Tag Archives: savitri

Allusions in Savitri – part 2

Posted on August 11, 2011 by

This article continues a previous article “Allusions in Savitri” in which we discussed some allusions used by Sri Aurobindo in his epic poem Savitri. Sri Aurobindo had to evolve a new diction in English to describe his supernatural experiences and towards this end, he occasionally employed images, symbols and phrases from English Romantic poetry. Continue reading →

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Why the future is veiled from us

Posted on June 17, 2011 by

Imagine for a moment that you knew the future. Doesn’t that seem a good thing? You could relax and work without getting stressed out; you could plan ahead and direct your energies only in those paths that you know would lead to success; you could avoid all those intransigent people who keep trapping you in some debilitating vortex of time. There would be no wastage of energy, no error, no agonizing in hindsight over missed opportunities. What a utopian world it would be! But counter-intuitive as it seems, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Mirra Alfassa offered some legitimate reasons as to why the future is deliberately hidden from us. Continue reading →

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Anandamayi Ma as the Guru

Posted on May 27, 2011 by

“How would the lives of Western women have been different if they had been raised to believe that God was a Mother, all loving and all powerful?” It is with this thought-provoking question that Lisa “Prajna” Hallstrom opens her book Mother of Bliss on the life of the Bengali woman saint, Anandmayi Ma(1896-1982). Hallstrom, through this book, sought to understand the phenomenon of female spiritual Gurus in India. Continue reading →

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Allusions in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri

Posted on February 28, 2011 by

In his epic poem Savitri, Sri Aurobindo sought to convey many of the superconscient experiences that he and the Mother Mirra Alfassa underwent. In order to bring home the touch of the Ineffable to the reader, he employed a number of literary devices as part of the diction, including what are known as “allusions”. V.K.Gokak, a professor of English and Kannada literature, was able to uncover about 140 allusions to Romantic era poetry in Savitri. In this article, we cover a few of allusions that he discovered. Continue reading →

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The role of intellectual development in the spiritual path

Posted on February 26, 2011 by

Someone asked the question in a comment on this blog, “If one is automatically going to obtain knowledge by following the spiritual path, why should we read books and create stress in the body? Why bother? Why not just sleep well and be relaxed?” People in spiritual communities sometimes tend to deprecate the intellect (and consequently, intellectuals) because the scriptures state that the intellect is a creator of illusions and has to be transcended in order to experience the Spirit which pervades the universe. The question raised above calls for a nuanced understanding of the felicitous role played by the intellect in the often-misunderstood “spiritual path”. Continue reading →

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Can a brain stroke victim experience Nirvana?

Posted on February 5, 2011 by

In her 2006 book “My Stroke of Insight”, neuroscientist Jill Bolte-Taylor describes how a brain haemorrhage that she suffered incapacitated her left brain and induced a feeling of bliss and euphoria, a state she alludes to as being akin to Nirvana. (“I’m no authority, but I think the Buddhists would say I entered the mode of existence they call Nirvana”) This post explores the intriguing possibility whether her experience could resemble the transcendental moments experienced by yogis. Continue reading →

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Summary of Savitri by Jyotipriya (Dr Judith Tyberg)

Posted on October 18, 2010 by

This is Jyotipriya’s summary of Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri. Jyotipriya aka Dr Judith Tyberg (1902-1980) was the founder and director of the Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles. Savitri is an epic poem in blank verse of about 24000 lines, which narrates the spiritual journey undertaken by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as part of their Integral Yoga. It details the varied occult worlds they witnessed, the states of consciousness they experienced, and the work of Supramental Transformation that they undertook in their life. Sri Aurobindo has rendered in accessible English verse many of the concepts found scattered across the numerous Vedas, Upanishads and Puranas. Continue reading →

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Developing one’s own spiritual atmosphere (Gita 3:17)

Posted on July 29, 2010 by

Those who live for Thee and in Thee may change their physical surroundings, their habits, climate, “milieu”, but everywhere they find the same atmosphere; they carry that atmosphere in themselves, in their thought constantly fixed on Thee. Everywhere they feel at home, for everywhere they are in Thy house. Continue reading →

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The occult forces behind artistic movements

Posted on July 13, 2010 by

In the history of various countries, one often finds a core group of artists born about the same time who went on to create a cultural movement which ennobled civilization as a whole. A few examples of this would be the European Renaissance, the Carolingian Renaissance, the Bengal Renaissance, the Harlem Renaissance, the Celtic Revival and many other literary and art movements. Is there an occult explanation for such collective movements? Continue reading →

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The latent Consciousness within Matter

Posted on March 25, 2010 by

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, Bhrigu is asked by his Guru to (spiritually) realize : “Matter is Conscious!”. The ancients believed that Matter was also a form of Consciousness and that this fact could be uncovered through Yoga. This consciousness within Matter discloses itself as the will in the atom, the symmetry of the crystals, the fatigue in metals, etc. There is an Intuition in Matter which holds the action of the material world from the electron to the sun and planets and their contents. To the modern rational mind, any such proposition seems preposterous and untenable. Modern science has found that Matter and Energy are interchangeable but it has not yet been able to resolve the mind-body dichotomy. On this topic, Sri Aurobindo said, “Only by an extension of the field of our consciousness or an unhoped-for increase in our instruments of knowledge can the ancient quarrel be decided.”[1] In the absence of such an advance on either side, all one can do for now is examine and anticipate the possibilities… Continue reading →

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How does the mind change with Yoga?

Posted on March 10, 2010 by

The nature of the thought process changes as the mind becomes illuminated with progress in Yoga. Sri Aurobindo identified various stages in this progression referred to as the Higher, Illumined, Intuitive and Overmind. This post contains excerpts from Sri Aurobindo’s conversations on this issue. Continue reading →

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Twin souls

Posted on March 8, 2010 by

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Mirra Alfassa were twin souls. They made explicit statements and also dropped plenty of hints as to the essential unity of their consciousness. He wrote that the “supreme state of human love…is the unity of one soul in two bodies” [1]. This post collects some of the material on twin souls. Continue reading →

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The occult spirits which influence our actions

Posted on March 6, 2010 by

The universe is larger than the physical world as explained in the section on Cosmology. There are many occult worlds peopled by conscious beings which exert an influence on earth and man. There is some element of truth in the fairy tales of yore which talk of elfins, genii, fairies and Titans. The majority of men are ignorant puppets in the hands of these forces and it only when the Yogin has progressed to a stage where his/her subliminal consciousness has opened to a greater cosmic consciousness that he/she begins to directly perceive the influence of these occult forces. One may find oneself succumbing to sudden depressions, violent outbursts and other dreadful thought formations which are the handiwork of these beings of various occult worlds. Continue reading →

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How to make the right choice when faced with a serious decision

Posted on March 5, 2010 by

Oftentimes in life, one hits a fork in the road where one is faced with a life-changing decision and has to make a choice without knowing all the facts. In such situations, one must understand that there are alternate futures. Those who want to grow spiritually should know that the inner motive with which one makes the choice is more important than the choice itself. One must examine one’s thoughts and ask, “what is the underlying motive on which my choice is based?” Is the choice driven by money, comfort, desire for social status, religious law, despair, anger, cruelty or the inability to admit mistakes ? Can one live with the decision in the future…? One must look for signs of uneasiness in the heart. Looking back later in life, it is quite possible that one realizes that the choice one made then was pre-destined! Continue reading →

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The subtle sounds which indicate progress in Yoga

Posted on February 12, 2010 by

When the Yoga enters into deeper states of trance, the heat of the Kundalini begins to course through the body, the subtle body is activated and the brain experiences a reverberating natural silence. The Yogin experiences a sense of purity, rejuvenation and alertness within. At this point, one may hear subtle sounds in the ear, smell burning incense or floral fragrances (which have non-worldly origin) and gain sight into the occult worlds. The sounds which the Yogin hears tend to vary depending on the inner plane of consciousness to which one is currently attuned. This post is a collection of these subtle sounds as noted in various ancient scriptures. As we see, there is lot of similarity in these descriptions. Continue reading →

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Ill-effects of television on Yoga

Posted on December 5, 2009 by

The television, a relatively recent 20th century invention, is a powerful form of entertainment and escape from the travails of life. By identifying with someone else’s life, we momentarily forget the ennui of our own life. TV also provides excitement in the form of sports programs or crime dramas (not to mention the absurd reality shows). But watching TV also has some subtle negative consequences on the consciousness of the spiritual aspirant which are seldom mentioned. In his poem Savitri (all of which was composed before 1950), Sri Aurobindo seems to have anticipated some of these ill-effects. He wrote in his poem… Continue reading →

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The Triple Cord

Posted on February 4, 2009 by

This post describes the three knots/granthis of mental, vital and physical ignorance that tie our consciousness to the physical world and bind our soul to the superficial personality.  When these knots are broken, our consciousness widens and opens to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Upanishads, Vedas | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

The Golden Lid or Hiranmaya Patra

Posted on January 28, 2009 by

The Vedas and the Upanishads speak of a golden lid (Hiranmaya Patra in Sanskrit) which divides the lower rational mind from the higher planes of the Mind above us. This post explains the significance of that Golden Lid in the … Continue reading →

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The inverted Banyan tree

Posted on January 23, 2009 by

The ancient Hindu scriptures speak of the Universe as an inverted Banyan/Ashwattha tree with its roots in the Higher Worlds of Sat-Chit-Ananda (Existence-Consciousness-Bliss) and its branches in the many lower worlds that have been created. This is a comprehensive list of references to this tree in the ancient scriptures and the works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. The world tree motif is present in many other religions and mythologies (See World-Tree) Continue reading →

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