| 1 | Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort. Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good-humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown. But Mr. Bennet was not of a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice. He was fond of the country and of books; and from these tastes had arisen his principal enjoyments. To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted, than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given. | - Mr. Bennet did not seek other women.
- He has sought no other dissipation.
- Elizabeth condones in her father his behaviour towards her mother.
- Elizabeth is aware of her father’s error in his marriage and how he arrived at his own compromise with her. She does not find him an ideal husband. She finds him a foolish lover who is disillusioned by his success, deciding not to dissipate and settling into his cocoon
- Her aversion to Collins arises from the fact he fully resembles Mrs. Bennet. She is determined not to commit her father’s error. After her engagement Mr. Bennet warns her that she must not commit the same error in her marriage he committed in his. He fell for her beauty. He thinks Elizabeth is falling for Darcy’s wealth. He cannot afford to know that Elizabeth reaps the benefit of his tapas in Darcy who was sent away by her at his proposal to go home and do his tapas before marriage
- “Drawing her opinion from her own family conjugal felicity and domestic comfort would not arise”.
Man ignores the realities, identifies himself with the non-existing ideal.
Reality is irksome. Ideal contemplation is comforting.
Identifying with the ideal is elevating and expansive.
One can progress by concentrating on the ideal.
Dwelling on the realities one ends in frustration.
Frustration frustrates aspiration.
Man aspires for God.
In its place he places Light, Freedom, Immortality.
He finds himself in fetters, darkness, encumbered by death.
He discovers Nature presents the problem as contradictions.
All problems, he finds, are problems of harmony.
His attempts at the initial harmony yields inertia.
A second higher attempt has given rise to Science.
The final attempt, he understands, will end in Marvel.
Vedanta came half way through and stopped.
We can go to the next step.
Universal Mother does not permit the cessation of inquiry.
Stopping in the middle makes it come back with a vengeance.
A principle He insists upon is not to stop in the middle.
The Rishis did so and ended in moksha.
Mind cannot go beyond that goal.
There was one more step of Supermind.
The Rishis knew that, but would not consider it fully.
Is Supermind the end?
He says Anandamaya, Chaitanyamaya, Satyamaya are beyond.
Still, will they be the real end?
It is open to the Absolute to start afresh.
To know the absoluteness of the Absolute is, in a way, one end. - “Her father captivated by youth and beauty and good humour.”
Flowers are colourful and fragrant to attract pollinating agents.
Dress, He says, is to attract, especially its colour.
Nature creates the opposites and devises its means of bringing them together.
At least in the Mind thought is not always unidimensional.
Mind is an instrument of ignorance seeking knowledge.
Mind coordinates several facts to fashion a thought, several thoughts to forge an idea.
Several ideas enlighten the will with knowledge to create a Real-Idea.
In coordinating facts or thoughts, mind resorts to selection.
Selection implies rejection.
Mr. Bennet to gain mental experience accepted a brainless emptiness.
Had it not been for marriage, he would have readily rejected her.
Nature that acts through the society does not want the rejection before the experience is gained.
Marriage is one of those devices.
Now society in the West has outlived the usefulness of marriage, but not the wisdom of Nature.
Man in seeking another woman lands exactly on a woman of the same temperament.
Man seeks his mother in his wife.
That is the reason why the mother and wife do not agree.
More than the mother, Man seeks the feminine principle that is his complement.
Ultimately he is trying to bring out the feminine principle in himself.
He becomes the female to God.
The Vedas had this intuition.
Sri Aurobindo has taken it one step further as He moved from the Immutable Self to Self; from Purusha to Ishwara; from Bliss to Delight; from soul to the Psychic.
Scientific thinking comes to Man first by using the products of technology, then by the study of science. He gives us the taste of the Supramental consciousness as its results in life, before we seek the consciousness. - “Good humour which youth and beauty generally give”.
Nature protects Man initially by its vigour.
Such a life had a longevity of ten years which is seventy years now.
Man giving himself the same protection Nature has given will lack the instinctive natural balance that maintains the equilibrium of energies.
In the accomplished yogis of certain schools, this balance was spiritually restored.
They cannot die a natural death by decomposition.
Coming from above spiritually it is called iccha mrithyu, death at will.
This is a balance and an equilibrium, not an integral one.
The supramental Being has that integral balance.
He is not born of a physical body, nor is he nourished physically.
Man has all the knowledge today to offer himself this balance in other levels.
The yogic balance was physically achieved long ago.
There is enough yogic knowledge to create a vital, mental balance.
Should it ever be achieved, medicine as a profession will be non-existent.
Medicine should take to health, not merely curing diseases.
As medicine has resorted to specialization, now they must seek integralisation.
Law enforced is justice restored.
Development removes injustice at its roots.
Examinations test the level of memory equipment.
Going into the world, the student discovers what he remembers and why.
The student allowed to pick up facts himself at school will be socially mature on leaving school.
Original thinking is not the aim of education.
Schools fostering it become the society to young children.
The emphasis usually falls on one aspect.
It usually falls on Money.
Money can be replaced by Man.
Society, then will be addressing the root causes of all evils.
An education to equip the student to become an integrated Man is possible today, especially with the Internet. - “a woman of weak understanding and illiberal mind”.
Mental growth determines one’s understanding.
Mental growth is determined by biological and spiritual inheritance.
Both of them are fixed by the geographical, social, spiritual environment.
Wider spaces generate emotions.
Narrow geographical limits create Mind.
Vast seas or high mountains are conducive to spiritual growth.
They are conducive, not a compulsive inevitability.
There are rules from below.
From above Grace acts, for no ascertainable reason.
Her father was an attorney who handled the facts and rights of the client.
Emphasizing the higher side of the rights, he becomes a champion of human rights.
He was one who earned very well, around £1000 a year.
Either he should have been a luminary or one who successfully manipulated facts.
A Man of values and intelligence can have a child of weak understanding.
A Man of intrigues can have a mean vengeful child.
The goodness and culture of Mr. Gardiner suggests that the father was intelligent and the mother was not.
There was no malice or venom in Mrs. Bennet. Even in Meryton it did not seen to be a malicious atmosphere.
Mind becomes liberal by education.
Perhaps she did not have a governess.
The family might have saved on a governess and spent liberally for their income.
She and her sister were married and well settled by the income and thrift of her parents.
She, on that basis, wished her children to be married and well settled.
She omitted the great fact of earning abundantly for a village attorney and saving £ 5000 to each of the three children.
Her weak Mind looked for results without commensurate effort. - “These qualities put an end to all real affection for her”.
Affection flows naturally, cannot be forced.
Affection is an emotion. It flows out of an emotional heart; it is drawn by various qualities apart from an affectionate heart.
Folly, insistence on folly, boisterousness do not generate affection in another.
In a woman mainly her feminine nature compels affection.
Mrs. Bennet has no feminine refinements; rather she has all the masculine coarseness.
An illiberal Mind will look roughly in her face.
Coarseness in the face is insensitivity in the feelings.
Absence of refined feelings inside aspires for loud display in behaviour.
She is all initiative; usurps everyone’s right, physically dominates.
When all these lead to no positive accomplishments, she complains of nervousness.
A wife who often imagines herself to be nervous to have her way as a stratagem does not incite affection in the husband or respect in the children.
Had she been quiet, doing her work, he would have totally forgotten her.
Her domineering, boisterous, insistent interference constantly keeps her in his Mind.
She ensures she is not forgotten.
When he is in the library we do not see any occasion there that would remind him of her affectionately or with solicitude.
She does not even appear to seek affection or complain of its lack.
Marriage was an end in itself initially.
When the girls grew up, their marriage was the object.
The way Mr. Bennet chose his wife is the same in Nature where the insects reach a flame.
The attraction of the bee to the honey, the predator seeking its prey, the beetles reaching the flame, Man gravitating towards a pretty face are ways of Nature for interaction between the Many.
Life is composed of this interchange, and further with the One.
As the root seeks water, one soul seeks another soul.
One relating to the Many, Many relating to the Many, the Many relating to the One is cosmic life. - “Mr. Bennet was not of a disposition to seek comfort for his disappointment in any of those pleasures that console the unfortunate for their folly”.
As soon as one meets disappointment, shallow characters turn to other avenues of satisfaction.
Strong characters persist and in most cases are rewarded long after.
Socially the Bennets will be considered lucky. - We look at it as the complements working out reconciliation.
The French Revolution extending its influence across the channel is a view.
The 20th century lived by Lydia in anticipation is a historical view.
There are some dozens of proverbs relating to the story proving the age old human wisdom.
We have taken the story to discover Mother’s rules of life.
The mystery of life lies in the exceptions.
The smallest act playing the greatest role is another significance.
One Man’s perfection saving the world is from Savitri.
The story explains Silent will in several shades.
Autocratic arrogance subconsciously harbouring aristocratic generosity comes out here.
I have been trying to discover Mother’s Marvel in the story.
Individual’s irresponsibility compensated by aristocratic responsibility is an aspect of life.
Once a lover, lover forever is the revelation of the heart.
In this world of extreme curiosity, one can be in intense love without anyone knowing it. She only knew it as hatred.
Even that performance found an exception in an old maid’s mercenary penetration.
We heard from Mrs. Bennet that had she gone to Brighton with the whole family, the catastrophe would not have happened.
It is the wisdom of the physical Mind after the event.
There is always the other Man’s point of view. - “He was fond of the country and of books”.
Man is conservative, that is physical, which means loves inaction.
The town represents change which means the adventure of insecurity.
Only the deprived population moved to the towns in those days.
From 1900 or even 1800 the privileged moved to town to share the nation’s political privileges.
The political privilege is more easily accessible through cultural eminence.
Culture vests with the wealthy.
Landed gentry are wealthy.
Lands were in the hands of the strong which means the brute.
The brute rules by brute strength.
The underprivileged had no strength to oppose the wealthy.
The wealthy employed the underprivileged to suppress their kind.
Unity of the have-nots created Revolutions.
What Revolution brings by violence, evolution brings about smoothly.
Evolution comes by education.
Education is education of equality.
Equality expresses easily in a pretty face.
Romance becomes an evolutionary vehicle of Revolution.
Man becomes a Revolutionary discovering equality in the down-trodden.
The woman in the wife is his downtrodden.
To accord equality to Mrs. Bennet is evolution by Romance.
The French Revolution is represented in Longbourn by her anxiety to visit Brighton with all the family.
It raises the have-nots, ennobles the nobles.
The change humiliates one and threatens the security of the other.
Material victory goes with moral triumph.
The long suffering society is rewarded in the next generation.
The low really are charmed by the falsehood of the high.
Even the triumph does not disenchant the successful low. - “her ignorance and folly have contributed to his amusement”.
To be amused by the despised is to retain the relationship.
In difference is subconscious relationship.
It is more comprehensive than the conscious relationship.
The word conscious cannot do its linguistic duty sufficiently or correctly.
Language uses unconscious to denote a subconscious phenomenon.
This method leaves us with no word for the life of the sleeping or stunned person.
Sri Aurobindo calls this usage of conscious vulgar.
We use the word conscious for intentional or wanton action.
Landed men disappointed in the wife turn to other woman.
It is a source of threat to the institution of marriage.
Society has a substantial population of women unfit for marriage.
They enter into domestic service and are available to degenerate men, becoming unwed mothers.
There is an equally substantial male population who cannot enter married life due to poverty.
They suffer a social degradation and settle themselves at a lower level.
Mr. Bennet sought no such diversion. Hence his penance.
Frittering away of physical energy disintegrates the body, desecrates the status.
Mr. Bennet redirected his mental energies to studies.
It broadens the mental horizon.
His tapas yielded results in his children and ended in Pemberley.
Before entering Pemberley Elizabeth chastened its atmosphere by disillusioning his Pride and arrogance.
Her abuse, of which she was later ashamed, elevated his arrogant consciousness.
The wisdom of her abuse was the mantra of his life.
He not only accepted her abuse, but asked his sister to adore her for that abuse.
Surely he took her punishments as grace. - “the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given”.
Philosophy is the high realm of purity removed from life.
The idealism of philosophy is the inactive inanity of existence.
Philosophy saw pleasure inextricably intertwined with pain.
So the epicurean cannot escape pain as a necessary consequence.
Sri Aravindam does not exclude anything, even life.
Its specific goal is to divinize life.
Love among the sexes is confined to the rich abundance of ideal matrimony; outside it is there in the sisterly affection of the brother.
Love is infinite and does not exclude any relationship.
A drop of divine love will crush the structures of human consciousness.
It is infinitely weighty; it is infinitely rich in its integral complexity.
It exists not only between the opposite sexes, but everywhere in existence.
Divine Love makes life divine life.
Divine Love permeates existence, not confined to the surface existence.
Surface existence is limited to finite dimensions of the separated egoistic limits, created by Mind, within the successive movements of Time.
Life is not confined to Time or the unmanifest Timeless.
Its wide richness is an infinite abundance where Time and Timelessness coexist, to express Supermind where no separative egoism can survive.
Love is the Self-experience of the Self consciousness of the conscious Self- Being.
Love is the sensation of the All in the Many.
It excludes no human relationship.
Its ultimate enjoyment is in Matter represented by the human body.
For one who rises from below the selfish human love is a necessary self-discipline of safe boundaries.
For one who descends from above the fullness is reached in its emerging with what rises from below after transforming it by its aspiration.
Its richness is unconditional purity of the entire dependence on the Divine.
It is a fullness made possible by its integral completeness transcending Time as well as Timelessness.
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| 2 | Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of her father's behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so strongly as now the disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising from so ill-judged a direction of talents; talents which, rightly used, might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife. | - “Elizabeth has never been blind to her father’s impropriety as a husband”.
Propriety is the unwritten law in all walks of life where law does not operate.
In the courts, judgment is final; but a decree is needed to execute.
Law lays down the legal destiny of the society at large.
That is the constitution.
It is brought down to every walk of life.
Propriety, courtesy, procedure, custom, usage, decency are the end expressions of the legal authority of the society reaching the individual through the long arm of government.
Mr. Bennet as a husband was to protect his wife.
He ridiculed her, exposed her to ridicule, rendered her ignorance vulnerable.
It was improper, that too before others, especially his own children.
It was unjustifiable, but we can understand it.
She took away his right which other husbands would not part with.
As she transgressed, he transgressed. Still it was indefensible.
Her own nature was dynamic. She could either submit or be what she was.
It was not given to her to choose a middle course.
Should a middle course arise, it should arise in her children.
Elizabeth was not blind to anything around her.
Closer home one can be blind.
She was fully alive to what went on, not knowing why it was so.
She knew the deficiency of her father from the social view. She was not aware that beyond the social view there is a personal reason for that development.
Responding as a child she winced at his sarcastic darts at her mother.
It was a reaction, not an understanding.
No child can understand a parent adequately.
Parents are incapable of understanding their own children.
Any issue fully understood leaves no grievance in our Minds.
Grievance is ignorance formulated as a mental comprehension.
Jealousy is an effective instrument by which one can compete and progress.
Grievance is the means by which one comprehends oneself. - “grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself”
Partiality to any child is ruinous to other children.
Insufficient energy to attend all children becomes selective partiality.
No parent has energy to attend to all children.
Parents are all the children have. When no attention comes from them, they dry up.
Children are very sensitive to attention.
The child directly becomes refractory when no attention is forthcoming.
Full attention makes a dull child brilliant.
Attention is energy.
Existing intelligence energized stands out.
Children have an accurate knowledge of the attention they receive.
They know what the parents expect and exactly refuse to do it because no attention is received.
It starts as a conscious protest and ends as a subconscious character.
Absence of broad-minded magnanimity leads to partiality.
Partiality is a pride in being able to be selective.
With the passage of time, children wean themselves away earlier than is good for them as an exercise in Individuality.
Encouraging Individuality indirectly leads to the child being unemotional and dry.
That way individuality ends up in selfishness.
Her representation to her father about Lydia and Lydia at last was saved for her sake by Darcy go together.
Society protects people from sliding down.
The power of culture that is conscience is a security against a fall. Also it opens opportunities.
Aspiration for an ideal is an occasion for great opportunities to sail towards him.
Spiritual elevation is social, psychological and even physical elevation.
After all, the physical, vital, Mental are of the Spirit. - “the continued breach of conjugal obligations and decorum” (P. 210)
Sri Aurobindo said about Vali, human conduct will not be proper with an infra-human person.
Conjugal obligation and decorum is in its excellent place with a wife.
Mrs. Bennet was no wife to him. She was a maid who occupied the place of a wife.
Such decorum can only be exploited by her.
She was not only one who could understand the intricacies of a decorum’s behaviour.
To her it would reveal a greater freedom for her to take initiative.
Society will not permit him to treat her as she deserves.
His own conscience, the conscience of a British husband will not allow it.
Nowhere does Elizabeth regret her mother’s deficiencies as, in the words of the author, she censured her father.
Children are not fully aware of the inadequacies of parents as they are unaware of their endowments.
They relate to parents from their point of view.
Parents rarely are aware of the aspiration of the children.
What stands in the way is ego and practical ignorance.
This ignorance is the rich field for realising the divine riches.
Such knowledge opens the Marvel.
The only instance in the story is Darcy’s attitude to Elizabeth.
Parents or children taking that attitude to others will be the right solution. Without Darcy’s effort at transformation, such an attitude will at once reduce a family to its conditions of a thousand years ago.
Should the head of the family have Darcy’s attitude, his family will rise to a status of a family a thousand years hence.
As it is, one can be good, reasonable, patient, law abiding, conforming to the social norms, having in mental view the social ideals.
In practice it reduces to social upward movement.
The next best is to earn Money.
Further down it is to survive where we are.
Not to lose what one has is often a great effort. - “in exposing his wife to the contempt of her children is highly reprehensible”.
Retaliation is second nature, it is involuntary.
When you are determined not to retaliate, the reaction moves to the subconscious and acts.
Man who can listen to endless criticism cannot do so in the presence of another.
Retaliation replaces severance.
Severance is physical.
One vitally retains the relationship which he desires to give up by provoking him to retaliate.
Retaliation ensures continued relationship.
Provocation retains the relationship negatively.
Affection can be given to deny obligations.
Obligations can put an end to affections.
Attitudes can cancel other relationship or create other attitudes positive or negative.
Only the Psychic can harmonise all attitudes.
All life is yoga obliges us to accept life.
Accepting social intercourse is an obstacle to yoga.
The Psychic can reconcile both.
Inner detachment and outer pleasantness will achieve it.
Had Mrs. Bennet had a hundred small domestic occupations that could raise the children as products of culture, her energy would have been fully absorbed.
Most diseases of the body can be so cured by one who understands the balance of energies by reordering his diet and work.
Shifting the concentration of ache in the head to stomach where the energy can be dissipated, the head ceases to ache.
Society and the individual have hundreds of acceptable behaviours which, when followed at random clash.
Creating a harmonizing centre dissolves all the discords.
Physically games and parties, vitally good manners, mentally the other man’s point of view, spiritually silence, supramentally a knowledge of the Marvel can remove the disharmony. - “She felt the disadvantages of the children of an unsuitable marriage”.
Children are the most important issue of a marriage.
Socially without the institution of marriage life could not be regulated in the earlier centuries.
Today because of hundreds of government measures to protect the individual, Man can materially survive.
Social services of innumerable kinds have replaced the essential role of a family created around marriage.
In the countries where marriage is on the wane, though Man is materially secure, it is obvious he is like a rudderless ship. At the age of 88 Robert MacNamara married, five years before his death.
Living together for decades with several partners still does not give the psychological security marriage affords.
As long as property is honoured, marriage has a role to play.
Marriage is essential for Man as a psychological institution.
Woman may not need it as much as Man needs. Cultural upbringing of children is entirely out of question in a single parent family. Children directly walk into the centreless social wilderness to entirely destroy themselves.
Out of thousands so degenerated, one individual emerging is Nature’s way.
Man who has supplanted Nature in all fields, can do so here also.
Humanity has not embarked on that experiment yet. Even at the level of thought, there is no clear idea still.
The father himself cannot be replaced for the children. How is the mother to be substituted?
Steve Jobs was an orphan, but was brought up in a family.
His life, apparently a shining success, is an intense psychological sore which is seen in his being ejected by his own company and cancer.
Children cannot be deprived of parents until humanity is generally capable of a love that is the milk of human kindness.
Elizabeth acutely feels the devastating effect on the children of the unbalanced marriage. - “ill-judged direction of talents” – Austen on Mr. Bennet.
Talents are rare. Proper utilization of them is also equally rare.
A governess would cost £50 a year. Mrs. Bennet needed that money.
It had resulted in two children becoming wild and giddy.
It is mothers who take greater care of the education of children.
Herself not having had its benefit, Mrs. Bennet set herself as the standard for the children to rise, forgetting it was in a world thirty years later.
For the perceptive eye, every five years will show the changes in the society.
It is the woman who is perceptive in this area. It relates to her as fashion.
The changing needs in the personality of the child for better education than the parents are as many as social facets.
Starting from the words of greetings, the imperceptible changes in the dress, lifestyle, attitudes of social preservatives, a mother can be seen constantly insistent in her instructions to her children.
She is thus a conscious agent of social change.
Children are subconscious recipients of emerging new patterns of life which they fully absorb and express as much as the prevailing freedom permits.
Media is a precise exponent of the changes, some they initiate.
Entertainment educates invariably so much that the politics of a country is largely determined by the line the entertainment takes.
It is a favourite theme of mine that every new comfort of life, either by way of change of attitudes or technological innovation, is a source of additional wealth.
The social talents are constantly directing the population towards an unperceived goal.
The receiving centre in Man of all these influences is his ego, its social, psychological, even its spiritual version.
The world is realising the need to outgrow the human ego.
Internet that brings freedom of information strikes at the roots of possessiveness. Free service dissolves the notion of selfish gain, the profit. - “Talents rightly directed would have preserved the respectability of the daughters”.
Respectability is the higher psychological worth of the inner life.
Man respects power and Money.
Man recognizes without fail another’s inner worth and respects it.
Respectability may not win husbands but without it no husband will look at a woman.
Energy moves, moves outside in activities that accomplish work.
Outer successful activities accomplish materially and socially.
A nurse with all the information of a doctor is not respected as a doctor.
The nurse possesses information that can serve a doctor.
The outer accomplishments can only serve the inner respectability.
Energy directed inwardly builds capacity and values.
School education and family upbringing build them up.
Kitty and Lydia are devoid of it, are past the age that can be given.
Mary’s education without family upbringing will remain book learning.
That she could not attract one officer to dance with her shows that.
The effort must be that of the father and the mother supported by a governess.
Mrs. Bennet firmly believed in a pretty face, good humour adorned with fine dress.
Maybe it was enough in her time to marry an attorney or an officer.
In one generation expectations change.
Money is always a qualifying adjunct.
Human respectability, feminine virtue, social graces have come into their own.
The Bennet girls could have had a little money.
Respectability could certainly be cultivated in them.
Longbourn is a great background, if not an endowment.
Mr. Bennet, perhaps like Micawber, waits for something to turn up.
Of course he does not voice it.
She does not wait for something to turn up.
She wants to pluck at a gown, hoping to get a sleeve of it. - “Even if enlarging the mind of the wife”.
Mind enlarges by education.
Education sought enlarges the Mind.
Education given will not have that salutary effect.
Formal education is a formidable power.
Geography spatially expands the Mind. Mrs. Bennet did not know Newcastle.
History’s contribution is the Time dimension.
Mind expanding in Time and Space is mind enlarging.
Observation is non-formal education.
Physical observation that knows every object at home is physical sensation.
Vital observation belongs to the experience of vital sensation.
Observation is to relate oneself to an object or person.
It is an act of coordination, an exercise of intelligence.
To coordinate thoughts is thinking, reason.
The centre of observation is the ego.
Making an observation an experience is mental growth.
Wide comprehensive observation of the subconscious over a long time presents to the surface as a capacity to accomplish.
The usual motive is to rise in society.
Observation, thinking, assimilation with values as the centre instead of ego shapes the inner value of the Man.
Capacity to accomplish with value formation creates leadership.
Jane’s observation is to formulate her own self-formed values.
Elizabeth’s observation is character study.
Mary does not observe; only those who are observed, observe.
Kitty’s urge is to follow Lydia’s lead.
Lydia looks out for fresh officers coming.
Charlotte observes everything from the point of view of each person’s values, scope, social values, and possibilities of the moment.
Mrs. Bennet seeks no enlargement of the Mind.
Her centre is her social value attained, waiting to be cashed as marriage for children.
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| 3 | When Elizabeth had rejoiced over Wickham's departure, she found little other cause for satisfaction in the loss of the regiment. Their parties abroad were less varied than before, and at home she had a mother and sister whose constant repinings at the dulness of everything around them, threw a real gloom over their domestic circle; and though Kitty might in time regain her natural degree of sense, since the disturbers of her brain were removed, her other sister, from whose disposition greater evil might be apprehended, was likely to be hardened in all her folly and assurance by a situation of such double danger as a watering-place and a camp. Upon the whole, therefore, she found, what has been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had looked forward with impatient desire, did not, in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself. It was consequently necessary to name some other period for the commencement of actual felicity -- to have some other point on which her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and by again enjoying the pleasure of anticipation, console herself for the present, and prepare for another disappointment. Her tour to the Lakes was now the object of her happiest thoughts; it was her best consolation for all the uncomfortable hours which the discontentedness of her mother and Kitty made inevitable; and could she have included Jane in the scheme, every part of it would have been perfect. | - Wickham’s departure brings the invitation to Derbyshire.
- Lydia’s Brighton visit abridges the Lakes into Lambton.
- “Elizabeth rejoiced over the departure of the regiment”.
The great mental disillusionment made her rejoice.
Such genuine rejoicing of the surface Mind is possible when the subconscious clings to its original charm of infatuation.
While in the society, family, work situation, one is influenced by all others.
After some years, the voice of one resembles the voice of the others.
The boss unconsciously adopts the handwriting of the subordinate.
The surface is so much against the depth that one cannot see the truth of it after the event. It is the practical ignorance.
To honour fully and consciously another’s practical ignorance is human wisdom of the divine nature.
Results in life are so concrete, so material, so full of reality that they are the symbolic voice of the evolving Divine.
Indian tradition calls the sight of a courtesan prostitute a good omen, silently calling her immorality divine virtue.
The most poisonous King Cobra is worshipped in India recognizing the divinity of its venom.
Human sacrifice is considered uncivilized, barbaric, ignoring the occult wisdom it inheres.
Had there been a human sacrifice on August 15, 1947, one crore of people would not have been uprooted and 200,000 would not have been massacred.
It is rank superstition to object to human sacrifice when the occasion demands.
Objection based on the understanding of the surface Mind is crass superstition.
The millions killed in the world wars are the human sacrifice for the development of the post-war decades.
Avoiding conscious willing sacrifice is to be compensated by Nature’s unconscious sacrifice on a massive scale. This is not an idea that can be ventured upon among the civilised population. - “mother and sister whose constant repining at the dullness of everything around”.
Stagnant waters begin to stink sooner or later.
Life is a flow of energy which is enjoyed by everyone who flows with it.
Its liveliness of the flow is more felt at the mental and spiritual level than at the physical level.
At the physical level one sees only the physical events.
At the spiritual level one feels even the non-movement live.
A mental person mentally views the events around and can occupy herself with books.
A vital person is satisfied with being with others as company is interesting.
Mrs. Bennet and Lydia are physical, can interest themselves only in action.
Maya is the infinitely variable oneness, the consciousness of Brahman.
The rasa of Maya is sensed only by the subliminal.
Variety is the savour of life.
Persons who realize the concrete material reality of an Act know its consequences are inevitable.
Knowing the power of determinism, Self-conception, Man knows in every event his choice is more powerful than the inevitability of the act.
Elizabeth is still determined by the family environment.
She is incapable of knowing that life at home is dull because she is going to Pemberley. The flow is preceded by this ebb.
Kitty is repining because she is left behind.
Her depression makes for Elizabeth’s elevation.
As long as one is moved by external forces, consecration is unreal.
Once he realizes the concreteness of the act, its consecration is real.
Then his knowledge of his decision, by his choice, instantaneously goes into action.
The spiritual Individual is one to whom life is always real, live, ready to act at the sanction of human choice.
Human choice at this level is a movement in evolution.
The choice releases the physical energy which cannot wait to act. - “Kitty might regain the natural degree of sense, since the disturbers of her brain are removed”
Lydia is the disturbing influence which means her mother.
Kitty is disturbed only when she is led to act as Lydia chooses.
Mary is uninfluenced by it.
The birth of Lydia, an exact replica of her mother, is the end of the chain of children.
The scheme of things will not permit a male child and no more than one child fully representing the mother.
Social forces are largely neutral, do not stir unless disturbed from outside.
That is so because social energies are of Nature.
The Psychic determinism is self-determinism.
Lydia is in the determinism of Nature; Elizabeth is moving towards the determinism of the Psychic.
The Psychic is energized by the movements of Nature.
Nature by its rapid movements evolves the hidden spirit in it.
He speaks of the slow, deliberate pleasure of Nature which thus enjoys its infinity.
The Divine enjoys in Nature as Nature would have the Divine enjoy.
The involution can be endless, infinite.
The evolution begins when the involution ends.
The Hour of God, worked for long, is to end the involution and begin the evolution.
Agriculture can continue for centuries.
The subconscious knowledge collected by working agriculture has come of age to begin the industrial revolution.
Man producing products of his own conception is the Self-conception of Brahman at that level.
The Self-conception and the volume of the products it produces needs self-limitation so that the society of its individual members will be saturated with the enjoyment of its products.
Abolition of monarchy is the dissolution of ego – Democracy.
Overcoming Nature and ushering in divine nature is socialism. - “her tour to the Lake is the object of pleasure”.
A tour has always been a pleasure to young people.
Travel, being a physical movement, is welcome to a stationary population.
Here, she has the subconscious knowledge of going to visit Pemberley.
Joy in the physical is pleasure.
An event in the physical plane prepares itself in the subtle plane.
The preparation can be direct or indirect or even opposite depending on the character of the person, rather the temperament, but never is abrupt.
An abrupt development is not abrupt, but we miss seeing the development.
It is the sense mind that sees the dualities including the inconscient and superconscient.
Mind that acts on receiving the impressions of the senses is sense mind, manas.
The thinking Mind is buddhi.
Buddhi is Mind that can see unhampered by the senses.
The Rishis turned off the senses and saw through the buddhi the dualities.
The buddhi can see the dualities and can see beyond the dualities, if it chooses.
Its not choosing to see beyond the dualities is ignorance.
My purpose will be fully served if I can show the Marvel in this story.
In reading The Life Divine the greatest result is to understand what He says.
That is intellectual knowledge.
It is like knowing what goes into a dish. It cannot help you make it.
If you are given a dictionary of a foreign language, it cannot help you to speak it.
Learning cooking or speaking a foreign language is an experience.
Synthesis tells us what to do. Even that cannot make us do the yoga.
The first step is to consecrate, next is to remove ego.
No consecration can be practised enough to remove ego by knowing it.
If you are taught cooking or a foreign language, they can be learnt.
These comments will certainly help me to explain every idea in the Book.
To give a full intellectual account of what is there, this story will do.
Understanding the subtle process in the story, the role of subliminal can open further vistas. - “could she have included Jane in the tour, the plan would be perfect”.
To make a plan perfect will not achieve the intended goal.
Because she was aware of this truth at 21, she landed in Pemberley.
This knowledge must be the knowledge of the community.
It is a subtle knowledge of a higher accomplishment.
A product can be perfect, not a plan.
A product is an end in itself, not to grow further.
A plan that yields a great result does not end there, it grows.
Perfection at one level seals off at that level, never giving an opening for further growth. It shows the interrelations.
Parts of a machine, though independent in themselves, are so made that they fit into other parts.
Agriculture is a whole in itself, but it allows its produce to be sold.
Selling steps into the next level of institutions, trade.
Trade permits the creation of Money, communication, transport.
Leisure created by physical activities helps create culture.
There are important links.
The double entry system of accounting made it possible for trade to grow.
Unawareness of public finance made the Roman Empire die its death.
The Hellenic culture died in one century as it could not grow spiritual.
Britain where democracy was born, unable to outgrow its sentiment to Royalty, lost its right to found the world government.
Kamaraj who saw the importance of education initiated development in Tamilnadu.
Internet that increased the speed of monetary transactions created abundant wealth out of the subtle atmosphere of trust.
America which extended the concepts of Individuality of Europe to action became the wealthiest of nations.
The atmosphere to give birth to the Individual in India initially gave birth to enormous wealth.
The World Academy Fellows are unconsciously sensing the need for the birth of the Individual.
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| 4 | "But it is fortunate," thought she, "that I have something to wish for. Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment would be certain. But here, by carrying with me one ceaseless source of regret in my sister's absence, I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of pleasure realized. A scheme of which every part promises delight can never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by the defence of some little peculiar vexation." | - At this young age, Elizabeth sees the wisdom of a plan left imperfect.
- Her sister Jane digesting her disappointment cannot be the right companion for her.
- Imagine Jane meeting Darcy at Pemberley, Bingley at Lambton.
- An imperfect plan in an imperfect atmosphere is Perfect.
- “Some little vexation”. Imperfect perfection is a philosophical concept. For a thing to exist in an imperfect atmosphere, it should be imperfect. Should perfection be attempted, it will either break or fail or vanish. It is its imperfection that gives it the value of perfection
- Elizabeth is aware of this truth and does not wish for Jane to be a part of the tour, though it is most desirable in her view. Later we see it is this imperfection that completes her marriage at Pemberley
- Kitty’s complaint is absence of invitation. She wreaks vengeance by being an accomplice to Lydia. She does not have a grievance against anyone in particular. But the nature of grievance is it will wreak its vengeance. For a work to be complete, there should be no grievance for anyone – an impossibility
- “It is fortunate I have something to wish for” – Elizabeth about the tour.
Aspiration keeps us alive.
The Divine created the universe so that it could have something to aspire for – Delight.
Romance is kept alive by the same principle negatively.
Aspiration inspires.
Inspiration releases all possible energy.
Energy employs us to direct and organize it before results are arrived at.
Sri Aurobindo says earth aspires through her tall trees.
Aspiration for communication creates speech.
Spatial aspiration leads to travel as well as transport.
Aspiration for intense employment of energy creates athletic games.
Emotions aspiring for light of self-awareness has created thought and science.
Aspiration for moksha created tapas, Samadhi, yoga.
Aspiration for food production in abundance created growing population.
Aspiration for world government created the United Nations Organisation.
Aspiration for equality created the French Revolution.
Today the same aspiration made a Black President.
Aspiration for upward movement creates urban migration.
Aspiration for employment created the movement of terrorism.
Aspiration to possess national assets to themselves created caste.
A similar aspiration for power created the divine right theory.
Aspiration of the woman for the property of the husband for her children made her chaste.
Aspiration of one who can grow vertically leads to horizontal growth.
Mr. Bennet’s aspiration not to interfere with his wife led to elopement.
Aspiration to believe in Caroline’s goodness cancelled her marriage.
Aspiration to scandalize Darcy falsely made Wickham a personification of scandal.
Elizabeth’s aspiration for the charm of infatuation made her plead for Wickham’s promotion in life. - “ceaseless source of regret in my sister’s absence” (P. 217)
Jane and Elizabeth are non-physical twins.
Darcy moving towards her celebrates Jane’s wedding first.
Elizabeth is the father of the family. Her sense of responsibility gets Lydia married, Jane engaged, before she could think of her own destiny.
Darcy loved her in spite of her not loving him, as Elizabeth was interested in Jane, while Jane never thought of Elizabeth.
Mr. Bennet discharged his responsibility to Jane through Elizabeth.
As all his energies went to her instead of the family, she served the family on his behalf.
Jane was an obsession to Elizabeth.
Physical passion occupying the Mind is obsession.
Vital passion occupying the Mind is inspiration.
Mental passion possessing Mind is revelation.
The divisive powers of Mind divide it from the vital, physical, spirit.
To overcome the mental division of the parts of our being is to overcome our constitutional ignorance.
The father and the mother were incapable of acting as they were. Both acted in the world through Elizabeth. She acted in her mother falling a victim to Wickham and later in her father moving to her Mind.
It was Darcy who came to Meryton; Bingley was the social occasion, almost an excuse.
An Alwar in quest of a guru, while he was in Banaras was guided by a star to Tirunelvely where he found the Guru in meditation under a tree. To attract his attention he threw down a stone.
Darcy was guided to Meryton by the invisible star of Elizabeth.
To eternally attract her towards him he powerfully provoked her calling her ‘tolerable’.
The first moment of Man meeting the woman is full of significance.
Romance enters as obstacle.
Caste, class, wealth, parents are social obstacles.
Now a days it is the psychological obstacles Man has to overcome. - “I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of pleasure realized”.
Reason is to think with a basis.
The thought that has no basis is not reasonable.
The highest work of reason is to find the one substance, the one law, the cementing latest reality connecting and unifying the many, the different, the discordant and disparate.
That is of the Absolute.
Reasons thus can take us to the Transcendent.
Man who aspires to be reasonable aspires for the Transcendent.
She hopes to have all her expectation of pleasure realized.
It is a subconscious awareness of the coming Pemberley.
It is the expectation of pleasure that she has in Mind. Pemberley can give it.
Marriage for woman is the expectation of pleasure afforded by property.
Woman ardently aspires for property as she has to bring up the children when she would not be able to gather food.
Till recently society did not allow the woman to earn her bread. It is another reason she yearns for a house or property.
The lady behaves as if marriage overtakes her.
She is told not to love anyone except in return of his love.
Even for conceiving a child, she has to lie in wait, not go after the male.
Perhaps, as she has to lie quietly delivering her children and feed them remaining stationary, Nature enjoins on her this poise of life.
The biological significance of the woman is to silently to rear the baby in her womb.
The spiritual significance of the woman is to be the stable foundation of the dynamic activity of Man.
Man brings in the resources and the woman organizes them.
Man seeks loyalty from the wife as it heightens the intensity.
The woman’s biological, natural tendency is to let many males avail of her as no male’s continued services can be relied on.
Property is a concept of society which generated loyalty that is chastity. - “A scheme of which every part promises delight can never be successful”.
Man’s movement is locomotion, one part advancing when the other remains unmoving.
Beauty, Unity, Truth, Goodness, Knowledge, Power, have all the six components of the human personality each of which grows at a time.
The completion awaits the full growth of the all six.
For each to grow fully, all the energy must be concentrated in one at a given time.
Of the seven or eight principles of evolution, one evolves at a time while the rest are dormant.
On earth the progress started in India, traveled via Greece to Italy and Europe till it reached America.
India started with the spirit and reached the penultimate stage.
Greece took up Mind and its thinking faculty.
Rome developed vital power.
Europe gave the power of thinking to every Man alive.
America took the Mind to impact on physical work.
Next, all of them are to be united so that the ultimate height of the spirit can be reached.
Its basis is the global, territorial unity, a human unity symbolized by the world government.
Its basis is global institutions, especially the financial institution.
Spiritually Man shedding the dividing ego is the starting point.
On another scale, the physicality of Man is to be overcome.
The wars did it effectively.
Terrorism is its effective, symbolic residue.
It is significant that terrorism is based on poverty.
Internet in cyber space is creating unity that is missing on earth.
Its contributions are overcoming Time by speed, overcoming ego by making possessiveness impossible, free service that eliminates profit, global reach by electronics. - “general disappointment is warded off by the defence of some little peculiar vexation”.
A value refuses to form when the work has not crossed the border.
Economic reforms have not addressed the crisis as the central issue is evaded.
Pollution is being controlled, not eliminated, for the same reason.
Indian spirituality relied on karma, as they were still in Force.
The surface Mind includes earth, the solar system, and the material universe.
Again it is the sense Mind that sees the dualities of the Superconscient, inconscient; good and evil, etc.
The Rishis have not seen the whole, by buddhi looking on both sides.
The Gita speaks of the divine nature but insisted on moksha.
The knowledge of the whole or an inkling of it is known to the ancients as evidenced by refusing amrita to the asuras, conquering the gods by Anusuya who invoked the Supreme, alchemy, search for physical immortality Põ¯PÀ£®, Ca\õ ª¸z², death at will.
Nehru, as the Vice-President of the Viceroy’s Executive council reached a great height, but it was not independence.
The period from August 15, 1947 to January 26, 1950 was a period entirely free of the British rule; but Independence must be ushered in by the constitution coming into force.
Any disease or most diseases can be very nearly cured but not fully, as cure is not health.
Fertiliser cannot make the soil creative of productive energy.
Memorisation cannot replace thinking.
Thinking does not lead to creativity, rather is its bar.
Mind cannot have created this universe.
Prose can never reach the depth of the emotions.
A concubine can give all services, not psychological inspiration.
Copious Money has never built up a spiritual institution.
Mercenaries have never defeated a patriotic army.
Foster parents have no scope to mature as biological parents.
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| 5 | When Lydia went away, she promised to write very often and very minutely to her mother and Kitty; but her letters were always long expected, and always very short. Those to her mother contained little else than that they were just returned from the library, where such and such officers had attended them, and where she had seen such beautiful ornaments as made her quite wild; that she had a new gown, or a new parasol, which she would have described more fully, but was obliged to leave off in a violent hurry, as Mrs. Forster called her, and they were going to the camp; and from her correspondence with her sister, there was still less to be learnt -- for her letters to Kitty, though rather longer, were much too full of lines under the words to be made public. | - At any time several events take place. Each is parallel to all others.
- Some are direct parallels, others are reverse, the rest after a fashion.
- The events in Lydia’s life, her letters, Kitty’s secrecy are directly a parallel to the visit to Pemberley, Darcy’s changed behaviour, visit of Georgiana and Bingley, Caroline’s provocation and finally, Jane’s letter.
- “Lydia promised to write to her mother very often very minutely.”
A promise is an intention within one’s capacity.
No one promises to another what is not in his reach.
Lydia’s promise was a form of speech, none of her intention.
Every promise of good will made in Mother’s atmosphere is overfulfilled.
What is promised in human dimensions is fulfilled in divine dimensions.
Ego that receives more than it can assimilate uses it against the giver, tries to ruin him.
A promise is the soul’s intention in human circumstances.
It can never fail when it is sincere as the higher power acts in a lower plane.
Sri Aurobindo says the Highest has promised the greatest for the earth.
To receive it Man needs sincerity and surrender.
That sincerity must be that of the Inconscient of which the subconscient of the body is made.
The sincerity of the inconscient overcomes the sense Mind.
This is a yoga where Mind is to be passed over in favour of Supermind.
Sense Mind is the extension of Mind in its objectification.
To overcome the sense Mind, one must go in from outside.
Going in so and coming out again, the senses through which the Mind operates purifies them.
Tradition turns off the senses.
We purify them, as Samadhi for us is in the waking consciousness.
Senses serve the divided Mind, but also serve the separative ego.
Integral vision combines the functions of the telescope and the microscope.
Now ego operates Man.
The Silent Purusha operates in Samadhi.
The Ishwara operates in waking Samadhi through the purified senses.
Transcending the sense Mind, neither the inconscient nor the Superconscient is seen but the conscient discovers its Self-existence.
Moving from vital to the Mental, Elizabeth made history for her family. We are to move to the Supermind. - “But her letters were long expected and were very short” – Lydia’s letters.
Letter writing as an occupation was developed as a branch of literature in England.
An M.A. received a letter in his 50th year and found he had no previous experience in writing letters. In India no letters are written in the English sense even today.
An English lecturer in a college found it difficult to read a postcard received by him.
Letter writing is the art of stationary life.
Mr. Bennet’s stationary, sedentary life robbed him of energy and hence the habit of replying his letters. One letter he replied fifteen days later.
Jane, Elizabeth, Mrs. Gardiner wrote at length and often if necessary.
The dress Man puts on pleases him and he expects to please others by it.
For a lady the dress is all.
In a way letter writing is an intellectual dressing.
Jane’s letter delighted Elizabeth who went to them in her leisure.
They distinguish a letter from a note.
The forms of address, subscription are fixed by etiquette and are inviolable.
There was an English Prime Minister who had no compunction to write to his lady friend daily giving out official secrets.
Biographers find more insights from letters than official documents.
Mahatma Gandhiji even in his telegrams to Nehru affectionately refers to his seeing Indu, giving a personal touch to political relationship.
Nehru’s letters to his daughter were published as “Discovery of India”.
Letter writing is an important development in civilization.
Before the advent of post office, few ever wrote letters outside of business.
Those were days when all the relatives and friends lived in one locality.
Marriage, domestic functions are occasions to communicate.
The acting President of India on the occasion of a marriage in his house called on his invitees in the sacred old Indian tradition.
Entire novels were written composed of letters at one time.
A political leader condemned to life received a letter from his unschooled sister and found her language poetic. - “Obliged to leave off in a violent hurry” – Lydia’s letter to her mother.
Lydia’s energies are in a violent hurry all the time.
The chastening influence of the father waned as one goes down and is very feeble in Lydia.
Lydia and more so Mrs. Bennet were the hippies of Jane Austen.
They released infinite energies of the society disregarding the norms of the society.
Mrs. Bennet destroyed the cultural values unconsciously.
Lydia was oblivious of the very existence of the society.
The energies released were phenomenal. Darcy harnessed them.
The hippies defied, disregarded, destroyed social values of all description.
Tom Peters symbolized the Freedom they aspired for in Management.
In the 80s the hippies were the social leaders.
Society at large or maybe life beyond the society did what Darcy did to the Bennet’s family by organizing various revolutions technologically psychologically as well as socially. Technologically the personal computer and Internet were organizations in cyberspace. Psychologically, it was the freedom of women and children, the quest for psychological fulfillment in the spouse. Socially this power became trillions of dollars generated out of human trust in wider than national institutions. None, not even the sadhaks and devotee recognized that
Mother is the Mantra of Mankind
Sri Aurobindo is the Absolute in the relative.
Every person is handling almost all the energies released by the hippie revolution through the PC, Internet, financial institutions. Man realising he is the emerging Individual will have at his disposal as much energy as this revolution has released, as he is universal. No longer it can be directed to material production. It must go creatively into the vital plane on the global scale to handle the financial crisis from behind, not from the economy but from the political, social plane. It will create the world government. - “Letters to Kitty were much too full of lines under the words to be made public”.
Betrayal serves as much as loyalty.
Falsehood offers as much service as truth.
Kitty betrayed the family, served a wider cause of the family.
The result of her migrating to Netherfield and Pemberley confirms it.
Krishna’s falsehood helped destroy the evil of Duryodhana.
Falsehood is an essential instrument to Truth in the plane of falsehood.
The German General’s betrayal of Hitler saved Paris for civilization.
Sri Aurobindo’s father took efforts to shut out Indian culture from his children. The result is He gave up entirely the English upbringing and became a champion of Indian culture.
The long centuries of dark ages absorbed the individual mental greatness of the Greeks into the vast vitally organized social power of Law and reemerged in every European nation as the capacity to think for himself in the common Man, thus giving birth to the Reformation, Renaissance and science.
Possessive betrayal of aristocracy created the French Revolution.
European aristocracy that betrayed the serf, created America.
The Indian Brahmin who betrayed the cause of Jnana, knowledge, sent that knowledge to Greece and Europe via Persia.
Persia that received the Indian Jnana invaded and ruled India for five hundred years.
Betraying Indian culture the British imposed English on India which became the instrument to drive them out, making the entry into the life of international politics for India easy.
Charlotte’s mean betrayal of Elizabeth giving Lady Catherine a non-existent rumour directly made Darcy come to Elizabeth with a second proposal.
Betrayal is reverse loyalty for the low consciousness.
Betrayal in the occult plane is black magic. It destroys the victim. Should he survive that onslaught, he conquers the occult planes of his own life. Anyone can be loyal or betray the other. The result is Self-determined by the victim if he is rooted in the soul.
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| 6 | After the first fortnight or three weeks of her absence, health, good-humour and cheerfulness began to reappear at Longbourn. Everything wore a happier aspect. The families who had been in town for the winter came back again, and summer finery and summer engagements arose. Mrs. Bennet was restored to her usual querulous serenity; and by the middle of June Kitty was so much recovered as to be able to enter Meryton without tears: an event of such happy promise as to make Elizabeth hope that by the following Christmas she might be so tolerably reasonable as not to mention an officer above once a day, unless, by some cruel and malicious arrangement at the War Office, another regiment should be quartered in Meryton. | - Longbourn is a cheerful home. After three weeks of dullness, good humour is revived.
- Everything is having a happier aspect in anticipation of the Pemberley visit.
- Pemberley enters the scheme of things at the mention of Derbyshire.
- Lambton is the link in space.
- Mrs. Gardiner is the link in human relationship.
- Wickham is the link in interest.
- The transition from one act to another greater act takes place via the subtle plane.
- It requires links of all descriptions. Without them it will remain incomplete. The love of Jane for Bingley is one of a few weeks. There were no such links to complete it. Those links were created by Darcy and Elizabeth later
- “After three weeks of her absence health, good humour and cheerfulness began to reappear in Longbourn”.
What ebbs after a time flows, sometimes totally disappears.
She was away for full three months.
The absence of good humour, cheerfulness is due to Jane’s disappointment.
The approaching visit to Pemberley announces as the reappearance of cheerfulness.
In a dry riverbed freshes show a few days before by the subsoil filling up.
Freshes never can appear suddenly. It is a gradual process.
No war suddenly bursts out. There are a hundred ways in which it announces.
The post-war rationing of food grains was severe. Black marketeers were rampant. Rajaji came to power. One morning he announced on the radio that rationing was abolished. The country was aghast because all rice will rise in prices. The black market prices will legally come to stay. He said he did it by intuition. Observing the arrivals in the market acutely, will reveal the trend of supply. He was right. All other states soon followed suit.
Such an observation can predict the terrorist attacks, outburst of infectious fevers, price trends in the stock market. Ants and animals know the advent of rain and earthquake like that. Women are totally sensitive to a Man’s interest in another woman. Silverbridge asked his sister to meet Lady Mabel and quoted the attitude of his father. To her questions he only said his father desired it. At once Mary declared he was engaged to Lady Mabel. The story is not written in a fashion for us to sense the trend of events. Still, with greater acuteness of perception we can slowly unravel the course of events in their antecedents. The most important clues are negative. Mrs. Bennet’s uncalled for abuse of Darcy at Netherfield ball, if we know the rule of the beneficiary’s offence to the benefactor, reveals she was responding to the future proposal of Darcy.
The police state of USSR was an inheritance from the Tsars. Peter the Great was a tyrant. Ivan was Ivan the Terrible. The emotional nature of the Russians demand hard cruel treatment to emerge out in freedom to keep up with the progressive world outside. - “Everything wore a happier aspect. Summer finery and engagements arose”.
The whole village, the season, social movements celebrated Lydia’s adventure.
Man in his short sightedness may mourn Lydia’s unbridled behavior.
The society too may silently frown on it.
But Life is unfailing. It has invisible eyes to see. It celebrates.
What is catastrophe for the finite is release of energies for the infinite.
Man asks others to cooperate, his organization to obey not knowing he is the determinant. He alone is the determinant. Those who come along with him share the results, others become bystanders. Those who go out from inside are crushed out by life. Man cannot get out of a running vehicle. It is total ruin and destruction to come out of a flying plane. Still it is not possible to persuade Men to cooperate.
It is the birthright of Man to betray.
The child cannot desert its mother. The baby doing so perishes at once.
The hippies released the social energy.
Life energy is beyond.
Mental and spiritual energies are still beyond them.
Energy released by Darcy is evolutionary.
It acted through the narrow constricting grooves of society and personality.
The apparently vast results perceived are not the minimum possibilities but a trickle out of the original flood.
Man does not know Mother; nor does he know it is a spiritual privilege to know Her.
He does not see Sri Aurobindo is the Absolute, the Absolute in the relative.
When they are together the Absolute acts in our lives as the relative seeking the delight of creation, expressing Ananda in the material objects of the world. The material objects are more receptive than the human swabhava which is bound by its self-chosen organization. - “Mrs. Bennet was restored to querulous serenity.”
A goal without a right endowment is never reached.
Its apparent attainment is a querulous serenity, as the monetary reforms attempted internationally.
Man attempting to solve human problems without making himself the centre will arrive at transitory precarious perches.
The Rishis realized that Life cannot be lived or handled with the Mind and shunned it.
It is a negative knowledge that without Supermind life cannot be under one’s control.
The death of Greek civilization is a classical example for the law that life that stops growing is death.
The fall of the Roman Empire is another classical example of a new level of life demands a new power and a new organization.
The failure of Indian spirituality is a supreme lesson that the higher one rises, the stronger and wider the foundation needed.
The Russian experience tells us that emotional population needs violence to think.
The seafaring Britisher endowed with excess wool for export was ushered into trade which by their honour gave them an Empire. Anachronic obstacles worshipped nationally not only made them lose the opportunity of founding a world government but points to dissolution under the seas.
France, Italy, Spain, Germany each missed the bus for various reasons.
The Twentieth century drifted into scientific superstition in spite of the warnings of pollution, economic crisis, nuclear armaments, and terrorism, being fond of slavery – slavery to its own creation.
Mr. Bennet insisted on such an attitude with his daughter who pointed out to him the catastrophe but awoke to the reality when the blow struck him.
That much of human response is adequate or abundant for Grace to act through Darcy.
Such an awakening from inside can save the world by one Man’s perfection. Such an awakening can only be spiritual universally.
Mr. Bennet was the worst of husbands which qualified him to awaken for a wider purpose. Today human smallness should awake thus. - “By some cruel malicious arrangement at the war office, another regiment should be quartered in Meryton”.
Jane Austen is aware of the character of life that acts on its own inspiration completely disregarding the Herculean labours of Man.
The perfection of the part is no perfection.
What is not sanctioned by Grace cannot be achieved by human ingenuity.
Non-violence can succeed up to the last point, but the real character of life, violence, will have its say.
The labours of the Five Year Plans are laudable, though based on ignorance. It has basically stirred the population which has taken the development into its own hands – the unconscious awakening of the Individual.
Present awakening is for the need for a decent comfortable living.
Those who already enjoy that standard must awaken to the inner need, the need of being a Man of value, honour, conscience, truthfulness, charity, service, human kindness to humans, not to animals.
Evolution does not proceed on those lines at that speed.
The slow deliberate delight of Nature is no longer imperative.
Human choice has come into its own.
Evolution to Supermind offers itself as an option to human choice.
It is not to be exercised only in the exalted moments of inner concentration.
It has to be exercised at all moments, in all small affairs.
One can awaken to prosperity, peace, inner mental calm, discovery of Romance in married life but he is free to awaken to cosmic consciousness, the supramental Marvel.
To have that knowledge is grace; to act on it is Supergrace.
Elizabeth had that grace; she acted to free herself of the malice.
Darcy had that grace by abuse; he acted enough to change them both.
Mrs. Bennet was impervious.
Mr. Bennet took one step when tragedy compelled his indolence.
Jane was oblivious of the outer sense perception or inner intimations.
The French Revolution could have made France the leader of the world.
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| 7 | The time fixed for the beginning of their northern tour was now fast approaching, and a fortnight only was wanting of it, when a letter arrived from Mrs. Gardiner, which at once delayed its commencement and curtailed its extent. Mr. Gardiner would be prevented by business from setting out till a fortnight later in July, and must be in London again within a month; and as that left too short a period for them to go so far, and see so much as they had proposed, or at least to see it with the leisure and comfort they had built on, they were obliged to give up the Lakes, and substitute a more contracted tour, and, according to the present plan, were to go no farther northward than Derbyshire. In that county there was enough to be seen to occupy the chief of their three weeks; and to Mrs. Gardiner it had a peculiarly strong attraction. The town where she had formerly passed some years of her life, and where they were now to spend a few days, was probably as great an object of her curiosity as all the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth, Dovedale, or the Peak. | - Man seeks Wickham, Life gives Darcy. Man grumbles to receive Darcy in place of Wickham.
- Later (p. 340) she asks how she could be silly about the Lakes.
- We know Mr. Gardiner’s work is rescheduled. That changes Elizabeth’s plans.
- We do not know Elizabeth’s changed attitude changed Mr. Gardiner’s work.
- It will be interesting to trace it.
- To be able to see the indirect connection between Mrs. Gardiner’s Lambton interest, Darcy’s coming a day early, Mr. Gardiner’s sudden change in schedule will show the determinism of life.
- The town of erstwhile residence was a great object of curiosity to Mrs. Gardiner.
- The curiosity of Darcy to know wherefrom the light issued in the eyes of Elizabeth is great.
- Charlottes’ curiosity to know why Darcy came to her house was inexplicable.
- Elizabeth had, of course, the curiosity to steal some petrified spars from Derbyshire without Darcy knowing.
- We see these curiosities in isolation.
- All of them are connected behind the perceived movements.
- There the explanation sits awaiting to be discovered.
- All movements of human energies can thus be reduced not only to curiosity but to all human faculties – they are attitudes, motives, urges, aspiration and a host of things.
- Enter through any, you will arrive at the same centre behind.
- “at once delayed its commencement and curtailed its extent”.
The delay goes with the curtailing.
A delay can be accompanied by extension.
Jane’s visit to dinner became a stay and made them depart altogether.
Jane’s letter to Lambton was delayed cruelly and cancelled the tour.
Delay is the movement that maintains the equilibrium.
Delay at one stage can be to hasten a result at another stage.
Jane’s opportunity was cruelly delayed as she could not marry without the coast for Elizabeth cleared, as she was the fountainhead of energy for Jane.
Hasten slowly is the wisdom of life.
Speed decides the goal, direction helps, but attitude decides everything.
One using the wisdom of life can hasten slowly to death by his attitude.
Attitude accomplishes.
Charlotte had an excellent attitude of good will. Unfortunately it had a mixture of petulant ill-will.
Of the various definitions of wisdom is one that says the capacity not to communicate on his own the gathering Light inside is wisdom.
We see it in small events, as Darcy’s intention to search for Lydia.
Vivekananda chose to speak to Sri Aurobindo silently in the subtle plane about Supermind.
Sri Aurobindo did not share his ultimate knowledge even with Mother.
To refuse to express wisdom is to convert it into power.
Men who do not voice their grievances are inwardly occupied by them.
Not to cherish them inwardly is death knell to them in consciousness.
Man does not evaluate himself by the opportunities knocking on his door, but compares himself with the crowd of non-achievers.
Man is finite; his spirit is infinite.
Delay is in Time.
Delay in every sense is divine.
Delay accomplishes more than haste. Delay is divine haste. - “the leisure and comfort built on” – Mrs. Gardiner’s letter to Elizabeth. (P. 212)
Leisure is the essence of civilization.
Leisure in Time is Divine in supreme action.
Comfort enables leisure to be enjoyed.
Mother gave leisure and comfort to Man to seek god.
Culture in values express in Time and Space as leisure and comfort.
Leisure is the absence of Time compelling Man to act fruitlessly.
Today society is advanced and endowed enough to offer Leisure and comfort to all, if they commission the higher organized forces of itself.
Mother saw this Truth in 1920 and offered it to sadhaks.
Companies doing their work by the highest forces available organized integrally can support ten times their present employees in comfort.
Families that have this knowledge and can act on it can support ten times its number in rich leisure and higher comfort.
Organisations that can exercise their higher Minds can create ideas, strategies, attitudes, social skills that will serve this purpose.
Lands and factories produce grains and products.
Leisure and comfort produce culture and values.
The Jnani frowned on work.
The Bhakta loved to serve God in Man.
To the karmayogi, work is worship.
Work must be done in the highest plane of consciousness organized with spirit as the centre. The rest is drudgery. Today drudgery is the fashionable ideal of modern life. Their demands for higher leisure belie their fashion. To mistake leisure for idleness is mental resourcefulness.
Leisure and comfort in a family raises affection to the level of love.
Technological innovation is welcome for its usefulness; but seeking it for its sake is not the best use of one’s energy or time.
Leisure and comfort will generate its own technology out of the saturated energies of Man not seeking work. - “obliged to give up the Lake”.
Obligation is action based on knowledge and responsibility.
Cultural obligations can create occasions for Grace to act.
Social obligations extend social possibilities and even create them.
Material obligations are at the level of survival.
Vital obligation creates, sustains, and enriches Romance.
Mental obligation compels one to see the other Man’s point of view.
Spiritual obligation is a blessing to all.
Supramental obligation creates a descent on Mankind.
Family obligation enjoins affectionate responsibility to all.
Mental obligation in the family today, can make a family rise ten times in society, enrich it a hundrend times, make them enjoy in all directions.
To realize all one’s obligations is to evolve spiritually.
Obligation avails of opportunities.
Obligation awakens opportunities on all sides.
Marital obligations honoured is domestic joy in spiritual peace.
Democracy offers the citizens vast freedoms and expects them to realize their obligations as citizens. In a country where this is done, one can see paradise on earth.
A gentle man obliges anyone in a gentlemanly fashion.
It extends his culture to the society.
Consciousness-responsibility feels the obligation to all the colleagues.
The mother’s obligation to children is biological.
The father has no such obligation biologically.
Socially he has an obligation to his family.
The woman is at pains all her life for marriage and property because she is aware that Man has no intrinsic obligations.
Men who remain unmarried or are not able to marry are those who do not have this obligation.
Children today do not wait for the parental obligation to be discharged. - “according to this plan they were to go no further north ward than Derbyshire”.
What is chance in the physical plane, is precise definition in the subtle plane.
A little water poured on the ground moves and stops somewhere.
To us it is a chance. It is guided by the gradient, stops at the lowest point.
We see a voluble, foolish man talking endlessly when no one is listening.
His speech, the very words, and parts of them are guided and governed by well defined rules of how thought expresses as speech.
One can observe that in oneself. The precision of its expression or failure to express will be seen as microscopic. 1.75ml of liquid transferred to another receptacle will measure there, if measurement is possible as 1.74ml accounting for the missing .01ml the loss in transmission.
Yogic experience enables us to take note of such phenomena in the process of psychology. Given the correct minute of birth of a child, astrology can precisely predict its action, says Sri Aurobindo.
It is the perfection in Nature, some of which we see in the workings of gold lace in silk sarees.
Such precisions may not have use value, but it is a fact of Natural existence. Man has achieved some of it occasionally. If the claim is true, - the tyre of a plane is replaced sixteen seconds, a sofa is assembled by the machine from its parts in ten seconds – Man knows that in his experience.
To rise from one plane to another, from Nature to Spirit, we know such perfection is indispensable. To discover the soul in Nature, Man’s efficiency should rise to this perfection. One who has successfully overcome the traits of egoistic sense would have seen this precision in the outer response to the inner movements. Forest dwellers, in dealing with animals that attack them have known the value of those small vibrations of fear.
Musicians know too well such shades in their voice and its direct immediate effect on the audience while they are rising to a climax.
Precision precisely matters for perfection. - “to Mrs. Gardiner it had a peculiarly strong attraction”.
A peculiar strong attraction arises from the minutest earlier enjoyment.
Sensitive mothers having observed their growing children are so attracted to their later blossoming, as they remind the mothers of their earlier observation.
One who has romantically enjoyed the company of his girl, has unconsciously sensed the potentials expressing later as actualities.
Married life, for the cultured sensitivity of self-giving generosity, has infinite avenues of this description making it eternally real in its endlessness.
Even an excellent cook knows his work like this.
The indication that one has reached the maximum of perfection in a relationship is at this point, it thrills.
God relating to Man who has become feminine renders every touch so thrilling.
Thrill that comes to stay is rapturous ecstasy.
Esctasy is the penultimate state of surrender.
Force passing through Love is made rapturous by infinity.
One who can attain this precision in money transaction unselfishly expressing truth or goodness through power when touched by infinity will earn all the Money that is there in his world in a trice.
Perfect precision producing infinite abundance is an inexorable rule. Nature in all its facets has this status, e.g. waste.
It does not require supramental sense to know it. Even a subtle perception can see it.
Grace acting on impervious personality distantly relating to it resorts to this precision.
Sylvia on her way to Australia coming to an Ashram guest house was saved from a plane crash against her vociferous protest.
Our well developed sensitivity in life, touched by Grace by the least vibration, is entitled to protection even as we are entitled to protest!
Elizabeth a little before the tour felt that exhilaration. - “The town where she had formerly passed her early life”.
Nostalgia is a great enjoyable sensation even as sentiments are.
In its recollection the memory gains a new life as nothing else can give.
Charles Dickens visiting his childhood home found the road narrow, chicken small.
He would have enjoyed more if his childish eyes came back with wide roads and big chickens.
Romance is an excellently fit field for nostalgia.
The old joys are recreated as fresh raptures.
Nostalgia is the experience of an old sentiment acquiring new vigour by imagination.
In a writer it is imagination that creates.
Physical events cannot always have an imaginative richness.
Imagination fills the drab subtle areas of physicality with emotionally creative movements.
Imagination exists entirely in the subtle plane as dreams.
Dreams are not under one’s control, imagination is.
A writer creates events, plots, characters, conflicts, confluences, events ripening into temperamental intensities of emotions, emotionally real possibilities all of which are real to him long after the writing.
The dress on the woman is an ornament to her while for him who adores her the end of that saree is an ever living sentiment in his imagination. Tagore grew expressive of it.
A lover’s vision is unearthly, if not celestial.
To be in love is to live in eternity.
The hero expressing his courage is lifted to heaven.
To him the body is a vehicle that raises him to celestial heights.
Danger itself thus becomes loveable and attractive.
In Romance the lover always feels the danger of losing his love.
Positively it can be an ever present hope.
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| 8 | Elizabeth was excessively disappointed; she had set her heart on seeing the Lakes, and still thought there might have been time enough. But it was her business to be satisfied -- and certainly her temper to be happy; and all was soon right again. | - The more ready Elizabeth is, the longer it is postponed.
- She is more ready to accept Darcy in her depths.
- “Elizabeth is excessively disappointed”.
Excess of anything makes for excellence.
The excessive disappointment is due to excessive surprise that awaits a consciousness rooted in infatuation.
Excess is never disappointing in itself.
Excess indicates growth.
Excess may spoil a local situation as sugar in coffee.
It can always be well utilized.
Life itself directs the course of its proper utilization.
Any problem of the excess arises poignantly when the choice of the Man is egoistically willful.
Wilful insistence harms.
Life lives by balance, restoring it whenever it is disturbed.
Excess flow of the river causes havoc.
Damming it will irrigate lands, produce electricity.
The field of education suffers in modern days from an excessive surplus of overflowing energy.
The system is not able to absorb it.
Children rebel or become refractory.
Internet has brought a flood of ideas on all sides.
It is enough to open the faculties in the children.
Curiosity can never be exhausted.
Thinking organizes an ocean of information into one thought.
Imagination rises to the occasion of endless expanse of ideas.
Judgment is not exhausted by any amount of views.
Opinions are constricting.
Idea formation can rise to an infinite supply of facts.
When the Mind itself opens by a flood of energizing occasions the genius begins to formulate itself.
The occasion to abuse Darcy, says Elizabeth, opened the springs of abusive genius. - “It was her business to be satisfied and her temper to be happy.”
To be happy in the given condition is a Psychic temperament.
So, her will told her to be satisfied.
It was the choice of her temperament – human choice – that qualified her finally for the reward of our life.
This temperament and her selfless goodwill for Jane arose from her character.
She was endowed with the character to receive grace.
She had the potential of her mother’s falsehood.
The latter surfaced on meeting Wickham, energized his scandal.
The force required for her to move to the Mind arose from the energy of the scandal.
It was enough to move to the Mind, not to free her from falsehood.
The elopement gave strength to this energy for her mind to endorse action.
What was energized was the mental decision, not the vital choice.
It enabled Darcy to act, was not enough to free her vitally.
Consecration raises Mind to Supermind.
Her response was to Pemberley; so Darcy came to meet her there.
She consecrated her idea to Pemberley, not to love nor to Darcy.
Consecration secures the willingness of the Will to the light of Knowledge.
That willingness is the choice.
Whenever problems remain unsolved, passages ununderstood, we can examine inside, the consecration will be in words, not in feeling.
It is the unwillingness to solve the problem.
It is the Taste of Ignorance that cherishes the past view of low consciousness, enshrined in preference or habit.
A systematic analysis at this point that breaks down the whole to its parts will ultimately end, as the dividing Mind ends in atomic existence, the smallest single act where the evil, wickedness, falsehood, wrong will assert its joy of selfish possessiveness, giving the sensation of right to the will that exercises.
Mr. Bennet’s unwillingness to exert himself to prevent Lydia.
Split it further. We see 1) spirit of contradiction, 2) love to thwart the wife, 3) indolence, 4) subconscious consent to elopement, 5) exercise of authority of the head of the family.
Man fixing on any one of them and insisting on moving it, Mind rises to Supermind.
From Elizabeth’s side, she does not want to condemn Wickham in her emotions.
She wants to avoid a crisis without taking commensurate effort.
In the Guru-sishya relationship, progress gets stalled at some point.
At that point the Guru will assert himself, rather than the work.
The sishya will express the spirit of contradiction.
He would like to accomplish the work by his own illumination which he does not have.
Such statements linger forever for some thousand years.
Shankara’s illusion lived in his followers for a thousand years.
The point where work stalls is a moment of Grace, a moment of Truth, if one awakes inwardly.
It is a spiritual awakening.
It will reduce to an argument where one is unwilling to accept that 7+3=10 out of prestige.
Lenin says people, at such moments, will change the geometrical axiom to suit their argument.
Royalty in England drives them under the sea.
Caste in India keeps the country divided.
Goldman Sachs goes back to speculation.
These people will plead ignorance. It is not true in the final analysis.
It reduces to possessiveness, prestige, profit, etc. like the English educated Frenchman refusing to answer in English. Churchill and
De Gaulle both knowing the other’s language employed interpreters.
Pollution, crisis, terrorism, disarmament can be reduced to such a small move – if people act, it is a wonder.
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| 9 | With the mention of Derbyshire there were many ideas connected. It was impossible for her to see the word without thinking of Pemberley and its owner. "But surely," said she, "I may enter his county with impunity, and rob it of a few petrified spars without his perceiving me." | - “With the mention of Derbyshire, many ideas were connected”.
It is memory that commissions itself thus.
Memory is an instrument of Time.
It acts on the surface Mind.
Thought, imagination, and ego have their own memories.
At a moment like this one can observe the instantaneousness of the action of consciousness.
Attitudes, likes, past events, future expectations, responses of all the existing beliefs all rise at once simultaneously, meet, decide, and settle down.
Consecration too is instantaneously effective.
As the forces rush, so consecration must simultaneously rise for it to be effective.
Human choice is made at that split second.
It is subconscious.
Man who accepts Mother deeply accepts Her in the depth of his subconscious.
The virginally creative moment He speaks of is this moment when Man remembers Mother.
The Memory should precede the uprush of thoughts, etc.
At least, it should be simultaneous.
Love of Mother shows itself in this ready Memory which is consecration.
Such a love of Mother, its Memory, is the subconscious willingness to become conscious.
That movement calls down the Superconscient and is felt as an elevation or inspiration.
To remain in that inspiration forever is to be a sadhak.
To have that readiness at the occurrence of each thought is to be a devotee.
For yoga the rising subconscient and descending Superconscient meeting in him should ascend to the Transcendent.
To him life will never be a bore. - “It is impossible for her to see Derbyshire without thinking of Pemberley”.
Subconscious interest brings it to memory.
Subconscious indifference will make her forget Pemberley in that situation.
She did forget his proposal after leaving Hunsford.
One who is connected with Mother for thirty years did not remember Mother when his heart was attacked. He never thought of it for three days till he was asked.
A girl coming to Pondicherry was asked in an interview about the interesting places there, and gave an exhaustive list excluding Ashram. Her uncle lives in Pondicherry. Her brother in law is a regular visitor to Ashram. Ashram was not in her consciousness.
A lady educated in Ashram school, who visits Ashram for every Darsan found herself not remembering Mother at the mention of Pondicherry. She remembered someone there.
Kitty did not remember Darcy’s name.
Darcy was lodged in her subconscious.
When memory is gradually weakening by yoga and is dissolving, distant meaningless trifles will come to Mind sometime in dreams. They are the small significant events for his transformation.
An event so lingers if you have not got its essence into yourself.
Those events whose lessons have been received will be forgotten.
It is true of events, Men, ideas, places, etc.
Nostalgia is taste of ignorance.
Man without drawing the essence of events, can be without nostalgia if he is turned inward, organized in that poise, unaware of the outside world of Men and matters.
The physical consciousness is thus organized for all.
Sensitivity of the physical consciousness will mean either his physical responds or he is physically organized on the surface.
Mother speaks of light in the body which means the physical organization of consciousness does not reach the surface or inner mind.
Each Man can know how he is organized by his problems, response to consecration, the impact he produces on others.
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| 10 | The period of expectation was now doubled. Four weeks were to pass away before her uncle and aunt's arrival. But they did pass away, and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at length appear at Longbourn. The children, two girls of six and eight years old, and two younger boys, were to be left under the particular care of their cousin Jane, who was the general favourite, and whose steady sense and sweetness of temper exactly adapted her for attending to them in every way -- teaching them, playing with them, and loving them. | - It only means it passed away delightfully without her noticing the time.
- “The period of expectation is now doubled” – Expecting the tour.
Agents that activate actions are significant symbols.
Desire in the absence of possibility is dormant.
For a brahmachari taken to sannyasa, sex is not so much an urge as for one in family life. Shaw speaks of it.
Ambition in the prewar world was a sin, as there was no scope.
Ambition is aspiration in USA where the scope is everywhere.
Higher consciousness is not bothered by views that oppress the lower consciousness.
Ideals do not constitute an urge to people of low consciousness.
Knowledge reveals itself according to the level of consciousness.
Levels of consciousness differing, knowledge around is not seen, is not taken interest in, is unintelligible when approached, does not yield to comprehension. When exercised, interest instantaneously vanishes even when it is intelligible.
The foreign invasions of India were for trade, empire resulted out of it.
Europe came to know of the Indian spirit by that contact.
For two hundred or even three hundred years, what they got out of it is bare awareness of its existence.
The existence of America was ignored till the war.
The whole world now takes after their way of life, not their real values, because of their pre-eminence.
Indian Spirit will receive attention when she is richly prosperous, territorially united.
Man accepts another’s value, not for that value, but for some extraneous, often silly cause.
Japan still insists on its insularity.
Democracy is imposed on them.
May be they are capable of reverting to monarchy if it is possible.
Japan is fully infected by all western evils, not all western values.
It is an immature culture which arose out of its insularity.
Maturity can come by Spirit, not only by education. - “Four weeks were to pass away and they did pass away”.
The doubled expectation becomes quiet when the result is assured.
The Bhakta assured of moksha abridges a lakh of births into the present.
Frustrating expectation arises out of disbelief.
Knowledge of the future abolishes Time.
Time is the Spirit’s observing its own movement.
The Spirit that observes its movement is itself in the movement.
Its knowledge is of the movement, not the goal in the end.
Knowledge of the goal, a belief in it, and its certitude abolishes Time.
Mind divides to analyse by coordination. It cannot see the goal except by analysis.
The emotions of the heart do not analyse, they accept the end, by a movement of unity with it.
The heart abolishes Time by certitude.
The body abolishes Time and Space by understanding.
The body’s understanding is action instantaneous.
The body being matter is localized.
The heart being emotion extends to Time.
The Mind being thought extends over Time and Space.
The Spirit being silence abolishes Time and Space in a higher sense.
In the ascent Spirit is the highest.
In the descent body is the highest.
The growth of the Psychic moving from Mind to body becomes the Supramental Being at the body.
The sensation of the body taken by life to Mind becomes thought and controls the body.
The thought in the Mental consciousness moving down to the Mental substance becomes the thought of understanding of the body.
Hence the instantaneous action.
The Hour of God, by the sanction of the Highest, abolishes the grades acting through sincerity that is total and surrender that is complete. - “Their children to be left to the care of Jane, their favourite”.
Love of children, especially those whom the children love, is goodness.
Goodness is Truth expressing knowledge as a sensation, formed in to sensitivity.
Children readily sense this sensitivity and gravitate towards it.
Natural goodness is a sensation people never fail to apprehend.
Their first impulse is how such goodness can be made to serve them.
Those who are disappointed move away.
Organised falsehood formulated as selfish greed gets offended and tries to harm.
Saints have as a rule become unpopular in their own place.
The local population quickly discovers the enormous power of the saint.
Each individually tries to appropriate it fully and is disappointed.
All such disappointed individuals join together in opposition.
Sri Aurobindo refused to cure a woman brought to him by her husband.
The vital deities are known to respond the first time and generally hold out a hope of reward, occasionally extending it, and destroying them if deserted.
The principle of popularity is the attitude of vital deities presiding over famous temples.
Whatever the benefit, Man is utterly unwilling to seeking it, qualifying for it.
Left to himself he exerts monumentally for every small gain as promotion.
Efficiency, skill, selflessness, goodness can offer multiple gains. He does not countenance them.
What comes free he demands in increasing measure and even makes himself scarce to receive it – QµõUQ.
An idealist desires to deliver personal benefits. It boomerangs.
Making benefits available impersonally that defect is eliminated.
Man who understands an immense benefit, acquiring that knowledge, offering it to others appears vain in their eyes.
He who accomplishes and is not unwilling to offer the knowledge to those who ask for it will succeed in very little measure.
Tata’s accomplishment was not imitated for 150 years.
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| 11 | The Gardiners stayed only one night at Longbourn, and set off the next morning with Elizabeth in pursuit of novelty and amusement. One enjoyment was certain -- that of suitableness as companions; a suitableness which comprehended health and temper to bear inconveniences -- cheerfulness to enhance every pleasure -- and affection and intelligence, which might supply it among themselves if there were disappointments abroad. | - ‘In pursuit of novelty and amusement.’ Darcy’s behaviour is the novelty, his attention is the amusement.
- ‘One enjoyment was certain, that of the suitableness of companions’. We hear here the voice of life saying Darcy’s temperament will be suitable.
- ‘…which comprehended health and temper’. Read ‘which comprehended aspiration and eagerness to accept’.
- The first three lines of the page read as if she is writing about Darcy and Elizabeth.
- “The Gardiners set off in pursuit of novelty and amusement”.
They did land in novel amusements in Pemberley and Lambton.
The lack of time for Mr. Gardiner is expressive of hastening Lizzy’s marriage.
Her marriage was not in the family agenda or hers.
She received a fascinating proposal in abusive language.
She was flattered by it and forgot it, never wishing to see him again.
Her disgust was so great that Jane could not even share her flattery, and Mr. Bennet even after its consummation cannot appreciate the greatness of it.
The marriage is there in potential. Mrs. Gardiner is to create the circumstances that would make it actual. Hence the novelty and amusement.
Their good will persuades her against her reluctance to visit Pemberley.
Good will is creative of Good.
Every occasion in the society is an opportunity.
Often it reveals to great initial effort, sometimes to a little effort, at other times to no effort, just for an idea.
The banks of a river can never receive the river water for irrigation.
Far above the course a dam is to be built and canals dug for that benefit.
One can lift the water by any arrangement such as a pump.
The banks have copious ground water to be pumped.
On the banks of a lake with high bunds dry lands can get the water by a siphon.
Great sources of artesian will perennially supply for a simple hole dug into the soil.
The present civilization is the result of Mental resourcefulness in the physical plane.
Now we have at our disposal Supramental resourcefulness in all the planes down below.
This is life, not yoga.
He used His Force to win the war and Indian Independence.
That Force is available for the creation of universal prosperity. - Man got his prosperity from land and factory.
Trade came booming and expanded life, made Money real and allowed it to multiply by itself.
Society is an organization.
It is an organization of people, energy, relationship, movement, knowledge, power and finally an eternal organization of self-organising, self-multiplying forces.
Man is extremely resourceful as well as wedded to blindness.
Wherever the organized forces overlap or interact, as in Education and government, Management and academic education, Money and the market, the generated energy is of a higher order in infinite measure.
In rare occasions Man stumbles on it.
The river bed civilization discovered it in the formation of cities.
Romans saw the knowledge generating power through law and ruled the world for five hundred years.
American settlers found it in freedom and enterprise.
A mere worker Stalin could rule a superpower for thirty years when he stumbled on the organizational power of an organized army.
Today Google has done it more than once.
The woman denied of primary freedom discovered it in values and reached moksha. These are all unconscious.
Becoming Mentally conscious, Western civilization has come into existence.
Spiritually conscious Man cannot exert himself for material survival. It is there all around.
To him vital well being, Mental expansiveness are available.
The expansion of the American retail business is partly due to voluntary self-denial, a denial of the ego.
Non-egoistic rational functioning will bring five hundred years from now here at once.
Sri Aurobindo invites us to yoga.
At least we can respond to yogic life. - “Suitableness which comprises of health and temper to bear inconveniences”.
Suitability is the strategy of accomplishment.
Energy, organization, attitude, skill, etc. bring about an accomplishment.
Aspiration, structure, vital understanding Mind, organization of energy give them.
Accomplishment is creation in miniature.
A thought that accomplishes is pure creation – conception.
Limitation is as great a strategy as conception.
Absorption creates infinite intensity.
The intensity can be dark or light.
Involution is as much creation as evolution.
Creation is manifesting the Absolute in the relative.
Spiritual wisdom is to see the relative as Absolute.
Consciousness is the nature of Being.
The nature of consciousness is force.
Being is delight, consciousness is delight, Force is delight.
All the rich potentials we see in society are here.
The play of Being is delight.
The delight is infinite.
All social potentials are infinite.
Man is not to end as a social animal.
Without affirming in the society, Man cannot affirm in Spirit.
He is likely to level off horizontally in the society.
To prevent that pollution and crisis arise.
Man is spiritually infinitely resourceful.
The delights of knowledge are greater than the delights of ignorance.
Ignorance gives the surprise of self-discovery to emerging knowledge.
Ignorance can transform into knowledge instead of allowing knowledge to emerge out of it for delight.
Transformation transfigures. - “affection and intelligence which might supply cheerfulness among themselves if there were disappointments abroad”
Travel brings out one’s best as well as worst.
Travel is a minor project for a family. Its accomplishment brings rich experience primarily through knowledge. It is an intense occasion to know another.
Inconvenience and discomfort require an adjustment cheerfully.
That requires intelligence to understand and affection to rise to the occasion.
Affection that cheerfully accepts discomfort is emotional intelligence.
Family is a miniature society. In cultured families children can receive from the families the experience of an emotional university.
What is taught is valuable.
What is learnt is invaluable.
What comes from the family unseen makes one a valuable member of the society.
Culture has the basis of religion, education and wealth.
Religion has a spiritual basis.
Family has a corporate existence in the cultural market that buys and sells respectability.
Landed aristocracy, religious aristocracy, aristocracy of power, are some varieties of high status.
A family that possesses aristocracy of any type can equip the children to acquire all other aristocracy if they are bent upon it.
Social upward movement is towards aristocracy.
Blood in England is as valuable as caste in India.
One can lose caste, cannot acquire it.
Once lost, lost forever.
There is no institution like the family to usher the next generation into any type of aristocracy or all aristocracy.
Family gives emotional knowledge useable.
Family is an emotional unit of the society.
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| 12 | It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire, nor of any of the remarkable places through which their route thither lay: Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenelworth, Birmingham, etc., are sufficiently known. A small part of Derbyshire is all the present concern. To the little town of Lambton, the scene of Mrs. Gardiner's former residence, and where she had lately learned that some acquaintance still remained, they bent their steps, after having seen all the principal wonders of the country; and within five miles of Lambton, Elizabeth found from her aunt that Pemberley was situated. It was not in their direct road, nor more than a mile or two out of it. In talking over their route the evening before, Mrs. Gardiner expressed an inclination to see the place again. Mr. Gardiner declared his willingness, and Elizabeth was applied to for her approbation. | - ‘It is not in the direct road’ – In Elizabeth’s psychological route, Darcy is not in the direct road.
- “after seeing all the principal wonders of the country”
England is a country of pretty rural scenes.
Their parks are their pride.
Pemberley spread over perhaps, ten thousand acres was beautifully laid out in a naturally beautiful scenery.
Elizabeth at the first sight of Pemberley from a distance voiced her change of attitude.
Wonder is an overwhelming emotion.
Emotions surging leaving the senses paralysed is wonder.
What happened to Elizabeth was exactly that.
She never knew that she was such a wonder to Darcy.
Her senses were overpowered.
His imagination was captivated.
Darcy wondered at the dexterity of her movement and the delicacy of her manners.
Pemberley, the very sight of it, cured her petulant perversity.
The building, its majestic appearance does to the physical appreciation what ceremonies do to nerves.
Akbar was so impressed by the loftiness of Indian religious ideals.
Sri Aurobindo saw Kali emerging out of the idol.
It was a response of stone to the spiritual liveliness in Him.
The very soil where a saint is buried is made sacred.
Mother told a sadhak to go to the Guest House where She had lived and said he could find Her atmosphere there.
Romance is the wonder of a newly emerging relationship.
Descending Silence reveals spiritual wonders of magnificence.
Fully received, it yields wonders in daily life.
Consecrated food while being assimilated gives a thrill of wonder, wonder of digestion.
Negotiation is a wonder of civilization which replaced bloodshed. - “It is not in their direct route”.
Grace when acts thrusts luck on oneself.
Mrs. Gardiner had already seen the place. Now she wanted to see it for Elizabeth’s sake, a clear act of thrusting her into her luck.
Elizabeth was distressed, expressed disinclination.
Here it is Elizabeth being forced into good fortune by her aunt.
Really it is Darcy who insisted on Elizabeth being raised to the throne.
Kamaraj was a town crier, an uneducated Congress volunteer.
In 1940 he became the Chief of Tamilnadu Congress just to keep Rajaji out of it. That was his eternal heavens.
From 1946 to 1952 he made four chief Ministers. In 1954 he became the Chief Minister and was there till 1964. This was a second stint of luck that comes to the rare few. He resigned to become the All India Congress committee chief, a post for non-entities. During his tenure the post itself rose in value. He became the most popular Congress leader in India. Hereafter Mother acted in his life. He made two Prime Ministers, missing it himself on the advice of jealous friends. Mother creates a possibility where no potentiality exists.
There is some little parallel here with Elizabeth.
I saw this opportunity in a Man’s life. Readily he quit the arena lest he should be the recipient of Grace. People buried in hostile circumstances never can receive Grace. To escape the hostile conditions is their grace. Man sees vast inconceivable improvements in his life. That is the time he must capitalize his energies and organize his capacities. The excuses they give at that time express human resourcefulness to escape grace. At least in one case I was determined to thrust it on him. In the end, he came to me and said he would be at peace if he withdrew. Human choice is always powerful.
Choice is luck. - Elizabeth was applied for approbation”.
Freedom becomes real not when taken, but when extended.
She is young and a guest, a woman. The question of her having an opinion does not arise. Uncle and aunt treat her as an equal and seek her approval.
The force of law lies in the spirit of implementation.
This is a great valuable social truth.
It is true of our values.
The power of our values lies in the practice of them.
Law, social values, personal values are aspects of a community’s culture.
Often, especially in degenerating older cultures, society develops schizophrenia, in the sense Man is corrupt in public life, its opposite in personal life.
It has other expressions too.
Men whose honour is impeccable in every aspect, in their conduct with women exhibit a disgusting corruptibility. Values are valuable wherever they are followed in whatever measure they are followed.
When Man either individually or collectively should rise to the next level of social existence, values are valueless unless they are perfectly followed.
All the progress China is making in prosperity when evaluated in terms of human dignity will work in the reverse.
The great sense of honour of Japan cannot contribute to the growth of individual value.
What with the Brahman, Sachchidananda, moksha in India as reliability in public or private life is nil.
For seventy years the USSR offered guaranteed employment. On her demise, in view of the individual of value being absent, the mafia reared its head.
Great values are great, laudable, commendable in their own zone, not for the nation unless they are universal and perfect.
The individuality of children will take shape by the treatment to them as Elizabeth now receives.
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| 13 | "My love, should not you like to see a place of which you have heard so much?" Said her aunt; "A place, too, with which so many of your acquaintance are connected. Wickham passed all his youth there, you know." | - Mrs. Gardiner exerts herself to bring Elizabeth to Pemberley.
- Mrs. Gardiner exerted herself to wean Elizabeth from Wickham. The sweetness in her personality actively brings Elizabeth to Darcy. Its outer version is this exertion to persuade Elizabeth to see Pemberley.
- Mrs. Gardiner uses the name of Wickham to go to Pemberley.
- In such situations, man seeks his object through its opposite.
- Sri Aurobindo got Freedom through Churchill who won the war and made Freedom possible.
- Foolishly Subash Chandra Bose sought freedom through the Japanese.
- Mrs. Bennet seeks Bingley through her unwelcome initiatives.
- Man seeks God through his ego.
- Mrs. Gardiner insists on Elizabeth visiting Pemberley acting as a good angel
- “Should you not like to see the place of which you have heard so much”
Man progresses in the measure of his aspiration.
Knowledge is what interest offers.
Education is a great tool of progress as it creates interest.
What is unknown evokes no interest.
The unknowable becomes knowable according to human quest.
Aspiration is the measure of Man.
USSR came down when the population knew of the outside world.
In marriage people seek selfish domination and get frustration.
Seek to know the human greatness in the spouse, you will rise high in your inner worth.
Discover the genius in the child, you will know the scale where genius is the first step.
Economic goal is not for the cultured Man. Seeking it, one ends in limits to growth, pollution, and terrorism.
For Man, economics is a useful plane, not a plane where one has to reach an ideal.
What would you think of a Man or society that idolizes the landed gentry as the ultimate goal of Mankind?
Even education does not qualify to be the ultimate goal.
It led Greece nowhere.
Presently it is an unpardonable superstition to follow an economic goal as an ideal for any nation.
Today we see the distinguished elite speaking with one voice about demography, pollution, speculation.
This is no voice of Mankind.
It is the voice of Babel.
Surely anyone voicing the consciousness of Mankind will be speaking for her conscience.
Conscience itself is something to be overcome.
Such a Man will be heard with respect. - “Wickham passed all his youth there”.
Darcy never came to her Mind.
A gift is valued for its wrapper.
Having seen his mercenary nature, her aunt valued the place he grew up in.
For the woman, a handsome face is of ultimate value.
The Prince of Wales was given an income of £50,000. Glencora with that income said she would let Burgo throw away all that money to win his love. What she did not know was after all that Money was spent, he would be furious at her for not having more. Unless she enjoyed his cruelty there would be nothing for her to enjoy. Of course, Love, cannot survive.
The spending of that Money will raze out any humanity he had.
Spending creates an addiction.
He would not know it was her Money.
She would become detestable for having exhausted her supply.
Hers is a temperament that needed that experience.
Not only a handsome face, but every article that creates that craving for dissipation leading to addiction has that character.
Sackcloth, ashes, bed of nails will be smaller cruelties for the body when one thus aspires for the Non-Being.
That is not an avenue Mankind has so far explored.
Sri Aurobindo offers a path that includes the Non-Being in its journey as his path overcomes ego and Nature thus avoiding evil.
A Mind that contemplates what He offers us now, rises to Supermind.
It is the throne to the beggar maid.
No wonder the surface Mind includes the earth, the universe and the superconscient along with its counterpart the inconscient.
Man can get a glimpse of the magnificence when he contemplates the concept of Waking Samadhi.
His spiritual atmosphere was there for seven and half miles around Pondicherry. Now it is all over the world.
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| 14 | Elizabeth was distressed. She felt that she had no business at Pemberley, and was obliged to assume a disinclination for seeing it. She must own that she was tired of great houses; after going over so many, she really had no pleasure in fine carpets or satin curtains. | - “Elizabeth was obliged to assume disinclination”.
Dilip Kumar complained to Him when Mother announced that the Supermind would descend in the playground.
He left the ashram before its descent.
Sri Aurobindo treated him as his son, Nirodbaran his brother.
As the grace comes closer Man readily announces his willingness to depart.
This is a power that can create the CEO of the first company in the world if gratefully received.
It needs Sincerity, Opening, Receptivity, Gratitude, Surrender. With some excuse anyone can be trained to reach that height.
But Man readily goes away and stations himself at a place where we should not go.
The indulgence He practiced was Himalayan.
After meeting Darcy at Pemberley to his question of how she found the place she answered ‘delightful’ and restrained herself on the sense of politeness. She did not mind being false and insincere. It took her breath away. She should have told him that truth.
The word daridhram u›zvµ® means poverty of falsehood, rather the personification of eternal poverty.
Man is wedded to daridhram and is proud of it.
The vital spirits he worships perpetuate daridhram.
The wealth these temples accumulate is the wealth of poverty.
Money is the foundation of Supermind.
It is the Money earned in truth.
One who has earned several crores trying to earn one lakh by the path of Truth will miserably fail.
The path Money takes follows its character.
It is also true Money can change its character.
To effect such a change Man should have allowed the Psychic to emerge. Even then it is not so easy.
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| 15 | Mrs. Gardiner abused her stupidity. "If it were merely a fine house richly furnished," said she, "I should not care about it myself; but the grounds are delightful. They have some of the finest woods in the country." | - Mrs. Gardiner does not seek Pemberley because it is a fine house, richly furnished.
- Elizabeth does not seek Darcy because he is rich and handsome.
- “The grounds are delightful”
Elizabeth accepted Pemberley. Her aunt talked about the delightful grounds.
Earth is the Mother, Heaven is the Father. So we seek the mother first.
Of course, Elizabeth was dragged to Pemberley against her wishes.
Any great gift to humanity, be it education or insurance went begging to start with.
All India political leaders during their days of early entry used to go to the beach in search of an audience. The moment they started speaking the little crowd melted.
Fernand, Danglars accumulated wealth of falsehood.
Edmond earned his wealth by austerity of love and knowledge.
Raoul’s love was intense, but being an inversion of a motherless child, it evoked no response. He could only die.
The grounds are the ground realities.
England is really an agricultural country but the Industrial Revolution came there, as they say, because of successful agriculture.
The best of a species is fit to leap out of it to the next, instead of preserving the existing one.
Her unwillingness to visit Pemberley must be understood from several points of view.
- Social transition.
- Personal fitness.
- First contact with Darcy.
- Role of good will of her aunt.
- Darcy’s aspiration.
- The French Revolution.
- Her position in the family.
- Lydia’s elopement.
- Woman’s need for property.
- Life Response.
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| 16 | Elizabeth said no more -- but her mind could not acquiesce. The possibility of meeting Mr. Darcy, while viewing the place, instantly occurred. It would be dreadful! She blushed at the very idea, and thought it would be better to speak openly to her aunt than to run such a risk. But against this there were objections; and she finally resolved that it could be the last resource, if her private enquiries as to the absence of the family were unfavourably answered. | - She has the one dread of meeting Darcy.
- “She has the one dread of Darcy knowing of Lydia’s elopement.”
- “The possibility of meeting Darcy while viewing the place”.
Man’s only point of view is his own selfish view.
Each Man thinks from the point of view of that with which he has identified.
Dr. Thorne told Mary that Roger’s property was given away. She at once exclaimed “To Frank”. It only shows Frank was uppermost in her thoughts. He was unconnected with Roger at all.
What thinks in Man is his ego, not his Mind!
She, who forgot his proposal, would find it natural not to think of Darcy on visiting Pemberley. Her aunt never thought of it.
She thought of him as he was there in her subconscious memory.
Man has totally forgotten God. It is God who remembers him.
To understand Man from his memory will give good results.
Jimmy Carter forgot Rosalin’s birthday.
A village was ushered into unprecedented property by the tireless work of a single Man against heavy odds. He was forgotten by the entire population at the time of review of the change.
The European Secretary whose state secret was stolen by his wife on getting the news of its discovery ran into the house crying ‘Hilda’ to tell his wife first.
Man loves his enemy dearly.
Dr. Alexander, after 40 years, remembered only T. Govinda Rajan from Annamalai University. His memory was due to the occult fact that he was in the place meant for T. Govinda Rajan.
Man seeking woman is Romance. The woman seeking Man is marriage.
Even when the woman is endowed with property, she needs a husband for social approval.
Property is the biological need, marriage is the social need.
Left to herself Glencora will choose Burgo, Elizabeth Wickham. - “She blushed at the very idea”.
Blushing is subconscious shame.
Men and women blush at the mention of their love, not because they are ashamed of their love, but that their own intimately personal issue of sacred significance is publicly mentioned.
Shame is social, blushing is personal.
Man’s inner life is not only private but some of them are sacred.
Accomplishment at that level is necessarily secretive.
A musician creates greatest music in that sanctum sanctorum but wishes to sing it publicly.
Inspiration is private, enjoyment is public.
One is in the comprehending Supermind, the other in the apprehending Supermind.
The private becoming the public is the process of creation.
Sri Aurobindo says creation became possible when the Absolute decided to objectify.
Objectification is there at several levels: Absolute, Sachchidananda, Supermind, etc.
It is by objectification that Spirit produces Time and Space.
Self-conception, Self-limitation, Self-absorption is another process.
Movement of the Moveless is a basic process of creation.
Manifestation of what is in the Timeless emerging out in Time is another essential process.
Involution and Evolution together is creation.
Atman moving to Purusha and Ishwara is another view of the process initiated by Self-conception.
Elizabeth blushing is due to the awareness of her coveting Pemberley.
He says let not the worldly wisdom whisper in your ears.
Elizabeth is a high ideal personified as worldly wisdom.
She does feel a mercenary attitude and blushes at self-recognition. - “it would be better to speak to the aunt openly than to run the risk”
Honesty is the best policy.
A false Man prefers truth if he knows truth will come out later at his cost.
This is not to be truthful; it is to be defensive or protective.
Truth compels the individual by revealing itself to all first.
One who acts with reference to the outside, being true in the measure he will be compelled to be true, is not one who seeks truth.
One who acts with reference to the inside, being true in the measure the inner life requires, is one who is true.
For him honesty is not a policy, but an inner compulsion.
Secrecy has a value with reference to its inner requirement.
In speaking to her father, Elizabeth resorts to truth in the measure it suited her.
Life acted to compel her to speak out at Lambton when Lydia ran away.
We see the outer unfolds in the measure the inner requires. How then is one to be truthful?
Truthful or any such principle does not act all by itself.
It acts in its own context.
There is a truth each context requires.
Elizabeth was not as truthful with her father as the situation required.
At her first meeting we can understand she was taken in as she had a grievance against Darcy.
At Netherfield we can say that Elizabeth could not have missed Darcy’s partiality to her.
Even when he asked her to waltz, she put a construction on his request that he wanted to despise her taste. It was Prejudice. That is the theme of the story. Her acting in Prejudice prompted by his Pride is the theme. She could act as truthfully as the context permitted, not according to the demands of absolute truth. In all this there was no inclination to falsehood. We see that inclination first when Wickham deserted in favour of £ 10,000. In defending him with her aunt she was not misled. She was consciously trying to make him the recipient of her ideal devotion to Love in spite of his desertion. Her telling her aunt that handsome young men must have something to live upon was certainly a defence of his falsehood. It was an exercise in falsehood that was in her. - “As a last resource, if her private enquiries as to the absence of the family”
(P. 214)
Man insists on his own way as long as he can have it.
Shrewdness discerns its future advantages.
Life allows him to progress according to his best light.
Here, it chooses to have its own way, and crosses her resourcefulness by giving her the right information and making Darcy come a day early.
That determinism of life always exceeds human determinism.
Human choice can get the better of life by moving inside from life to existence and then from existence to the soul of existence.
Man’s ability to move so is compromised by his taste of the present.
Mother’s Presence, in the form of Her atmosphere, FULLY helps him move further and further, provided there is an inclination in him towards Her.
Inclination towards Her is sincerity, opening, receptivity.
It is the deciding moment.
All human progress depends upon Man’s choice in that zone.
Life’s temptation of falsehood, Mother’s Silent Presence ready to respond, human vacillations are graphically seen in this area.
A call to a hostile centre at such a moment is to one not meant for grace.
In every event where the devotee moved up, he can now recollect that he responded to the Presence. In every occasion he failed, he can very clearly recollect now that his own choice was intentionally wrong. No devotee can fail to rise to the highest position presently inconceivable to him if he decides to make the right choice each time. In any event recent or distant past, if he can now correct his past choice, he can witness the Miracle of a past bygone given up, buried opportunity coming to life in his favour. He may succeed or fail; but he cannot miss seeing the exact microscopic point where he had the temptation to lapse or the sincerity to rely on Her. Life warned me not to collect Rs. 1500/- Damodaran had cheated. It made him come to the collector and speak the Truth no one can tell the collector. Such a trifle, equal to the word of the Chief Minister’s personal secretary, decided the whole future of the project.
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| 17 | Accordingly, when she retired at night, she asked the chambermaid whether Pemberley were not a very fine place, what was the name of its proprietor, and, with no little alarm, whether the family were down for the summer. A most welcome negative followed the last question -- and her alarms being now removed, she was at leisure to feel a great deal of curiosity to see the house herself; and when the subject was revived the next morning, and she was again applied to, could readily answer, and with a proper air of indifference, that she had not really any dislike to the scheme. -- To Pemberley, therefore, they were to go. | - Actually she blushes at the idea of his knowing her family as it is. It comes to the surface like this.
- There were objections to speaking it out openly.
- Human communication does not always further frankness.
- It often achieves its purpose silently in the subtle plane.
- Desiring to be rational, if one speaks out in such occasions, you see the work will be at once spoiled.
- Achievement has gross as well as subtle dimensions.
- Private enquiries are always right, allowing for exceptions.
- Usually the exceptions arise when you work against the purpose of life.
- Now she develops the curiosity we mentioned earlier.
- This is an occasion where negative is positive.
- “With proper air of indifference’ she agreed.
- Throughout Darcy’s courtship, life gives her a proper air of indifference which she consciously acquired here.
- The information of the maid confirms it
- “She asked the Chambermaid”
The chambermaid is the child that shouted, “the Emperor has no clothes”.
The gardener of Nehru kidnapped by an industrialist, supplied with a car and Money, got him access to the household and helped him in his ascendancy.
There are real powerful avenues that can be used either way.
It is a human organization that can wield all the power.
One can construct its corresponding version in his own organization if only he has observed his own family in terms of the outside world that matters to him.
A subtle knowledge of his own mental movements can give the same knowledge.
It is never failing.
Buried in his own vital preferences, he can fully miss such indications.
His indifference is overtaken by grace when it insists by stronger clearer events.
It is frustrating when one is coarse, buried in physical movements or vital interests.
Life is always alive when Man insists on the Mental.
Anyone can recollect such Mental events where one in spite of his warnings chose intentionally the other thing.
Spiritually one is ever awake.
To know is different from being able to act.
It is here the human willingness acts as human choice.
Man is ethical and is guided by right or wrong.
Man sensitive to life movements will find himself functional.
The European Secretary who ran calling his wife ‘Hilda’ would not take long to know his great misfortune arose out of his great inspiration to please his wife going far out of the way.
In desiring to continue a work or discontinue, one can precisely see his preference.
Every Man is endowed with that sense in the plane he is awake.
Mr. Bennet is awake to poke fun at his wife.
Charlotte is fully awake to every distant possibility of marriage for her.
One can be casual or alert. - “What was the name of proprietor”
To pretend not to know what one knows is a strategy to get news.
A strategy is a human device to arrive at a conclusion of Nature or life.
Every accomplishment is based on a strategy natural or artificial.
Attitude in Man is the general human strategy for all accomplishments.
Attitudes are spiritual values in the vital when they are true.
One attitude splits into several or even endless strategies.
Motive is deeper still, based on the body or the being.
Motives can be right or effective or ones that relate to forces of life.
Accomplishments can be traced from opinions, attitudes, motives expressing as strategies that relate to work.
As they are expressing outward, so they can function inward.
Yoga was spread over body, will, Mind, thought, emotions.
Thus asana, pranayama, concentration, inquiry, japa, mantra, yantra arose.
Gita when it advocated surrender went beyond all these and saw an effective centre in human dharma which is to be abandoned.
The goal of the Gita is release of the Spirit.
He aims at transformation of the whole embodied being.
The centre for that function is in the evolving soul, centred in the subliminal.
The surrender He advocates moves Man to the Psychic.
Even that effort He further abridges by asking us to surrender to Mother.
Mother is the highest functioning cosmic centre.
She is running the cosmic life.
Our surrender to Her is to avail of the highest tool spirit has evolved.
Our surrender is negatively to come out of ego as well as Nature.
Positively it is to become the Psychic or better still as Mother.
In democracy Man is capable of rising to the position of the monarch.
The party makes his task light which is otherwise impossible.
A Man of integrity and capacity is sought after by the party.
Sincerity on our part makes Mother come to us and readily accept our surrender of devotion. - “A most welcome negative followed”
There are times when negative is positive.
Not only positive serves, but even the negative serves too, as good as well as evil take life ahead.
In her case a negative made her act and later it was negatived by life for her to accomplish.
Life adjusts to her ignorance.
Suppose she had a rightful knowledge, she would have known that Darcy awaited her. Darcy was coming to her. She saw only Pemberley. Socially it was not delicate for her to throw herself in his way. Again it is social ignorance. She, in the clarity of her subtle spiritual knowledge could see Darcy coming to her literally through Pemberley. She must gravitate towards it without the promptings of her aunt, without the ploys with the chambermaid and in heart respond to Darcy, not only to Pemberley.
Every situation the devotee faces or has recently met, successful or not, lends itself to such an analysis.
Analysis yields all the knowledge, an analysis on these lines.
Something more important than the analysis is the prior mental preparation – receptivity.
Our own Mind will readily reveal all the points of resistance, lapse, lack of receptivity, lack of opening, etc.
Address all of them and set them right.
Their moving rightly will partially move other things rightly also.
Now the receptivity of the instrument, knowledge of the environment are there.
What acts is the Will in the right atmosphere.
The will exercises the knowledge it is impelled by.
Action of that will is the human choice.
Such a choice can also be impelled from inside.
It is inspiration.
That being Psychic inspiration is the best. - “She was at leisure to feel a great deal of curiosity.”
Curiosity requires freedom to act.
The leisure mentioned above is mental freedom.
Such a freedom has so many further dimensions.
Vital, physical below, spiritual above, social around.
The history of civilization can be studied as the flowering of these freedoms over the centuries and the refusal of the society to yield this freedom to individuals.
Freedom comes and is fully appropriated by the strongest, say Man.
Women and children in the family, the worker and the have-nots in the society are denied that freedom.
Society has to cultivate that freedom till it reaches all, which is social culture with respect to this aspect.
Human relationships that foster this freedom are culture.
In one enlightened view, one can see the structures of the society in terms of freedom, rights, light, power, etc., etc.
That enables us to trace its evolution till now.
The future then is a revelation that is a wonder.
To see such a vision in the study of The Life Divine makes the study easy.
Such a Mind cannot lose itself in the wonders of technology.
Nor can that mind whip itself into enthusiasm for travel or shopping.
No economic barbarian can arise out of this culture.
Man’s horizon is widening across the globe.
Its riches reveal in politics, human unity and well being.
Man should respond to this movement.
Now he responds from his ego.
To aspire is to enlarge one’s spiritual curiosity.
Man knows of oases in the desert.
Ours is truly a land of oases with no scope for the desert.
What is deserted is the human heart, not the world outside. - “with a proper air of indifference”
The polite version of the spirit of contradiction is indifference.
To receive what is given so as to please the giver, the act of giving, the object given is a high act of human generosity.
Condescension becomes contemptible.
Hesitation smells of superiority.
Resistance is an offence to good will.
Man practices all this and more when grace comes to him.
Sri Aurobindo came with the Hour of God, He brought The Mother, and in support of Her, the universal Mother came. Man was rooted in himself.
He never opened his eyes and saw.
In spite of all this the descent came in 1956.
Every four years its anniversary reveals to us its richer density.
We do not know any of this.
Mother told us all this in Her Agenda.
The knowledge and more so its consciousness remains abstract to us.
In America people are mobile.
No one knows the past of anyone.
culture is not to know the neighbour.
In India or Europe everyone knows everyone else.
Only the celebrities become vulnerable to prying by the media.
By law the media must be prevented from gathering or publishing details of private life.
Clinton was the worst victim.
It is all done in the name of justice.
This is known as public opinion.
Such scandals kept the Democrats for long from the While House.
What Man has fortified himself from personally, he indulges in publicly.
Diana was the worst victim of this.
It is high time law prevents it.
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Comments
On point No. 41, I have two
On point No. 41, I have two questions regarding the following “A scheme of which every part promises delight can never be successful”.
Man’s movement is locomotion, one part advancing when the other remains unmoving.
Beauty, Unity, Truth, Goodness, Knowledge, Power, have all the six components of the human personality each of which grows at a time.
The completion awaits the full growth of the all six.
For each to grow fully, all the energy must be concentrated in one at a given time.
Of the seven or eight principles of evolution, one evolves at a time while the rest are dormant.
On earth the progress started in India, traveled via Greece to Italy and Europe till it reached America.
India started with the spirit and reached the penultimate stage.
Greece took up Mind and its thinking faculty.
Rome developed vital power.
Europe gave the power of thinking to every Man alive.
America took the Mind to impact on physical work.
Next, all of them are to be united so that the ultimate height of the spirit can be reached.
Its basis is the global, territorial unity, a human unity symbolized by the world government.
Its basis is global institutions, especially the financial institution.
Spiritually Man shedding the dividing ego is the starting point.",
Here are the two questions:
1. What did China do on the progress of earth? or Where was it and where it is now?
2. Does the principle of 'For each to grow fully, all the energy must be concentrated in one at a given time.' apply also to the process of 'Spiritually Man Shedding the dividing ego' on an individual level?
Thanks.
What did China do on the
What did China do on the progress of earth? or Where was it and where it is now? China was never an occupied nation. She developed Mind in the early centuries and made philosophy as a national institution. She was the first to create an intelligentia who ruled the government. Now she is the biggest market, by her population moving to market economy from command economics.
Does the principle of 'For each to grow fully, all the energy must be concentrated in one at a given time.' apply also to the process of 'Spiritually Man Shedding the dividing ego' on an individual level? The two items are disparate.
Thanks for the reply.Which
Thanks for the reply.
Which role can China play optimally now for the further evolutionary progress of Earth?
China's greatest assets are
China's greatest assets are she was not a slave country. She has the highest population and the longest tradition of intelligenstia. Taiwan, a real part of her, Shanghai, Canton, Hong Kong had won great prosperity. The country has no democratic tradition. Its culture is essentially feudal. Tyranny and cruelty have had long and intense innings there. Concubinage is a national institution. Greece lost its Mental culture in one century, because she did not open into Spirit. Like her China's intellectuality never extended to spirituality of any type. The future is not for the national collective, but for the Individual. Democracy, socialism, Individuality and Spirituality will rule the future. In the measure, she responds to any of these principles, her present Herculean effort to emerge out of poverty will be rewarded.
In my view entrepreneurship, democratizing national institutions, organizing education to create the Individual, shedding dictatorship will help her. Market economy, universal education are there to help.