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4. The World Energies at Work

The world travelers explored life in other nations. Adventurous sailors discovered new sea routes. Others discovered the New World. The Rishis discovered the Spiritual continent inside. Sri Aurobindo's yoga is also known as the yoga of Spiritual evolution. To Him earth is Mother Earth. He discovered the Spirit of the earth as the involved status of the Brahman. His spiritual evolution commences from Matter and ends in Brahman via Life, Mind and Supermind. Earth has evolved Life and Man is the acme of that evolution. The world we speak of is essentially the world of Man. We know the history of humanity. It can be examined from His point of view. To the scientist the process is important. Scientists say they know every step the universe has taken from the Big Bang. It is no small discovery. Still, it is confined to the Process. Process is not all. It does not include the essence.

The essence of the Process is the Spirit. The process is the Process of the evolving Spirit on earth. Earth that is Matter evolved Life from which Man evolved. Man is now evolving into the Supramental Being. It is said civilization began in Mesopotamia. Man took to agriculture and urban living. It was a physical life of the civilized man. Mind was developed in Greece in later centuries. The evolution of Man continued but elsewhere. It was Rome that developed law, art and empires. Again it moved. Europe developed science. Now the centre of that movement is in USA which is focusing not so much on Science as Scientific Technology. Before this movement began, the Spirit was discovered in India. The movement of civilisation is Man's evolution from physicality to mentality. Nature has developed different aspects - physical, vital, mental, Spiritual - of human existence to the next stage at different periods and in different places. Now that Nature has completed one round, all the different aspects must be brought together as a whole on earth. Sri Aurobindo says it will come about as World Union. Trade is now globalised. It is a movement of bringing all nations together in the field of trade. It is the natural prelude to a united humanity on earth.

By world energy one is likely to think of the wind energy, light energy, magnetic energy, etc. They are the different forms of the one energy of the world we call Nature. It is called Prakriti in Sanskrit. Nature does not move by itself. Nature moves, says the tradition, by the sanction of the Silent Purusha behind. We hear from Sri Aurobindo a different strain. Sri Aurobindo reminds us of the Upanishadic formula "Sarvam Brahman". Nature too is Brahman, says He. Also nothing in this universe can exist without the Spirit, the Purusha or the Being. Therefore, Nature exists by the Spirit inherent in it. When Nature moves, the Spirit in it evolves. Sri Aurobindo calls it the evolving spirit, the Psychic Being. Sri Aurobindo posits the theory of the evolving Spirit as against the traditional theory of unchanging Spirit or the Immutable Spirit.

  • His position is this evolving Spirit evolves out of Ignorance into knowledge, seeking the Delight of emergence.
  • It is for this Delight the Absolute Brahman created the universe.
  • Such an evolving Spirit returns to its original position of the Absolute Brahman.
  • As man has evolved out of the animal, He says, the Supramental Being is evolving out of Man.
  • Before the advent of the Supramental Being, the rational Man has to evolve.
  • Rationality does not permit division. It calls for unity, unity of human existence. Sri Aurobindo called it World Union.
  • World Union is the advancement of the collective on the basis of the Spirit.
  • It is not the partial spirit of Man as one of the four parts of his being - Body, Vital, Mind, Spirit. Sri Aurobindo means the underlying Spirit, underlying the Body, Vital and Mind.
  • Sri Aurobindo's progress envisages that Man moved from his body to the Vital and from there to the Mental and the Spiritual. This is the Ascent. In the Descent, the Spirit emerges in the Mind and later in the vital and the body. At the end there will be ONLY Spirit, not the vital, physical, mental appearances.

The world energies are moving along this line of progression. This is a simple statement of His philosophic description of Ascent and Descent which will appear to be different. The occurrences in the past must, to an extent, explain this. Nature does not work for progress in all fronts at all places simultaneously. Nature herself is a partial force. Soul and Nature together make for the whole. Nature is a part. A partial force cannot work for total progress. Hence Nature has decided to develop emotion in Asia and mind in Europe. Spirit is generally associated with high mountains and wide seas. India was chosen by Nature to develop the Spirit here. Sri Aurobindo says the French Revolution happened because someone sat in the Himalayas and dreamt of Freedom. Mother says both of them were there on earth at all critical times of evolution. She says She had a part in the Revolution of China in the early decades of this century. People related to that revolution came to see Her. She made the sign of the Chinese Revolution - a closed fist on top of another closed fist. At once they recognised it and asked, " Were you part of the Revolution?" Sri Aurobindo says He had some little part in the Russian Revolution. In the Evening Talks there are passages where He speaks of doing what He wanted in Turkey and Ireland.

My theme is Nature set about her work on earth working at various places on various fronts. In India Nature developed the Spirit. By Spirit, I mean the Spirit in Man as one part of his being. It is the best part. India recognized that Man's best part is the Spirit and devised various ways to attain it and release it for moksha. Such a release could be obtained from the body - Hatha yoga, the vital - Karma yoga, or the Mind - Jnana yoga. She went further to perfect Jnana yoga in Raja yoga. The Gita stole a march over all of these to reach Purushothama through surrender. Krishnavatar from the Overmind achieved that great consummation. Having discovered the Spirit, Nature moved away and worked at various places for the development of various other parts. During this period, there was the necessity to preserve the treasure of Spirit discovered during the periods of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gita. It is Nature's irony that the best has to be preserved by the worst, even as a treasure of gold is saved in a forest under thorny bushes and protected by vital spirits. Indian Spirit had to be preserved in an atmosphere of poverty by a top dressing of Falsehood. In the period of the Vedas the Rishis discovered the Spirit. Also they lived in unison with Nature. It was a life of the whole or whole life. The physical Man discovering the Spirit, living in unity with the environment of Nature, though it is of a spiritual fullness, was the victory of the first step - the physical life, the life in the Body. The wholeness of primitive times could not last. The joint family of the last century of thirty or forty members was a life of unity. But it was the unity of an agricultural family, mostly of uneducated simple people of primary emotions living on their land. As agriculture moves to manufacture, rural life gives place to urban living, illiterate goodness exchanges itself with educated individuality, and joint family is no longer a reality. As civilisation marches ahead, joint family disappears and gives place to the nuclear family. Even its life is no longer certain. The Vedas have two parts, one seeking knowledge and the other preserving the sacredness of the rituals. A split arose there. Those who followed knowledge were the Rishis of the Vedanta. Those who preserved the rituals became the purohits.

Sri Aurobindo pleads for the restoration of unity lost at that time. He says the unity is to be restored above in the Supramental plane. The original cleavage between the Rishis and the purohits was followed by the dichotomy of the sannyasin and the householder. Then it became the contradiction between the sannyasin who denied Matter any reality and the Materialist who discovered the secrets of the universe and denied any reality to the Spirit. This is so because the instrument of the Rishi or sannyasin was Mind that could perceive only a part of the Reality. The scientist did one better by insisting on his physical mind, a part of the Mind that is already a part. Supermind is the right complete instrument that can see the whole Reality of Brahman in the cosmos as well as in our human life. Sri Aurobindo, who discovered the Supermind guided by Vivekananda, asks us to receive the descending Force of the Supermind so that we may be raised to its own native plane. There the unity lost after the Vedic period can be restored in its fullness. It will be a unity that transcends life and Mind. The world energies are in the process of building up that unity, not according to any mental formula intelligible to us, but in terms of a Life that transcends rationality. It is a life that is intelligible to Intuition, accessible to insight. It eludes intellectual enquiries.

Waste

Sri Aurobindo says there is no waste in the working of Nature. Man is unconscious. His work can involve waste. Nature is conscious. She has no waste. She attempts simultaneously many things and completes all of them at the same time. Therefore the efficiency of Nature is maximal. It means we have nothing to regret. Let us see what happened in that process.

  • India who reached the peak of the Spirit had her land in a thousand fragments. For her Spirit to become the Guru of the world, the very first condition is physical, geographical unity. Sri Aurobindo says, Nature resorted to foreign invasion to unite India having failed in all her other attempts. Britain gave us that unity but partition came to mar it. The Spirit in India still awaits the geographical unity of her various parts.
  • The French who were receptive to Freedom revolted against the Monarchy and gave the benefit of Freedom - rule of law - to the whole of Europe. France took the path of dissipation resorting to wine and women. Character in the leadership could not be built up.
  • England, the mother of democracy, ruled over the seas with an empire where the sun never set. Having undergone subjection under the Romans, Normans, and French for centuries, Britain cherished democracy and the values of democracy. That built up a leadership of courage and character. They could save democracy for the world or the world for democracy because they were men of character. Had their character sprung from spiritual roots, it would not have become rigid as it has now done. So, she cannot be in the evolutionary race any more. It is a character from physical hard work. By definition it will ossify and lead to rigidity. We see them worshipping the rigidity for permanence, not realizing that it has no life. Their Royalty is the symbol of their decay. Russia that took up Marx's socialism resorted to violence. Maybe their past demanded it or their peasant composition needed it. But, having resorted to violence, they had a violent end. Russia has made the entire capitalist world more socialistic than socialist countries. Today the worker is far better off in all the capitalist countries than in socialist countries. Whatever their justification, that was the path they chose.
  • USA is in the evolutionary vanguard, not by culture but by practical organisation. The hippies echo the evolutionary call from heaven.
  • The hippie movement was an aberration of the civilisation. Really it was a revolt of youth against the establishment. They are now reabsorbed into the society and they are in their fifties, the real leaders of thought in whatever field they are. Fritjof Capra is a physicist who so revolted thirty years ago against the traditional philosophy of physics. He has not been accepted by the physicists of the world as yet. But his books have sold in the millions. He tries to integrate Science and Spirit. Tom Peters was another from that generation. His plea for Freedom had the widest appeal in the eighties. The spirit of his appeal has prevailed in the field of Management. The appeal Harry Potter has among children is phenomenal. What substance it has God knows. The emerging world is now led by children. It is their response to Spirituality in the shape of Magic. All over the world education is trying to shed rote memory. Freedom for the children in all respects has come to stay in the Western world and in all elite schools in India. Most of the progressive schools in India do not have exams up to five standards. Rock music is not good, but it is a negative breaking through of a positive movement. Mahesh Yogi has taken Hatha yoga to the West in a big way. There is no real spiritual substance in it. It clings to the form. It is a true response of the world to spirituality.
  • Agriculture was the first ORGANISATION which emancipated man from physical drudgery. The organisation it invented was of real value to man and civilisation. Till today the ORGANISATION by which the world lives at all sophisticated institutions is that original organisation. Its value is enduring.  On the surface the forms change. Anthropologists have acknowledged the truth of this. The form changes and disappears; the substance, the content endures. It is of the Spirit. That organisation agriculture invented is the same organisation by which Mind created Life and Life created Matter. It is a spiritual organisation. It has the subconscious efficiency which means complete efficiency, an efficiency of unfailing success. It has come into industry in a major way, not yet completely. The organisation of social life has not yet seen the significance of it fully. Failure will be entirely eliminated from human life in its daily expressions when that organisation has the force of ordinance. The precision Space programmes have acquired is possible because of that organisation. We can say life has discovered the Spiritual value in terms of organisation. For a total success, Life has to acquire not only spiritual organisation, but spiritual skills, spiritual capacities, spiritual talents, spiritual abilities and spiritual consciousness.

Better than Nature

If Nature's efficiency is greater, all that we have to do is to watch. Yes, it is true; Nature's efficiency is conscious and is the very best. Mother says Nature has infinity before her and She enjoys her movements deliberately. She is on her easy course. What we call civilisation now is entirely because of human effort to overcome Nature's movements. The universe splits into Soul and Nature. Nature is called Prakriti, Maya or Shakti. The scientist may call her Matter and expressions of Matter. For our present purposes, it is all Nature. Soul has other names. Spirit is the most common name. Being is another. Purusha, Brahman, Ishwara are other names for Soul at other stages. It is also called Self. Human life belongs to Nature. Higher life belongs to higher Divine Nature.

Earlier we said the force issues out of Being or its consciousness. The entire universe is made of force. This force is limited to Time, Mind, the surface being of Man, his ego and is finite. It is bound by karma. The Rishi moves away from the surface mind into the inner mind. Inner mind belongs to Timelessness. It is not gross, but subtle. It has an opening into the higher ranges of Mind and can lead one to Moksha or Nirvana. It can also lead man to his subliminal being and the Psychic that dwells there. This subliminal mind does not belong to Time or Timelessness. It belongs to the dimension of Time that includes Timelessness. Sri Aurobindo calls it Simultaneous Integrality of Time. Let us for simplicity's sake call it the third dimension of Time. Mind in this plane changes into subliminal mind. Ego does not exist here, but changes into Psychic Being. The finite becoming universal tends to reveal the infinite.

After 1956 Man has a grand choice. In India Man had the option of becoming a Rishi and attaining Moksha. A further opportunity has opened to Man to move into the subliminal mind. It is not Nature's slow movement we witness here. It is not a world made of force. This is a world of consciousness. We can say it is a world of Being. Karma is not a factor here. Speed of life is not speed in Time. Its speed is greater than light. Now that the force has descended on earth Man need not move by his own effort. World travelers were there a few centuries ago. They moved on foot. Today they can travel by train, car, ship or plane. The Force acting through Self-giving beckons man to avail of it. Its greatest effect is to help man evolve when it acts continuously. Acting intermittently at our call, the Force raises our life of problems into one free of problems where luck is commonplace.

The Individual in the World Movement

Mankind is a collective mass. Its first step of progress is the emergence of the Individual. In the West such an emergence occurred when Martin Luther defied the Roman Catholic Church. It was an evolutionary movement. It is said the printing press came to propagate the message of Luther. It is not a coincidence.

Parallel movements occurring at different places are missed by our perception. No movement is isolated. When one new movement starts at one place,  all the other parallel movements simultaneously start. It is possible to consider them as fortunate coincidences but that will not lead to a theoretical understanding. We know the same thought develops in several unconnected places in the world simultaneously indicating human oneness, the unity of human consciousness. It is equally true of complementary movements such as the demand to read the Bible and the facility to print in large numbers. In one hundred and fifty years half the territory of Europe was Protestant. Martin Luther was a symbol of the individual soul awakening. Democracy is the institution that symbolized that awakening in politics.

  • Its further expressions are the rational Individual in public affairs.
  • Its height is the Spiritual Individual coming into his own and becoming the leading light in the world. The twenty first century has that mission.

Today, in any field, including science, the voice of the Individual is not heard. Only when the seniors in the field espouse his ideas will he be recognized. The reputed members, the presiding organisations, are the deciding factors today, i.e., society is still a collective entity, not yet an individual phenomenon. The IDEA has not gained importance on its own. Technology has that privilege. On its own strength a new product created by a new technology can survive. Even here the big corporations are conservative. Such a product like Xerox machine was rejected by thirty companies. Our goal is Man should overcome the superstition of rituals or religious worship and look inside to discover his own Spirit and be led by that. That is Spirituality.

Tradition believes that Jivatma is not eternal. It has to go and merge with Paramatma. Sri Aurobindo says that Jivatma is Paramatma. When one abolishes the ego and goes inside, one sees that the World-Being is there and its spiritual centre is Paramatma. It is His Spiritual experience that Paramatma has come down as Jivatma in Ignorance. Spiritual evolution is the rediscovery of Jivatma as Paramatma. That was how HE could see the whole world inside Himself. We know that the whole world was seen in the open mouth of Lord Krishna. The Spiritual Individual, having discovered himself, goes on to discover the universe in himself. Such an Individual has three stages to cross before reaching the full spiritual stature. In his language it is called reversal of consciousness. The world as it is in Knowledge or Spirit, is a world of Delight. There is no pain created in this universe. It is one of Delight. To enjoy that Delight more intensely, God has created Ignorance and hid Himself in it. The act of discovering the lost knowledge enhances that Delight. Those three stages are,

  1. In our ignorance the opportunities of life appear as obstacles. After a long time, the obstacle is seen as opportunity. To see it as such is the first inversion - a coming out of the ego and seeing the reality. In the case of the dying last grade servant, had he not gone to the verge of death, the opportunity of living long and fulfilling his ambition of building the house would not have arisen. Those vast opportunities were around him and he was unable to see them.
  1. This is an inversion of coming out of the limited Mind. A man's one and a half acre plot was acquired by government in 1960 for a compensation of Rs.2350. Someone suggested to appeal on the grounds that it was an ex-serviceman's plot. He could thus save it. His original idea of selling it for Rs.17,000 was completed by selling it for Rs.47,000. The owner of the plot thinks in terms of the power of the collector to acquire. It is a narrow view of the Mind. To think in terms of all the aspects of the plot is to widen the mind, an emergence out of the Mind. That widening increases the earlier opportunity.

  1. The third is emerging out of the dimension of Time. Thought keeps us in Time. Silence takes us beyond Time. Relying on friendship is in Time. Relying on Mother is to go beyond Time. When a project failed, someone realised the unreliability of friendship. He shifted to Mother. Before long he got a much bigger project unsolicited. To be able to see these inverted situations without undergoing the ordeals requires an insight and intuition. The inversion of ego, Mind and Time can also be explained as the inversion of the material physical plane into the subtle and again the inversion of the subtle plane in the Supramental causal plane is possible. They can be said differently too. Whatever it is, these inversions are necessary to reach the spirit fully.
  • God asked Siruthondar, a saint, to cook his son and feed him. The saint had the knowledge not to mistake it. His knowledge was rewarded with moksha for all the three. The offer of God's moksha comes as the murder of the son, as the saint is in the human plane. That is an inversion. These inversions are in three grades. We reach the Spirit when we cross all of them. To have the knowledge beforehand avoids the necessity of the experience which is an ordeal.
  • In observing the workings of world energy in the past centuries, we can see these inversions. Will it open our eyes? The Allies, particularly Britain, need not have suffered this much had the British Cabinet listened to the dire warnings of the cabinet officials - officials working for the Ministers. The warnings were given over five years. At last they brought in Churchill on public pressure. If that too had not been done, the Allies would have lost the war.
  • In 1942 the Cripps Mission offered Dominion Status to India. Sri Aurobindo persuaded the Congress to accept it. That would have avoided Partition.
  • Churchill said Britain was wedded to democracy, but did not know why. The Theory of Social evolution says democracy in any country is preceded by autocracy. Britain was a slave nation for over 400 or 500 years. Hence they cherish freedom.
  • Penderel Moon, an ICS officer in 1947, explains in great detail that Partition could have been avoided up to January 1947. He also says the uprooting of the population and the communal carnage could have been largely avoided. In Bhawalpur, a state where there was a Muslim ruler, he was a Revenue Minister. While the neighbouring state had 100,000 casualties, his own state had only 5000 dead because of administrative precaution.
  • Now we understand the Bengal famine of 1943 could have been avoided, as the shortage was only marginal. In 1965 against the prediction of FAO of famine in India, concerted action avoided it.
  • "How does all this information describe the inversion? What is the inversion we are talking of? "Explain its practical relevance," is a legitimate query.

At The Mother's Service Society, we have been applying Sri Aurobindo's philosophy to life and enunciated a Theory of Social Evolution in 32 principles. We have also applied it to Business Management and come up with a distinctive approach to management.

The essence of these two findings is,

  • The Theory must be able to explain any historical event in its own light.
  • It must be able to solve any problem of humanity.
  • Any company that follows this line must be able to double its profits.

ICPF

If we truly believe in our findings we must be able to act in some measure. We know The Mother and Sri Aurobindo worked for world disarmament. They were successful in defusing crises but the armaments were piling up. Around 1988 we saw the possibility of disarmament becoming real. A Mission headed by an eminent individual to the heads of US & USSR would bear fruit was the assessment based on our theory. We approached an eminent Indian to lead the team. He was gracious enough to support us. Later he told us he had wished to have Sri Aurobindo's Darsan on August 15, 1947 but could not make it. He proposed a commission of eminent international personalities. On his invitation a commission was constituted and was to hold its first meeting in Trieste in 1989. A week earlier the Berlin wall fell and disarmament appeared to become a full reality soon. The purpose for which the commission was constituted was fully served before its first meeting.

  • The Token ACT of exercising ourselves in favour of disarmament was more than fulfilled.

So the Commission - International Commission for Peace and Food - ICPF - addressed itself to the other burning issues of that period. The other issues were 1) Food Scarcity, 2) Unemployment, 3) Reorganisation of Russia and other East European nations, 4) the many mini-military conflicts all over the world, 5) the need to evolve a Theory of Social Evolution, and 6) the Importance of the emerging Spiritual Individual.

In the year 1994, the Commission released its Report. It was released by the World Academy of Arts and Science, UNESCO, and UNDP. It was presented to the Secretary-General of the U.N.O. Among the various findings of the Commission, the one that stands out is the suggestion for a World Army. To create a standing World Army would enable the international community to slash the expenditure on military equipment.

Before the creation of ICPF, we tried to approach the head of USSR, Gorbachev, for his country to be represented in it. He did appoint an agricultural scientist as a member of the Commission. When he was out of power, we approached him to explain our ideas of reorganisation of the USSR. Our ideas can be summarized as,

"Russia is a rural feudal country. She tried to usher the nation into Socialism through centralized command economy but has now dismantled that structure. We see chaos everywhere. The mafia rules. Of course, she will find her feet and join the march of nations sooner or later, maybe in ten or fifty years, depending on various factors that arise then and there. The Theory of Social Evolution, based on the Theory of creation, substantiated by historical events, can plan out the future of USSR and achieve it sooner rather than later."

He gave a good listening and proposed a joint Seminar on inflation, as that had caught his imagination. We organised it later. Gorbachev presided over it. One member of our Commission was later appointed the Governor of the Central Bank of an East European country to control inflation that had reached astronomical levels. His measures based on the views discussed in ICPF reduced the rate of inflation to zero in a week. In the ten years that followed the publication of the Report, we were anxiously watching further developments in the world. Some of them were.

  • Food threat and food scarcity were no longer the major concern of the world community.
  • The trend of employment, particularly in USA and Holland, was according to our ideas. There was a year when unemployment in these two nations was at an all-time low.
  • The idea of a European Army is being seriously considered.
  • The Gulf War was fought.
  • September 11th announced the terror of terrorism.
  • Kashmir issue became hot.

We tried our best to present our views on Kashmir to the political leadership in India and Pakistan. We did so a little even in America. Having acted thus, we arrived at the conclusion that any work hereafter has to be inner work. Mentally, we believe, we have the answers to all problems of the world. If these are true solutions, it must reach the people at the helm of affairs. At this point there is nothing for us to do, except watch the movement of world affairs with interest. Our work outside will bear fruit only to the extent the inner has prepared it. The Mother said if one is capable of serving the Divine, he need not waste his energy in the service to the nation. She adds that serving the Divine is very difficult.

Divine Service

The Divine is trying to rediscover himself on earth which is immersed in Ignorance. To rid oneself of the Ignorance will be service to the Divine. Sri Aurobindo divides that Ignorance into seven divisions. The last is practical ignorance, not knowing what to do next. That will go, says He, only when the Original Ignorance goes. If you want to go to an office and get things done, you go there and do as they say and get it done as others do. It may take a few trips, may involve waiting or bribing or even protesting. Suppose you know when to go, to whom you should go, and also know what to speak and do, the work will be done straightaway without delay or bribes. To know this is knowledge. Occasionally, it happens to anybody. To the devotees, it happens often. But the devotee does not know how it is done. One can know the right process of doing anything to successful conclusion. That will be ever-present LUCK. One can learn it or even teach it to others who are willing to learn it on its own conditions. That is the maximum a householder can accomplish. Anything more needs yoga. The four basic things Mother asked the sadhaks to avoid are 1) politics 2) smoking 3) liquor 4) sex.

The sex energy must be converted into the higher energy of tejas for higher accomplishment. Smoke and liquor dissipate energy. Yoga is a process of conserving one's energy. Politics is too full of falsehood which cannot be faced at its own level.

The Significance of an Act

The Act is a unit of life and therefore a basic unit of the universe. To master the ACT and make it behave is to master the essence of life. Even in the life of a householder, that much can be learnt. In practice, it is to be a MASTER of your life. No living man can aspire for it or has it. There are too many unseen or invisible forces. A devotee who learns it can have a mastery over the movements of all the external forces with respect to his ACT, from the side of his act, not from the side of these forces. He who learns it will be effective in his world, the world of his own life around his personality, not the world outside. Should he desire mastery over a wider area, he must widen his personality.

Longevity is increasing all over the world, even in poor countries. Abolition of infectious diseases, airborne and waterborne, is one reason for it. They were prevented by vaccinations too. It is a great achievement and an essential one. It has prolonged human life, but its effectivity has limits. New drugs, antibiotics, are coming out daily to fight minor or major diseases. They contribute a lot to prolong human life. But that too has its limits. Poor countries and backward nations are becoming prosperous and developed. There is more food around. Nutrition is daily increasing in its quality. That too has a limited effectivity. All this cannot offer man an unlimited power because some of them are limited in scope, and have no power over other factors. The smallpox vaccination can prevent infection, but cannot make a dirty environment clean or offer better food. When poor people have vaster quantities of food, food has no power to prevent them from overeating. Nor can it give knowledge of nutrition. Education raises the level of mind. It contributes to better health and longer life. Physical exercise has demonstrated that even at the age of 78 one can start exercising the body and invigorate it. Asana does it scientifically to the point of perfection. Everything can contribute, not cancel death. Only asanas can do it when the spiritual element is awakened. Life is too wide even for asanas to have complete mastery over it. Sri Aurobindo says the longest life known to have been lived was that of a sannyasi on the banks of Narmada. He lived for 200 years. When life wants to terminate someone's life, it always has a source. This sannyasi stepped on a rusted nail and died from it. The psychic being is the evolving soul. It evolves at all points of the being - body, vital, mind and the spirit - and therefore life or Time cannot get the better of it. The Psychic Being offers man a deathless life. Only it can do it. To the ordinary man it can give a prolonged life. When the psychic gives a longer life, it will be free from all the vitiating influences of old age. To the end a man will be cheerful and healthy. All those who have taken to Mother have had their lives greatly extended.

Americans migrated from European countries because the social structure in England and Europe permitted anyone to rise only up to the social status of their father. They were forbidden to go beyond. In the fresh land of wilderness that America was in 1800 or 1900, there was no society to monitor individual progress. There were no classes or castes. Anyone could rise to any level not based on his class, but on his own education and capacity. That is social freedom, freedom from social restrictions. This is one main reason for America being a prosperous nation, flush with achievements. This is also one way the world energies act. If human progress is stultified by classes and castes, Nature creates a New World free of them. Next to social barriers are psychological limits. Yoga is of the Infinite. The poor and the lowly suffer from social inhibitions. But everyone suffers from psychological limitations. These are created by opinions, beliefs, and superstitions. We Indians believe in karma. That creates a limit to our social accomplishments. The European knows no karma. If a work fails, he feels his skill is insufficient. So, he tries again and again till he succeeds. The absence of such a barrier as karma acts as an incentive to them. Our lives are full of such mental convictions. "There is a limit to everything", "I cannot be ambitious," "I should not exceed the social achievements or I should not aim to overcome the social achievements," "This is new, I cannot accept it," are some psychological barriers. Mind is a limited instrument. It will always impose on itself some limit or other. The Spirit in its birth is limitless. When we go to the spiritual depths in us, we enter into an infinite vastness. If only we honour our spiritual impulses, there will be no limitations, barriers, or inhibitions in sight.

  • To reach the Spiritual depths is not easy.
  • To honour the urge of those Spiritual impulses is difficult.We must go to that depth, honour those impulses and ORGANISE them permanently in our lives.

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OM NAMO BHAGAVATHE SRI

OM NAMO BHAGAVATHE SRI ARAVINDAYA.



book | by Dr. Radut