The Work and the Preparation

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August 3, 1914
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ALL the being, this morning is mute adoration and the immensity
of Thy love fills its soul....
The preparation and the work, the work and the preparation
alternate and interpenetrate to such an extent that sometimes it
is difficult to distinguish them; and their combination
constitutes Thy divine life upon earth. What one must be, what one
must do: the perfecting of Thy instrument and its utilisation go
together; sometimes Thou wantest it to enrich itself and grow, to
open all its doors on infinite horizons; to unite with the god it
can manifest, to develop its power of conscious relation with the
various worlds, and sometimes Thou wantest that, losing so to
speak all consciousness of itself, it may be nothing but Thy force
in action. And in the two is found the supreme law of communion
with Thy will.
All the being, this morning, is mute adoration and the
immensity of Thy love fills its soul.


--- The Mother [CW.Vol.I]

'Central Will'

Sweet Mother,

I was waiting for things to be well established in me before writing you again. An important change has occurred: it seems that something in me has 'clicked' - what Sri Aurobindo calls the 'central will,' perhaps - and I am living literally in the obsession of divine realization. This is what I want, nothing else, it is the only goal in life, and at last I have understood (not with the head) that the outer realization in the world will be the consequence of the inner realization. So thousands of times a day, I repeat, 'Mother, I want to be your instrument, ever more conscious, I want to express your truth, your light. I want to be what you want, as you want, when you want.' There is in me now a kind of need for perfection, a will to abolish this ego, a real understanding that to become your instrument means at the same time to find the perfect plenitude of one's personality. So I am living in an almost constant state of aspiration, I feel your force constantly, or nearly so, and if I am 'distracted' a few minutes, I experience a void, an uneasiness that calls me back to you.

And at the same time, I saw that it is you who is doing everything, you who aspires in me, you who wants the progress, and that all 'I' myself am in this affair is a screen, a resisting obstacle. O Mother, break this screen that I may be wholly transparent before you, that your transforming force may purify all the secret recesses in my being, that nothing may remain but you and you alone. O Mother, may all my being be a living expression of your light, your truth.

Mother, from the depths of my being, I offer you a sole prayer: may I become your more and more perfect instrument, a sword of light in your hands. Oh, to get out of this ego that belittles everything, diminishes everything, to emerge from it! All is falsehood in it.
And I, who understood nothing of love, am beginning to suspect who Satprem is. Mother, your grace is infinite, it has accompanied me everywhere in my life.

We are still in Kataragama, and we shall only go up to northern Ceylon, to Jaffna, around the 15th, then return to India towards the beginning of May if the visa problems are settled. Only in India, at the temple of Rameswaram, can I receive the orange robe. I am living here as a sannyasi, but dressed in white, like a Hindu. It is a stark life, nothing more. I have seen however, that truth does not lie in starkness but in a change of consciousness. (Desire always finds a means to entrench itself in very small details and in very petty and stupid, though well-rooted, avidities.)

Mother, I am seeing all the mean pettiness that obstructs your divine work. Destroy my smallness and take me unto you. May I be sincere, integrally sincere.

With infinite gratitude, I am your child.

-Satprem

The Force is here to manifest

WHAT plenitude in the perception! The entire individual being,
modest, humble, surrendered, adoring, calm and smiling, feeling one
with all beings, unable to make any difference of value, in perfect
solidarity with all things, is kneeling down before Thee together
with them all; and at the same time the formidable omnipotence of
Thy Force which is here, ready for the manifestation, waiting,
building the propitious hour, the favorable opportunity; the
incomparable splendour of Thy victorious sovereignty.
The Force is here. Rejoice, O you who are waiting and hoping:
the new manifestation is sure, the new manifestation is at hand.
The Force is here.
All nature exults and sings in gladness, all nature is at a
festival: The Force is here. Arise and live; and be illuminated;
arise and battle for the transfiguration of all: The Force is here.


--- The Mother [CW.Vol.I]

HE Answers OUR ARDENT CALL!

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July 4, 1914
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O SOVEREIGN Force, O victorious Power, Purity, Beauty, supreme
Love, grant that this being in its integrality, this body in all
its totality may draw near to Thee solemnly and offer to Thee in a
complete and humble surrender this means of manifestation abandoned
perfectly to Thy Will, if not perfectly ready for this
realisation....
With the calm and strong certitude that Thou wilt one day
accomplish the expected miracle and manifest in its fullness Thy
sublime splendour, we turn to Thee in a profound rapture, and
silently implore Thee....
Immensity, Infinitude, Wonder....Thou alone art and Thou shinest
resplendent in all things. the hour of Thy fulfilment is near. All
Nature is ingathered in a solemn concentration.
Thou answerest her ardent call.


--- The Mother [CW.Vol.I]

Thy love is vaster than the universe

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May 23, 1914
-----------------------

O LORD, Thou of whom I would be constantly conscious and whom I
would realise in the smallest cells of my being, Thou whom I would
know as myself and see manifested in all things, Thou who art the
sole reality, the sole cause and aim of existence, grant that my
love for Thee may grow ever greater so that I may be all love, Thy
love itself, and that, being Thy love, I may unite integrally with
Thee. May this love grow more and more intense, complete, luminous,
powerful; may this love become an irresistible urge towards Thee,
the invincible means of manifesting Thee. May everything in this
being become pure, profound, disinterested, divine love -- from the
unfathomable depths to the outermost substance. May the God with
form who manifests in this aggregate be entirely moulded from Thy
complete and sublime love, the love which is at once the source and
the realisation of all knowledge; may thought be clarified,
organised, enlightened, transformed by Thy love; may all the
life-forces, solely impregnated by Thy love and moulded from it,
draw from it irresistible purity and constant energy, power and
rectitude. May this weakened intermediary being, take advantage of
its weakness to reconstitute itself with elements entirely moulded
from Thy love, and may this body, now a burning brazier, radiate
Thy divine, impersonal, sublime and calm love from every pore....
May the brain be reconstituted by Thy love. Lastly, may Thy love
overflow, flood, penetrate, transfigure, regenerate, animate all
things, with the power, the splendour, the sweetness and force
which are its very own. In Thy love is peace, in Thy love is joy,
in Thy love is Thy servitor's sovereign lever of work.
Thy love is vaster than the universe and more lasting than all
the ages; it is infinite, eternal, it is Thyself. And it is Thyself
I want to be and that I am, for such is Thy law, such is Thy will.

--- The Mother [CW.Vol.I]

Hours of an Extreme and Anguished Aspiration

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October 15, 1917 (*)
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I HAVE cried to Thee in my despair, O Lord, and Thou hast
answered my call.
I have no right to complain of the circumstances of my
existence; are they not consonant with what I am?
Because Thou ledst me to the threshold of Thy splendour and
gavest me the joy of Thy harmony, I thought I had reached the goal:
but, in truth, Thou hast regarded Thy instrument in the perfect
clarity of Thy light and plunged it back into the crucible of the
world that it may be melted anew and purified.
In these hours of an extreme and anguished aspiration I see, I
feel myself drawn by Thee with a dizzy rapidity along the road of
transformation and my whole being vibrates to a conscious contact
with the Infinite.
It is so that Thou givest me patience and the strength to
surmount this new ordeal.


--- The Mother [CW.Vol.I]

V-Day 2009

My dear other selves on Tribe,

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY to All

May this V-Day bring the Realization of that...

LOVE is a mighty vibration coming straight from the ONE. Only those who are very pure and strong can receive it and manifest.

Love Divine gives and asks nothing in return.

To Love is not to possess but to give oneself.

TO FEEL LOVE AND ONENESS IS TO LIVE
AND THIS THE MAGIC OF OUR GOLDEN CHANGE.

www.auroville.org

Renouncing Everything

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December 25, 1916
------------------------------

(What I heard in the silence and noted down last evening)

"BY renouncing everything, even wisdom and consciousness, thou
wert able to prepare thy heart for the role assigned to it:
apparently the most unrewarding role, that of the spring which
always lets its waters flow abundantly for all, but towards which
no waters can ever run back; it draws its inexhaustible strength
from the depths and expects nothing from outside. But thou canst
already sense the sublime felicity that accompanies this
inexhaustible expansion of love; for love is sufficient unto itself
and needs no reciprocity; this is true even of individual love, how
much more true then of divine love which so nobly reflects the
infinite.
"Be this love in all things and everywhere, ever more widely,
ever more intensely, and the whole world will become at the same
time thy work and thy wealth, thy field of action and thy conquest.
Fight with persistence to break down the last limits which are only
frail barriers before the expansion of the being, to vanquish the
last obscurities already being lit up by the Illuminating Power.
Fight in order to conquer and triumph; fight to overcome everything
that was till today, to make the new Light spring forth, the new
Example the world needs. Fight stubbornly against all obstacles,
inner or outer. It is the pearl of great price which is offered for
thy Realisation."


--- The Mother [CW.Vol.I]

Divine Justice

Why do people receive force from the Divine even when He knows that they are not sincere?

You must understand once for all that the Divine, when he acts is not moved by human notions. Possibly he does things even without what we call reason. In any case the reasons are not of the human kind; above all, the Divine has not that sense of justice which man has. For example, when you see a man full of greed for money, trying to cheat people just for the sake of getting a few rupees, your idea of justice cries out that such a man should be deprived of all money, he must be reduced to poverty. But actually you find things happening to the contrary. Although that is only the appearance of the situation; behind there is an altogether different picture. The greedy gets the object of his greed, but he has to make an exchange, give up some other possibilities. He gets money but he loses in his consciousness. And then it also happens very often that when he does get what he desired so much, he finds himself not so happy, generally he is even less happy than before: he is tormented by the wealth he has gained. You must not judge things by apparent success or by apparent failure. One can say, on the whole, that the Divine gives what one asks for and that is the best way in which one gets his lesson. If your desire is ignorant, unconscious, obscure, selfish, you increase in yourself ignorance, unconsciousness, obscurity and selfishness, that is to say, you move away more and more from truth and consciousness and happiness, in other words, away from the Divine. For the Divine, however, there is only one thing which is true, the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Union. Each time you put material things in front of you, you become more and more material, you push behind more and more the Divine. To the eye of the ignorant you may have all the appearance of wonderful success, but this success, from the standpoint of truth, is a terrible defeat, you have bartered truth for falsehood.

To judge by appearances, by apparent success is an act of complete ignorance. Even in the case of a person hardened to the core, who has apparently the utmost success, there is a counterpart: exactly this hardening, this evil that is put up thicker and thicker between the outer consciousness and the inner truth becomes also more and more unbearable. The outer success has to be paid for very dearly. One must be very great, very pure, one must have a very high, very unselfish spiritual consciousness to be able to succeed and yet not be affected. There is nothing so difficult to bear than success. That is the true test in life. When you are not successful, you turn very naturally to yourself, go within you, seek there comfort for the outer failure. And they who have the Flame within them and the Divine helping them truly, that is to say, if they are mature enough to get the help, if they are ready to follow the path, must expect blows coming upon them one after another, because that helps. Indeed that is the most powerful, most direct and most effective help. But if you have 'Success, take care! Ask yourself, at what price you have had it? What is the thing you have paid for the success? Of course, there are people of a different kind. They who have gone beyond, who are conscious of their soul, who are entirely surrender they can succeed and success does not touch them. But one has to rise very high to be able to shoulder the burden of success. It is perhaps the last and final test that the Divine puts to anyone. He says: "Now that you are noble and high and unselfish, you belong to Me alone. I shall make you triumph. We shall see if you can bear the blow!"

To the Asuras too the Divine gives what they ask for. Generally it is in that way that their end comes all the sooner. An Asura is a conscious being. He knows that he has an end. He knows that the attitude he has taken in this universe will necessarily destroy him after a time. Of course the Asura's time is much longer than human time. Even then he knows that there will come an end for him, for he has cut himself from Eternity. What he seeks is to carry out his desires to the utmost extent possible till the day of his doom, when the final defeat comes. And very possibly if he is allowed his way the defeat will be hastened. That is why exactly when great things are about to happen, at that moment the adverse forces become the most active, most violently active and apparently the most successful. They are given a free field as it were to rush to their doom.

- Nolini Kanta Gupta, volm 3, Divine Justice -

Nirvana - Stroke of insight

TED.comNeuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story of recovery and awareness -- of how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another. (Recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 18:44.)

wach the video if you have Broadband connection
www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder, schizophrenia. And as a sister and as a scientist, I wanted to understand, why is it that I can take my dreams, I can connect them to my reality, and I can make my dreams come true -- what is it about my brother's brain and his schizophrenia that he cannot connect his dreams to a common, shared reality, so they instead become delusions?

So I dedicated my career to research into the severe mental illnesses. And I moved from my home state of Indiana to Boston where I was working in the lab of Dr. Francine Benes, in the Harvard Department of Psychiatry. And in the lab, we were asking the question, What are the biological differences between the brains of individuals who would be diagnosed as normal control, as compared to the brains of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, or bipolar disorder?

So we were essentially mapping the microcircuitry of the brain, which cells are communicating with which cells, with which chemicals, and then with what quantities of those chemicals. So there was a lot of meaning in my life because I was performing this kind of research during the day. But then in the evenings and on the weekends I traveled as an advocate for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

But on the morning of December 10 1996 I woke up to discover that I had a brain disorder of my own. A blood vessel exploded in the left half of my brain. And in the course of four hours I watched my brain completely deteriorate in its ability to process all information. On the morning of the hemorrhage I could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life. I essentially became an infant in a woman's body.

If you've ever seen a human brain, it's obvious that the two hemispheres are completely separate from one another. And I have brought for you a real human brain. [Thanks.] So, this is a real human brain. This is the front of the brain, the back of the brain with a spinal cord hanging down, and this is how it would be positioned inside of my head. And when you look at the brain, it's obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another. For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor. While our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor. The two hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus collosum, which is made up of some 300 million axonal fibers. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate. Because they process information differently, each hemisphere thinks about different things, they care about different things, and dare I say, they have very different personalities. [Excuse me. Thank you. It's been a joy.]

Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It's all about right here right now. Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems. And then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like. What this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and what it sounds like. I am an energy being connected to the energy all around me through the consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy beings connected to one another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now, all we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this moment we are perfect. We are whole. And we are beautiful.

My left hemisphere is a very different place. Our left hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past, and it's all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment. And start picking details and more details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information. Associates it with everything in the past we've ever learned and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It's that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It's that little voice that says to me, "Hey, you gotta remember to pick up bananas on your way home, and eat 'em in the morning." It's that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it's that little voice that says to me, "I am. I am." And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me "I am," I become separate. I become a single solid individual separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you.

And this was the portion of my brain that I lost on the morning of my stroke.

On the morning of the stroke, I woke up to a pounding pain behind my left eye. And it was the kind of pain, caustic pain, that you get when you bite into ice cream. And it just gripped me and then it released me. Then it just gripped me and then released me. And it was very unusual for me to experience any kind of pain, so I thought OK, I'll just start my normal routine. So I got up and I jumped onto my cardio glider, which is a full-body exercise machine. And I'm jamming away on this thing, and I'm realizing that my hands looked like primitive claws grasping onto the bar. I thought "that's very peculiar" and I looked down at my body and I thought, "whoa, I'm a weird-looking thing." And it was as though my consciousness had shifted away from my normal perception of reality, where I'm the person on the machine having the experience, to some esoteric space where I'm witnessing myself having this experience.

And it was all every peculiar and my headache was just getting worse, so I get off the machine, and I'm walking across my living room floor, and I realize that everything inside of my body has slowed way down. And every step is very rigid and very deliberate. There's no fluidity to my pace, and there's this constriction in my area of perceptions so I'm just focused on internal systems. And I'm standing in my bathroom getting ready to step into the shower and I could actually hear the dialog inside of my body. I heard a little voice saying, "OK, you muscles, you gotta contract, you muscles you relax."

And I lost my balance and I'm propped up against the wall. And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can't define where I begin and where I end. Because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy. Energy. And I'm asking myself, "What is wrong with me, what is going on?" And in that moment, my brain chatter, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button and -- total silence.

And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there.

Then all of a sudden my left hemisphere comes back online and it says to me, "Hey! we got a problem, we got a problem, we gotta get some help." So it's like, OK, OK, I got a problem, but then I immediately drifted right back out into the consciousness, and I affectionately referred to this space as La La Land. But it was beautiful there. Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that connects you to the external world. So here I am in this space and any stress related to my, to my job, it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and the many stressors related to any of those, they were gone. I felt a sense of peacefulness. And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of emotional baggage! I felt euphoria. Euphoria was beautiful -- and then my left hemisphere comes online and it says "Hey! you've got to pay attention, we've got to get help," and I'm thinking, "I got to get help, I gotta focus." So I get out of the shower and I mechanically dress and I'm walking around my apartment, and I'm thinking, "I gotta get to work, I gotta get to work, can I drive? can I drive?"

And in that moment my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side. And I realized, "Oh my gosh! I'm having a stroke! I'm having a stroke!" And the next thing my brain says to me is, "Wow! This is so cool. This is so cool. How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?"

And then it crosses my mind: "But I'm a very busy woman. I don't have time for a stroke!" So I'm like, "OK, I can't stop the stroke from happening so I'll do this for a week or two, and then I'll get back to my routine, OK."

So I gotta call help, I gotta call work. I couldn't remember the number at work, so I remembered, in my office I had a business card with my number on it. So I go in my business room, I pull out a 3-inch stack of business cards. And I'm looking at the card on top, and even though I could see clearly in my mind's eye what my business card looked like, I couldn't tell if this was my card or not, because all I could see were pixels. And the pixels of the words blended with the pixels of the background and the pixels of the symbols, and I just couldn't tell. And I would wait for what I call a wave of clarity. And in that moment, I would be able to reattach to normal reality and I could tell, that's not the card, that's not the card, that's not the card. It took me 45 minutes to get one inch down inside of that stack of cards.

In the meantime, for 45 minutes the hemorrhage is getting bigger in my left hemisphere. I do not understand numbers, I do not understand the telephone, but it's the only plan I have. So I take the phone pad and I put it right here, I'd take the business card, I'd put it right here, and I'm matching the shape of the squiggles on the card to the shape of the squiggles on the phone pad. But then I would drift back out into La La Land, and not remember when I come back if I'd already dialed those numbers.

So I had to wield my paralyzed arm like a stump, and cover the numbers as I went along and pushed them, so that as I would come back to normal reality I'd be able to tell, yes, I've already dialed that number. Eventually the whole number gets dialed, and I'm listening to the phone, and my colleague picks up the phone and he says to me, "Whoo woo wooo woo woo." [laughter] And I think to myself, "Oh my gosh, he sounds like a golden retriever!" And so I say to him, clear in my mind I say to him. "This is Jill! I need help!" And what comes out of my voice is, "Whoo woo wooo woo woo." I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I sound like a golden retriever." So I couldn't know, I didn't know that I couldn't speak or understand language until I tried.

So he recognizes that I need help, and he gets me help. And a little while later, I am riding in an ambulance from one hospital across Boston to Mass General Hospital. And I curl up into a little fetal ball. And just like a balloon with the last bit of air just, just right out of the balloon I felt my energy lift and I felt my spirit surrender. And in that moment I knew that I was no longer the choreographer of my life. And either the doctors rescue my body and give me a second chance at life or this was perhaps my moment of transition.

When I awoke later that afternoon I was shocked to discover that I was still alive. When I felt my spirit surrender, I said goodbye to my life, and my mind is now suspended between two very opposite planes of reality. Stimulation coming in through my sensory systems felt like pure pain. Light burned my brain like wildfire and sounds were so loud and chaotic that I could not pick a voice out from the background noise and I just wanted to escape. Because I could not identify the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expensive, like a genie just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free like a great whale gliding through the sea of silent euphoria. Harmonic. I remember thinking there's no way I would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.

But I realized "But I'm still alive! I'm still alive and I have found Nirvana. And if I have found Nirvana and I'm still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana." I picture a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives. And it motivated my to recover.

Two and a half weeks after the hemorrhage, the surgeons went in and they removed a blood clot the size of a golf ball that was pushing on my language centers. Here I am with my mama, who's a true angel in my life. It took me eight years to completely recover.

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the "we" inside of me.

Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

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