Our inevitable, most auspicious destiny
It is the secret destiny of our soul which creates our life and work. The outward circumstances are truly a correct image of our state of consciousness. Our destiny is to grow one day in the divine consciousness. As the inner light grows, our life takes constantly a new orientation. The physical mind of man, his animal vitality and the body created from an inert unconscious matter, are like so many impenetrable walls which prevent the soul from shining through them. At this stage, whatever we see in human life, in the race, is the creation by the mind. The mind lives in separation, in division. It arrives at a unity by adding different elements. It tries to express unity through a uniformity. It cannot have an idea of Infinity. For the mind, Infinity is an indefinite ceaseless extension of number, of space and time. The mind has not, does not possess the natural sense and vision of absolute indivisible unity and oneness.
The apparent unconciousness is a conscious voluntary limitation of his own manifestation for his own play and joy of existence. Gold never ceases to be gold, whatever form or colour we give to it. Now the Divine has decided in his sweet will to manifest himself more completely. This He is doing, and nothing and no one can prevent him from doing it. Our personal will for or against the divine manifestation in ourselves, in others and the world, is absolutely of no consequence. Whether we like it or not, the soul in us will grow and we shall become divine only when He decides the moment. The human ego is a strong bandage over the eyes of the growing divinity in us. When the Mother Divine decides in Her playful fancy to remove it from our eyes, we shall emerge in the eternal blissful light, and recognise our one and unique Mother and the divine Source and Origin. This is our inevitable, most auspicious destiny in a thousand years.
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N.Guha Roy 1988
Prayer to the Divine for a world of Harmony
May Your sovereignly benevolent Will be realised by the manifestation of a world of truth, peace and divine harmony
May our surrender become total, perfect without any personal preference.
All is eternally the Divine, one and infinitely multiple. Each one is Thyself. You are at the centre of each one and all. Whatever be the change, the Substance is always the same.
Om tat sat
Everything existing on earth, natural or created by men is the earth itself under different forms. Your Presence in each and all, everywhere behind the most obscure beings, the disguises, deformations, the terrifying forces, the dynamic energies in perpetual changes even in the void and the nothingness is the only constant reality. How can You manifest such a beauty, tenderness, power in some fragile earthen vessels so ephemeral! What a wonderful spectacle, stupefying, endless passes at each instant in front of our soul as witness.
O Magician, Om Mahamaya paramarahasyamayi-amrita chaitanyamayi ananté.
All those actors and actresses each one playing their roles on the scene are Yourself innumerable.
There are still moments of forgetfulness and we fall in an abyss of obscurity. There are still a very great quantity of weeds in the consciousness, a huge work remains to be done and this is why I address to You this prayer:
May I see You more and more with Your own eyes.
May I let You speak through my mouth, love through my heart.
You have become the absolute adored Master of my consciousness, of my existence
You are my beatific paradise, the ocean of eternal peace beauty, harmony, felicity.
Carry me in Your current according to Your WillBe without pity if I loose the way. Put me back forcefully on the track of grace
Be free with me. I want to belong entirely to You outside, inside at all moments.
You are the supreme benediction in the life of each and all
Niranjan Guha Roy _21-February-2000
on transformation of the body
To my own experience, I have the feeling that the body by itself is a wonderful instrument with great potential capacities hardly discovered. One day, by the descent of the powers of a superior consciousness, these latent possibilities will become a reality. This is in a way our aim, effort and struggle. As it is today, the poor body is a slave tyrannized by the mind and especially the vital. We hardly ever ask our body how it can be in its way happy, healthy and in harmony. We have to observe only a little to find out how almost all our activities are for the pleasure of the vital and the mind. In the yoga we have undertaken, this fact must be clearly seen and recognized. Of course, unless we have a higher aim of existence, if we suppress the mental and the vital activities which drive the body, then there hardly remains anything interesting in life. But there too, in all societies, disciplines have been developed in order to keep in control the mind and vital, so as not to incapacitate, injure or destroy the body too early. Moderation is the human law. Then, there has been another tendency to increase the actual powers of the body so that we can enjoy life as it is in a better way with a greater security. The physical education in various forms has been practiced and developed. This is a positive step. When we approach yoga, moderation and physical education are very helpful, indispensable. There is another serious problem: illness. Essentially this is due to the present state of imperfection of the body. As we are made today, perhaps it is practically impossible not to suffer from it sometime or other. The first two approaches, moderation and physical education minimize the possibility of illness but does not eliminate its presence. Various systems of medicine have been developed to cure and protect us. Still, there is nothing like a sure healing. If we want to make our earthly existence truly happy and beautiful then the transformation of the body, or rather, the formation of a new body becomes a logical necessity. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo tell us that by bringing into our body the powers of the spirit, the consciousness of Truth, this can be done. Our old masters, the mind and the vital must be dethroned and the Divine installed. This is precisely the basic fundamental work that we have undertaken. First, to discover the Divine. Then, allow our mind and vital to be gradually transformed, to establish through a growing experience a direct connection between the Divine and the body. When this connection is established, the Divine influence will flow into the very cells of the body and the transformation will begin of which we have hardly any idea because it has never been done before. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have carried on this work of transformation to the point of absolute certitude and they have recorded their experiences. What they have done can be understood in an extremely limited way only when we undertake this work. In the little book, Supramental Manifestation, Sri Aurobindo has recorded His experience and the vision of the future. In the Agenda the Mother has recorded Her experience with the body in the minutest detail. But in general Her experience is inaccessible, practically impossible to understand, unless one is in constant union with the Divine in the active consciousness. She speaks of the actual experience and not of the vision. So you see, how important is the body and its true well being from the point of view of the yoga we have undertaken. A long life, free from disease and the effects of old age in union with the Divine Consciousness is within the present range of possibilities. This itself will be a tremendous achievement and a concrete proof in a very material way of the validity of the Yoga of Transformation. Let us work for this aim even if we fail so much of the groundwork would have been done.
The Mother is the Door and the Key, the Highway .
The more we consider this world as belonging to the Mother who is taking care of it in Her absolute wisdom and love, the more we will become aware of Her Presence in things and beings and beyond everything. If we can remind ourselves everyday that this world was a ball of fire and now is a miracle of human drama, then we will step into the mystery of God, His self creation. Each thing, each being, lives and glows for a second in the eternity. Behind it all, supporting all, substance of all, forever unseisable yet tangible, perceptible is the supreme fascination, a joy, a love, a beauty which compels us to live and enjoy and pursue it through all time. Once we have a glimpse of Him, of Her, then the life becomes a rhapsody, a song of delight, a game of chase, hide and seek, a tireless happy play with the sweet Companion.
As long as we are attached to the surface glitter, as long as we are satisfied with fugitive pleasures, as long as we are bound and enclosed in our little self, we miss this grand liberation, the vast measureless self play, the Lila of the Divine. The Mother is the key, the door, the bridge, the stairway, the wide luminous straight auspicious, secure crystal paved Highway to that liberation.
N.GUHA ROY 1984
The mystery of God's fantastic presence
... Do you know what I do when I have to read some high-sounding intellectual speculations? I take a dip in the sea of Nectar. I read a few pages of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, a chapter of the Synthesis or Education by the Mother. I enter into immediate and intimate contact with the Supreme Lord and the highest creative power, our Sweet Mother.
Look at the sky with its ever-changing robes, feel the touch of the divine Love in the wind loitering in the woods and among the reeds of the lake. The mystery of God’s fantastic presence and works is all the time inviting us to penetrate into its interminable, fascinating, thrilling corridors in time and space.
Be peaceful; stop the exhausting painful riot in the mind. Go out and meet the Divine in each corner of the street, in all faces and forms dressed up for carnival. Now, you are in the vast inner sanctuary of the House of the Lord. Look with the poet’s heart and eyes, strengthen your satisfying, rewarding communion with the glorious magnifcence of the Eternal, our mother, father, teacher, guide and friend.
Then we are in yoga, in union with the absolute Wonderful, Bliss and Love. Let our body, mind, heart and soul be soaked by that irresistible bliss of the Beautiful. Leave your mind uncultivated like the boundless plains or open deserts silent yet eloquent in their expansive prayer. Discover the mighty show, the unending Divine Comedy.
Our falls, stumbling, deviations, our momentary successes and jubilation, our disasters and nightmares are all steps seen and sanctioned by an infallible wisdom which oversees our constant progress in the great journey towards the Divine Life. What has been done or accomplished could have been much better, and even now, the journey could become a pleasant adventure if we could listen to the Oracle deep inside in the heart center, the voice calm and sweet of the gracious Mother.
When there grows an inextinguishable yearning to follow the Mother, come what may, from then on we are on the safe and secure path leading to the Home of Bliss. The pace of destiny cannot be forced. It is a question of transaction between the individual soul and the Divine. Unless we are strongly aware and guided by the psychic being, really we do not understand much of the spiritual Reality. The Spirit cannot be seized by the intellectual mind but easily by the heart in adoration for the Beloved, a seeker of the Beautiful.
Leave your life and action in the care of the Mother, then any miracle is possible. Remember always that the Mother is supremely benevolent. No harm can ever come through Her to anyone. Her least touch is a blessing for all. She is far above the Supramental world, all the worlds.
N.Guha Roy 2000
To the pilgrim of the Sunny Path
Pilgrims go to Benares to wash away from their stains and mortal sins in the Ganges and be freed from the infernal births tying us to this suffering and agonising earth.
O you, pilgrim of the great sunny Path, you do not need to go to Benares or to any other holy places to be liberated from the suffering and darkness dominating the earth.
Commune with your divine soul and plunge in the ocean of eternal, infinite felicity. Then all the suffering, pain and chronic agony of human life on earth will dissolve in that infinite ocean of divine eternal bliss. You will come out purified, regenerated, liberated forever from all slavery to karma and to the dark and limited powers governing the earth and perpetuating its deep wounds.
O pilgrim as we bathe every day to wash our body thus at an auspicious hour plunge in the eternity always present without past or future, in the ocean of felicity which transmutes the dust of the earth in heavenly gold.
Slowly the memory itself of the terrible suffering on earth will be totally erased as we erase with a sponge the old writings on a board.
O pilgrim, you can neglect all your other urgent duties, even the most sacred ones, but do not forget to take your bath, your dive in the infinite ocean of the unfathomable mystery of the supreme. Slowly you will realise that this holy water is nothing else than the infinite heart of the healing and appeasing love of the Mother Divine.
Each dive will be like the tender embrace warm and full of sweetness of the marvelous Mother Divine .Each form, each face, each eye, each mouth will become an open window on the infinite Mystery of irresistible sweetness, the ocean of infinite felicity.
Now wherever you plunge your gaze you will meet always and everywhere the same sweetness the same smiling love. There is nobody else anywhere; there is nothing else but the smile and sweetness of the mysterious Mother Divine near, inside, unceasing, infinite, surpassing all horizons.
This very earth has disappeared as an old nightmare forgotten opening the eternity of divine existence.
O Pilgrim, you will have to dive again and again for a long time for that incredible Reality to become normal without surprise, as is your respiration or the beating of your heart.
O happy pilgrim when you will have an easy access at will in the inward courtyard of the Sovereign Mother then to your brothers and sisters who are preparing for this long pilgrimage you will be able to propose the inward voyage to this High Place of perpetual endless ravishment.
OM Douce Mère saranam mama - OM Sri Aurobindo saranam mama
Niranjan Guha Roy
About art and dance
Our conception of art( dance, paintin and others forms of art) is not realistic, rather idealistic. We do not try to portray life as it is but to express in the art our aspiration for a more noble and higher life. For we believe that by giving expression to ordinary life with its drama and tragedy, suffering, ignorance and perversion, even its pleasures and happiness, we remain within the bounds of our present limited life and consciousness. We aspire for a better world, free from violence and ugliness and suffering. And in our art we want give expression to that aspiration, to that vision. It is a call for beauty, harmony, peace and unity and joy above all. We give more importance to the aspiration, to the noble intention, to the idealistic approach than to the outer form of expression which will necessarily vary almost from person to person. True aspiration will always bring with it its appropriate form of expression. For example, in front of a magnificent sunset our whole being bows down in gratitude to the great mysterious Spirit of beauty. Works of art without true feelings behind them seem empty and mechanical and have not the power of conviction, at least in the long run. A true artist who feels this gratitude will spontaneously express it in his own way and the result would be really convincing and convey the message of beauty, harmony and gratitude to the onlooker. Above all the artist himself would be satisfied when there is a deep feeling behind his work. But when we try to reproduce without experiencing real feelings and emotions then the result is really empty and conveys very little meaning to others and we do not get much joy out of it. The artist should have a good technique as the foundation but though indispensable, it is not sufficient by itself. It is only when the technique is mastered that the artist begins to emerge .
About dance
If one gives oneself to dance with love and devotion avoiding inferior movements of life, approaching dance with a purer motive, adoration, harmony, beauty, then dance itself will have a transforming influence on life. One becomes aware of one’s own body, need of hygiene, cleanliness, food habits, sleeping habits. The dance will give more vision – one will look more for beauty of expression in all fields. For example, much great painting and sculpture are full of dance – the great masters have brought out the movement of the body. The dance opens a new world of beauty and one will appreciate art better, an abiding interest in life will develop. As one searches for beauty and harmony, he moves away from the grosser instincts. Seeing beauty awakens beauty. Yoga is an entry in beauty, purity, wide goodness, tolerance.
N.Guha Roy 1977
Festival of the birth of the eternal Light
OM Anandamayi, Chaitanyamayi, Satyamayi, Parame
OM Mother of Delight, Mother of Consciousness,
Mother of Truth, O Supreme, Jayastute namastute
Victory to Thee, Salutations to Thee
Sarvam Khalhidam, Brahman:
All is verily divine. The Divine is truly all
Rises a rich-textured chorus of adoration from a crowd of pilgrim souls.
In the solemn night streaked with beams of light hundred lovely bodies
full of grace and strong dance across the field of an incredulous vision,
Like a stream of ecstasy undulating through pillars of sapphire,
And carved statues of godheads frozen in bronze and granite.
Buddham saranam gatcchami, Dammam saranam gatcchami
Take refuge in Buddha; Take refuge in the Word of the Lord,
Echo and reecho the distant hills in meditation,
Disciples of the desireless, egoless, equal souled compassion.
Vedic mantras float and reverberate in the sacred air.
Satyam, Ritam, Jyotih, Brihat
The Truth, the Law, the Light, the Infinity are now sovereign Lords.
The Long night is at last over, the Sun of Truth illumines and guides our steps.
Praying hands and bodies burning with aspiration offer sacrifice in the mounting Fire.
Words old and new in many tongues and voices mingle in a glorious riot of tone colours.
Bodies radiate in rhythmic movements, the vast organ swell of an unalloyed delight,
A scattered rainbow broken into a hundred scintillating shifting fragments.
Woodwinds, drums and trumpets, harp, cymbals and bells,
Passionate violins, grave cellos and mixed choir of chanting voices,
Urge the impetuous dancers to dare the impossible,
To renounce the animal and discover our identity with God and Soul.
Bodies caught in a whirlpool of celestial rapture, sway and swing, run and rush,
solo or in groups amidst a sweeping gale of maddening high-paced music,
Tearing us away with an irresistible might
From the ancient moorings of our unbearable night and agony.
In the name of God, in the name of God,
O God the Great, O God the Merciful.
The hero worshippers dance and slash and hew a straight path
Through the demon hordes which deny the Will of the One.
Ave Maria sends the soul soaring to the embrace of the Mother Divine.
Bodies possessed by the divinities of beauty and harmony
and the Soma wine dance intoxicated as in a trance
And oblige the psychic buds to blossom by their charm.
The soul repeats the mantra:
May I be Thy slave, May I be Thy slave.
Yogis and saints, sculptors, poets, musicians and painters
Followers of the Truth, lovers of the Supreme and His Avatars,
Bring their bountiful generous gift of melodies interwoven and harmonies
Piled higher and higher to the skies, and drive the dancers in the effort
To seize and embody a transmutative ray of the never setting Sun of Truth.
The audience surrenders in joy to the magic of the ceremony,
The soul-filling panorama of sound, form, colour and light.
A grandiose pyramidal aspiration rises and rises to the Heavens,
To the immaculate crystal throne, where the Mother receives the prayers
Offered by the reverent assembly of souls.
Benediction, love and light, Benediction, Benediction.
The fortunate multitude, aspiring pilgrim souls in deep concord
Coverging on Her from all dim corners of the earth,
Seated in silence and wonder under the starlit open sky
Hypnotised by Her tangible delight and the sweetness of Her Presence,
Celebrate the Festival of the birth of the Eternal Light.
Showers of blessings, showers of love, showers of peace,
Sprinkle the air, purify the Earth and Soul.
Fountains of aspiration, fountains of heavenly dreams
Shoot upwards a myriad sparks
In the boundless space of the hushed soul.
Thy Will be done, Thy Will be done, Thy Will be done,
Whispers the ravished Earth faint and vibrating under
The exquisite touch of footsteps compelled by a felicitous rhythm.
A powerful interchange of currents between Matter and Spirit
Forces open the sealed passages for a dynamic transformation.
Ekaibaham jagattatra, Kadrvitia mama para.
I alone am in this universe; who else is there apart from me?
The triumphant proclamation of the Mother Divine
Assures the suppliant soul.
Sri Aurobindo saranam mama - Sri Aurobindo is my refuge.
Om Anandamayi, Chaitanyamayi,
Satyamayi, Parame’Jayastute namastute.
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N.Guha Roy
Acceptance
Once we learn to hand over the responsibility of our life and its thousand changing circumstances to the Divine, who is no other than our highest Self, then there is less confusion, less stress and strain and the being acquires a state of permanent relaxation inside and outside. More and more I realise that what we do is far less important than what we become. We must remain open to the Mother Force as much as possible, for this we must be peaceful, free from useless emotional upheavals and the flood of uncoordinated thoughts. We must become simple The big world problems and their solutions are far too big for us anyway. Some things we seem to know but most of the things we do not know. This acceptance of wide ignorance is a relieving wisdom. Let us admit that we know very little of anything. Then a new light will grow and another vision of the existence will be revealed to us, unknown to man ‑ the mysterious Divine Presence eternal and unfathomable.
Let us pray for peace in the being.
N.Guha Roy 1984
Listen With Your Heart
My heart is like a huge cathedral, a temple rising to the sky,
Illumined with Love, filled with the perfume of Love.
Softly resounding with the organ-choir music of Love.
An invisible breeze refreshing, healing all the agonies and wounds
Greets one and all, good ones, bad ones, prophets and monsters,
The sick and healthy, the nuns and harlots, the hard and the gentle ones
With a silent adoring Love which sees the Divine in all.
The cathedral Temple needs constant expansion in all direction
To house birds, animals, living beings on land, sea and air,
For whom to reject: In the tiniest worm and flower and pebble
Shines the Lord, the Great One who puts on the humblest robes.
Love circulates unseen through all hearts, unhindered by any wall.
Your violence, selfishness, blind littleness, your grief and shame
Will disappear forever, if you come out of your cocoon in the open,
Break the rock fortress of ego, your self-made prison of hatred,
Anger, disdain, your born distrust of others, even of your own brother.
Love in disguise is at your door begging,
Invite the Stranger to your table.
Darkness will be swallowed up by the radiant yet soothing Love,
Division cured by Love,
Becomes myriad souls throbbing with a single impulse.
Suffering faints in the mighty embrace of a sublimating sweetness,
The psyche in man and beast, plant and stone
Yearns for Love day and night.
Love is knocking at your door.
Listen with your heart.
Welcome the Mother.
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N.Guha Roy 1998