
    Kitty’s consolation was her possession of Lydia’s secret.
    Kitty coughed once, cried twice, asked her mother why she was winking at her.
    Her responses were physical, later matured to negative vocal.
    Kitty kept Lydia’s secret; Lydia let out Darcy’s secret.
    Darcy’s vital secret was lost by the physical Lydia.
    Lydia’s physical secret could be kept by Kitty who too is physical.
    Kitty shed tears while Lydia triumphed.
    At the physical, vital levels, one’s success is balanced by the failure of the other.
    At the spiritual plane, partially in the mental plane, one’s success is accompanied by the success of the rival.
    In the spiritual plane one’s success flows into another as success.
    At the physical, vital level one succeeds by drawing energy from the rival.
    Darcy seeking success through transformation, by the touch of supramental consciousness, went out of his way, confessed and made Bingley happy.
    In this plane, joy is infectious, not capable of producing the opposite in the other person.
    Whatever Wickham sought, whatever he agreed to, it was a great personal success for him that Darcy paid for his debts, his wedding and begged him to accept a proposal, though under an implied threat.
  4. “she should not miss the opportunity of enjoying herself as much as possible”
    Enjoyment must be within the limits of duty and decorum.
    Mrs. Bennet’s idea of duty is she must enjoy at all costs.
    One who is unashamed of borrowing for the ninth time and one who is sensitive about asking for the money back is a combination convenient to both.
    Society progresses by the opposites meeting to reconcile themselves.
    That is true of works, functions, duties and comforts.
    Kindness and affection do not emerge by cruelty and Love meeting.
    Cruelty cancels love, does not reconcile with the other.
    The man who does not ask back for his money does not help the borrower in any fashion. The borrower goes down steadily.
    Of course, after his ruin in this birth he may turn the corner in the next birth.
    The possibility of the borrower remaining an inveterate borrower at a higher level is there in the next birth.
    That happens when the vibration is not exhausted.
    It is not anyone’s duty to transform the borrower. It is his own way of life.
    Mother says it is childish to interfere in another’s karma.
    Man does it out of affection under the illusion it is good.
    It is not good, but ignorance.
    Once can overcome such ignorance with others, not with oneself.
    It is a stage where one has knowledge but not strength.
    It is a weakness one indulges in as Elizabeth’s warmth to Wickham.
    One levels off at that point.
    Selfish people, insensitive people do not have such problems.
    When lending is stopped, the borrower grows responsible.
    Sorrow is halved, joy is doubled by sharing.
    What is common to both is doubling each in its own direction.
    The logic of mathematics and logic of life are both parts of the logic of the infinite.
    Higher reason, logic of the infinite remove the mystery of the world.
    Mystery is ignorance.
  5. “Advice which there was every reason to believe would be attended to”.
    Revolutions, mass killing in civil war, speculation in a rising market are occasions for a free for all.
    A great orator addressing a rapt audience does not stop on his own.
    Shallow, but scintillating news does not stop half way through.
    They come to an end not at the moment, but by the society not responding to it in further rounds.
    One Man took 17 M.A. degrees.
    It is a sign that the world is outgrowing the mania for degrees.
    Unformed characters die without any formations.
    Sometimes such people are in situations where a great deal of money or some valuable social material as power is extensively destroyed by them.
    Such destructions cure their unformed formulations.
    This is a cure from outer conditions.
    One who loses several crores to rectify his unformed personality, if he chooses can do it by an inner self-discipline.
    Such a discipline yields results if it is based on a higher knowledge.
    A higher knowledge understood and accepted, if striven for to acquire the appropriate attitude for its implementation will absorb all the energies of the unformed personality.
    Lack of formation scatters the energies that enter into it.
    The mental effort taken to understand a higher knowledge saps all that energy.
    Nothing is left for frittering away.
    Conversion of that knowledge into a work attitude consumes equally greater knowledge.
    It is inner self-discipline.
    In the story the self-discipline on behalf of the family was essentially taken by Elizabeth.
    More energy came from Darcy.
    Mr. Bennet’s decision helped shape the events.



story | by Dr. Radut