Amal-kiran (KD Sethna) is now 104 with a glowing personality

Amal-kiran—the Fire-Worshipper RY Deshpande rydesh@gmail.com Mirror of Tomorrow

This article was written to celebrate the birth centenary of Amal-kiran (KD Sethna) who is now 104 with a glowing personality as if some wise God of ancient Greece took birth to offer himself to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. A versatile genius he may be—and he is—but what is most appealing to us about him is his soul given to the pursuit of things of the spirit, pursuit with an intuitivised intellect and with the psychic not only in his heart but also bold and bright on the face. There is much yet we have to appreciate about him, much to learn from him.

Narendra Kishor Das, Lalit Mohan Ghosh, Nimain Charan Mohapatra, & Gobinda Tej

Friday, September 01, 2006 Orissa: 1948-1968

Although the first Sri Aurobindo Study Circle began in Rairangpur of Mayurbhanj District in 1948, the movement grew gradually from 1960. In Cuttack, weekly Pathachakra sessions were conducted in the residences of Narendra Kishor Das (Naribabu) and Lalit Mohan Ghosh. Around the same time, Nimain Charan Mohapatra started a Study Circle in the Railway colony of Retang in Jatni. He also organized the first State level Conference there. Later in 1964, Gobinda Tej on behalf of the Sri Aurobindo Society held a Conference from April 4-7 in the Barabati Stadium. The next Conference took place in 1968.

Prasad Tripathy, THE MATRUBHABAN PATRA, AUGUST 2006 Editor : Gadadhar Mishra, Matrubhaban, Sri Aurobindo Marg, Cuttack - 753013 E.mail - ctk_matrubha@sancharnet.in Please visit us : matrubhaban.com
Posted by Tusar N Mohapatra at 1:59 PM

Suffering on the cross or in a solitary cell in the jail

Savitri: the Light of the Supreme Home Mirror of Tomorrow Main Page Previous: The Cross their Payment for the Crown they Gave (C)—Sri Aurobindo Narrates his Prison Life
The Cross their Payment for the Crown they Gave (C)—Sri Aurobindo Narrates his Vasudeva Experience in the Jail: Uttarpara Speech
by RY Deshpande on Thu 23 Apr 2009 05:00 AM IST Permanent Link Cosmos

After his acquittal in the Alipore Bomb Case on 6 May 1909 Sri Aurobindo was given an emotional reception at Uttarpara on 30 May 1909. This historical event should mark an important landmark not only in his life but also of the country for whose freedom and for whose values and ideals he spared no effort and did as an assigned task coming from the divine Instructor whom he obeyed implicitly, obeyed even at his personal risk of serious nature. In his speech at Uttarpara Sri Aurobindo disclosed some of the self-transforming and world-transforming things that had happened during the one-year period of incarceration. The speech was first published in his weekly Karmayogin, June 1909.

Sometime during this incarceration he wrote a remarkable poem inviting those who heard the call of the country to join him even if that should entail hardship. Against him were beating the wind and the storm, even as he was sporting with solitude and had made misadventure a friend; it is under these countries that the challenge was thrown to the brave and the upright. He declared himself to be the Spirit of freedom and pride and only they who could be kinsmen to danger could join him and walk by his side. Only those souls who are full of wisdom and strength, the brahmateja and kshātrateja, will be in a position to accept this remarkable invitation, invitation for the righteous conduct of life even in its difficult and trying circumstance.

But why should the great suffer? Or is their suffering only an outward thing, for show to the trusting? Is there any real content in it? In other words, do they really have pain and grief and ache, the agony of harrowing experience? This will be a ridiculous question when one knows in every detail the crucifixion of Christ. Sri Aurobindo himself wrote in a letter to his brother Barin about the severe and painful work he was engaged in. In another context he answered Nirodbaran about these matters as follows:

“The Divine does not need to suffer or struggle for himself: if he takes on these things it is in order to bear the world-burden and help the world and men; and if the suffering and struggles are to be of any help, they must be real. A sham or falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves—the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. It is strange that you cannot understand or refuse to admit so simple and crucial a point. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the meaning out of it?” [Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran, p. 175]

Perhaps suffering on the cross or in a solitary cell in the jail are much smaller aspects than the inner wounds they have to bear. Who has any idea about them? None. But let us first read the speech Sri Aurobindo gave at Uttarpara on 30 May 1909.

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Re: Re: The Mortal's Lot became the Immortal's Share by RY Deshpande
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Re: The Embodied Guest within Made no Response [4] by auroman
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The indignity, the ignominy that is there in the human life

Savitri: the Light of the Supreme Home Mirror of Tomorrow Main Page Previous: Hard is it to Persuade Earth-Nature's Change
The Mortal's Lot became the Immortal's Share
by RY Deshpande on Sat 18 Apr 2009 04:53 AM IST Permanent Link Cosmos

To live with grief, to confront death on her road,—
The mortal’s lot became the Immortal’s share.
(Savitri, p. 7)

Savitri coming as an incarnation means she accepting the mortal’s lot, the indignity, the ignominy that is there in the human life. The Immortal has consented to share, the lot, the plight of the suffering soul, all the uncertainties that fill this creature’s daily life. In a way it is as if thus alone could she rise to a yet higher state of immortality. Indeed, if the gods wish to rise to higher worlds they must come down and take a human birth. Progress is here, and this beautiful birth though downhearted and full of misfortune and affliction is the Creator’s wonderful boon given to heighten the soul in the glory, in the possibilities of the widening manifestation. This is what the Vishnu Purana says: gods come here to make progress, the progress is here and nowhere else. This is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have said a number of times. But most of the gods are happy with their lot. Perhaps they can afford to be so; perhaps they do not wish to undergo the travail that is associated with this life of the mortal. But we are tied to this condition, to this state of things; in fact by that very token we will not be allowed to remain where we are.

“The gods,” says the Mother, “do not have within them the divine spark which is the core of the psychic, because only on earth—I am not even speaking of the material universe—only on earth did this descent of divine Love took place, which was the origin of the divine Presence in the core of Matter. And naturally, since they have no psychic being, they do not know the psychic being. Some of these beings have even wanted to take a physical body so as to have experience of the psychic being—but not many of them. As a rule, they did it not only partially, through an ‘emanation’, not a total descent. For example, Vivekananda is said to have been an incarnation—a Vibhuti—of Shiva; but Shiva himself has clearly expressed his will to come down on earth only with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for the supramental life, he will come. And almost all these beings will manifest—they are waiting for that moment, they do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity… None of these gods has a psychic being. It is only by coming down and uniting with the psychic being of a man that they can have one, but they have none themselves.” (12 January 1965)

Is Shiva going to miss something by opting to come down on earth only with the advent of the supramental, coming down only after the arrival of that world? By not participating in the present process is he going to miss the joy, the experience, the realization of the evolutionary being in his march towards the supramental life, the life of the earth turning into the divine life? Possibly so,—for the simple reason that the Mother had at all made such a suggestion to him.

And then, in contrast to this, the Mother says something interesting about her experience with Durga: “…I was in touch with her during my meditations upstairs, and this new power in the body was in me then as it is in me now, and… (how to put it?) I made her participate in the concept of surrender. What an experience she had! An extraordinary experience of the joy of being connected with That. And she declared, ‘From now on I am bhakta of the Lord.’ It was beautiful. Truly… truly, it was beautiful. I knew how it was with her because I remember the days when Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go downstairs to give meditations to the people assembled in the hall. There’s a ledge above the pillars there, where all the gods used to sit—Shiva, Krishna, Lakshmi, the Trimurti, all of them—the little ones, the big ones, they all used to come regularly, every day, to attend these meditations. It was a lovely sight. But they didn’t have this kind of adoration for the Supreme. They had no use for that concept—each one, in his own mode of being, was fully aware of his own eternal divinity; and each one knew as well that he could represent all the others (such was the basis of popular worship, and they knew it). They felt they were a kind of community, but they had none of those qualities that the psychic life gives: no deep love, no deep sympathy, no sense of union. They had the sense of only their OWN divinity. They had certain very particular movements, but not this adoration for the Supreme nor the feeling of being instruments: they felt they were representing the Supreme, and so each one was perfectly satisfied with his particular representation. Except for Krishna…” (2 August 1961)

And for Savitri, who accepted to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death. She came here to do the Lord’s work. When the Mother was asked (on 19 February 1969) if the gods can help the work of transformation, she replied: “It is too soon to put such a question.” What chance then for techno-capitalism and our ideas of post-human destinies? What chance for the human potential? Perhaps nigh none.

Savitri came to live with grief; she came to confront death; she bore the mortal’s lot. Gods and Goddesses don’t do that; they wish also not to do that; they “do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity”. It is one Savitri who can do it and she does it—because such is the command of the Lord to her. She has with her the unfailing Mantra of Surrender to the Lord and it is that alone which can accomplish the great miracle of transformation. She has found it, that Mantra with its efficacy in the deathful circumstance prevailing here. Gods and Goddesses perhaps do not even have the knowledge of it. In the process, to redeem in its greatness the creation, Savitri is willing to undergo all the misery and suffering. She has faith and she has utter confidence that things here will change. That is the faith born in the power of the Mantra, the Mantra of complete surrender to the Lord, to do things in his will alone.

The Mother’s prayer is such a happy splendid assurance: “What are these powerful gods whose hour of manifestation upon earth has come, if not the varied and perfected modes of Thy infinite activity, O Thou Master of all things, Being and Non-Being and What is beyond, Marvellous Unknowable One, our sovereign Lord?... What are these manifold brilliant intellectual activities, these countless sunbeams illumining, conceiving and fashioning all forms, if not one of the modes of being of Thy infinite Will, one of the means of Thy manifestation, O Thou Master of our destinies, sole unthinkable Reality, sovereign Lord of all that is and all that is not yet… And all these mental powers, all these vital energies, and all these material elements, what are they if not Thyself in Thy outermost form, Thy ultimate modes of expression, of realisation, O Thou whom we adore devotedly and who escapest us on every side even while penetrating, animating and guiding us, Thou whom we cannot understand or define or name, Thou whom we cannot seize or embrace or conceive, and who art yet realised in our smallest acts… And all this enormous universe is only an atom of Thy eternal Will. In the immensity of Thy effective Presence all things blossom!” (August 2, 1914)

But what else are these manifold brilliant intellectual activities if not one of the modes of being of the Infinite’s Will? In it is the place for our thought, for our philosophy, for our sciences and arts, for all the thousand human occupations that make a wider and brighter and nobler place for the Lord’s habitation. If human endeavour has a justification in shaping the destinies, it is here. The mortal’s lot then becomes the Immortal’s glad acceptable share. That is the joy of participation which is, indeed, also such a marvellous gift given to us. Should we not be thankful for it? Which means, should we not grow in it? Man’s manhood lies in it, in that superb greatness.

Re: The Mortal's Lot became the Immortal's Share by Tusar N. Mohapatra on Sat 18 Apr 2009 10:32 AM IST Profile Permanent Link [“It is too soon to put such a question.” - The Mother (19 February 1969)]
But question we must. [TNM] Reply

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The Mortal's Lot became the Immortal's Share
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Re: The Core Problem Rick Thu 19 Mar 2009 02:24 PM PDT I am personally interested in the problem: How do we build a bridge between a more open, less reductive viewpoint, and the materialist view with its exclusive faith in reason—and that being mostly the reason of the physical mind. There seems to be some gap, some lack of linkage, that we haven’t got to, some bridges we need to build or, at least, add to a portion of the spans that already exist.

It’s not a matter of proselytizing towards some religion, but of opening a way so that the human mind, really the whole human being, can link up, and more effectively connect, with a more conscious way of knowing and experiencing. Dr. Nadkarni worked in this field and we need to continue to do so. AntiMatters journal, the SCIY website, and the publication of works attempting to engage with the academic mind, for example, are a step in that direction. So many blocks stand in the way; to remove those blocks is an authentic need. Rick Thu 19 Mar 2009 02:24 PM PDT Re: The Core Problem

Seekers must qualify themselves

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Home Savitri: the Light of the Supreme Main Page Previous: Towards the Intermediate Race—the Early Writings of Sri Aurobindo [3]
Towards the Intermediate Race—Early Writings: Record of Yoga 1914 [4]
by RY Deshpande on Fri 10 Apr 2009 05:14 AM IST Permanent Link Cosmos

The theme of evolution was central to Sri Aurobindo’s thought almost throughout his life. We have a set of essays written by him in 1909 which first came out in the weekly review the Karmayogin edited by him when he was in Calcutta; this was after his acquittal in the Alipore Bomb Case filed against the revolutionaries, including himself, in 1908. It is quite appropriate that we should read these over again to celebrate the centenary year of their appearance. Along with these three selected pieces, from Harmony of Virtue, must also go the absolutely last set of articles Sri Aurobindo dictated in 1950; this was at the request of the Mother who wished him to contribute to the newly started periodical, the Bulletin of Physical Education. These last writings were later published, in January 1952, in the book entitled The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.

The most important thing we become aware of in these revelations is the arrival of what Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light, the mind of the physical receiving the Supramental. It is this Mind of Light which governs the race of beings who provide a link between the Mental and the Gnostic beings,—the Intermediate Race. If we do see a change in the writings of these two periods, separated by forty years, then it is not a change or shift of any kind in his central concepts related to the principles and methods of evolution, evolution which is more a collective change of consciousness, a change pertaining to spiritual evolution than to the evolution of form.

The difference is due to the great yogic work that had gone towards the realization of the life divine upon earth, the difficult and untiring yoga-tapasya of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. To view it in any other manner, other than an occult-yogic work, howsoever appealing it might be to the rational mind, is to miss the entire purport of the evolutionary objective itself. One might please oneself with theories and concepts, but that would avail hardly anything if the day’s job is to make the evolutionary possibility a realised certainty. Precisely in it lies the convincing uniqueness of Sri Aurobindo’s vision and work, and it is that we must celebrate during the centenary year, celebrate the first appearance of the theme in 1909.

Belonging to the writings of this early period, we include here a relevant record Sri Aurobindo made in his jottings of yogic experiences, dated March 1914. These jottings or records were more for his personal use than for publication. But these have now been published in book form under the title Record of Yoga. We do not know if Sri Aurobindo meant these to be made public at all, as we understand that the heap of papers containing these details had on top of it a note, marking it as ‘confidential’.

Perhaps the best thing would have been to just keep them as proper archival documents for studies by the interested individual researchers of his works. Which means that, while reading these, we must be extremely careful about the parameters that were associated with them at the time—we should not apply the demanding inflexible criteria of academic or professional scholarship to them, for they do not belong to the mental domain at all; we must only try to enter into the spirit of the occult knowledge they contain. And what a treasure-mine it is, shining with luminous details, containing many a gem of the divine preciousness!

When Sri Aurobindo says, for instance, that the Sun is only a subordinate star of the great Agni, Mahavishnu, in whom is centred the Bhu, the Earth, he is actually talking of knowledge of another world altogether. It will be a sheer travesty of this knowledge, as much as of the knowledge obtained by our present-day science, if we mix them up. One should be extremely careful in reading such details, actually meant for advanced yogi-occultists, and that could well be the reason why Sri Aurobindo might not have approved the publication of his records. It is rather unfortunate that this important perspective is missed in the present publicity given to the Record of Yoga.

All that we can now say is that the Record is meant for the seekers of the occult truth-details and they must qualify themselves before picking them up for study which should be more in the direction of extending the investigation of the occult working of nature, that functioning in this vast domain of space and time, time comprising of its three operative divisions. Let us hope that this will well borne in mind before reference is made to the secrets of Record of Yoga. ~ RYD