A strong aspiration for the truth is essential to enter the spiritual life
Often when we are very ill, we become detached from everything in this world and Ihave a very strong aspiration to belong only to the Divine. His Will becomes the only worthwhile motive of life, His Presence the only reality in this life and forever. But too often when we are well, we lose that intense aspiration. A thousand little things of life assert their importance and we get submerged in them and I have to constantly remind ourselves of the unimportance of the material things and events and draw back our concentration from these things to the essential aspiration. Uptil now all spiritual disciplines laid an exclusive accent on the inner development and left the natural man or the ordinary human consciousness, untouched and untransformed. They imposed on the outward existence a minimum of discipline for they were convinced that the human nature could never be transformed, so they sought liberation in extinction in the Absolute or in some distant Heaven. Our yoga is extremely difficult for it lays an equal accent on the transformation of the human nature. Here the difficulty is great, complicated by two factors: Firstly, we are as if enamoured of our present self or physical makeup, of its perfection and beauty, of its great value, we are unwilling to admit the necessity of any change in are character and nature. Secondly, until the light grows, we have no precise idea of the transformation to be. We are told that one day through transformation we would acquire a divine nature, but on the practical field we equate the divine nature with our ideal of moral and ethical perfection.
True spirituality exceeds by far the moral and ethical ideal and is entirely something different from and vastly superior to the human consciousness and its ideals. So where to begin in order to have a clear understanding of the spiritual demand? When there is a simple and strong aspiration for the Truth, for the Divine, then we have in us the only qualification for admission into the spiritual life. Truly nothing else is required. The presence of the aspiration in a human soul is the presence of the rising Godhead, the Divine Mother aspiring for the manifestation of Truth in a human body in the material universe. This aspiration is also an all seeing and all knowing divine power. Our aspiration will gradually reveal to us the true meaning of our life, show us exactly what we are and what we have to be. In the aspiration we shall discover the presence of the Mother Divine. To be true to our aspiration, to follow its guidance, to work out its demands will gradually lead us into deeper and wider regions of higher consciousness.
The path of yoga is extremely difficult and long. What has been built in us over thousands and thousands of years has to be undone and newly made by the Divine Power within a lifetime or in a few lives, so the pace is alarmingly high and a little mistake, one flies off the highway like a car running at very high speed. There is only one security in yoga and truly there is nothing else which can protect us. It is the sincerity of our aspiration. Our imperfections do not matter. Our limitations and incapacities are of little consequence as long as there is a little flame burning day and night in the secret chamber of our life aspiring for the Divine, for the Truth, the good and the beauty for the most mysterious person who forever calls and draws us to his charm and love, we cannot fail to recognise Him, serve and love Him. We shall be liberated in His infinity and eternity of wonder and delight. We shall discover Him in all forms yet ever self-existent, wonderful and intimate person without any name or form. This realisation will be just the beginning of other great realisations as man will evolve into a greater and greater divine being. Such is the inevitable destiny of the aspiring soul.
There is one little thing - if we wait always for the right moment and the opportunity to do what we want to do we might as well wait for eternity. On the other hand if there is a strong inner urge and we begin to do straight away in the given circumstances, even a little of what we want to do some day, then miraculously what is far comes near and becomes realisable.
The world is entering an era of growing illumination. May we some day become true childs of the Mother Divine, selfless disciples of the supreme Teacher and Lord, humble and dedicated servants full of love and gratitude for the Master of Existence.
N.Guha Roy
In a future evolution, a better body will appear.
When we are young and full of energy we do not think of our body, we utilise it thoughtlessly, in the most careless way, drive it like a racing horse or a rocket forgetting the extreme fragility of the human body. During the last war when I was a pilot, I realised that my body was the weakest part in the plane. The mind and the vital push the body like a slave driver without ever considering its limits and its modest demands. Once we are passed sixty, seventy we begin to realise the extreme fragility of the body. With the growing age we become gradually immobilised. The spirituality has always condemned the body and the tragic life on earth – the body and the earth cannot be transformed. All our dreams and visions of a better world must end in the death of the body. As a matter of fact, the health of the strongest man is precarious, at any moment anything can happen – accidents or diseases can break the body. So is there no hope of a better body? Sri Aurobindo says, yes there is hope. In a future evolution a body will appear which will be free from fatigue, disease and decay with old age, even death at will will be possible, one could prolong the span of life at will. All this will come by following a new psychic spiritual physical discipline. Unless the psychic being is sufficiently developed through evolution, this transformation may not be possible. When we become conscious of the Supreme Spiritual reality, the primordial creative power, supramental Mahashakti through the psychic being, then by a progressive surrender to the Mother Divine there is a possibility of having a partial transformed body. The mind and the vital being must be already much transformed by the Divine Force through the intervention of the psychic being, then only the Divine Force can work on the transformation of the body cells. This is a very long, laborious and difficult discipline with its ups and downs, but Sri Aurobindo says that however difficult it may be, there is no other way of transforming the body.
The Divine help is always there, will always be there for all those who undertake this strenuous difficult journey under the leadership of the supramental Mahashakti, our Mother. This is the work She has undertaken to accomplish in whatever degree possible as Her next step in the evolution of the Gnostic being.
Om Mother Divine, may our surrender be perfect.
Give us faith and trust in Your luminous leadership.
Om Sri Aurobindo, Pranam, pranam, pranam
July/25/04 N. Guha Roy
Desire dead, the soul like a polished mirror, reflects the Sun.
I am bad in arithmetic and suffer from poor memory.
I always forget to count my blessings.
My colleagues seem to earn more then I do.
I forget, I have free boarding and lodging with my mother.
I forget, I have two hands, two legs, two eyes and two ears in good shape.
I forget, my brother has created a job for me out of love.
I forget to look at others, the terrible hardship they have to face.
Long ago, in my childhood, a lady gave me a sound advice,
When you don’t have shoes, look at the poor devil without legs.
I forget to count my blessings even now years after.
Once I saw a miserable leper eating from a fine Chinese bowl,
With a spoon, for he had no fingers left in his hand.
Something greedy in me, envied the owner of the bowl.
I always forget to count my blessings, so poor is my memory.
I curse my luck by looking at my neighbour’s new car,
His new property, forgetting conveniently his broken back.
The Buddha found out two thousand years ago,
The root-cause of all our endless suffering, the enemy.
Desire is an unholy fire, never satisfied, grows fast
And burns our body and soul, gives us no respite even after death.
O Seeker of Truth, nothing material has a durable value.
Aspire for the Eternal, the highest blessings are immaterial, -
Peace, love, beauty and harmony, compassion, God’s infinity,
And above all, the constant Presence of the radiant Mother.
Desire dead, the soul like a polished mirror, reflects the Sun.
******
Niranjan Guha Roy 1995
Soham, soham, soham God is in all,all is in God-All is divine, sustained by the Divine
God is all, All is in God, each and everyone, everything is God.
Whatever may be the form or nature, inert or active, disguised, masked
Hidden or partly revealed, sleeping or awake, now, yesterday, tomorrow,
Near or far, dead or alive, all existence visible or invisible or extinct,
All is the divine, sustained by the Divine, inhabited by the Divine.
If there is a Nothingness, a Void, a Nihil, that too is filled with the Divine.
All exists in God's body, like the incalculable fishes and animals in the ocean.
Each insect, animal, fish, aquatic bird is a mystic symbol of the ocean.
They have no existence without the ocean, but the existence of the ocean
Does not depend on all it contains yet the germ of all life hides in its womb.
The evolution is the gradual awakening and ascent of the sleeping God,
Towards his own supreme heights covered with silent dazzling light.
God in man has become a conscious seeker of his endless perfection,
Keeps the man running without respite, makes his heart burn with desire,
Feeds him with a strong brew of discontent to the edge of precipice.
The Godhead in the immortal soul of man grows stronger every moment,
By numberless births and deaths and ever shifting dramas of human life.
When the inner light shines brightly, flooding his mind, life and body
With its transforming radiance, man emerges out of darkness,
Suffering and agony of death into a luminous ocean of divine felicity.
The mortal man steps into a blissful deathless, timeless Infinite life,
One with all creation, all living beings in a clasp of identity,
United in a boundless wordless undeviating divine rapture.
All the man-made barriers of clan, creed, family, race, colour and religion
Like so many chains preventing the mighty soar of his soul simply fade away.
God calls him from all sides, all eyes and flowers, the sun, the moon and the stars,
Soham, soham, soham, I am this one, that one, everyone, love me ever more.
O my Lord, Sweet Mother thrice welcome, remain with us,
so much as yet is to be done.
Thy gracious Will be done, Victory of Thy blissful Love in all yearning souls.
Om Douce Mère, Sweet Mother, saranam mama
Om Sri Aurobindo, our kindly master, saranam mama.
******
Niranjan Guha Roy 2000
The Spirit- Space, vast limitless domain of eternal peace
Life is changing at each instant like the flowing waters of the Ganges.
Nothing remains, foes, family, friends, husbands, wives and children.
One never knows where one would end up, nothing is sure.
In this wild rush of events, is there a safe corner anywhere?
Men are swept away by hurrying time uncaring,
Like dry leaves in a strong wind helplessly, topsy-turvy.
Where can we find a secure platform under our feet!
Behind this dizzy race of today chasing tomorrow forever,
There is a Spirit-Space, a vast limitless domain of eternal Peace,
The infinite Mother-Presence rapt in blissful trance.
When we take refuge with utmost faith at Her Feet,
The moving and the unmoving, the mobile and the immobile,
Fuse together into Something mysterious, soothing,
Ecstatic, marvellous like the serene face of the Mother
Breaking into a soul-bewitching ravishing Smile.
Rushing, breaking, roaring, advancing in a cavalcade,
Or calm, unmoving, flooding, reposing in a wide lake,
The goddess Ganga is a tiny reflection of the Eternal Mother.
Nothing moves, impossible to catch up when we run after it.
Remain immobile, the world takes delight in a frenzied dance around us.
Mobile or immobile, the Mother remains the most irresistible Mystery.
Niranjan Guha Roy 1987
meditation- prayer - Om Tat Sat
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 center 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 obscur beings, the deguises, 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 abscurity. There are still a very great quantity of weeds in the consciousness, a huge work remains to be done and this is why I adress to You this prayer:
May I see You more and more with Your own eyes.
May I let You spreak 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 atccording to Your Will
Be 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 2000
meditation on the Supreme Lord and His play
O Lors Supreme, You do not come or go away. You are eternal, infinite, always trying to fathom Your own depths.
There is no one else but Yourself, You are All.
This world manifestation is Your fanciful play.
O Lord Supreme, Thou art all, each one, everyone now and ever. There is no one apart from Thee here or anywhere.
O happy earth, you are no other than the Lord himself
*******
All is Thy play... an eternal unending Felicity binds us all in Thy embrace.
Amazement upon amazement piled sky high, blissful.
*****
O Secret Self from You I am born, Your body's portion,
In You I disappear like the exalted sprays falling back into the Ocean.
When I contemplate the endless sacred procession of Your fugitive names and faces on the screen of Time,
Then only I vibrate and my life even so insignificant glows and burns in ecstasy like a meteor in explosion.
****
You send down the rays of a new Sun penetrating our bain, every cell of our body.As our surrender grows, You pour Yourself more and more into our heart, mind, body and soul and become the luminous, compassionate sovereign of our life.
*****
When we feel the thrill of immortal bliss in all touches, when we see nothing, no one but the supreme auspicious divine Presence, then and then only we are free.
*****
O traveller of the highway, sit back, pray, leave the controls to the Driver. A supremely conscious power has chosen these clay images to live in them And transform the mud gradually to express some bliss of the Brahman.
O traveller of the highway, sit back, pray, leave the controls to the Driver.
A supremely conscious power has chosen these clay images to live in them
And transform the mud gradually to express some bliss of the Brahman
The universe is Your conscious self-becoming, self-discovery. In the minutest cells, You are present with Your omnipotence.
Our individual life is a gradual flowering of Your dreams yet unrealised, a long experiment, how to transform this mud, this fragile image, so precarious, so uncertain, so hopelessly weak into a deathless radiant godhead conscious of the One in all creation. It is not our effort however wonderful that can alter our destiny. Your unsleeping force works with an all-seeing wisdom in all, in each soul through ages transforming the dark elements into gold. These clay images can hardly support the least heat of Your fire. Yet behind these brittle vases, something slowly takes shape, the promise of a bright Godhead, a slow revealing outline, an unpolished encrusted glowing shadow of Your grandeur.
The outer casing becomes stronger at every birth to house the treasure. We live in the illusion of running the show while being driven. As the inner light escapes more and more, illumines the clay image,the mud house inhabited by a secret Divinity, the outer man suddenly becomes wise, clairvoyant, realises his nothingness. An unbelievable change comes over him – the master becomes slave. The frail house becomes conscious of the immortal heavenly Guest. The role is reversed : the indwelling Godhead openly takes the lead. The Mother Divine pours in the growing soul more and more her fire, her nectar, her transmuting Power in carefully calculated flow for the earthen jar unbaked, risks a breakdown with overdose.
Om Devi, sarvamangala, vijaya paramakatyanmayi janani saranam mama.
******
Niranjan Guha Roy
Prayer to the Mother Divine -Build me a golden bridge over the gulf of Thy heart and mine. I know of no other heaven but that honeyed land of divine love.
Build me a golden bridge over the gulf of Thy heart and mine. I know of no other heaven but that honeyed land of divine love. Let Thy heart fill mine so that I am no longer "I" but Thou manifested through Thy love. I am not here to dig the mysterious depths and climb unknown heights and explore unmapped regions of high altitudes. I know Thy heart as the supreme Secret, the nucleus, the focal point, the very heart and love of the Supreme Being. The secret of secrets, the joy of joys, the Ananda of ananda, the supreme beatific Love. The all transmuting love flows out in a divine effulgence. The gold mine, diamond quarry, the mysterious lotus is there. Thy heart, the purple passion fruit of the eternity - the Love that forever is there. The supreme abode, the eternal child's playground where the All can find a shelter and yet leave unexhausted that maternal love. The dynamis of the created world is first energised in that Heart and then thrown out, but they cannot find an existence outside that circle of Love. Open our eyes Mother and let all our movements flow from the Great Heart - the mysterious lotus bud.
Thy Love is infinite, make my thirst for Thy Love too infinite. Be it an eternal unquenchable thirst - my heart a sahara aspiring for the moist - visitations of Thy Love.
********
Niranjan Guha Roy
The key to the new life is a total surrender and opening to the descending rays of the eternal Sun. Nothing else matters
I have a glimpse of a new life which is far, far away from the human life at its best. It is to live in the living presence of the Divine all the time, unbound by anything in life. Free from the animal which dominates us, free from my humanity. To possess and be possessed by Something which I can only call true light, peace, harmony, beauty and that Presence which is in all and beyond all. That which is truly Love, the only one Love. The Key is a surrender as total as possible, an aspiration, an opening to the descending rays of an eternal Sun. Nothing else matters. These descending rays, the divine Force pouring down from above into the being, only this power has the capacity to transform our humanity, our human consciousness into the divine consciousness. This is the transmuting Force. All our effort and discipline lead to this opening. When we can feel consciously the Divine Force pouring down into our mind, free from desire and tension in the vital, to be passive and aspiring in the body ‑‑ the whole being just opens like a thirsty vase, which prays and waits for the divine Nectar to fall from Above. The culmination of sadhana and personal effort is this wide and constant opening to the descending rays, to the transmuting force of the transcendent Mother Divine. Nothing else matters. All the human ideals and their pursuit are far far behind. A new Sun has appeared in the heaven, a new force unknown hitherto or just glimpsed by the Vedic Rishis has entered in the evolution as a most dynamic transforming divine agent. It works for peace, harmony and the widest possible unity. All that man has dreamed will be realised solely by the action of this Force. Our exclusive sacred duty and work is to arrive at the point when the center at the crown of head, the centers between the eyebrows and in the throat, the heart center, the two vital centers and the center at the base of the spine and other centers generally unknown in the legs and beyond must gradually open from highest downwards and receive the influx from above. How it happens and in what order and by what agency of discipline, even what it does are not very clear at least at the beginning. All we know is that the contact with the supraconscient divine consciousness has been established and the mind must be silent, the vital peaceful, even the body passive to receive and assimilate this Force. Wherever there is the minutest opening in the being, the power will come in as a sublimating force. In the least it will awaken an aspiration for a beautiful, harmonious, truly refined human life in beauty, peace, harmony. There is one essential condition so that this Force can begin to act: an intense, uncompromising aspiration for a Divine Life however vague our idea of it may be. A total recoil and unacceptance of human consciousness as it is even at its best, of the animality and humanity in us and an unconditional willingness to do anything and everything, whatever tapasya or discipline is required in order to receive this Force. Sri Aurobindo has outlined the conditions in an extremely precise and powerful form in "The Mother". There He has stated briefly in the form of mantras the process and the culmination, the final state of identity with the divine Mother Force through the tearing of the veil of ignorance and constant pouring down of the divine Consciousness from above. This opening to the descending rays of the Supreme Mother is the gateway to the divine life that is being born.
Niranjan Guha Roy