LETTERS FROM A BAUL written by SRI ANIRVAN in English. Copyright.
LIFE WITHIN LIFE
PART 1 - THE PRINCIPLES
CHAPTER 1
A STATE OF SAHAJA
The Katha Upanishad says: “The aim is to attain pure Existence (sat).” He who has realised this has a clear understanding of what reality is. Pure Existence is the Truth beyond life and death. That you exist is a fact! And your existence is nothing but a manifestation of that which is universal and transcendental. So your existence becomes oneness (kaivalya) in which there exist the two principles of Samkhya: Purusha, which is the spirit, and Prakriti, which is “that which is manifested.” Spiritually cannot be acquired; it can only be derived from these two principles.
Open yourself up to the sun of pure Existence (sat) as the bud of a flower opens to the light. Then the Truth will flow into you. Impatience spoils everything! There is a Baul song, which says: “The stars, the suns, and the moons are never impatient. Silently, they follow the stream of pure Existence, as the true Guru does.”
Now, this pure Existence, lived with a wide-open heart amid all the circumstances of life, is in itself the state of sahaja- a state in which the mind is freed from all duality. The motionless mind knows “That” which has neither beginning nor end, which is free in its very essence.
Sahaja is yoga for the same reason as all other yogas. It is a path that leads to the discovery of “That with which one is born,” the pure being living in the temple of the heart.
Sahaja can be defined as follows: “That which is born in you, that which is born with you,” a state of pure essence. The body, the spirit, the impulse of life and intelligence are all there. Nothing must be rejected or mutilated, so that “one and the same thing” can be consciously established.
That is why Samkhya, which is the path by which the state of Sahaja is attained, speaks a great deal of the waking state that is the normal level of all activity. It also speaks of the state of consciousness interiorised in dreams, which later becomes the state of deep sleep. The fourth state, that of inner awakening, is the mark of deep sleep. Shankaracharya, instructs us about these four different states in his philosophy.
In sahaja, there is a fifth state, that of a totally awakened consciousness; it contains in itself the four states of wakefulness, dreaming, deep sleep, and the state in which deep sleep exists along with the other four states. There is no longer any differentiation between the various states, all of them being unified at a single point.
From that moment on, everything becomes your food. Everything is one and the same thing in you. Then you are faced with a new task in the realm of sensation and relaxation. It becomes a question of forgetting oneself, of voluntarily obliterating oneself, which is a letting go in a region that is very subtle and hard to discover. Voluntary forgetting is a task that is just as difficult as accustoming one’s mental faculty to remembering the details of self-observation. It is only approached much later, when memory has become submissive and fulfils its true role.
This is slow work and a true discipline in itself. The effort to forget ceases when the contraction that determines the field of work disappears. Without construction there can be no directed effort. When this effort is recognised, the contraction disappears and is at once replaced by a very special kind of attention coming from very far away. This attention is different to what is going on and yet it watches closely. It gives no orders and does not know impatience. It simply watches how Great Nature (prakriti) operates, for even in the subtle domain of voluntary forgetfulness prakriti has still to be reckoned with.
To wish to forget is, in fact, impossible. Forgetting proceeds from a principle without any form. When your being is invaded by a movement coming from the heart and the mind, you are just like an empty vibrating bell filled by the echo of a sound coming from elsewhere.
Accept within yourself the idea that you have only twenty-four hours to live. Let those hours be full of clarity to help you to accomplish your task. Do not allow them to be tarnished. They have been entrusted to you. Those twenty-four hours are your eternity. In the face of his three-dimensional day, it is impossible to imagine the future. Do not attempt to stretch the time, nor to divide it, nor to lengthen or shorten it. Everything is so full and at the same time so empty!
The discipline of sahaja begins with the acceptance of the whole of life just as it is. The heat opens up to receive it and to live it. As for intelligence and logic, they will seek in Samkkhya the necessary strength to finding the key to the enigma of existence. Sahaja then appears like a path illumined by the experience of inner being.
In practice, Samkhya is a technique to realize the expansion of sahaja. Neither the one nor the other takes into account god, demons, paradises, hells, or formalisms of any kind, in the course of inner effort. The point where Samkhya and Sahaja converge is tin the whole of life, which becomes in itself the object of meditation. Therefore serenity within oneself and a right relationship with life and one’s fellow beings becomes a way of being.
He who practices a spiritual discipline (sadhana) will use Samkhya to learn how to look at the movements of Great Nature in all its manifestations without interfering with its movements, to recognize its imprint on everything and to observe the ability of prakriti to pass imperceptibly from one plane of consciousness to another. Not to react to any of its movements would, in fact, mean to live in the very heart of life without being affected by it. But at the beginning, this state cannot be taken for granted, for it is not merely by observing the movements of prakriti that one becomes its master.
The disciple will turn his gaze upon himself and will discover, although he had never before seen it, the countless inner disturbances created by everything in him that says, “I like and I do not like; I want and I do not want; it’s right and it’s wrong,” and so forth, which prevent him from noticing that in himself there is a stormy prakriti identical to the one that exists around him.
How can he dissociate himself from that prakriti which until he dies will be for him his life, his mind and his body with all their functions? At this time traditional Rajayoga comes to help. This yoga through its graduated disciplines brings the body to a state of conscious joy, one’s life to a state of equanimity comparable to complete rest and one’s mind to ecstasy (samadhi). In this state of equanimity, all the automatic movements of prakriti and its unconscious play can be perceived. Always, in following this inner discipline, the ideal of Samkhya is to learn how to stand back, and the ideal of yoga is vairagya, which means to learn how to observe oneself dispassionately and without judgement.
Long and meticulous work is indispensible in order to discover that emotion of any kind creates a passionate movement which takes man out of himself. In this case yoga teaches how to check any impetuous movement by emptying the mind of all images. The superabundant energy is thus brought back to the self. But the purpose of Samkhya is that this energy, having returned to the self, should also be directed consciously towards the outer life, that it should become openly active without disturbing the inner or outer prakriti. In this way life-energy is purified. It becomes creative. Of course this state can only last for a few minutes, and the ordinary man immediately reappears with his train of habitual reactions within the play of manifestation.
This play of illumination (sattva) and this word is right even if the moment be brief, is a look into oneself and at the same time is a look outside oneself (sivadrsti). Symbolically it can be compared to the piercing look of Purusha into himself and upon the active Prakriti around him. To accept Prakriti in its totality is pure sahaja. In a subtle manner, beyond “I like and I don’t like,” it brings a possibility of modification in the densities of intrinsic qualities (gunas) of the lower prakriti and shows the path by which a higher Prakriti can be reached.
Learn to return voluntarily to what is fundamentally primitive in you, carefully hidden and disguised in the realm of instinct, intuition and sex. This conscious return will produce unsuspected reactions and induce outbursts of all your dormant impatience. If you were a tree, they would all of them be branches issuing from the same trunk. One cannot cut off one branch without damaging the whole; cutting several of them would cause the death of the tree. All the branches together form the canopy of foliage.
In the wind, the foliage is in harmony with the whole forest. It is in the foliage that the birds nest and sing. May this picture help you in your spiritual discipline even if it is very hard. If something obscure lingers in you, it means that there must still be an attachment somewhere, just as in the tree there are knots which hinder the rising of the sap.
You can observe ideas and make them your own. You can freely create ways to express them. That is what the force in you can do. Perhaps I can help you to discover your own power but only by suggestion. If you open yourselves up and discover who you are, I shall be pleased.
A great tapasya awaits you. This word means personal austerity and voluntary discipline.
These are clearly the creative energy and the wisdom so often described in the Upanishads as being together the first manifestation of the creative urge. One of the Upanishads even goes so far as to say that it is a radiation devoid of any characteristic, that is, without form (alingam).
True tapasya means to be one with the creative power of prakriti. It brings us close to Great Nature as she really is. One voluntarily drops all accumulations, all that has been acquired, and returns to what is simple and innate. Austerities, both mental and physical, to which many a seeker subjects himself, are only the fumbling means adopted by ignorant souls wishing to attain that entirely natural end.
Allow your power to radiate, and may this radiation be your discipline. Hear the resonance of this call in you and, without tension of any sort, have the courage to plunge into the depths of your soul. Do not listen to the sophisticated sayings of t he wiseacres who teach with pomp and ostentation.
U: nderstood in this manner, tapasya is the progressive development of limitless intuition. There are two kinds of tapasya. One in which I always say “Yes” -tantras – and one in which I always say “No” – Vedanta. The true seeker who says “yes” is a born poet, for he finds himself obliged to translate everything into exalted thoughts and language. His poetry plays the role of a science of transmutation.
In sahaja there is a close correspondence between the Baul and the Sufi, provided that the “underground current” of spiritual life brings the mind of each one to grasp the secret and to live it in his own light.
As soon as one attempts to describe Hinduism in terms of circles and cycles, and Sufism in terms of four degrees, one is lost. Immediately one enters the world of division and quarrels.
How is it that the Sufis have discovered the content of the Upanishads that freedom of which they sing, when, in fact, the Upanishads are unknown to most of them? Each one, at his appointed time, must break the shell in which he is enclosed, so as to penetrate into knowledge; just as a fully formed chick must break out of the eggshell if it wishes to live its life.
In the final stage there is no longer any discipline but only an uninterrupted consciousness of being. If the entire being is immersed in a (the Sufi calls it Fanaa) I “know” how in myself without efforts the current of a right relationship is established, which dissolves everything false or halting in my relationship with myself and with my fellow men.
The Bauls and the Sufis tread the same path in life and drink from the same eternal source; they are above every kind of sectarianism. They do not practise any formal initiation; they speak however of two kinds of initiation.
One is compared to the sun touching the bud of a flower, inviting it to open. A power is transfused from the Master to his disciple simply by radiation without ritual or words. That is all. The bud of the flower still retains all its individuality.
The other initiation, at a still higher level, is compared to the sun which absorbs the dew into itself. At a glance the Master recognises the real disciple, whether he be a Baul or a Sufi. His look captures the reflection of the disciple’s being as in a mirror; then the eyes of the Master and the eyes of the disciple close. But the current between them will continue to flow eternally. This is called the process of saturation.
But the time comes when the Master becomes an obstacle to the flowering of the disciple. The cult of the person falls away, and also the cult of devotion to ideas. The question arises, “Why do I obey?” And the answer is “The Guru of the Guru of my Guru is walking ahead on the same path as I. Can I reach the source by myself alone, making do without any intermediaries?”
That is the beginning of a long and declared war with many painful stages with the Guru. The true Guru will be aware of this struggle. He watches closely the disordered movements of the disciple. His kindness is such that he speaks with his disciple about the one who walks ahead, about the laws of working on oneself; yet he does nothing to attenuate the struggle which has begun.
At the end of this stage there is a sahaja when the disciple finally opens the eyes of his heart and understands that he has gone astray. On this subject Keshab Das has said,”I discover that I am what I was, but between the two there are only complications. Now, I see…” The aim is the Truth, through which the unity of all things can be perceived. This truth is sahaja.
The Master of a Baul or a Sufi teaches nothing directly; he merely stimulates his disciple by suggestions. Once initiated, the disciple feels that a force drives him forward, but he will always have to struggle alone in the world around him, in the very heart of all life’s complications.
My one ambition has been to learn to speak without words. That is, to be the smoke of a fire that others do not see, or the sound of music that others do not hear. It has taken me fifty years. Two ideas have always been in my mind. The first of these was to be the traveller who follows the trail with a precise goal: to touch God and to serve him. The second was the idea of expansion: to know how to flow out like a gas without any destination for the rshis have said,”Those who have attained pure Existence (sat) become the One.”
So many people come to see me who only want words! If I do not speak, they are upset. So I speak in a poetic way, and that keeps them occupied for a while.
But where are those to whom I can entrust a task in life, one single task that would be the expression of their spiritual fervour? If you are not a ploughman, what do you know about ploughing? If you are not a man of action, what do you know about a task to be fulfilled? In the seed-bed of thought, action, prayer, and meditation coexist in the sensation of being and action is not what men have made of it – something subjective and hypocritical, far removed from the centre of being.
You do not know that all creation is born of an action? To live is also an action. To live could be the fact of acknowledging the “Man in the temple of the heart” and serving him perfectly.
CHAPTER II
SAMKHYA
Samkhya is, above all, the practical philosophy transmitted by Kapila, who lived in the far distant past.
Samkhya give s a clear idea of the “Purusha-Spirit” and of “Prakriti-manifestation” represented by “Great Nature.” The latter is manifested essentially in a mechanical manner, like all the cosmic Laws which govern us.
I know how difficult it is to explain deep spiritual values. That is why I think the best link between the things of the beyond with the things of this world is that of practical psychology.
Psychology speaks a universally known language.
Samkhya is the only religious philosophy that speaks a psychological language, hence a scientific language. Everything can be explained from the point of view of Samkhya. It is the basis of the Buddhist pitakas, as well as of the Sufi precepts. It is no more concerned with rites than are the Upanishads.
Nothing exists, in any realm, that by deduction does not proceed from a higher Law. There comes a time when one must submit to such a deductive process. This process is pure Samkhya, it is the inexorable descent into Prakriti, under pressure from above of the great Will. From that moment onwards everything functions in a mechanical way: the higher intelligence (Buddhi), the soul, the ego, all the centres of the human being, each one with its natural intelligence. The automatic progression functions from the moment when connections start between the different levels of the being: its inner organs of perception (indriyas) or senses, its constituent elements (bhutas) and densities.
When “He who knows” effects the descent voluntarily and reaches the lowest point, that is to say, the nadir, his being becomes radiant. At that moment he enters consciously into the discipline of a clearly conscious upward movement.
Man s by nature inductive; he gropes his way forward and goes blindly along. Woman, on the other hand, is by nature actively passive, for her function is to create the child. From her are born husband and father. All manifestations, mind, soul, life, matter, have come from her. In that respect she is the “Divine Mother,” the foundation from which the slow ascent towards the source begins.
It is said in the Bhagavatam that, at the time when Samkhya arrived on the earth, a woman was the first to benefit by it. This woman was called Devahuti. She represents the higher Prakriti. Devahuti realised this knowledge to its ultimate limit. Having rejected everything that was not the pure and luminous “I,” she is said to have wandered in Nature, completely naked, radiating light. At the moment of death, she transformed herself voluntarily into an inexhaustible river in order to water the whole earth and allow hundreds and thousands of beings to quench their thirst for knowledge.
The spiritual science of Samkhya can make a saint out of a man who has no longer any faith in God or in himself.
In the beginning Samkhya sappers to be appallingly dry and lacking in love, for imagination and any kind of emotion are strictly set aside. But when the inner being has recovered his lost equilibrium and discovered the equilibrium which he has thus far never felt, he is nourished by a pure love which no longer has any root in human love.
The adept of Samkhya finds his point of support in his own inner attitude, in his conscious effort to understand “what there is.” To reach this attitude, he makes use of everything that he has discovered, everything that he has experienced up to the time when he begins his search. His material consists of events in his life which enlarge his plane of consciousness, harmonise the microcosm that he is, and reveal the relationship existing between the known universe and the unknown universe around him. Even if he has neither a prayer nor a petition, he has, on the other hand, an attitude of openness. He questions and he observes. He searches within himself for a familiar sensation so as to face the perfect and absolute cosmic Law which unfolds. He knows that it is through overcoming obstacles that the inner being will make a fresh effort to attain a wider level of consciousness. To hold to this openness entails attentive vigilance and an immense work of amassing details upon details, until the first of them are clearly perceived. To lead such a life is to live a prayer.
The following example, taken from a Tantric text, formulates it like this: “Let your body become hard like dry wood. Then your inner felicity (rasa) will be like sugar syrup. Let the fire of your spiritual discipline (sadhana) purify this syrup until it becomes like candied sugar; this candied sugar will at first be brown, but finally it will become as transparent as rock crystal. May your inner felicity resemble rock crystal; then your love will be as pure as Krishna’s.”
In order to taste this experience, there are two methods on opposite levels. In one case, stimulants and drugs are utilized by the physical body. In the other case, the spiritual body becomes consciously more and more refined and in full awareness reaches a strictly graduated interiorisation. This conscious lucidity will then be continuous like the tracks of a caterpillar on the earth.
Then a stage of knowledge will be reached, that is, a knowledge that is searching for itself and gradually discovers itself. At its highest point after a very delicate attunement, this knowledge becomes true compassion or pure objective love.
In Vedanta and for the Vedantist, if felicity is not reached in the complete passivity of all the centres of the being, the upward path is nothing but renunciation and frustration.
Vedanta denies all reality, while the Samkhya discipline affirms that everything is reality (sat). In prakriti, which by nature is mechanical, three densities have to be acknowledged and gone beyond matter, energy and spirit, and to reach finally the cosmic force that contains them all. Higher reality, or pure Existence (sat) beyond manifestation, is expressed by the unity of these three densities. Behind it stands Purusha.
The essential condition of this condition is the possibility of absorption which continually increases until it becomes total. To start with, everything appears heavy and opaque, like a clod of earth that, little by little, as understanding broadens, appears like pure rock crystal.
The soul’s felicity is the state (vilasa-vivarta) in which the unreal becomes real and vice versa.
In attempting this a Christian risks himself with difficulty, for he has to take into account a “sinful body” which weighs very heavily. The Christian places his point of support ahead of him in God, which gives him strength and consolation, He prays, invokes and gives thanks. He is a worshipper (bhakta) before his Lord (istadevata). The great majority of Hindus are also worshippers.
In Samkhya, several themes for meditation are taught which date from the time of the Vedas.
For example, the idea of the opposite pairs of the zenith-nadir (what is above and what is below), or Purusha-Prakriti, is graphically pictured by two points inked by an ideal line going vertically from the zenith to the nadir. But in living experience one perceives in meditation that it is quite different. Actually, these two poles of zenith and nadir are not opposites, but joined in a continuous movement that starts from the zenith, describes a vast semicircle to the right and reaches the nadir at the bottom of the curve. After having penetrated the nadir, this same movement re-ascends to the left towards the zenith, forming the same semicircle as on the right. It gives the picture of a large round vessel, with the nadir at the bottom.
The energy that descends from the zenith is fully conscious of its movement. In full force it condenses, breaks down any resistance on the way, and penetrates the inner being which, having seen it coming, has hidden itself coiled three and a half times, in the nadir. This coil is what the energy has to break up.
A Guru of Samkhya explains this state as follows: energy penetrates the dark night until the energy itself becomes inert and without reaction. At that very moment it becomes entirely one with the heavy matter.
In the nadir of prakriti, the three-fold coil represents the three distinct and complementary qualities (gunas) of prakriti itself. In the descending movement white (spirit), black (energy) and red (matter) follow one another in the order of the colours at sunset. In the re-ascending movement towards the zenith, the colours follow one another as at dawn: black (energy), red (matter) and white (spirit).
The last half-coil remaining besides the three coils of the gunas was, during the entire process of the descent, the hiding-place of the active consciousness of Purusha. It represents the last redoubt of the individuality-spirit through which the re-ascent can take place.
In this picture the conqueror, conscious of the road he must follow, resolutely penetrates into the darkness of matter and its heavy densities to reach the very heart of prakriti. To complete his course he has to break down the last half-coil of prakriti which is holding him back. Only then will he emerge from the struggle a hero.
Throughout the conscious and voluntary descent into the heaviness of the human body down to the nadir, a clear vision makes it possible to perceive what will be the ascending path starting from the nadir, for the stages and steps of the descent are analogous to those of the re-ascent.
There is also a theme of deep meditation which consists in seeing the three gunas as if they were concentric surfaces, one within the other. Thus, we have the picture of four concentric barriers which delimit them, one within the other, the one delimiting matter is outside, those delimiting energy are inside, as well as the one in the centre which delimits the spirit. The space in the centre represents the zone of perfect calm, the Void.
Diagram
As soon as the perfect calmness of the inner space is perceived, the image of concentric surfaces is obliterated and the fact of existing is now experienced but very subtly, as if a state of active consciousness could be compared to a thin steak of light which at the same time is filling the sky. The result is an all-encompassing sensation of fluidity along the spinal column. The sensation is that of a very fine vibrating matter ascending from below.
This sensation is like the radiation of light which fills space. The three gunas constitute the equilibrium of purusha. Whatever takes place, the constant balance between the qualities and the substances that compose the gunas remains. They move always in the same order, that is, from matter (tamas) to energy (rajas), then to spirit (sattva), or in the reverse order, from spirit (sattva) to energy (rajas), down to matter (tamas). At the moment of sunrise and sunset, one can feel in oneself the very delicate transition from one density to the other, from one quality to the other, and see the change from one colour to another. That is why traditionally these are the moments in which the gunas form the background and the theme of all meditation.
There are two Samkhyas: the first is philosophical, the second mystical.
Philosophical Samkhya, formulated by Ishvara Krishna is recognised in India as being the system of basic thought that indicates to the yogi, as well as to the anchorite, the ascending path of spiritual search. It is a profoundly negative philosophy which had an influence on the whole of life in India in the Middle Ages. This is all that is known of samkhya in the west.
But this Samkhya is also a mystical path, enshrined in the Vedas and the Upanishads, which, in the course of centuries, has found its free and clear expression in the Puranas and the Tantras, especially in the later sacred scriptures. It can be said that the whole Tantric way of life is none other than a Samkhya whose sources can be discovered in the most ancient Vedic verses.
In this, the world is not denied. The principle of supreme bliss (ananda) is recognised, but it is called by another name, samprasada, which in the Upanishads is the state of dreamless sleep, a sleep in which the spirit is awakened within. Nothing is present to experience anything at all. There exists only a calm joy which can carry over into the waking state. There is no question of fleeing from pain, but rather of experiencing it as the embrace in which Kali enfolds Shiva prostrate beneath her. This is technically described in the Tantras by the word Viparitarati (or the inverted coitus) in which the Purusha is passively accepting even death and destruction from the active Prakriti. Evil and pain, from which the world-negating Vedanta assiduously turns away are transformed here into Bliss (Ananda)
But the mystics have added something further to their experience. They have felt that, for a realized soul, suffering itself is no more than a ripple in the current of bliss. It was its reference to this that Sri Ramakrishna was able to say, ”Everything is sat-chit-ananda.” Even my suffering is only a part of the experience of existing and it has very little space in the total experience of “being,” in the consciousness of bliss.”
From this profound experience,,, Samkhya, integrated into life as it is in the Bhagawad girta, looks upon Prakriti as being threefold: the lower prakriti (apara), the higher prakriti (para), and the highest Prakriti that is our very own (pram or sviya).
The philosophical Samkhya takes into consideration onl the lower Pakriti which is merely a complex of the qualities of sattva, rajas, and tamas, permanenly intermingled, although one of them must necessarily predominate. But a pure quality (suddha sattva) can also exist, which is neither touched nor soiled by rajas and tamas. This, than, would be the highest Prakriti that is many times mentioned in Puranic and Tantric literature. This idea of pure sattva reigns over all the practical philosophies of the Hindu mystics.
This pure quality is nothing other than eternal bliss (non-existent in rajas) and eternal illumination (non-existent in tamas) co-existing in the spiritual being. This is th entire concept of sat-chcit-ananda common to the mystical philosophies of Samkhya and Vedanta.
Vignana Bhikshu, a great Master of the school of Samkhya in the fifteenth century, has given us the following metaphor in connection with Purusha and Prakriti: “Prakriti is PUrusha’s wife; she is shrewd and peevish. She gives Purusha no respite, until he becomes so harassed that he finally says, ’I am going away, do what you like!’ Then Prakriti runs after her husband in tears, implores him, and clings to him…” These are the two ways of dealing with prakriti, before and after realized what she is. The cosmic Law closest to us tells us,” As soon as you become detached from prakriti, everything follows you.”
Swami Rama Tirtha has given us another picture, “If you turn your back to the sun, your shadow is in front of you. You can try to catch it, but you will never succeed. But the minute you turn to face the sun, your shadow is behind you. If you move, it follows you. You can make it go where you wish. The sun is truth, the shadow is Prakriti.”
It is easy for us to talk about the changes in our consciousness, the broadening of our understanding, but not so easy to speak of the readjustment of our relationship with the world, for the matter of the body is heavy. And the many envelopes of the body (kosas) are no mere illusions, as the envelopes of the mind often are.
Purusha can do nothing for us, since we are the slaves of Prakriti. Purusha is outside of time and beyond our understanding, whereas prakriti exists in time. It is at once the aggregate of the qualities (gunas) that we can evaluate and the aggregate of the movements and impressions (samskaras) of all those qualities that make up our life. Purusha is a flash of perception, while prakriti operates in an integral mechanism.
Between the two there is the sacrifice of Purusha, which in time takes on a form. For example, the efforts of the Buddha can be perceived by us. If we talk about the efforts of the Buddha on our scale, we have a certain perception of something. But of what?
An exact relationship exists between prakriti, which moves spontaneously, always in circles, and Prurusha, outside of time, which merely looks on at what is happening. In spiritual life, this relationship appears at the exact point where voluntary detachment breaks the bonds which have been established by prakriti. In the olifeof the Buddha, the period of detachment is represented by the first half of his asceticism. Later on, while looking from afar at what is happening, he becomes increasingly interested in the game in which he no longer participates and observes the smallest errors of each participant. Then, without hindering their manner of playing, he urges them by his spiritual strength alone to stand aside like himself, so that they, too, can watch the game. In this way, at the proper time, he gives them the chance to see the prakriti from which they are withdrawing, as he himself sees it. The subtle energy that is here described has become the aura of the Buddha; it is simply the lower prakriti transformed and illuminated.
In actual spiritual life one proceeds only by negation. This constant negation, for Christians, has become resignation. We must not forget that whereas in Hinduism, there is no beginning and no end, in Christianity there is no end but a beginning. The way of love (bhakti) has its way in the attitude of negation as well as in the attitude of resignation.
The path to the attainment to the state of “divine soul” is extremely long with precipices on both sides. This state of “divine soul” is limited to a very few and, even so, is always subject to the Laws of the all-powerful and mechanical prakriti. Jesus Christ himself was crucified; nothing was able to prevent the action set in motion by prakriti, which on our human level works exactly like the cosmic Laws and with equal intransigence.
Prakriti contains everything that exists. It is the divine womb of all manifestation. In prakriti one can observe three different degrees:-
1. Everything of which we are made: soul, intelligence, ego, life, mind, and the animal matter of our body.
2. The very principle of our possible evolution on all planes of our psychic and physical being.
3. The divine energy (sakti) in its most subtle elements.
In one sense all is materiality. In the Vedas the word Tanu means the body as well as everything to do with incarnation, and the word atman means the spirit and everything connected with its energy or life. These words are interchangeable and are constantly being used for one another, since they both express the same materiality. There is no difference between spirit and matter; it is only a question of different densities. When a piece of coal is white hot, it is impossible to say whether it is burning matter a a cluster of flames symbolizing the spirit. Here we have a phenomenon of transubstantiation that is visible in the heart of the spiritual experience.
The essential characteristic of India is that nothing is ever rejected. What was a simple Vedic sacrifice has been transformed in the course of centuries into a ritual of such complexity that it suggests a banyan tree (which is) sheltering at one and the same time a temple, a mosque, a saint, a bandit, devotees, animals, manure and so on. It is a real jungle in which one can easily lose one’s way. In it one finds “this and that and also That.”
Hence the hoarding of objects in the Hindu temples. The minute one accepts the idea of form (rupa), one can throw away nothing. Who is to decide what is true or false? Everything is of equal importance and equally worthy of attention. Each form has a name (nama) and significance. This is so on every level.
The “too much” has a logic of its own, and logic is very far from the divine. In the ceremonies, the forms have become all important, and have driven out the spirit. Man plays with materiality with consummate art, without being aware of the mechanicity of prakriti, and without discovering that he is its slave.
One cannot change the course of prakriti, which goes its way according to a determined plan in the order of universal things and according to immutable Laws that it does not know. It knows only its own law. It does its work excellently and faultlessly. The energies divide and subdivide up to the point of feeding the cells of our body. They penetrate the heart and they penetrate every drop of blood. At this point the body is an expression of “That.”
Men are tossed about and carried along by a wave of which they cannot get free, but they can swim in the direction of the cavern of the heart. The seat of immobile consciousness is there. The movement of the wave has then ceased for these men, because they have put their attention to another order of reality. In the cavern of the heart they touch the Immutable. One has to follow this process with an inward look and feel the pulsation of life. There is a known relation between the pulsation of life and the movement of the outer wave just ads there is a relation between the pulsation of life and the immobile consciousness. This movement is continuous. A sudden stop would mean death.
So long as we are immersed in prakriti, in ourselves and in life, we are governed by it, by its movements, its sudden jumps, and its cosmic rhythms. Without withdrawing into ourselves, we can have no control over our prakriti.
It is impossible from outside to know whether the driver of a vehicle has control over himself or not. If he has, he can stop when he so decides. He knows that the wheels of a vehicle turn because of him. He is in control of his personal prakriti, which n its turn plays its role in a vaster Prakriti. The latter is itself the field of the great cosmic Laws.
There are two ways in which Great Nature constantly reacts toward Purusha: it remains in the centre of the movement, not to be drawn to one side of the other; or it follows the movement all the way. In any case, one must turn to the Void, which is the beginning as well as the end of all things.
Conscious energy (sakti) implies continuous growth which, even if it is not apparent and seems to start from darkness (tamas) is nonetheless real. It passes through the red hot glow of active impulse (rajas) before reaching the whiteness of the rarefied state ( sattva). This whiteness in life is the state of awakened consciousness.
Thus, we have to raise ourselves up step by step from the plane of gross matter to the plane of awakened consciousness , and thus come back to heavy matter, retaining in ourselves as long as possible a continuous and right sensation. We are constantly harassed from outside by multiple shocks which bring forth in us either the desire to see GOd and experience a moment of illumination, or the anguish of death, prowling in the shadows and bringing a state of deep depression. The dawn symbolises the intermediate power of sakti. It is the light that begins to shine in the heart of the dark night.
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CHAPTER III
LAWS – POWERS
In India people strive for these powers:
- to reach God
- to make God appear objective
- to have a clear sensation of the “I”;
- to eradicate every difference between “you” and “me”;
- to materialise the divine Laws and worship them as they are represented in the form of gods.
If man of 50,000 years ago were to return, he would see that man has not changed, either spiritually or in his deep reactions. The whole of civiilisation is only the outward appearance (maya) of what is manifested (sat). So why then should the Hindu believer not look for a means to escape from this slavery?
This cosmos to which we belong does not hold us in slavery. It is what it is. For us it represents the continuity of a power, of a descending Law with, here and there, one ascending soul, one in a million, says the Bhagawad Gita.
Such a soul radiates its own light; it touches other hearts because it has “passed through the death of the ego and the birth of the being.” It is nourished by the Void. In the Void absurdities evaporate spontaneously.
He who has lost faith and builds it up again slowly and cautiously by means of the science of Samkhya, the logic and mathematics relating to cosmic Laws, knows by experience why the world holds together; but the instant he tries to formulate the mathematical equation he will fail and fail.
Great Nature in her eternal recurrence represents a form of prakriti that the human heart can comprehend. She expresses the force that has two opposite movements, the one ascending, the other descending. Their role is to bring mankind and organic life on earth into the play of cosmic Laws. She shows the mechanical aspect of the Laws, in which man, according to his sage of evolution and inner attitude, sees miracles, ironies or absurdities, or no matter what else, in order to escape the grip of eternal recurrence. At the same time, he refuses to see the harmonious operation of these cosmic Laws.
This concordance is beyond human logic, such logic being only a form of the unconscious and mechanical functioning of the ego.
The world is a bazaar where everybody is shouting at the top of his voice to attract attention and make his little bargain. Remember that success or failure means nothing in the play of the Laws. All depends only on how the game is played. Thoughts are a thousand times more powerful than words. Be quiet in yourself, be calm and silent in the agitation around you. Let the powers act without allowing the human law, subjective and narrow, to interfere. The great powers act by impregnating the nerve fibres of the earth.
The whole of life is the immensity of the darkness of night (varuna) and the immensity of the light of day (mitra). The multiplicity of the circumstances and conditioning, to which we are subject in time, must not distort our inner vision in relation to darkness and light.
Then, in the intermediate light between day and night, we will clearly distinguish the broken lines which are the Laws as they come down to us, insofar as we are able to understand them. The work, for every one of us, is to learn to recognise them steadfastly and patiently, one after another.
Power, even in its most subtle and essential vibrations, includes two directions: one is positive and the other negative. Words such as truth, life, essence, should only be used with caution, for they contain in themselves an implicit source of opposition.
All the Vedic sages (rsis) repeatedly taught that spiritual life proceeds by jumps, by upward thrusts whose trajectory, being subject to the Law of gravity, falls down again from the apogee of its course to the lowest point. This fall is what starts eternal recurrence. We live and are fed by the visions of “those who see,” and there will always be new rsis and new disciples.
In these times the rsis’ vision serves only to create disciples. Disciples are necessary so that what is brought by the rsi can make its way into life. But the more the disciples are attached to themselves, the more mediocre they become, interested only in defending their rights of seniority, their Ashram, their master’s thought, without engaging themselves in the process of creation.
In summary, the rsi’s vision does not seem to belong to those who gather around him, but is a testimony to “That which is” for a much wider circle and for the sake of a continuity that will establish itself. This vision is a state of impersonal consciousness; it is what keeps the world in an exact relationship to the Laws. To impose a name on it is to limit the vision and lock it in a closed circle.
There are three important points to recognize in the ascending spiral representing the evolution of man: the point of sunrise, the point of the zenith, and of the “High North” (uttaram), which is the summit reached by the trajectory of this ascending spiral. The High North is the point where a new light scale begins to develop.
This direction toward the High North is also directly related to the solstices. The sun travels toward the north from December 21 until June 21 and the days lengthen. From the time when the sun moves toward the south, the days get shorter. That is why Yama, the king of death, is represented as living in the south, and Shiva, the god of life and death beyond the north. Moreover the east is the origin of light, the west is the house of the Void. These indications are scrupulously observed in the building of a temple or of a house. The position north-east always indicates the very action of the Law in our life.
For an action to be in accordance with the Laws and be a part of them, two forces must support it. One of them is The Void which generated the action, the other the energy and freedom of its movement.
Such a mode of action is established in a right relationship between Guru and disciple. The Guru says to his disciple, “Go and fulfill this task and know that even here I shall be the Void of your movement. Feel this deeply in yourself.” These two forces can also co-exist in the same person, which is the state mentioned in the Bhagawad Gita: the action is born from the vibration of the Void.
The best illustration of this is the story of a nun chosen by the king of a state to become his queen. The sannyasini finally accepted on condition that she be given an isolated room in the royal palace to which she alone would have the key. She used to go there every day. The king, jealous of the radiance of the queen, decided one day to follow her there to steal her secret. The room he saw her enter was bare and whitewashed. A sackcloth robe was hanging on a nail. The queen took off her rich attire and jewels and put on this beggar’s dress. Then she meditated for a long time, seated on the ground. At last she turned around and said to the king, “Here I am “myself,” the woman who loved God alone before she became a queen, and who still loves only God in His divine play.”
That queen has no name. She is part of Indian folklore.
An impulse pushes us to follow the way of the spirit, Purusha. We must not stop to ask, “What is this impulse?” It is there so that we may follow the ideal and constantly make it grow. No backward steps! This impulse has to be cultivated because it belongs to the ascending Law.
Opposing this, Prakriti holds us fast in the wheels of her machinery. One can be satisfied there and sleep in peace. Prakriti asks no more of us. She has a very strong power of gravitation, and drags back to herself beings who were ready to escape. She brings them back very skillfully for she needs our lives for her own purposes; she needs humus composed of the constantly renewed heavy and fine matter which our lives bring to her.
As regards any personal discipline, you must follow the right course. What you get through intuition can never fail you. The whole attitude can be summed up in a short sentence: “I know that, I feel that, I am that.” Let the powers work deep within you. The pain that results is that of a new birth. If inclination for inner work lessens, do not worry. Creation starts in darkness. Out of nothing comes the force of sakti. Let yourself be carried by the stream; so do not struggle. Not that you will reach the shore; your destination is to become the ocean itself.
We know that there are seven planes: three above and three below and a seventh which serves as a bridge.
The three lower planes generate the physical, emotional, and mental; the three higher ones generate pure existence (sat), pure radiant energy (chit) and bliss (ananda), which is the joy of creation; the seventh plane (rasa) is that on which things are carried out, that of the mother standing between the father and the child, permeating both.
In the Tantras the lunar days divided into three groups of five. This five-fold pattern symbolises the power of the mother. In each group, the days stand for joy (nanda) harmony and welfare, (bhadra), victory and power (jaya), consecration and sacrifice (rikta), plenitude (purna). Sakti is pictured as a little girl growing into womanhood. The first stage is her childhood; the second her adolescence; the third her youth; the fourth her maturity; and the fifth her completeness. Beyond is the Void. The same applies to the three lower planes: physical, emotional, mental. Analytically speaking, beyond Sakti is the eternal Spirit known as nityasodasi, and still further beyond is complete emptiness, nirvana-kala.
The full moon symbolises the blossoming and fruition of the hidden moon’s creative activity working in darkness. This is why peasants who are in contact with the earth sow seeds for flowers during the bright phase of the moon and for edible plants in its dark phase. The dark ray of creation is spoken of in the Katha Upanishad.
Following is the scheme of the seven planes:
Father Mother (the bridge) Child
1, 2, 3 4 5, 6, 7
There is always a gap, a no-man’s-land, between two planes. Otherwise there could be no creation. The Buddhists were right in saying that “everything” comes from “nothing.”
The intrinsic qualities (gunas) of prakriti are what bring gradual degrees of modification in the transition from matter to spirit and vice versa. These modifications are everywhere and on all planes. Energy (rajas) is the element of fermentation. The Bhagavatam gives an excellent comparison between the entire process and a piece of wood catching fire. At first there is no fire- a state of inertia (tamas); then comes smoke- a state of energy (rajas); and then heat and light- the rarefied state (sattva). So whenever we try to break up inertia on the human plane, we must be ready for confusion, misunderstanding and rashness; these things are bound to happen. The whole world is rajas, storm and stress; otherwise matter could not become “ luminous spirit,” or “harmonious multiplicity” like the petals of the lotus, which is the symbol of the One.
Dissolution is often necessary before real creation starts. You cannot always be looking for something. You must stop somewhere and let things grow within you. There is a rhythm of creation and a rhythm of dissolution, symbolized by the dance of Shiva. At first this dance is violent, full of convulsive movements with steps marking life and death at the same time. The rsis have called this part of the dance tandava. Its duration is related to cycles. Gradually the dance changes into the gentle dance of balanced force, where the rhythm becomes so supple that life and death are near each other and can be felt in the same movement. The rsis have called this rhythmic vibration lasya.
Herein lies the true creative possibility of sakti, of which the violent tandava of Shiva is the cosmic background. The balance and deep significance of life lie in dissolution. This is what makes life a constant renewal. Accept things just as they come and one day the light step of lasya will be yours.
There are two movements in creation. The movement of interiorization always precedes that of exteriorization. It is represented in the following imagery; according to the Puranas, creation was to come from the four united principles, the four sons of Brahma. But when Brahma had created them, instead of going down to earth and manifesting themselves outwardly, they went into their father’s bosom and became the force of withdrawal, from which there then issued the “Seven Sages” or “Seven Laws” that participated in the creation and continue to maintain it. These two movements, interiorization and exteriorization, are to be found everywhere, in creation as in de-creation, or pralaya, that is to say, the creation that undoes itself spontaneously, beginning from the end. Creation is in itself birth and death, whereas de-creation is in itself death and birth.
It is difficult to conceive of the transition from rarefaction to density even though it is the very process of all creation. We realize, or rather we imagine, what the Void may be, but to follow the process of the either becoming the earth, which would be the genuine realization of creation, is far from understanding.
You rise to the heights and are often aware of the process, but then you suddenly bump your head on the earth. Of course, you bring the flavour of the ether down with you but still you cannot re-create it. The attempt has been given up as almost impossible by the author of the Brahmasutra who remarked: “You can become one with Brahma in knowledge and bliss, but you cannot become one with him in his creative power.” The explanation is something like this: you can die consciously, but you cannot be born consciously. If you could do so your birth would be a divine birth, an incarnation.
Through the ages man has pursued his quest beyond death through idolatry. Even nowadays man’s search starts with idolatry and it is very important to see that it ends with it too. If matter becomes spirit, spirit likewise must return to matter. That is why the greatest spiritual Masters of India never denounced or gave up idolatry. Not even Shankaracharya.
Through his Guru’s teaching the Hindu disciple discovers, in the spiritual discipline he follows, how to put into daily practice the Laws of Shiva Mahadeva, the supreme Lord, just as they are described in all the sacred texts. These Laws are illustrated by three aspects of life, creation, preservation and destruction, and by two movements, the one from above moving downward, the other from below going upward.
A disciple will hold to this imagery so long as he expects to receive everything from his guru. He may continue to do so during several successive lives, unless the idea of evolution is born in him. There comes a time when the disciple recognizes the obstacles that must face and go beyond. He discovers that this has to do with the Law of three in his own nature and in his development.
Three Laws govern life: the Law of growth, the Law of expansion, and the Law of intensity. All three are illustrated by the “tree of life”, showing how this tree grows, how it spreads out its foliage, and how it sinks its roots deep into the soil.
One must be firmly rooted. Such is the first Law. Then grow and assert yourself. At that moment open yourself, stretch out your arms to feel your radiation around you, and then bring the universe back to you with head held high, for it touches the sun. Be deep, wide, tall, truly like a tree of life.
Purusha in its manifestation still depends on Purusha. It is by nature opposed to Purusha, so that between the two a life-giving current may be established. As soon as sakti appears, it already contains in itself the three initial Laws which give it its material density.
If Purusha chooses to pay an active role, its sakti will always be passive. Om the other hand, if Purusha chooses to be passive, its sakti will always be active. While the passive element stands back, the active element takes different forms. Each form or each movement gives rise to new Laws, which, if the movement ceases, will be reenfolded within one another and will return to the initial force that gave them birth.
Thus in Shivaism, Shiva, representing the spirit, is always passive, and his saktis, representing various aspects of manifestations in the world, have different functions under different names: Uma, Gauri, Annapurna, Parvati, Kali, Durga, and so forth. In Vaishnavism, on the other hand, Vishnu is the active element. He is the creator who has manifested himself in different forms in different incarnations, displaying a gradual voluntary evolution. The constant activity of Vishnu is to maintain the world, whereas his sakti is secret, inner and completely passive. She is called Shri, meaning beauty and harmony. She is the symbol of the lotus in full bloom. Shri is the secret in the heart of women.
The sound (bija) in the sacred word (mantra) is the vibration, which causes matter to pass to spirit, or conversely, spirit to pass to matter. Hence its great importance in spiritual techniques. Every being has his own vibration which, in either a clear or confused way, is equivalent to a formula of coagulation or of a possible dissolution. On the horizontal plane, in ordinary life, this mantric vibration is expressed by a configuration (yantra) which is the basic individual diagram used by the force emanating from oneself at no matter what degree of materialization.
This force flows out in complete disorder. It is instinctive. It obeys all the outer attractions and associates itself with all the automatic movements of prakriti, whatever they may be. Those who are conscious of the power of this spontaneous force direct their effort towards preventing its uncontrolled emanation and towards canalizing it without producing any mutilation.
Then one must learn to know it, to guide it, to love it as it is, so as to tame it and give it a way of expression. The sacred sound (bija) is that very force which, when necessary, is used against itself. This has nothing to do with the invocations or sacred (mantras) which are repeated to create a state of openness or surrender; but only with the seed- syllable itself.
There are four Tantric Laws that concern Unity:
1. Cosmic unity (brahmanda), which is, the expansion of the self up to touching the sky, a passionate love for the sensory universe in all its forms, until it brings within ourselves the vibration of the Vedic formula: “ The earth is my mother, I am the child of the earth.”
2. The Psychic unity (prakrtyanda) existing between the real inner being and the ego with all its impulses. This unity is the thread of life connecting all experiences lived through up until our discovery of knowledge.
3. Causal unity (mayanda ), which is the progressive discovery of the forces and Laws within the heart of Prakriti.
4. Spiritual unity (saktyanda), which is the harmonious association of our soul, our essence, the “I”, and the force of life, the most subtle Prakriti.
There is a basic rule for approaching any one of these Tantric Laws, which is to understand that the body is the instrument of life. It follows that any stiffening or hardening, that is, any tension in thought or in body, prevents a conscious extension towards the infinite.
Now, as regards the spiritual quest: if you consciously hold within yourself three-quarters of your power and use only one-quarter to respond to any communication coming from others, you can stop the automatic, rapid, and thoughtless movement outward, which leaves you with a feeling of emptiness, of having been absorbed by life. This stopping of the movement outwards is not self-defense, but rather an effort to have the response given come from within, from the deepest part of one’s being. This process reverses the natural movement of prakriti and brings back energy to its seed form. Let this become your way of communicating with others.
Something in yourself is awakened, and by this interiorization you begin a movement in the direction opposite from what is taking place outwardly. Thereby two movements are produced in you. One of them goes outward and the other goes inward. The latter is the movement of the higher Prakriti uniting with the immobile Purusha. This is the moment in which prakriti surrenders, in which there is no struggle.
The Law of life is the same. As the physicalcells build the body, the germ cells are concentrated within and retain their energy for a later creation. We imagine that we create by projecting outwards, whereas real creation takes place through suction and absorption. When this power of absorption becomes natural, you discover that creation, radiation, communication and all similar processes come to you spontaneously.
In Samkhya, this spontaneous creation is called dharmamegha, or the cloud of energy that pours forth multiple powers, for behind this creation there is the Void.
All spiritual search is directed towards a shining point, which can be approached only from the periphery of a big circle and in many different ways. Samkhya is the logical science that makes it possible to see the movements of prakriti and to dissociate oneself from it on the plane of life itself. This is the opposite of the attitude of so many seekers who, in order to escape from the clutches of prakriti and turn away from it, run away from the world to follow a primitive discipline that mutilates their life to such an extent that it no longer has any connection with reality.
Feeling oneself dissociated from prakriti does not mean that one has become her master. To master prakriti requires inner work and attentive observation of sakti’s energy. This energy is a fully awakened power, which is not yet tamed. Only when prakriti is conquered and mastered does Life within life, in the midst of all prakriti’s erratic movements, become the state described as Shiva-sakti in the heart of the cosmic Laws.
The whole theory of the Void is that of the luminous ether (akasa). Sound (sabda) and speech (vak) come from akasa, and therefore also the idea of a creator God who in order to manifest Himself, uses five elements and five sensations.
The five elements belong to God, to the descending Law; the five sensations belong to man, to the ascending Law. To approach a direct experience, we have only the authority of the sacred Scriptures and the experiences of the saints and yogis who have gone before us. The work of transformation in the course of evolution can only be done by oneself on oneself. A master, of course, can activate it, and fellow disciples can help in sustaining the effort, but the seeker will be entirely alone throughout his attempt and many times he will confuse the means with the end to be attained.
Some notions are occasionally given but always in a veiled form which can be interpreted in different ways, such as:
“One must be subtle enough to feel the presence of the mother, for life begins with an odour…
“One must be subtle enough to discover where the father is, for life ends with a sound…”
in studying the Tantras, one discovers progressively thanks to sound and by means of sound, how the idea, by Taking on destiny, gradually becomes the object that is perceived. The two linked words “Shiva-sakti” create the vibration by which the spirit takes on the destiny of matter. Every time this double word is pronounced one must refer also to what it contains in the ascending Law for it is the passage from one level to the next. In every sensation pertaining to the ascending Law, each movement begins with heat, continues with the materiality of food and light, and reaches luminous ether, that is, the Void.
The three Laws of sakti always remain veiled. They are the Laws of pure Existence (sat), of pure Spirit (cit) and pure Bliss (ananda). Another Law, however, the Law of phenomena, is projected on to the screen of consciousness.
The first of the three laws is that of pure Existence, sat; although having the appearance of complete immobility it is in itself a vibration or a movement. This inner vibration is the source of all existing movement. The first movement is a straight line between two points and it is this straight line that represents the immobility of Shiva. Prakriti appears and takes possession of the pattern of straight lines, weaving onto it her pattern in the shape of a spider’s web, with broken lines forming angles, surrounded by concentric circles.
Finally, by the force of sakti these curves detach themselves from the horizontal plane to form a spiral ascending around its own axis.
The second Law is that of pure Bliss. Ananda is the result of the movement having taken place in consciousness, a calm movement like an undulation of the water. This undulation contains life, which is in itself the very essence of sakti. This pattern of flexible undulation is nevertheless made up of short broken lines.
The third Law is that of pure Spirit. Cit has a very definite function between the vibration originating in the immobile source and the wave that is the essence of sakti. It is the awakened consciousness and its role is to unite sat with ananda.
In one-way or another, it can be said of sat that if I look within myself, I see that sakti draws me inwardly. I become conscious of the immobility of the world and of the straight line between two points representing Purusha. Of ananda it can be said that if I am conscious of what is around me, I project myself outward and enter into the very play of sakti. At that moment I feel all the waves passing over the water as being the pulsations of life itself. On the other hand, cit, the pure consciousness of the spirit, observes what is happening between sat and ananda.
The expression Shiva-sakti reveals the ultimate reality beyond the concept Purusha-Prakriti of classical Samkhya. Shiva-sakti is the state of the fully realized being, that is, an inward state of enlightened consciousness. The seeker who has not yet dissociated himself from the prakriti outside himself and from the prakriti within himself, sees the immobile Purusha as a state of pure consciousness and prakriti as being an unconscious and mechanical force.
Prakriti and Shakti thus denote two different states of consciousness, the second being a higher state of consciousness, tending towards the limitless. Prakriti is a kinetic energy, whereas sakti is a latent potential energy returning to itself and containing in itself all the possibilities of development of Prakriti’s movements.
If I speak to you, I am using prakriti’s power of exteriorization. If I collect in myself what I wish to say to you, I have the choice of speaking if I so desire or of saying nothing, thus demonstrating the interiorized power of sakti, which contains in itself the kinetic capacity of prakriti.
The inner fluctuations and commotions in the course of spiritual discipline (sadhana) can be expressed schematically, according to the modifications in the passive and active qualities involved.
The lower aspect or exteriorization pratriti-Purusha
+ -
The higher aspect or interiorisation Shiva-sakti
+ -
from the point of view of samkhya, Prakriti can be an active energy only if it has a passive substratum opposing its movement. This fact is represented mythological by kali(time) dancing on the naked body of Shiva(infinity). From the psychological viewpoint, consciousness is the surface of a mirror across which reflections of movement pass rapidly. Consciousness remains immobile.
In the mystical experience it is known that Prakriti in movement and immobile Purusha are but one. Here the Vaishnavite Tantras bring a clarifying element to samkhya by saying that the visible movement in Prakriti is Purusha’s movement permeating it. The two are no longer dissociated. Spiritualized Prakriti is nothing more than the form of Pyrysha. Mystically, this gives us the following scheme:
Prakriti-Purusha the two movements of existence having become one.
Krishna-Radha the mystical couple par excellence.
Krishna, as Purusha is fully conscious in the midst of his activity. Radha, in her transcendental love for Krishna, is in ecstasy (Samadhi) even in her role of prakriti. Psychologically, according to vaishnavite Tantrism, Radha, through her passivity, becomes the substratum of the activity of Krishna-Purusha. The roles are thus reversed, producing the following diagram:
Shiva-Radha are nirguna the transcendental aspect of existence of power
Kali-krishna are saguna the phenomenal aspect of existence and power.
That is why, in India, so many children are named Kali-Krishna.
The Trantric scriptures reveal the necessary deviations making it possible for creation to escape from the ceaseless mechanical repetitions of prakriti.
If there were no deviations, one could easily imagine creation-taking place without discontinuity between the immobile Purusha and Prakriti manifested in its numerous aspects. But the primordial energy of sakti constantly produces deviations, both in the subtle densities of the spirit and in course densities of matter. Once set in motion, this process cannot stop. Therein lies the whole chance of creation towards a possible evolution, and man’s opportunity to move upwards, provided that the deviation by broken lines turns upwards in a spiral (kundalini). The amplitude of their curve can be very wide without change of direction.
The curve of deviation can also be repeatedly retraced on the horizontal plane, attracted by its point of departure.
In that case, because of the endless repetitions that will take place, the primordial energy will be frittered away and finally lost.
The figure “3” represents the “Law of Three” which contains in itself the whole of life. In the beginning, there was the One, Purusha. From its inner vibration, the One projected its opposite, as light casts a shadow, which is its substratum. In this movement, spirit-matter, bound by the energy, which belongs equally to the one and the other, can become perceptible. This can be demonstrated in the following manner:
One is the “I”- subject manifested by light – sattva
Two is the “I”- object manifested by shadow – tamas
Between the two aspects of I- subject and I- object the perpetual movement of life develops, that is, all forms of manifestation on the lower plane of life. This perpetual movement of energy is rajas.
Thus life, through the energy of rajas, is a development of movements acting between the two poles of sattva-tamas.
From the plane of rajas, which is ours, a certain state of consciousness can exist in which it is possible to perceive what is above (sattva) and what is below (tamas).
What is above can be known by sudden intuition or glimpsed through imagination, but it is impossible to reach it without a shock provoked by the vision itself. A through discipline of the mind is the indispensible preparation for this.
What is below is the weight of ignorance, the inertia of the primitive prakriti. It is also the field of individual work. Before discovering the stages leading towards sattva, one must become familiar with the opposition of heavy matter.
The energy of rajas proceeds from sakti, which holds sway in the space between sattva and tamas. The energy of rajas is the desire that creates life. Without this desire, that space would be the Void without movement or action. Actually, life exists only through a deviation of energy, through propulsion, which sooner or later returns to its starting point.
This movement of exteriorization and of interiorization seems to vary in its possibility of extension according to one’s understanding of it. In fact, one is in front of a point (bindu), which contains everything in itself. When energy creates a movement, this point becomes a straight line. To return to its starting-point, a deviation is a necessity. The straight line will break and, through broken lines formatting angles, will return to its starting-point.
Three angles are necessary for a movement to enclose a space and thereby create a surface, a form. This form is a triangle. Every action can be described as a triangle. If the angles are equal, the action is perfect and balanced. The three lines are the qualities of prakriti (gunas) and the space is that of sakti spread out and in balance. Sakti can also gather itself together at the central point (bindu), which signifies, in a perfect action or in a perfect meditative state- the union of sakti and purusha, a state of perfect awakened consciousness.
While following a spiritual discipline a man tries at a certain time, by interiorization during active meditation, to feel in himself the mobile qualities and tendencies of the inner being. It means coming into contact with the world in world his own Law of three functions. On our level of understanding we can perceive the triangle of our life formed by the three gunas and the numerous irregular triangles formed by our actions.
The subdivision and expansion of the three gunas (tamas-rajas-sattva) in relation to the three fundamental intrinsic qualities of the primiordial prakriti make up different worlds in accordance with the relative distance of these worlds from one another. The greater the subdivision of the gunas, the greater is the subdivision of the Law of Three. A seeker can never have access to any world higher than his own unless he has completely absorbed in himself the gunas of his own world to the point of being one with them. This means that his inner equilibrium is then brought into accord with his prakriti.
In the following the figures indicate the number of gunas in each world. From one world to the next, the number is multiplied by two, whether the worlds are taken as in the cosmic order or as worlds interiorized in man. The number represents the subdivision of the Law of three, which becomes heavier the further it moves from the primordial prakriti. Three gunas are added in each world to
The sum of gunas from the proceding world.
3 3 gunas of primordial prakriti.
6 3+3--- 6+ 3--- 9
12 9+3--- 12+ 9--- 21
24 21+3--- 24+21--- 45
48 45+3--- 48+45--- 93
96 93+3--- 96+93--- 189
192 189+3--- 192……
The triangle shows how three broken lines enclose a surface. This surface has two dimensions, but there is a third dimension to be attained, in conformity with a Vedic Law indicating three successive stages. They follow one another in the manner indicated below:
1. The stage when the potter’s wheel sets up a circular movement.
2. The stage when the clay placed on the wheel becomes malleable; the circular movement can then give a form to the clay, but it still remains on the same level.
3. The stage when a spindle is fixed on the wheel. The clay at once comes up in a spiral. The hub will even reach a point slightly higher than the spindle-axis.
This movement explains why there are moments of progression in life and moments of regression, and time, which elapses between these different movements. In spiritual experience, every man ought to aspire to raise himself around an axis, and every woman to become a perfect triangle in order to create perfect forms.
In the following diagram the seeker stands between two triangles. He who devotes his life to spiritual search, thanks to his inner discipline, absorbs the sakti of the triangle of the infinite ideal that is above him. Below him the downward pointing triangle contains all possible forms of manifestation.
Perfect yoga in the heart of life is represented by the two integrated triangles with a single centre. A master is one who voluntarily enters into the manifested prakriti. His disciples and pupils are so many reflections of himself which he recognizes without being attached to them. He stands in the centre of the two triangles.
As regards the symbol of the triangle, one should know that Tantric esotericism represents sakti as the water chestnut (srngataka), a peculiar pyramid-shaped fruit growing in swamps. There again you have the idea of density.
The radiation of energy, one of them centripetal and the other centrifugal. The interaction of these two movements produces the luminous sphere of all existence, technically known as bindu, the point, which is situated in the centre of the pyramid. Creation may appear and start from any point, going from the centre outward, or from the periphery towards the centre. Sakti never stops creating, whether she spreads herself out or concentrates herself within. In fact these movements are complementary to one another, just as the phenomena of denseness and rarefaction.
What we need is to break the inertia that hinders or slows the passage from one state to another. I use the word tapasya in speaking of this movement, and the instantaneous power of transformation in this passage, whether it be centripetal or centrifugal.
The Vedas tell us that we have a “father in Heaven” and a “ Mother on Earth.” They are linked together by the atmosphere full of clouds, full of quarrels between the gods and quarrels between the demons, full of book knowledge and all the philosophies of life. The sastras and the puranas bind us with chains called spirituality, orthodoxy, politics, castes and economic conditions.
What does man possesses that could eventually free him? As often as not he is aware of it, for prakriti jealously holds him under her sway. And yet most of his instinctive movements are right. His original, very primitive nature can serve him in his thought as in his feelings. And this is his chance, for he will gradually discover in himself a higher spiritual force which will lead him to worship the divine Mother in one or another of her aspects, and an animal force through which he will identify himself with one of the divine Mother’s vehicles: tiger, cat, swan, peacock, etc.
The cosmic Laws act on the level of our understanding, but we are able to perceive only a very few of them. As a result, we can adapt the conditions of our life only to those Laws we have recognized. The cosmic Laws operate in time. And the notion of time, beyond our limitations is unknown to us. What consciousness of time do people in India have? This concept is difficult to understand until you integrate it within yourself.
The Tantras indicate a method to realize the zero value of time. Technically, this value is called Bindu. It is said that the pronunciation of a sacred formula (mantra) takes three moras and a half. The half is the point (bindu) which contains the all and is attained by drawing in the consciousness through seven stages, each stage in a geometric progression with different intervals: ½+(1/4… 1/8… 1/16… 1/32… 1/64… 1/128… 1/256)… of a mora.
In reality, this is the alternating movement of consciousness in an inner concentration lasting as long as the recitation of the japa (sacred formulas) until one comes in contact with the Void. This Bindu, more subtle than the atom, and Brahman, “the Vaster than the vast,” are the same. Both are the Void. Time moves between the two. Between the two, there are the coils of manifestation like the coils of the serpent, which represents the innate force (sakti). This innate force, also called kundalini, is the operative force between the two modes of the void.
Chapter IV
MASTERS AND DISCIPLES
The disciples, in no matter what ashram, are not attracted primarily by pure metaphysical research, but by the person and the radiance of the Guru, who becomes for them the beacon-light on the path, the ideal made real. Thus the rule of “loyalty to the Guru” immediately comes into play. The Guru’s authority (gurudom) is boundless.
Traditionally, without even being expressed, the Guru’s promise to his disciples is as follows: “I am here to lead you toward liberation. Do my work obediently and you will be saved. You will know the highest ecstasy and will be freed from the round of births and death (samsara). If I go to heaven, you will come to heaven with me; if I go to hell, you will come to hell with me…”
The Guru’s responsibility is immense; he takes upon himself the karma of all those he accepts. For their part the disciples are happy to throw their burden on his shoulders. Is the Master great enough to wish that one of his disciples would one day be more renowned than himself? If he does not wish it, a descending Law immediately operates. Owing to the Guru’s hold over his disciple, there is often something morbid in their relationship, like that of father to son when the son is doomed to remain a son without ever becoming a father.
In the preliminary part of the Samkhya discipline, the disciple’s relationship to the Guru is compared to a seed that has been buried in the earth. The seed is left to develop by itself in the heart of what feeds it. It absorbs the Guru. It will become a plant, bearing foliage, flowers, fruit and seeds. In so doing, it transcends the ground in which it grew and becomes directly responsible for its relation with Great Nature and the life it contains in itself.
An attitude particularly conducive to rapid progress is that of total obedience to the Guru in all things: thoughts, attitudes and actions. The aim is to become the well-tilled ground the Master needs. From tradition, everyone knows that with rare exceptions this field, ploughed with such care, will only be used in a future life when the right impulse will take possession of it. This slow and deep preparation is most important.
Great is the illusion of the man who believes that he can reach the goal after a few months of efforts! His ambition will be stopped at precisely the point where he becomes conscious of his personal destination (svadharma), of his own law as it seeks its own way in the midst of cosmic Laws. This is equivalent to discovering the Divine that lives in the heart, to serve it, to worship it but nothing more. A wild rosebush can be forced to produce big flowers of its kind, but a wild rosebush will never be able to produce anything but wild roses; any grafting promised by a Guru would mean that he is an impostor. And pseudo-Gurus are legion! This moment of self-knowledge is crucial. It means the death of the illusory ideal and often brings violent reactions. But if the ideal becomes interiorized, that moment of consciousness will be a feeling of unity on the level of the understanding attained. Here we are in the very heart of the living power.
At the beginning, a Guru and his disciple are like a mother and child, joined together by the umbilical cord. There is no tension whatsoever in this attachment. If there were any, it would mean that the “psychic being” which is to grow and develop between them until it becomes the “heat” of their blood, would never take shape for the lack of necessary substances.
This psychic being must be nourished with care. It is both cause and effect meaning that it exists out of time. That is the reason why there is no longer any “why” or “how” in a well established relationship between Guru and disciple. Master and disciple can each say to the other: “I am you…” the same vibration animates them. One day, the “child” between them will disappear, when certain vibrations mathematically reach a known point of reabsorption. Then life in its reality becomes the Guru.
There are four kinds of devotees:
1. He who becomes a devotee because he is in danger.
2. He who wants to obtain grace, help, health, security from the master, or simply to live close to him, for his own sake.
3. He who has a thirst for knowledge. In such a case, the Master’s physical person and way of life are of little importance to him.
4. He who knows without being aware of it, who by nature is good soil. Such a devotee welcomes obstacles on his path because they increase his determination. He has his own roots. For him, what matters is to live an experience, no matter how difficult.
Does a Master care for this last kind of devotee? The situation is illustrated by the story of Lord Narayan, who one day was resting after having stationed two faithful guardians at his door. Jaya (victory) and Vijaya (total victory), to drive off intruders. Two risis arrive from afar and ask to see Narayan. A violent quarrel breaks out at the door of the God, so much so that the risis curse the two guardians. Awakened by the noise, Lord Narayan appears, bowing to the risis; at the same time he is also greatly upset, for nothing can erase the curse the risis have called down. It must take effect. So Narayan says to his two guardians, “Since you have been cursed, you must enter the round of births and deaths, but I can allow you to choose your fate. Do you wish to be born among my enemies?”
“What will be the difference?” ask Jaya and Vijaya.
“If you are among my devotees, it will take you seven lives to reach me; if you are among my enemies, it will only take you three!”
And so it happened that Jaya and Vijaya willingly became great enemies of Narayan, constantly aware of their hate and therefore constantly remembering the god in spite of the severe obstacles they had to overcome to draw near him.
The relationship between Master and disciple is established by an infallible Law, with a view to the esoteric transmission of the cosmic Laws and their functioning. Once this relationship is clearly established, one can neither break out of it nor make decisions for oneself, nor wish to sidestep the Law once it has been recognized and one’s part in it discovered. That would only be mental self-deception.
In this connection what is most difficult to attain is the surrender of the mind, because for some time, until a real new birth takes place on a different plane, this surrender seems to be a state of alarming torpor. To accept this state of passivity is always painful.
During all this period the subjective attachment of the disciple to the Guru exists in contract to the objective love of the Guru for his disciple. What the Master can transmit is neither an idea nor a form, but a means. The Kaushitaki Upanishad describes the traditional way in which the dying “father” passes on his power to his “son.”
It can be interpreted as the passing on of power from the Guru to his disciple: “Let me place within you my word, my breath, and my vision; what I perceive, what I taste, likewise my actions, pains and pleasures; the concepts to which I have been attached, and my search itself. In you I place my spirit and my consciousness. I gave you the breath of my life (prana). May power, sanctity and honors go with you…” The son or disciple answers, “May your words be fulfilled…Go in peace!”
In the life of the Buddha, this moment is the one when he set the wheel of the Law in motion within those around him, saying, “Go, and speak of the Law for the benefit of many. When the soil is well tilled, sow one seed of knowledge in it, nothing else, and go on further.”
Every Guru has only a very few key ideas at the root of his teaching. These ideas are the very ones that brought him to his realisation. No others. He will constantly bring his teaching back to the fruits of his personal effort, which keep his spiritual experience alive.
Some Masters try to express these ideas by a single key word, others dilute them with explicit formulations in order to pass them on to a larger number of disciples. So there are two methods, that of interiorisation and that of exteriorisation, which the orthodox Hindu recognises at once. Both of them are traditional. Both of them demand total sacrifice and cost dearly.
No Master transmits the totality of what he has received. As soon as he feels in accordance with the Laws known to him, he utilises them like chemical formulae, transmitting only fragments to those around him. On the other hand, no fragment of knowledge is ever transmitted before the disciple has perceived it or had a foretaste of it. In summary, the Master is nothing other than an indispensible intermediary between the Laws and those who are ready to discover them. Nor does he ever teach more than a tenth of what he knows. Likewise, air is only a tenth part of ether, and water only a tenth part of air, and so forth. It cannot be otherwise. The Master cannot allow his strength to be further utilised. This explains why there is such a rapid degradation between the level of the Guru and that of the third generation of his disciples. A well-known cosmic Law comes into play here.
What is important to the Master, after having consciously reached the zenith of his upward curve, it is to see the downward curve with equal consciousness and to choose the point from which he will teach. This point will keep constantly moving in response to his living search.
Every saint or Guru speaks according to a particular “principle” adopted and faithfully served in which lives a hidden Truth. The Guru is perfectly aware of this. This fragment of truth belonging to ultimate reality is the only thing of real value whereas the principle in itself, on the human level, merely helps to create the strict form of a discipline.
Certain sacred formulas (mantras) have been revealed and many commentaries written. Their form is known, even to the number of vibrations in each letter. But only the Guru knows their bijas, which are his potent semen or seed. He never reveals them. Were he to do so, he himself would become like an empty vessel. Whether the death of the Guru occurs after he has passed on his seed or after he has let it be reabsorbed in himself is of no importance, for the disciple who is a Master by nature will have found by himself the exact resonance of the bijas in his Guru’s mantra.
In the Tantras, the mantra has four forms:
1. It is given in a detailed form as in a hymn (stotra).
2. It is condensed into one formula (mala).
3. This formula is condensed into a single word (nama).
4. This word becomes only a pure sound (bija).
The mind must be led from the hymn to the bija, which is the seed, the pure vibration that gives birth to the psychic body of the disciple.
There are great Masters and small Masters. Both of them do exactly the same work, for great Masters are for great disciples and small Masters for small disciples. The relationship between Master and disciple is the same in both cases.
The disciples, because of their avidity and competitive spirit, are always anxious to discover the sources from which their Master has drawn his knowledge. Some of them ask questions, discuss and argue; others even demand proof.
And what do they find? Nothing worthwhile, for the Master transmits what has become his own substance. It is through this substance that the disciple will taste what he is able to assimilate of any given Law.
No matter what stage he has reached, a disciple must learn not to talk about what he has received. All experiences, spectacular and fleeting, are no more than the vision of the level he trying to reach. To believe in them and talk about them is a pure illusion of the ego. Because of this, a period of silence after each experience is a wise measure of protection
Sometimes, faced with a difficulty of understanding, the disciple blames this on his Guru and goes away; he is driven downward without being aware of it, caught by law of gravity. And so he becomes a parasite in the spiritual search fed by his ego.
Every great Guru, when the time comes, drives away, from himself and from those close to him, the disciple to whom over a long period he has given a great deal. He releases him from all bonds, blesses him and entrusts him with a special task to fulfill, for “ there cannot be two tigers in the same forest.”
The disciple who is called to leave is fundamentally different from the disciples who live under the direct inspiration of the Master. He takes away with him a seed to be sown where he goes. He leaves without anyone knowing it, after he has secretly received from the Master the “gift of power” which will be his support in life.
This is the origin of the tradition of wandering. The one who goes away changes his name. His trace is lost. No one asks about him. On the lower vital plane, the wildcat, when the right time comes, drives her kittens away from her. At the risk of their lives, they must find their own living space and hunting ground.
The disciple who leaves possesses nothing except the fact of his belonging to the Laws, for he has been fed by the Guru’s essence. Either he grows and develops with fresh vigour because of the very separation he has lived through and the difficulties that await him, or he will perish without anyone hearing about it. In the latter case, he becomes humus useful to prakriti, a humus with a definite function to fulfill, however humble.
On the other hand, most of a Master’s disciples remain close to him all their lives. They are a necessity for the Guru, just as the presence of the Guru is a necessity for them. These disciples have a precise role to fill. They are the fine matter, which the Master uses to manifest his work in Prakriti. Without them, the Master would be merely radiance, but through their presence these disciples establish the circle in which the Master’s vibrations create the ferment of possible evolution.
Until the disciple assumes his responsibilities, it is the Master’s stomach that works and digests for him. But the disciple continues to question his Master: “Who are you?” Krishnamurti answers by saying: “I have never read any sacred books……” the disciples of Ma Anandamayi cut things short with the words: “She has never received anything from anyone, since she already knew everything when she was born!” Also, one could answer with another question: “Who can tell what the Pathans, that proud people of the Northern Frontier, are made of?” They were originally Aryans who become Muslims after having been Buddhist; but above all, they are to this day the vigorous children of their own land.
Some of the disciples who left their ashram have acted like all the mystics who, at a given moment, called the crowds to them. Likewise, Sri Ramakrishna in his exaltation used to climb to the roof of the temple at Dakshineshvar near Calcutta and, weeping, would cry out, “Come to me from everywhere, disciples! So that I may teach you…I am ready!” others, like Sri Ramana Maharshi, through their silence and concentration have compelled those who approached them to ask themselves the question, “Who am I?”
Among “the independents” wandering about, there were those called Carvakas because they rebelled against all learned, expounded orthodoxies. Some have found fame without looking for it. Some have allowed followers to gather around them. Others have repeatedly fled from the slavery created by the excessive solicitude of their disciples. Still others have accepted this bondage with a definite aim known to them alone. Many of them have lived incognito in the midst of the world, hidden in the crowd and have died without leaving any apparent trace. Since the Carvakas have never been written about, it is only indirectly, through the reactions they aroused, that their name has circulated by word of mouth. The orthodox followers of every tradition have pursued and persecuted them, considering their freedom and influence too great.
Should one attempt to say what Carvakas are? It is written that Brihaspati, a Vedic sage, was their ancestor. Fragments of their teachings are scattered throughout the Katha Upanishad, the Mahabharata, and also the Buddhist texts, since in the time of the Buddha, their voice was listened to very attentively. But their enemies gave such distorted descriptions of their positivist, anti-ritualistic philosophy centered on the search for the “I” that later hid themselves with their well-guarded secret. They knew the paths leading to knowledge.
There is an enormous disparity between quality and quantity; quality hides within, whereas quantity spreads outward.
He who possesses the gift of captivating the imagination of the many and transforming it into creative imagination is a born Guru. When a lamp is used, its light loses none of its brilliance, but when one takes a pound of sugar out of a bag of provisions it leaves an empty space in the mass of material. When receiving the darshan of the Master, one touches the spirit itself, but as soon as one makes arrangements to stay close to him, the “downward curve” begins and the Law of gravity immobilises the spirit.
One cannot escape from this Law, nor from its process of materialization. Owing to its constantly moving densities, matter will always be either somewhat more or somewhat less receptive to spirit.
The Guru sees what is happening with intelligence that is not the intelligence of his disciples. He dwells at the centre of an esoteric circle, which, of course, carries its own limitations; but this circle is far above the circle in which the disciples move. In comparison with them, he is living in knowledge.
However the Guru is well aware that this knowledge is relative, and that he himself is a seeker in relation to knowledge existing in the circle above him. A guru who thinks he has reached the end of his search would be an imposter; a disciple who imagines him thus to satisfy himself would be a fantastic, cutting himself off from the Laws, from the ascending and descending movements that support life.
Why would you want the moment of knowledge to last? Even Brahma cannot keep what he creates for himself! Everything springs from him and immediately flows out. Millions of gods or of Laws at once take possession of it. We are a humble part of those who are trying to swim up stream. And what do we find? Close by we hear the repeated calls of Krishnamurti, who is becoming impatient, because, despite the shocks he produces, Great Nature does not transform itself. He halts people caught in the circumstances of life and cries, “Stop! Understand who you are! Understand what you are doing!”
Elsewhere, in the sphere she governs, the Mother of Sri Aurobindo’s ashram declares, “O Nature, material Mother, you said that you would collaborate in the transformation of man; and there is no limit to splendor of such collaboration.” The unfolding of time enters into play here, in the very play of Prakriti.
Ma Anandamayi was the first in history, faithful, moreover, to the Buddhist tradition still widespread in Bengal, to roam about Northern India, stopping to sleep and eat only in temple rest houses, completely cut off from the rhythm of life. For years she lived almost continually in ecstasy without any relationship with her surroundings. She returned gradually to the human state, at first unconsciously through a known process. Now she has voluntarily returned within the rhythm of Prakriti to transmit her experience to those around her and teach a way of possible expansion.
What tools will the Master use? The ones that suit him best. What difference is there between a bare room like the one in which we are speaking together now and a room filled with a hodgepodge like a bazaar? The Master utilises the means that are needed to bring his disciple to him. Some day perhaps, if such is his wish and need, he will take the very bones of his disciple, crush them, make a pie out of them and offer them to the gods. He can make use of the trust the disciple has placed in him, his submission, and even the essence of his being (bhuta), to the uttermost limits.
So what remains of the disciple, once his bones have been crushed? Nothing. For him it is death. There are deliberate deaths in which the blood flows, as in many temple sacrifices where the bodies of the decapitated goats keep on jumping and twitching until all life departs.
What is it that is freed by death? There is also the secret of dogs, those beasts branded by the curse of impurity, who hide under a bush to die with a dignity the sannyasins envy and hope to have at the moment of their own death. One of the hardest commandments in the initiation into sannyasa is: “When the day comes, know how to die like the dog, with dignity, unnoticed.”
Does the disciple know that by his death he is serving the “essence of the Guru?” Can ashes know what use they have? If he so desires, the Guru can swallow up his disciple. He can use the liberated energy, just as we do in eating the food we need. The interdependence of functions exists; it is right and normal. The Bhagavad Gita states clearly how few out of a million pass through the narrow gate. But the aspiration is there. How can we know what is above us, since we only control the relationship of the planes of consciousness that we have acquired? That is why death in the Guru’s essence” is the highest goal we can desire. We cannot lift our prakriti any higher. The best we can do is to unify, in all our reactions, the raw material of our nature with the movements of the spirit and to place these reactions in the heart- the heart that becomes the “seat of the Guru” (gaddi). This movement in itself is the voluntary death of the ego. It is only in this voluntary death that the Guru sees what is permanent in us: the fact of existing (sat). He can only give it form and animate it. In this he is like the Creator in Genesis, removing one of Adam’s ribs to free the divine Sakti who is ready to give birth. Without this shock coming from above, no transformation is possible.
Another transformation is to give birth in ourselves to Sakti’s child. This child will manifest a different prakriti than ours, different in quality. The child will call right away for a plaything. He must hold something in his hands to have the pleasure of throwing it on the ground, of picking it up, of giving it away, and taking it back, without any logic in his movements, just for the sake of moving around and discovering what life is. So always surround yourselves with plenty of toys, for yourselves and for others…..
up to page 63
LIFE WITHIN LIFE
PART 1 - THE PRINCIPLES
CHAPTER 1
A STATE OF SAHAJA
The Katha Upanishad says: “The aim is to attain pure Existence (sat).” He who has realised this has a clear understanding of what reality is. Pure Existence is the Truth beyond life and death. That you exist is a fact! And your existence is nothing but a manifestation of that which is universal and transcendental. So your existence becomes oneness (kaivalya) in which there exist the two principles of Samkhya: Purusha, which is the spirit, and Prakriti, which is “that which is manifested.” Spiritually cannot be acquired; it can only be derived from these two principles.
Open yourself up to the sun of pure Existence (sat) as the bud of a flower opens to the light. Then the Truth will flow into you. Impatience spoils everything! There is a Baul song, which says: “The stars, the suns, and the moons are never impatient. Silently, they follow the stream of pure Existence, as the true Guru does.”
Now, this pure Existence, lived with a wide-open heart amid all the circumstances of life, is in itself the state of sahaja- a state in which the mind is freed from all duality. The motionless mind knows “That” which has neither beginning nor end, which is free in its very essence.
Sahaja is yoga for the same reason as all other yogas. It is a path that leads to the discovery of “That with which one is born,” the pure being living in the temple of the heart.
Sahaja can be defined as follows: “That which is born in you, that which is born with you,” a state of pure essence. The body, the spirit, the impulse of life and intelligence are all there. Nothing must be rejected or mutilated, so that “one and the same thing” can be consciously established.
That is why Samkhya, which is the path by which the state of Sahaja is attained, speaks a great deal of the waking state that is the normal level of all activity. It also speaks of the state of consciousness interiorised in dreams, which later becomes the state of deep sleep. The fourth state, that of inner awakening, is the mark of deep sleep. Shankaracharya, instructs us about these four different states in his philosophy.
In sahaja, there is a fifth state, that of a totally awakened consciousness; it contains in itself the four states of wakefulness, dreaming, deep sleep, and the state in which deep sleep exists along with the other four states. There is no longer any differentiation between the various states, all of them being unified at a single point.
From that moment on, everything becomes your food. Everything is one and the same thing in you. Then you are faced with a new task in the realm of sensation and relaxation. It becomes a question of forgetting oneself, of voluntarily obliterating oneself, which is a letting go in a region that is very subtle and hard to discover. Voluntary forgetting is a task that is just as difficult as accustoming one’s mental faculty to remembering the details of self-observation. It is only approached much later, when memory has become submissive and fulfils its true role.
This is slow work and a true discipline in itself. The effort to forget ceases when the contraction that determines the field of work disappears. Without construction there can be no directed effort. When this effort is recognised, the contraction disappears and is at once replaced by a very special kind of attention coming from very far away. This attention is different to what is going on and yet it watches closely. It gives no orders and does not know impatience. It simply watches how Great Nature (prakriti) operates, for even in the subtle domain of voluntary forgetfulness prakriti has still to be reckoned with.
To wish to forget is, in fact, impossible. Forgetting proceeds from a principle without any form. When your being is invaded by a movement coming from the heart and the mind, you are just like an empty vibrating bell filled by the echo of a sound coming from elsewhere.
Accept within yourself the idea that you have only twenty-four hours to live. Let those hours be full of clarity to help you to accomplish your task. Do not allow them to be tarnished. They have been entrusted to you. Those twenty-four hours are your eternity. In the face of his three-dimensional day, it is impossible to imagine the future. Do not attempt to stretch the time, nor to divide it, nor to lengthen or shorten it. Everything is so full and at the same time so empty!
The discipline of sahaja begins with the acceptance of the whole of life just as it is. The heat opens up to receive it and to live it. As for intelligence and logic, they will seek in Samkkhya the necessary strength to finding the key to the enigma of existence. Sahaja then appears like a path illumined by the experience of inner being.
In practice, Samkhya is a technique to realize the expansion of sahaja. Neither the one nor the other takes into account god, demons, paradises, hells, or formalisms of any kind, in the course of inner effort. The point where Samkhya and Sahaja converge is tin the whole of life, which becomes in itself the object of meditation. Therefore serenity within oneself and a right relationship with life and one’s fellow beings becomes a way of being.
He who practices a spiritual discipline (sadhana) will use Samkhya to learn how to look at the movements of Great Nature in all its manifestations without interfering with its movements, to recognize its imprint on everything and to observe the ability of prakriti to pass imperceptibly from one plane of consciousness to another. Not to react to any of its movements would, in fact, mean to live in the very heart of life without being affected by it. But at the beginning, this state cannot be taken for granted, for it is not merely by observing the movements of prakriti that one becomes its master.
The disciple will turn his gaze upon himself and will discover, although he had never before seen it, the countless inner disturbances created by everything in him that says, “I like and I do not like; I want and I do not want; it’s right and it’s wrong,” and so forth, which prevent him from noticing that in himself there is a stormy prakriti identical to the one that exists around him.
How can he dissociate himself from that prakriti which until he dies will be for him his life, his mind and his body with all their functions? At this time traditional Rajayoga comes to help. This yoga through its graduated disciplines brings the body to a state of conscious joy, one’s life to a state of equanimity comparable to complete rest and one’s mind to ecstasy (samadhi). In this state of equanimity, all the automatic movements of prakriti and its unconscious play can be perceived. Always, in following this inner discipline, the ideal of Samkhya is to learn how to stand back, and the ideal of yoga is vairagya, which means to learn how to observe oneself dispassionately and without judgement.
Long and meticulous work is indispensible in order to discover that emotion of any kind creates a passionate movement which takes man out of himself. In this case yoga teaches how to check any impetuous movement by emptying the mind of all images. The superabundant energy is thus brought back to the self. But the purpose of Samkhya is that this energy, having returned to the self, should also be directed consciously towards the outer life, that it should become openly active without disturbing the inner or outer prakriti. In this way life-energy is purified. It becomes creative. Of course this state can only last for a few minutes, and the ordinary man immediately reappears with his train of habitual reactions within the play of manifestation.
This play of illumination (sattva) and this word is right even if the moment be brief, is a look into oneself and at the same time is a look outside oneself (sivadrsti). Symbolically it can be compared to the piercing look of Purusha into himself and upon the active Prakriti around him. To accept Prakriti in its totality is pure sahaja. In a subtle manner, beyond “I like and I don’t like,” it brings a possibility of modification in the densities of intrinsic qualities (gunas) of the lower prakriti and shows the path by which a higher Prakriti can be reached.
Learn to return voluntarily to what is fundamentally primitive in you, carefully hidden and disguised in the realm of instinct, intuition and sex. This conscious return will produce unsuspected reactions and induce outbursts of all your dormant impatience. If you were a tree, they would all of them be branches issuing from the same trunk. One cannot cut off one branch without damaging the whole; cutting several of them would cause the death of the tree. All the branches together form the canopy of foliage.
In the wind, the foliage is in harmony with the whole forest. It is in the foliage that the birds nest and sing. May this picture help you in your spiritual discipline even if it is very hard. If something obscure lingers in you, it means that there must still be an attachment somewhere, just as in the tree there are knots which hinder the rising of the sap.
You can observe ideas and make them your own. You can freely create ways to express them. That is what the force in you can do. Perhaps I can help you to discover your own power but only by suggestion. If you open yourselves up and discover who you are, I shall be pleased.
A great tapasya awaits you. This word means personal austerity and voluntary discipline.
These are clearly the creative energy and the wisdom so often described in the Upanishads as being together the first manifestation of the creative urge. One of the Upanishads even goes so far as to say that it is a radiation devoid of any characteristic, that is, without form (alingam).
True tapasya means to be one with the creative power of prakriti. It brings us close to Great Nature as she really is. One voluntarily drops all accumulations, all that has been acquired, and returns to what is simple and innate. Austerities, both mental and physical, to which many a seeker subjects himself, are only the fumbling means adopted by ignorant souls wishing to attain that entirely natural end.
Allow your power to radiate, and may this radiation be your discipline. Hear the resonance of this call in you and, without tension of any sort, have the courage to plunge into the depths of your soul. Do not listen to the sophisticated sayings of t he wiseacres who teach with pomp and ostentation.
U: nderstood in this manner, tapasya is the progressive development of limitless intuition. There are two kinds of tapasya. One in which I always say “Yes” -tantras – and one in which I always say “No” – Vedanta. The true seeker who says “yes” is a born poet, for he finds himself obliged to translate everything into exalted thoughts and language. His poetry plays the role of a science of transmutation.
In sahaja there is a close correspondence between the Baul and the Sufi, provided that the “underground current” of spiritual life brings the mind of each one to grasp the secret and to live it in his own light.
As soon as one attempts to describe Hinduism in terms of circles and cycles, and Sufism in terms of four degrees, one is lost. Immediately one enters the world of division and quarrels.
How is it that the Sufis have discovered the content of the Upanishads that freedom of which they sing, when, in fact, the Upanishads are unknown to most of them? Each one, at his appointed time, must break the shell in which he is enclosed, so as to penetrate into knowledge; just as a fully formed chick must break out of the eggshell if it wishes to live its life.
In the final stage there is no longer any discipline but only an uninterrupted consciousness of being. If the entire being is immersed in a (the Sufi calls it Fanaa) I “know” how in myself without efforts the current of a right relationship is established, which dissolves everything false or halting in my relationship with myself and with my fellow men.
The Bauls and the Sufis tread the same path in life and drink from the same eternal source; they are above every kind of sectarianism. They do not practise any formal initiation; they speak however of two kinds of initiation.
One is compared to the sun touching the bud of a flower, inviting it to open. A power is transfused from the Master to his disciple simply by radiation without ritual or words. That is all. The bud of the flower still retains all its individuality.
The other initiation, at a still higher level, is compared to the sun which absorbs the dew into itself. At a glance the Master recognises the real disciple, whether he be a Baul or a Sufi. His look captures the reflection of the disciple’s being as in a mirror; then the eyes of the Master and the eyes of the disciple close. But the current between them will continue to flow eternally. This is called the process of saturation.
But the time comes when the Master becomes an obstacle to the flowering of the disciple. The cult of the person falls away, and also the cult of devotion to ideas. The question arises, “Why do I obey?” And the answer is “The Guru of the Guru of my Guru is walking ahead on the same path as I. Can I reach the source by myself alone, making do without any intermediaries?”
That is the beginning of a long and declared war with many painful stages with the Guru. The true Guru will be aware of this struggle. He watches closely the disordered movements of the disciple. His kindness is such that he speaks with his disciple about the one who walks ahead, about the laws of working on oneself; yet he does nothing to attenuate the struggle which has begun.
At the end of this stage there is a sahaja when the disciple finally opens the eyes of his heart and understands that he has gone astray. On this subject Keshab Das has said,”I discover that I am what I was, but between the two there are only complications. Now, I see…” The aim is the Truth, through which the unity of all things can be perceived. This truth is sahaja.
The Master of a Baul or a Sufi teaches nothing directly; he merely stimulates his disciple by suggestions. Once initiated, the disciple feels that a force drives him forward, but he will always have to struggle alone in the world around him, in the very heart of all life’s complications.
My one ambition has been to learn to speak without words. That is, to be the smoke of a fire that others do not see, or the sound of music that others do not hear. It has taken me fifty years. Two ideas have always been in my mind. The first of these was to be the traveller who follows the trail with a precise goal: to touch God and to serve him. The second was the idea of expansion: to know how to flow out like a gas without any destination for the rshis have said,”Those who have attained pure Existence (sat) become the One.”
So many people come to see me who only want words! If I do not speak, they are upset. So I speak in a poetic way, and that keeps them occupied for a while.
But where are those to whom I can entrust a task in life, one single task that would be the expression of their spiritual fervour? If you are not a ploughman, what do you know about ploughing? If you are not a man of action, what do you know about a task to be fulfilled? In the seed-bed of thought, action, prayer, and meditation coexist in the sensation of being and action is not what men have made of it – something subjective and hypocritical, far removed from the centre of being.
You do not know that all creation is born of an action? To live is also an action. To live could be the fact of acknowledging the “Man in the temple of the heart” and serving him perfectly.
CHAPTER II
SAMKHYA
Samkhya is, above all, the practical philosophy transmitted by Kapila, who lived in the far distant past.
Samkhya give s a clear idea of the “Purusha-Spirit” and of “Prakriti-manifestation” represented by “Great Nature.” The latter is manifested essentially in a mechanical manner, like all the cosmic Laws which govern us.
I know how difficult it is to explain deep spiritual values. That is why I think the best link between the things of the beyond with the things of this world is that of practical psychology.
Psychology speaks a universally known language.
Samkhya is the only religious philosophy that speaks a psychological language, hence a scientific language. Everything can be explained from the point of view of Samkhya. It is the basis of the Buddhist pitakas, as well as of the Sufi precepts. It is no more concerned with rites than are the Upanishads.
Nothing exists, in any realm, that by deduction does not proceed from a higher Law. There comes a time when one must submit to such a deductive process. This process is pure Samkhya, it is the inexorable descent into Prakriti, under pressure from above of the great Will. From that moment onwards everything functions in a mechanical way: the higher intelligence (Buddhi), the soul, the ego, all the centres of the human being, each one with its natural intelligence. The automatic progression functions from the moment when connections start between the different levels of the being: its inner organs of perception (indriyas) or senses, its constituent elements (bhutas) and densities.
When “He who knows” effects the descent voluntarily and reaches the lowest point, that is to say, the nadir, his being becomes radiant. At that moment he enters consciously into the discipline of a clearly conscious upward movement.
Man s by nature inductive; he gropes his way forward and goes blindly along. Woman, on the other hand, is by nature actively passive, for her function is to create the child. From her are born husband and father. All manifestations, mind, soul, life, matter, have come from her. In that respect she is the “Divine Mother,” the foundation from which the slow ascent towards the source begins.
It is said in the Bhagavatam that, at the time when Samkhya arrived on the earth, a woman was the first to benefit by it. This woman was called Devahuti. She represents the higher Prakriti. Devahuti realised this knowledge to its ultimate limit. Having rejected everything that was not the pure and luminous “I,” she is said to have wandered in Nature, completely naked, radiating light. At the moment of death, she transformed herself voluntarily into an inexhaustible river in order to water the whole earth and allow hundreds and thousands of beings to quench their thirst for knowledge.
The spiritual science of Samkhya can make a saint out of a man who has no longer any faith in God or in himself.
In the beginning Samkhya sappers to be appallingly dry and lacking in love, for imagination and any kind of emotion are strictly set aside. But when the inner being has recovered his lost equilibrium and discovered the equilibrium which he has thus far never felt, he is nourished by a pure love which no longer has any root in human love.
The adept of Samkhya finds his point of support in his own inner attitude, in his conscious effort to understand “what there is.” To reach this attitude, he makes use of everything that he has discovered, everything that he has experienced up to the time when he begins his search. His material consists of events in his life which enlarge his plane of consciousness, harmonise the microcosm that he is, and reveal the relationship existing between the known universe and the unknown universe around him. Even if he has neither a prayer nor a petition, he has, on the other hand, an attitude of openness. He questions and he observes. He searches within himself for a familiar sensation so as to face the perfect and absolute cosmic Law which unfolds. He knows that it is through overcoming obstacles that the inner being will make a fresh effort to attain a wider level of consciousness. To hold to this openness entails attentive vigilance and an immense work of amassing details upon details, until the first of them are clearly perceived. To lead such a life is to live a prayer.
The following example, taken from a Tantric text, formulates it like this: “Let your body become hard like dry wood. Then your inner felicity (rasa) will be like sugar syrup. Let the fire of your spiritual discipline (sadhana) purify this syrup until it becomes like candied sugar; this candied sugar will at first be brown, but finally it will become as transparent as rock crystal. May your inner felicity resemble rock crystal; then your love will be as pure as Krishna’s.”
In order to taste this experience, there are two methods on opposite levels. In one case, stimulants and drugs are utilized by the physical body. In the other case, the spiritual body becomes consciously more and more refined and in full awareness reaches a strictly graduated interiorisation. This conscious lucidity will then be continuous like the tracks of a caterpillar on the earth.
Then a stage of knowledge will be reached, that is, a knowledge that is searching for itself and gradually discovers itself. At its highest point after a very delicate attunement, this knowledge becomes true compassion or pure objective love.
In Vedanta and for the Vedantist, if felicity is not reached in the complete passivity of all the centres of the being, the upward path is nothing but renunciation and frustration.
Vedanta denies all reality, while the Samkhya discipline affirms that everything is reality (sat). In prakriti, which by nature is mechanical, three densities have to be acknowledged and gone beyond matter, energy and spirit, and to reach finally the cosmic force that contains them all. Higher reality, or pure Existence (sat) beyond manifestation, is expressed by the unity of these three densities. Behind it stands Purusha.
The essential condition of this condition is the possibility of absorption which continually increases until it becomes total. To start with, everything appears heavy and opaque, like a clod of earth that, little by little, as understanding broadens, appears like pure rock crystal.
The soul’s felicity is the state (vilasa-vivarta) in which the unreal becomes real and vice versa.
In attempting this a Christian risks himself with difficulty, for he has to take into account a “sinful body” which weighs very heavily. The Christian places his point of support ahead of him in God, which gives him strength and consolation, He prays, invokes and gives thanks. He is a worshipper (bhakta) before his Lord (istadevata). The great majority of Hindus are also worshippers.
In Samkhya, several themes for meditation are taught which date from the time of the Vedas.
For example, the idea of the opposite pairs of the zenith-nadir (what is above and what is below), or Purusha-Prakriti, is graphically pictured by two points inked by an ideal line going vertically from the zenith to the nadir. But in living experience one perceives in meditation that it is quite different. Actually, these two poles of zenith and nadir are not opposites, but joined in a continuous movement that starts from the zenith, describes a vast semicircle to the right and reaches the nadir at the bottom of the curve. After having penetrated the nadir, this same movement re-ascends to the left towards the zenith, forming the same semicircle as on the right. It gives the picture of a large round vessel, with the nadir at the bottom.
The energy that descends from the zenith is fully conscious of its movement. In full force it condenses, breaks down any resistance on the way, and penetrates the inner being which, having seen it coming, has hidden itself coiled three and a half times, in the nadir. This coil is what the energy has to break up.
A Guru of Samkhya explains this state as follows: energy penetrates the dark night until the energy itself becomes inert and without reaction. At that very moment it becomes entirely one with the heavy matter.
In the nadir of prakriti, the three-fold coil represents the three distinct and complementary qualities (gunas) of prakriti itself. In the descending movement white (spirit), black (energy) and red (matter) follow one another in the order of the colours at sunset. In the re-ascending movement towards the zenith, the colours follow one another as at dawn: black (energy), red (matter) and white (spirit).
The last half-coil remaining besides the three coils of the gunas was, during the entire process of the descent, the hiding-place of the active consciousness of Purusha. It represents the last redoubt of the individuality-spirit through which the re-ascent can take place.
In this picture the conqueror, conscious of the road he must follow, resolutely penetrates into the darkness of matter and its heavy densities to reach the very heart of prakriti. To complete his course he has to break down the last half-coil of prakriti which is holding him back. Only then will he emerge from the struggle a hero.
Throughout the conscious and voluntary descent into the heaviness of the human body down to the nadir, a clear vision makes it possible to perceive what will be the ascending path starting from the nadir, for the stages and steps of the descent are analogous to those of the re-ascent.
There is also a theme of deep meditation which consists in seeing the three gunas as if they were concentric surfaces, one within the other. Thus, we have the picture of four concentric barriers which delimit them, one within the other, the one delimiting matter is outside, those delimiting energy are inside, as well as the one in the centre which delimits the spirit. The space in the centre represents the zone of perfect calm, the Void.
Diagram
As soon as the perfect calmness of the inner space is perceived, the image of concentric surfaces is obliterated and the fact of existing is now experienced but very subtly, as if a state of active consciousness could be compared to a thin steak of light which at the same time is filling the sky. The result is an all-encompassing sensation of fluidity along the spinal column. The sensation is that of a very fine vibrating matter ascending from below.
This sensation is like the radiation of light which fills space. The three gunas constitute the equilibrium of purusha. Whatever takes place, the constant balance between the qualities and the substances that compose the gunas remains. They move always in the same order, that is, from matter (tamas) to energy (rajas), then to spirit (sattva), or in the reverse order, from spirit (sattva) to energy (rajas), down to matter (tamas). At the moment of sunrise and sunset, one can feel in oneself the very delicate transition from one density to the other, from one quality to the other, and see the change from one colour to another. That is why traditionally these are the moments in which the gunas form the background and the theme of all meditation.
There are two Samkhyas: the first is philosophical, the second mystical.
Philosophical Samkhya, formulated by Ishvara Krishna is recognised in India as being the system of basic thought that indicates to the yogi, as well as to the anchorite, the ascending path of spiritual search. It is a profoundly negative philosophy which had an influence on the whole of life in India in the Middle Ages. This is all that is known of samkhya in the west.
But this Samkhya is also a mystical path, enshrined in the Vedas and the Upanishads, which, in the course of centuries, has found its free and clear expression in the Puranas and the Tantras, especially in the later sacred scriptures. It can be said that the whole Tantric way of life is none other than a Samkhya whose sources can be discovered in the most ancient Vedic verses.
In this, the world is not denied. The principle of supreme bliss (ananda) is recognised, but it is called by another name, samprasada, which in the Upanishads is the state of dreamless sleep, a sleep in which the spirit is awakened within. Nothing is present to experience anything at all. There exists only a calm joy which can carry over into the waking state. There is no question of fleeing from pain, but rather of experiencing it as the embrace in which Kali enfolds Shiva prostrate beneath her. This is technically described in the Tantras by the word Viparitarati (or the inverted coitus) in which the Purusha is passively accepting even death and destruction from the active Prakriti. Evil and pain, from which the world-negating Vedanta assiduously turns away are transformed here into Bliss (Ananda)
But the mystics have added something further to their experience. They have felt that, for a realized soul, suffering itself is no more than a ripple in the current of bliss. It was its reference to this that Sri Ramakrishna was able to say, ”Everything is sat-chit-ananda.” Even my suffering is only a part of the experience of existing and it has very little space in the total experience of “being,” in the consciousness of bliss.”
From this profound experience,,, Samkhya, integrated into life as it is in the Bhagawad girta, looks upon Prakriti as being threefold: the lower prakriti (apara), the higher prakriti (para), and the highest Prakriti that is our very own (pram or sviya).
The philosophical Samkhya takes into consideration onl the lower Pakriti which is merely a complex of the qualities of sattva, rajas, and tamas, permanenly intermingled, although one of them must necessarily predominate. But a pure quality (suddha sattva) can also exist, which is neither touched nor soiled by rajas and tamas. This, than, would be the highest Prakriti that is many times mentioned in Puranic and Tantric literature. This idea of pure sattva reigns over all the practical philosophies of the Hindu mystics.
This pure quality is nothing other than eternal bliss (non-existent in rajas) and eternal illumination (non-existent in tamas) co-existing in the spiritual being. This is th entire concept of sat-chcit-ananda common to the mystical philosophies of Samkhya and Vedanta.
Vignana Bhikshu, a great Master of the school of Samkhya in the fifteenth century, has given us the following metaphor in connection with Purusha and Prakriti: “Prakriti is PUrusha’s wife; she is shrewd and peevish. She gives Purusha no respite, until he becomes so harassed that he finally says, ’I am going away, do what you like!’ Then Prakriti runs after her husband in tears, implores him, and clings to him…” These are the two ways of dealing with prakriti, before and after realized what she is. The cosmic Law closest to us tells us,” As soon as you become detached from prakriti, everything follows you.”
Swami Rama Tirtha has given us another picture, “If you turn your back to the sun, your shadow is in front of you. You can try to catch it, but you will never succeed. But the minute you turn to face the sun, your shadow is behind you. If you move, it follows you. You can make it go where you wish. The sun is truth, the shadow is Prakriti.”
It is easy for us to talk about the changes in our consciousness, the broadening of our understanding, but not so easy to speak of the readjustment of our relationship with the world, for the matter of the body is heavy. And the many envelopes of the body (kosas) are no mere illusions, as the envelopes of the mind often are.
Purusha can do nothing for us, since we are the slaves of Prakriti. Purusha is outside of time and beyond our understanding, whereas prakriti exists in time. It is at once the aggregate of the qualities (gunas) that we can evaluate and the aggregate of the movements and impressions (samskaras) of all those qualities that make up our life. Purusha is a flash of perception, while prakriti operates in an integral mechanism.
Between the two there is the sacrifice of Purusha, which in time takes on a form. For example, the efforts of the Buddha can be perceived by us. If we talk about the efforts of the Buddha on our scale, we have a certain perception of something. But of what?
An exact relationship exists between prakriti, which moves spontaneously, always in circles, and Prurusha, outside of time, which merely looks on at what is happening. In spiritual life, this relationship appears at the exact point where voluntary detachment breaks the bonds which have been established by prakriti. In the olifeof the Buddha, the period of detachment is represented by the first half of his asceticism. Later on, while looking from afar at what is happening, he becomes increasingly interested in the game in which he no longer participates and observes the smallest errors of each participant. Then, without hindering their manner of playing, he urges them by his spiritual strength alone to stand aside like himself, so that they, too, can watch the game. In this way, at the proper time, he gives them the chance to see the prakriti from which they are withdrawing, as he himself sees it. The subtle energy that is here described has become the aura of the Buddha; it is simply the lower prakriti transformed and illuminated.
In actual spiritual life one proceeds only by negation. This constant negation, for Christians, has become resignation. We must not forget that whereas in Hinduism, there is no beginning and no end, in Christianity there is no end but a beginning. The way of love (bhakti) has its way in the attitude of negation as well as in the attitude of resignation.
The path to the attainment to the state of “divine soul” is extremely long with precipices on both sides. This state of “divine soul” is limited to a very few and, even so, is always subject to the Laws of the all-powerful and mechanical prakriti. Jesus Christ himself was crucified; nothing was able to prevent the action set in motion by prakriti, which on our human level works exactly like the cosmic Laws and with equal intransigence.
Prakriti contains everything that exists. It is the divine womb of all manifestation. In prakriti one can observe three different degrees:-
1. Everything of which we are made: soul, intelligence, ego, life, mind, and the animal matter of our body.
2. The very principle of our possible evolution on all planes of our psychic and physical being.
3. The divine energy (sakti) in its most subtle elements.
In one sense all is materiality. In the Vedas the word Tanu means the body as well as everything to do with incarnation, and the word atman means the spirit and everything connected with its energy or life. These words are interchangeable and are constantly being used for one another, since they both express the same materiality. There is no difference between spirit and matter; it is only a question of different densities. When a piece of coal is white hot, it is impossible to say whether it is burning matter a a cluster of flames symbolizing the spirit. Here we have a phenomenon of transubstantiation that is visible in the heart of the spiritual experience.
The essential characteristic of India is that nothing is ever rejected. What was a simple Vedic sacrifice has been transformed in the course of centuries into a ritual of such complexity that it suggests a banyan tree (which is) sheltering at one and the same time a temple, a mosque, a saint, a bandit, devotees, animals, manure and so on. It is a real jungle in which one can easily lose one’s way. In it one finds “this and that and also That.”
Hence the hoarding of objects in the Hindu temples. The minute one accepts the idea of form (rupa), one can throw away nothing. Who is to decide what is true or false? Everything is of equal importance and equally worthy of attention. Each form has a name (nama) and significance. This is so on every level.
The “too much” has a logic of its own, and logic is very far from the divine. In the ceremonies, the forms have become all important, and have driven out the spirit. Man plays with materiality with consummate art, without being aware of the mechanicity of prakriti, and without discovering that he is its slave.
One cannot change the course of prakriti, which goes its way according to a determined plan in the order of universal things and according to immutable Laws that it does not know. It knows only its own law. It does its work excellently and faultlessly. The energies divide and subdivide up to the point of feeding the cells of our body. They penetrate the heart and they penetrate every drop of blood. At this point the body is an expression of “That.”
Men are tossed about and carried along by a wave of which they cannot get free, but they can swim in the direction of the cavern of the heart. The seat of immobile consciousness is there. The movement of the wave has then ceased for these men, because they have put their attention to another order of reality. In the cavern of the heart they touch the Immutable. One has to follow this process with an inward look and feel the pulsation of life. There is a known relation between the pulsation of life and the movement of the outer wave just ads there is a relation between the pulsation of life and the immobile consciousness. This movement is continuous. A sudden stop would mean death.
So long as we are immersed in prakriti, in ourselves and in life, we are governed by it, by its movements, its sudden jumps, and its cosmic rhythms. Without withdrawing into ourselves, we can have no control over our prakriti.
It is impossible from outside to know whether the driver of a vehicle has control over himself or not. If he has, he can stop when he so decides. He knows that the wheels of a vehicle turn because of him. He is in control of his personal prakriti, which n its turn plays its role in a vaster Prakriti. The latter is itself the field of the great cosmic Laws.
There are two ways in which Great Nature constantly reacts toward Purusha: it remains in the centre of the movement, not to be drawn to one side of the other; or it follows the movement all the way. In any case, one must turn to the Void, which is the beginning as well as the end of all things.
Conscious energy (sakti) implies continuous growth which, even if it is not apparent and seems to start from darkness (tamas) is nonetheless real. It passes through the red hot glow of active impulse (rajas) before reaching the whiteness of the rarefied state ( sattva). This whiteness in life is the state of awakened consciousness.
Thus, we have to raise ourselves up step by step from the plane of gross matter to the plane of awakened consciousness , and thus come back to heavy matter, retaining in ourselves as long as possible a continuous and right sensation. We are constantly harassed from outside by multiple shocks which bring forth in us either the desire to see GOd and experience a moment of illumination, or the anguish of death, prowling in the shadows and bringing a state of deep depression. The dawn symbolises the intermediate power of sakti. It is the light that begins to shine in the heart of the dark night.
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CHAPTER III
LAWS – POWERS
In India people strive for these powers:
- to reach God
- to make God appear objective
- to have a clear sensation of the “I”;
- to eradicate every difference between “you” and “me”;
- to materialise the divine Laws and worship them as they are represented in the form of gods.
If man of 50,000 years ago were to return, he would see that man has not changed, either spiritually or in his deep reactions. The whole of civiilisation is only the outward appearance (maya) of what is manifested (sat). So why then should the Hindu believer not look for a means to escape from this slavery?
This cosmos to which we belong does not hold us in slavery. It is what it is. For us it represents the continuity of a power, of a descending Law with, here and there, one ascending soul, one in a million, says the Bhagawad Gita.
Such a soul radiates its own light; it touches other hearts because it has “passed through the death of the ego and the birth of the being.” It is nourished by the Void. In the Void absurdities evaporate spontaneously.
He who has lost faith and builds it up again slowly and cautiously by means of the science of Samkhya, the logic and mathematics relating to cosmic Laws, knows by experience why the world holds together; but the instant he tries to formulate the mathematical equation he will fail and fail.
Great Nature in her eternal recurrence represents a form of prakriti that the human heart can comprehend. She expresses the force that has two opposite movements, the one ascending, the other descending. Their role is to bring mankind and organic life on earth into the play of cosmic Laws. She shows the mechanical aspect of the Laws, in which man, according to his sage of evolution and inner attitude, sees miracles, ironies or absurdities, or no matter what else, in order to escape the grip of eternal recurrence. At the same time, he refuses to see the harmonious operation of these cosmic Laws.
This concordance is beyond human logic, such logic being only a form of the unconscious and mechanical functioning of the ego.
The world is a bazaar where everybody is shouting at the top of his voice to attract attention and make his little bargain. Remember that success or failure means nothing in the play of the Laws. All depends only on how the game is played. Thoughts are a thousand times more powerful than words. Be quiet in yourself, be calm and silent in the agitation around you. Let the powers act without allowing the human law, subjective and narrow, to interfere. The great powers act by impregnating the nerve fibres of the earth.
The whole of life is the immensity of the darkness of night (varuna) and the immensity of the light of day (mitra). The multiplicity of the circumstances and conditioning, to which we are subject in time, must not distort our inner vision in relation to darkness and light.
Then, in the intermediate light between day and night, we will clearly distinguish the broken lines which are the Laws as they come down to us, insofar as we are able to understand them. The work, for every one of us, is to learn to recognise them steadfastly and patiently, one after another.
Power, even in its most subtle and essential vibrations, includes two directions: one is positive and the other negative. Words such as truth, life, essence, should only be used with caution, for they contain in themselves an implicit source of opposition.
All the Vedic sages (rsis) repeatedly taught that spiritual life proceeds by jumps, by upward thrusts whose trajectory, being subject to the Law of gravity, falls down again from the apogee of its course to the lowest point. This fall is what starts eternal recurrence. We live and are fed by the visions of “those who see,” and there will always be new rsis and new disciples.
In these times the rsis’ vision serves only to create disciples. Disciples are necessary so that what is brought by the rsi can make its way into life. But the more the disciples are attached to themselves, the more mediocre they become, interested only in defending their rights of seniority, their Ashram, their master’s thought, without engaging themselves in the process of creation.
In summary, the rsi’s vision does not seem to belong to those who gather around him, but is a testimony to “That which is” for a much wider circle and for the sake of a continuity that will establish itself. This vision is a state of impersonal consciousness; it is what keeps the world in an exact relationship to the Laws. To impose a name on it is to limit the vision and lock it in a closed circle.
There are three important points to recognize in the ascending spiral representing the evolution of man: the point of sunrise, the point of the zenith, and of the “High North” (uttaram), which is the summit reached by the trajectory of this ascending spiral. The High North is the point where a new light scale begins to develop.
This direction toward the High North is also directly related to the solstices. The sun travels toward the north from December 21 until June 21 and the days lengthen. From the time when the sun moves toward the south, the days get shorter. That is why Yama, the king of death, is represented as living in the south, and Shiva, the god of life and death beyond the north. Moreover the east is the origin of light, the west is the house of the Void. These indications are scrupulously observed in the building of a temple or of a house. The position north-east always indicates the very action of the Law in our life.
For an action to be in accordance with the Laws and be a part of them, two forces must support it. One of them is The Void which generated the action, the other the energy and freedom of its movement.
Such a mode of action is established in a right relationship between Guru and disciple. The Guru says to his disciple, “Go and fulfill this task and know that even here I shall be the Void of your movement. Feel this deeply in yourself.” These two forces can also co-exist in the same person, which is the state mentioned in the Bhagawad Gita: the action is born from the vibration of the Void.
The best illustration of this is the story of a nun chosen by the king of a state to become his queen. The sannyasini finally accepted on condition that she be given an isolated room in the royal palace to which she alone would have the key. She used to go there every day. The king, jealous of the radiance of the queen, decided one day to follow her there to steal her secret. The room he saw her enter was bare and whitewashed. A sackcloth robe was hanging on a nail. The queen took off her rich attire and jewels and put on this beggar’s dress. Then she meditated for a long time, seated on the ground. At last she turned around and said to the king, “Here I am “myself,” the woman who loved God alone before she became a queen, and who still loves only God in His divine play.”
That queen has no name. She is part of Indian folklore.
An impulse pushes us to follow the way of the spirit, Purusha. We must not stop to ask, “What is this impulse?” It is there so that we may follow the ideal and constantly make it grow. No backward steps! This impulse has to be cultivated because it belongs to the ascending Law.
Opposing this, Prakriti holds us fast in the wheels of her machinery. One can be satisfied there and sleep in peace. Prakriti asks no more of us. She has a very strong power of gravitation, and drags back to herself beings who were ready to escape. She brings them back very skillfully for she needs our lives for her own purposes; she needs humus composed of the constantly renewed heavy and fine matter which our lives bring to her.
As regards any personal discipline, you must follow the right course. What you get through intuition can never fail you. The whole attitude can be summed up in a short sentence: “I know that, I feel that, I am that.” Let the powers work deep within you. The pain that results is that of a new birth. If inclination for inner work lessens, do not worry. Creation starts in darkness. Out of nothing comes the force of sakti. Let yourself be carried by the stream; so do not struggle. Not that you will reach the shore; your destination is to become the ocean itself.
We know that there are seven planes: three above and three below and a seventh which serves as a bridge.
The three lower planes generate the physical, emotional, and mental; the three higher ones generate pure existence (sat), pure radiant energy (chit) and bliss (ananda), which is the joy of creation; the seventh plane (rasa) is that on which things are carried out, that of the mother standing between the father and the child, permeating both.
In the Tantras the lunar days divided into three groups of five. This five-fold pattern symbolises the power of the mother. In each group, the days stand for joy (nanda) harmony and welfare, (bhadra), victory and power (jaya), consecration and sacrifice (rikta), plenitude (purna). Sakti is pictured as a little girl growing into womanhood. The first stage is her childhood; the second her adolescence; the third her youth; the fourth her maturity; and the fifth her completeness. Beyond is the Void. The same applies to the three lower planes: physical, emotional, mental. Analytically speaking, beyond Sakti is the eternal Spirit known as nityasodasi, and still further beyond is complete emptiness, nirvana-kala.
The full moon symbolises the blossoming and fruition of the hidden moon’s creative activity working in darkness. This is why peasants who are in contact with the earth sow seeds for flowers during the bright phase of the moon and for edible plants in its dark phase. The dark ray of creation is spoken of in the Katha Upanishad.
Following is the scheme of the seven planes:
Father Mother (the bridge) Child
1, 2, 3 4 5, 6, 7
There is always a gap, a no-man’s-land, between two planes. Otherwise there could be no creation. The Buddhists were right in saying that “everything” comes from “nothing.”
The intrinsic qualities (gunas) of prakriti are what bring gradual degrees of modification in the transition from matter to spirit and vice versa. These modifications are everywhere and on all planes. Energy (rajas) is the element of fermentation. The Bhagavatam gives an excellent comparison between the entire process and a piece of wood catching fire. At first there is no fire- a state of inertia (tamas); then comes smoke- a state of energy (rajas); and then heat and light- the rarefied state (sattva). So whenever we try to break up inertia on the human plane, we must be ready for confusion, misunderstanding and rashness; these things are bound to happen. The whole world is rajas, storm and stress; otherwise matter could not become “ luminous spirit,” or “harmonious multiplicity” like the petals of the lotus, which is the symbol of the One.
Dissolution is often necessary before real creation starts. You cannot always be looking for something. You must stop somewhere and let things grow within you. There is a rhythm of creation and a rhythm of dissolution, symbolized by the dance of Shiva. At first this dance is violent, full of convulsive movements with steps marking life and death at the same time. The rsis have called this part of the dance tandava. Its duration is related to cycles. Gradually the dance changes into the gentle dance of balanced force, where the rhythm becomes so supple that life and death are near each other and can be felt in the same movement. The rsis have called this rhythmic vibration lasya.
Herein lies the true creative possibility of sakti, of which the violent tandava of Shiva is the cosmic background. The balance and deep significance of life lie in dissolution. This is what makes life a constant renewal. Accept things just as they come and one day the light step of lasya will be yours.
There are two movements in creation. The movement of interiorization always precedes that of exteriorization. It is represented in the following imagery; according to the Puranas, creation was to come from the four united principles, the four sons of Brahma. But when Brahma had created them, instead of going down to earth and manifesting themselves outwardly, they went into their father’s bosom and became the force of withdrawal, from which there then issued the “Seven Sages” or “Seven Laws” that participated in the creation and continue to maintain it. These two movements, interiorization and exteriorization, are to be found everywhere, in creation as in de-creation, or pralaya, that is to say, the creation that undoes itself spontaneously, beginning from the end. Creation is in itself birth and death, whereas de-creation is in itself death and birth.
It is difficult to conceive of the transition from rarefaction to density even though it is the very process of all creation. We realize, or rather we imagine, what the Void may be, but to follow the process of the either becoming the earth, which would be the genuine realization of creation, is far from understanding.
You rise to the heights and are often aware of the process, but then you suddenly bump your head on the earth. Of course, you bring the flavour of the ether down with you but still you cannot re-create it. The attempt has been given up as almost impossible by the author of the Brahmasutra who remarked: “You can become one with Brahma in knowledge and bliss, but you cannot become one with him in his creative power.” The explanation is something like this: you can die consciously, but you cannot be born consciously. If you could do so your birth would be a divine birth, an incarnation.
Through the ages man has pursued his quest beyond death through idolatry. Even nowadays man’s search starts with idolatry and it is very important to see that it ends with it too. If matter becomes spirit, spirit likewise must return to matter. That is why the greatest spiritual Masters of India never denounced or gave up idolatry. Not even Shankaracharya.
Through his Guru’s teaching the Hindu disciple discovers, in the spiritual discipline he follows, how to put into daily practice the Laws of Shiva Mahadeva, the supreme Lord, just as they are described in all the sacred texts. These Laws are illustrated by three aspects of life, creation, preservation and destruction, and by two movements, the one from above moving downward, the other from below going upward.
A disciple will hold to this imagery so long as he expects to receive everything from his guru. He may continue to do so during several successive lives, unless the idea of evolution is born in him. There comes a time when the disciple recognizes the obstacles that must face and go beyond. He discovers that this has to do with the Law of three in his own nature and in his development.
Three Laws govern life: the Law of growth, the Law of expansion, and the Law of intensity. All three are illustrated by the “tree of life”, showing how this tree grows, how it spreads out its foliage, and how it sinks its roots deep into the soil.
One must be firmly rooted. Such is the first Law. Then grow and assert yourself. At that moment open yourself, stretch out your arms to feel your radiation around you, and then bring the universe back to you with head held high, for it touches the sun. Be deep, wide, tall, truly like a tree of life.
Purusha in its manifestation still depends on Purusha. It is by nature opposed to Purusha, so that between the two a life-giving current may be established. As soon as sakti appears, it already contains in itself the three initial Laws which give it its material density.
If Purusha chooses to pay an active role, its sakti will always be passive. Om the other hand, if Purusha chooses to be passive, its sakti will always be active. While the passive element stands back, the active element takes different forms. Each form or each movement gives rise to new Laws, which, if the movement ceases, will be reenfolded within one another and will return to the initial force that gave them birth.
Thus in Shivaism, Shiva, representing the spirit, is always passive, and his saktis, representing various aspects of manifestations in the world, have different functions under different names: Uma, Gauri, Annapurna, Parvati, Kali, Durga, and so forth. In Vaishnavism, on the other hand, Vishnu is the active element. He is the creator who has manifested himself in different forms in different incarnations, displaying a gradual voluntary evolution. The constant activity of Vishnu is to maintain the world, whereas his sakti is secret, inner and completely passive. She is called Shri, meaning beauty and harmony. She is the symbol of the lotus in full bloom. Shri is the secret in the heart of women.
The sound (bija) in the sacred word (mantra) is the vibration, which causes matter to pass to spirit, or conversely, spirit to pass to matter. Hence its great importance in spiritual techniques. Every being has his own vibration which, in either a clear or confused way, is equivalent to a formula of coagulation or of a possible dissolution. On the horizontal plane, in ordinary life, this mantric vibration is expressed by a configuration (yantra) which is the basic individual diagram used by the force emanating from oneself at no matter what degree of materialization.
This force flows out in complete disorder. It is instinctive. It obeys all the outer attractions and associates itself with all the automatic movements of prakriti, whatever they may be. Those who are conscious of the power of this spontaneous force direct their effort towards preventing its uncontrolled emanation and towards canalizing it without producing any mutilation.
Then one must learn to know it, to guide it, to love it as it is, so as to tame it and give it a way of expression. The sacred sound (bija) is that very force which, when necessary, is used against itself. This has nothing to do with the invocations or sacred (mantras) which are repeated to create a state of openness or surrender; but only with the seed- syllable itself.
There are four Tantric Laws that concern Unity:
1. Cosmic unity (brahmanda), which is, the expansion of the self up to touching the sky, a passionate love for the sensory universe in all its forms, until it brings within ourselves the vibration of the Vedic formula: “ The earth is my mother, I am the child of the earth.”
2. The Psychic unity (prakrtyanda) existing between the real inner being and the ego with all its impulses. This unity is the thread of life connecting all experiences lived through up until our discovery of knowledge.
3. Causal unity (mayanda ), which is the progressive discovery of the forces and Laws within the heart of Prakriti.
4. Spiritual unity (saktyanda), which is the harmonious association of our soul, our essence, the “I”, and the force of life, the most subtle Prakriti.
There is a basic rule for approaching any one of these Tantric Laws, which is to understand that the body is the instrument of life. It follows that any stiffening or hardening, that is, any tension in thought or in body, prevents a conscious extension towards the infinite.
Now, as regards the spiritual quest: if you consciously hold within yourself three-quarters of your power and use only one-quarter to respond to any communication coming from others, you can stop the automatic, rapid, and thoughtless movement outward, which leaves you with a feeling of emptiness, of having been absorbed by life. This stopping of the movement outwards is not self-defense, but rather an effort to have the response given come from within, from the deepest part of one’s being. This process reverses the natural movement of prakriti and brings back energy to its seed form. Let this become your way of communicating with others.
Something in yourself is awakened, and by this interiorization you begin a movement in the direction opposite from what is taking place outwardly. Thereby two movements are produced in you. One of them goes outward and the other goes inward. The latter is the movement of the higher Prakriti uniting with the immobile Purusha. This is the moment in which prakriti surrenders, in which there is no struggle.
The Law of life is the same. As the physicalcells build the body, the germ cells are concentrated within and retain their energy for a later creation. We imagine that we create by projecting outwards, whereas real creation takes place through suction and absorption. When this power of absorption becomes natural, you discover that creation, radiation, communication and all similar processes come to you spontaneously.
In Samkhya, this spontaneous creation is called dharmamegha, or the cloud of energy that pours forth multiple powers, for behind this creation there is the Void.
All spiritual search is directed towards a shining point, which can be approached only from the periphery of a big circle and in many different ways. Samkhya is the logical science that makes it possible to see the movements of prakriti and to dissociate oneself from it on the plane of life itself. This is the opposite of the attitude of so many seekers who, in order to escape from the clutches of prakriti and turn away from it, run away from the world to follow a primitive discipline that mutilates their life to such an extent that it no longer has any connection with reality.
Feeling oneself dissociated from prakriti does not mean that one has become her master. To master prakriti requires inner work and attentive observation of sakti’s energy. This energy is a fully awakened power, which is not yet tamed. Only when prakriti is conquered and mastered does Life within life, in the midst of all prakriti’s erratic movements, become the state described as Shiva-sakti in the heart of the cosmic Laws.
The whole theory of the Void is that of the luminous ether (akasa). Sound (sabda) and speech (vak) come from akasa, and therefore also the idea of a creator God who in order to manifest Himself, uses five elements and five sensations.
The five elements belong to God, to the descending Law; the five sensations belong to man, to the ascending Law. To approach a direct experience, we have only the authority of the sacred Scriptures and the experiences of the saints and yogis who have gone before us. The work of transformation in the course of evolution can only be done by oneself on oneself. A master, of course, can activate it, and fellow disciples can help in sustaining the effort, but the seeker will be entirely alone throughout his attempt and many times he will confuse the means with the end to be attained.
Some notions are occasionally given but always in a veiled form which can be interpreted in different ways, such as:
“One must be subtle enough to feel the presence of the mother, for life begins with an odour…
“One must be subtle enough to discover where the father is, for life ends with a sound…”
in studying the Tantras, one discovers progressively thanks to sound and by means of sound, how the idea, by Taking on destiny, gradually becomes the object that is perceived. The two linked words “Shiva-sakti” create the vibration by which the spirit takes on the destiny of matter. Every time this double word is pronounced one must refer also to what it contains in the ascending Law for it is the passage from one level to the next. In every sensation pertaining to the ascending Law, each movement begins with heat, continues with the materiality of food and light, and reaches luminous ether, that is, the Void.
The three Laws of sakti always remain veiled. They are the Laws of pure Existence (sat), of pure Spirit (cit) and pure Bliss (ananda). Another Law, however, the Law of phenomena, is projected on to the screen of consciousness.
The first of the three laws is that of pure Existence, sat; although having the appearance of complete immobility it is in itself a vibration or a movement. This inner vibration is the source of all existing movement. The first movement is a straight line between two points and it is this straight line that represents the immobility of Shiva. Prakriti appears and takes possession of the pattern of straight lines, weaving onto it her pattern in the shape of a spider’s web, with broken lines forming angles, surrounded by concentric circles.
Finally, by the force of sakti these curves detach themselves from the horizontal plane to form a spiral ascending around its own axis.
The second Law is that of pure Bliss. Ananda is the result of the movement having taken place in consciousness, a calm movement like an undulation of the water. This undulation contains life, which is in itself the very essence of sakti. This pattern of flexible undulation is nevertheless made up of short broken lines.
The third Law is that of pure Spirit. Cit has a very definite function between the vibration originating in the immobile source and the wave that is the essence of sakti. It is the awakened consciousness and its role is to unite sat with ananda.
In one-way or another, it can be said of sat that if I look within myself, I see that sakti draws me inwardly. I become conscious of the immobility of the world and of the straight line between two points representing Purusha. Of ananda it can be said that if I am conscious of what is around me, I project myself outward and enter into the very play of sakti. At that moment I feel all the waves passing over the water as being the pulsations of life itself. On the other hand, cit, the pure consciousness of the spirit, observes what is happening between sat and ananda.
The expression Shiva-sakti reveals the ultimate reality beyond the concept Purusha-Prakriti of classical Samkhya. Shiva-sakti is the state of the fully realized being, that is, an inward state of enlightened consciousness. The seeker who has not yet dissociated himself from the prakriti outside himself and from the prakriti within himself, sees the immobile Purusha as a state of pure consciousness and prakriti as being an unconscious and mechanical force.
Prakriti and Shakti thus denote two different states of consciousness, the second being a higher state of consciousness, tending towards the limitless. Prakriti is a kinetic energy, whereas sakti is a latent potential energy returning to itself and containing in itself all the possibilities of development of Prakriti’s movements.
If I speak to you, I am using prakriti’s power of exteriorization. If I collect in myself what I wish to say to you, I have the choice of speaking if I so desire or of saying nothing, thus demonstrating the interiorized power of sakti, which contains in itself the kinetic capacity of prakriti.
The inner fluctuations and commotions in the course of spiritual discipline (sadhana) can be expressed schematically, according to the modifications in the passive and active qualities involved.
The lower aspect or exteriorization pratriti-Purusha
+ -
The higher aspect or interiorisation Shiva-sakti
+ -
from the point of view of samkhya, Prakriti can be an active energy only if it has a passive substratum opposing its movement. This fact is represented mythological by kali(time) dancing on the naked body of Shiva(infinity). From the psychological viewpoint, consciousness is the surface of a mirror across which reflections of movement pass rapidly. Consciousness remains immobile.
In the mystical experience it is known that Prakriti in movement and immobile Purusha are but one. Here the Vaishnavite Tantras bring a clarifying element to samkhya by saying that the visible movement in Prakriti is Purusha’s movement permeating it. The two are no longer dissociated. Spiritualized Prakriti is nothing more than the form of Pyrysha. Mystically, this gives us the following scheme:
Prakriti-Purusha the two movements of existence having become one.
Krishna-Radha the mystical couple par excellence.
Krishna, as Purusha is fully conscious in the midst of his activity. Radha, in her transcendental love for Krishna, is in ecstasy (Samadhi) even in her role of prakriti. Psychologically, according to vaishnavite Tantrism, Radha, through her passivity, becomes the substratum of the activity of Krishna-Purusha. The roles are thus reversed, producing the following diagram:
Shiva-Radha are nirguna the transcendental aspect of existence of power
Kali-krishna are saguna the phenomenal aspect of existence and power.
That is why, in India, so many children are named Kali-Krishna.
The Trantric scriptures reveal the necessary deviations making it possible for creation to escape from the ceaseless mechanical repetitions of prakriti.
If there were no deviations, one could easily imagine creation-taking place without discontinuity between the immobile Purusha and Prakriti manifested in its numerous aspects. But the primordial energy of sakti constantly produces deviations, both in the subtle densities of the spirit and in course densities of matter. Once set in motion, this process cannot stop. Therein lies the whole chance of creation towards a possible evolution, and man’s opportunity to move upwards, provided that the deviation by broken lines turns upwards in a spiral (kundalini). The amplitude of their curve can be very wide without change of direction.
The curve of deviation can also be repeatedly retraced on the horizontal plane, attracted by its point of departure.
In that case, because of the endless repetitions that will take place, the primordial energy will be frittered away and finally lost.
The figure “3” represents the “Law of Three” which contains in itself the whole of life. In the beginning, there was the One, Purusha. From its inner vibration, the One projected its opposite, as light casts a shadow, which is its substratum. In this movement, spirit-matter, bound by the energy, which belongs equally to the one and the other, can become perceptible. This can be demonstrated in the following manner:
One is the “I”- subject manifested by light – sattva
Two is the “I”- object manifested by shadow – tamas
Between the two aspects of I- subject and I- object the perpetual movement of life develops, that is, all forms of manifestation on the lower plane of life. This perpetual movement of energy is rajas.
Thus life, through the energy of rajas, is a development of movements acting between the two poles of sattva-tamas.
From the plane of rajas, which is ours, a certain state of consciousness can exist in which it is possible to perceive what is above (sattva) and what is below (tamas).
What is above can be known by sudden intuition or glimpsed through imagination, but it is impossible to reach it without a shock provoked by the vision itself. A through discipline of the mind is the indispensible preparation for this.
What is below is the weight of ignorance, the inertia of the primitive prakriti. It is also the field of individual work. Before discovering the stages leading towards sattva, one must become familiar with the opposition of heavy matter.
The energy of rajas proceeds from sakti, which holds sway in the space between sattva and tamas. The energy of rajas is the desire that creates life. Without this desire, that space would be the Void without movement or action. Actually, life exists only through a deviation of energy, through propulsion, which sooner or later returns to its starting point.
This movement of exteriorization and of interiorization seems to vary in its possibility of extension according to one’s understanding of it. In fact, one is in front of a point (bindu), which contains everything in itself. When energy creates a movement, this point becomes a straight line. To return to its starting-point, a deviation is a necessity. The straight line will break and, through broken lines formatting angles, will return to its starting-point.
Three angles are necessary for a movement to enclose a space and thereby create a surface, a form. This form is a triangle. Every action can be described as a triangle. If the angles are equal, the action is perfect and balanced. The three lines are the qualities of prakriti (gunas) and the space is that of sakti spread out and in balance. Sakti can also gather itself together at the central point (bindu), which signifies, in a perfect action or in a perfect meditative state- the union of sakti and purusha, a state of perfect awakened consciousness.
While following a spiritual discipline a man tries at a certain time, by interiorization during active meditation, to feel in himself the mobile qualities and tendencies of the inner being. It means coming into contact with the world in world his own Law of three functions. On our level of understanding we can perceive the triangle of our life formed by the three gunas and the numerous irregular triangles formed by our actions.
The subdivision and expansion of the three gunas (tamas-rajas-sattva) in relation to the three fundamental intrinsic qualities of the primiordial prakriti make up different worlds in accordance with the relative distance of these worlds from one another. The greater the subdivision of the gunas, the greater is the subdivision of the Law of Three. A seeker can never have access to any world higher than his own unless he has completely absorbed in himself the gunas of his own world to the point of being one with them. This means that his inner equilibrium is then brought into accord with his prakriti.
In the following the figures indicate the number of gunas in each world. From one world to the next, the number is multiplied by two, whether the worlds are taken as in the cosmic order or as worlds interiorized in man. The number represents the subdivision of the Law of three, which becomes heavier the further it moves from the primordial prakriti. Three gunas are added in each world to
The sum of gunas from the proceding world.
3 3 gunas of primordial prakriti.
6 3+3--- 6+ 3--- 9
12 9+3--- 12+ 9--- 21
24 21+3--- 24+21--- 45
48 45+3--- 48+45--- 93
96 93+3--- 96+93--- 189
192 189+3--- 192……
The triangle shows how three broken lines enclose a surface. This surface has two dimensions, but there is a third dimension to be attained, in conformity with a Vedic Law indicating three successive stages. They follow one another in the manner indicated below:
1. The stage when the potter’s wheel sets up a circular movement.
2. The stage when the clay placed on the wheel becomes malleable; the circular movement can then give a form to the clay, but it still remains on the same level.
3. The stage when a spindle is fixed on the wheel. The clay at once comes up in a spiral. The hub will even reach a point slightly higher than the spindle-axis.
This movement explains why there are moments of progression in life and moments of regression, and time, which elapses between these different movements. In spiritual experience, every man ought to aspire to raise himself around an axis, and every woman to become a perfect triangle in order to create perfect forms.
In the following diagram the seeker stands between two triangles. He who devotes his life to spiritual search, thanks to his inner discipline, absorbs the sakti of the triangle of the infinite ideal that is above him. Below him the downward pointing triangle contains all possible forms of manifestation.
Perfect yoga in the heart of life is represented by the two integrated triangles with a single centre. A master is one who voluntarily enters into the manifested prakriti. His disciples and pupils are so many reflections of himself which he recognizes without being attached to them. He stands in the centre of the two triangles.
As regards the symbol of the triangle, one should know that Tantric esotericism represents sakti as the water chestnut (srngataka), a peculiar pyramid-shaped fruit growing in swamps. There again you have the idea of density.
The radiation of energy, one of them centripetal and the other centrifugal. The interaction of these two movements produces the luminous sphere of all existence, technically known as bindu, the point, which is situated in the centre of the pyramid. Creation may appear and start from any point, going from the centre outward, or from the periphery towards the centre. Sakti never stops creating, whether she spreads herself out or concentrates herself within. In fact these movements are complementary to one another, just as the phenomena of denseness and rarefaction.
What we need is to break the inertia that hinders or slows the passage from one state to another. I use the word tapasya in speaking of this movement, and the instantaneous power of transformation in this passage, whether it be centripetal or centrifugal.
The Vedas tell us that we have a “father in Heaven” and a “ Mother on Earth.” They are linked together by the atmosphere full of clouds, full of quarrels between the gods and quarrels between the demons, full of book knowledge and all the philosophies of life. The sastras and the puranas bind us with chains called spirituality, orthodoxy, politics, castes and economic conditions.
What does man possesses that could eventually free him? As often as not he is aware of it, for prakriti jealously holds him under her sway. And yet most of his instinctive movements are right. His original, very primitive nature can serve him in his thought as in his feelings. And this is his chance, for he will gradually discover in himself a higher spiritual force which will lead him to worship the divine Mother in one or another of her aspects, and an animal force through which he will identify himself with one of the divine Mother’s vehicles: tiger, cat, swan, peacock, etc.
The cosmic Laws act on the level of our understanding, but we are able to perceive only a very few of them. As a result, we can adapt the conditions of our life only to those Laws we have recognized. The cosmic Laws operate in time. And the notion of time, beyond our limitations is unknown to us. What consciousness of time do people in India have? This concept is difficult to understand until you integrate it within yourself.
The Tantras indicate a method to realize the zero value of time. Technically, this value is called Bindu. It is said that the pronunciation of a sacred formula (mantra) takes three moras and a half. The half is the point (bindu) which contains the all and is attained by drawing in the consciousness through seven stages, each stage in a geometric progression with different intervals: ½+(1/4… 1/8… 1/16… 1/32… 1/64… 1/128… 1/256)… of a mora.
In reality, this is the alternating movement of consciousness in an inner concentration lasting as long as the recitation of the japa (sacred formulas) until one comes in contact with the Void. This Bindu, more subtle than the atom, and Brahman, “the Vaster than the vast,” are the same. Both are the Void. Time moves between the two. Between the two, there are the coils of manifestation like the coils of the serpent, which represents the innate force (sakti). This innate force, also called kundalini, is the operative force between the two modes of the void.
Chapter IV
MASTERS AND DISCIPLES
The disciples, in no matter what ashram, are not attracted primarily by pure metaphysical research, but by the person and the radiance of the Guru, who becomes for them the beacon-light on the path, the ideal made real. Thus the rule of “loyalty to the Guru” immediately comes into play. The Guru’s authority (gurudom) is boundless.
Traditionally, without even being expressed, the Guru’s promise to his disciples is as follows: “I am here to lead you toward liberation. Do my work obediently and you will be saved. You will know the highest ecstasy and will be freed from the round of births and death (samsara). If I go to heaven, you will come to heaven with me; if I go to hell, you will come to hell with me…”
The Guru’s responsibility is immense; he takes upon himself the karma of all those he accepts. For their part the disciples are happy to throw their burden on his shoulders. Is the Master great enough to wish that one of his disciples would one day be more renowned than himself? If he does not wish it, a descending Law immediately operates. Owing to the Guru’s hold over his disciple, there is often something morbid in their relationship, like that of father to son when the son is doomed to remain a son without ever becoming a father.
In the preliminary part of the Samkhya discipline, the disciple’s relationship to the Guru is compared to a seed that has been buried in the earth. The seed is left to develop by itself in the heart of what feeds it. It absorbs the Guru. It will become a plant, bearing foliage, flowers, fruit and seeds. In so doing, it transcends the ground in which it grew and becomes directly responsible for its relation with Great Nature and the life it contains in itself.
An attitude particularly conducive to rapid progress is that of total obedience to the Guru in all things: thoughts, attitudes and actions. The aim is to become the well-tilled ground the Master needs. From tradition, everyone knows that with rare exceptions this field, ploughed with such care, will only be used in a future life when the right impulse will take possession of it. This slow and deep preparation is most important.
Great is the illusion of the man who believes that he can reach the goal after a few months of efforts! His ambition will be stopped at precisely the point where he becomes conscious of his personal destination (svadharma), of his own law as it seeks its own way in the midst of cosmic Laws. This is equivalent to discovering the Divine that lives in the heart, to serve it, to worship it but nothing more. A wild rosebush can be forced to produce big flowers of its kind, but a wild rosebush will never be able to produce anything but wild roses; any grafting promised by a Guru would mean that he is an impostor. And pseudo-Gurus are legion! This moment of self-knowledge is crucial. It means the death of the illusory ideal and often brings violent reactions. But if the ideal becomes interiorized, that moment of consciousness will be a feeling of unity on the level of the understanding attained. Here we are in the very heart of the living power.
At the beginning, a Guru and his disciple are like a mother and child, joined together by the umbilical cord. There is no tension whatsoever in this attachment. If there were any, it would mean that the “psychic being” which is to grow and develop between them until it becomes the “heat” of their blood, would never take shape for the lack of necessary substances.
This psychic being must be nourished with care. It is both cause and effect meaning that it exists out of time. That is the reason why there is no longer any “why” or “how” in a well established relationship between Guru and disciple. Master and disciple can each say to the other: “I am you…” the same vibration animates them. One day, the “child” between them will disappear, when certain vibrations mathematically reach a known point of reabsorption. Then life in its reality becomes the Guru.
There are four kinds of devotees:
1. He who becomes a devotee because he is in danger.
2. He who wants to obtain grace, help, health, security from the master, or simply to live close to him, for his own sake.
3. He who has a thirst for knowledge. In such a case, the Master’s physical person and way of life are of little importance to him.
4. He who knows without being aware of it, who by nature is good soil. Such a devotee welcomes obstacles on his path because they increase his determination. He has his own roots. For him, what matters is to live an experience, no matter how difficult.
Does a Master care for this last kind of devotee? The situation is illustrated by the story of Lord Narayan, who one day was resting after having stationed two faithful guardians at his door. Jaya (victory) and Vijaya (total victory), to drive off intruders. Two risis arrive from afar and ask to see Narayan. A violent quarrel breaks out at the door of the God, so much so that the risis curse the two guardians. Awakened by the noise, Lord Narayan appears, bowing to the risis; at the same time he is also greatly upset, for nothing can erase the curse the risis have called down. It must take effect. So Narayan says to his two guardians, “Since you have been cursed, you must enter the round of births and deaths, but I can allow you to choose your fate. Do you wish to be born among my enemies?”
“What will be the difference?” ask Jaya and Vijaya.
“If you are among my devotees, it will take you seven lives to reach me; if you are among my enemies, it will only take you three!”
And so it happened that Jaya and Vijaya willingly became great enemies of Narayan, constantly aware of their hate and therefore constantly remembering the god in spite of the severe obstacles they had to overcome to draw near him.
The relationship between Master and disciple is established by an infallible Law, with a view to the esoteric transmission of the cosmic Laws and their functioning. Once this relationship is clearly established, one can neither break out of it nor make decisions for oneself, nor wish to sidestep the Law once it has been recognized and one’s part in it discovered. That would only be mental self-deception.
In this connection what is most difficult to attain is the surrender of the mind, because for some time, until a real new birth takes place on a different plane, this surrender seems to be a state of alarming torpor. To accept this state of passivity is always painful.
During all this period the subjective attachment of the disciple to the Guru exists in contract to the objective love of the Guru for his disciple. What the Master can transmit is neither an idea nor a form, but a means. The Kaushitaki Upanishad describes the traditional way in which the dying “father” passes on his power to his “son.”
It can be interpreted as the passing on of power from the Guru to his disciple: “Let me place within you my word, my breath, and my vision; what I perceive, what I taste, likewise my actions, pains and pleasures; the concepts to which I have been attached, and my search itself. In you I place my spirit and my consciousness. I gave you the breath of my life (prana). May power, sanctity and honors go with you…” The son or disciple answers, “May your words be fulfilled…Go in peace!”
In the life of the Buddha, this moment is the one when he set the wheel of the Law in motion within those around him, saying, “Go, and speak of the Law for the benefit of many. When the soil is well tilled, sow one seed of knowledge in it, nothing else, and go on further.”
Every Guru has only a very few key ideas at the root of his teaching. These ideas are the very ones that brought him to his realisation. No others. He will constantly bring his teaching back to the fruits of his personal effort, which keep his spiritual experience alive.
Some Masters try to express these ideas by a single key word, others dilute them with explicit formulations in order to pass them on to a larger number of disciples. So there are two methods, that of interiorisation and that of exteriorisation, which the orthodox Hindu recognises at once. Both of them are traditional. Both of them demand total sacrifice and cost dearly.
No Master transmits the totality of what he has received. As soon as he feels in accordance with the Laws known to him, he utilises them like chemical formulae, transmitting only fragments to those around him. On the other hand, no fragment of knowledge is ever transmitted before the disciple has perceived it or had a foretaste of it. In summary, the Master is nothing other than an indispensible intermediary between the Laws and those who are ready to discover them. Nor does he ever teach more than a tenth of what he knows. Likewise, air is only a tenth part of ether, and water only a tenth part of air, and so forth. It cannot be otherwise. The Master cannot allow his strength to be further utilised. This explains why there is such a rapid degradation between the level of the Guru and that of the third generation of his disciples. A well-known cosmic Law comes into play here.
What is important to the Master, after having consciously reached the zenith of his upward curve, it is to see the downward curve with equal consciousness and to choose the point from which he will teach. This point will keep constantly moving in response to his living search.
Every saint or Guru speaks according to a particular “principle” adopted and faithfully served in which lives a hidden Truth. The Guru is perfectly aware of this. This fragment of truth belonging to ultimate reality is the only thing of real value whereas the principle in itself, on the human level, merely helps to create the strict form of a discipline.
Certain sacred formulas (mantras) have been revealed and many commentaries written. Their form is known, even to the number of vibrations in each letter. But only the Guru knows their bijas, which are his potent semen or seed. He never reveals them. Were he to do so, he himself would become like an empty vessel. Whether the death of the Guru occurs after he has passed on his seed or after he has let it be reabsorbed in himself is of no importance, for the disciple who is a Master by nature will have found by himself the exact resonance of the bijas in his Guru’s mantra.
In the Tantras, the mantra has four forms:
1. It is given in a detailed form as in a hymn (stotra).
2. It is condensed into one formula (mala).
3. This formula is condensed into a single word (nama).
4. This word becomes only a pure sound (bija).
The mind must be led from the hymn to the bija, which is the seed, the pure vibration that gives birth to the psychic body of the disciple.
There are great Masters and small Masters. Both of them do exactly the same work, for great Masters are for great disciples and small Masters for small disciples. The relationship between Master and disciple is the same in both cases.
The disciples, because of their avidity and competitive spirit, are always anxious to discover the sources from which their Master has drawn his knowledge. Some of them ask questions, discuss and argue; others even demand proof.
And what do they find? Nothing worthwhile, for the Master transmits what has become his own substance. It is through this substance that the disciple will taste what he is able to assimilate of any given Law.
No matter what stage he has reached, a disciple must learn not to talk about what he has received. All experiences, spectacular and fleeting, are no more than the vision of the level he trying to reach. To believe in them and talk about them is a pure illusion of the ego. Because of this, a period of silence after each experience is a wise measure of protection
Sometimes, faced with a difficulty of understanding, the disciple blames this on his Guru and goes away; he is driven downward without being aware of it, caught by law of gravity. And so he becomes a parasite in the spiritual search fed by his ego.
Every great Guru, when the time comes, drives away, from himself and from those close to him, the disciple to whom over a long period he has given a great deal. He releases him from all bonds, blesses him and entrusts him with a special task to fulfill, for “ there cannot be two tigers in the same forest.”
The disciple who is called to leave is fundamentally different from the disciples who live under the direct inspiration of the Master. He takes away with him a seed to be sown where he goes. He leaves without anyone knowing it, after he has secretly received from the Master the “gift of power” which will be his support in life.
This is the origin of the tradition of wandering. The one who goes away changes his name. His trace is lost. No one asks about him. On the lower vital plane, the wildcat, when the right time comes, drives her kittens away from her. At the risk of their lives, they must find their own living space and hunting ground.
The disciple who leaves possesses nothing except the fact of his belonging to the Laws, for he has been fed by the Guru’s essence. Either he grows and develops with fresh vigour because of the very separation he has lived through and the difficulties that await him, or he will perish without anyone hearing about it. In the latter case, he becomes humus useful to prakriti, a humus with a definite function to fulfill, however humble.
On the other hand, most of a Master’s disciples remain close to him all their lives. They are a necessity for the Guru, just as the presence of the Guru is a necessity for them. These disciples have a precise role to fill. They are the fine matter, which the Master uses to manifest his work in Prakriti. Without them, the Master would be merely radiance, but through their presence these disciples establish the circle in which the Master’s vibrations create the ferment of possible evolution.
Until the disciple assumes his responsibilities, it is the Master’s stomach that works and digests for him. But the disciple continues to question his Master: “Who are you?” Krishnamurti answers by saying: “I have never read any sacred books……” the disciples of Ma Anandamayi cut things short with the words: “She has never received anything from anyone, since she already knew everything when she was born!” Also, one could answer with another question: “Who can tell what the Pathans, that proud people of the Northern Frontier, are made of?” They were originally Aryans who become Muslims after having been Buddhist; but above all, they are to this day the vigorous children of their own land.
Some of the disciples who left their ashram have acted like all the mystics who, at a given moment, called the crowds to them. Likewise, Sri Ramakrishna in his exaltation used to climb to the roof of the temple at Dakshineshvar near Calcutta and, weeping, would cry out, “Come to me from everywhere, disciples! So that I may teach you…I am ready!” others, like Sri Ramana Maharshi, through their silence and concentration have compelled those who approached them to ask themselves the question, “Who am I?”
Among “the independents” wandering about, there were those called Carvakas because they rebelled against all learned, expounded orthodoxies. Some have found fame without looking for it. Some have allowed followers to gather around them. Others have repeatedly fled from the slavery created by the excessive solicitude of their disciples. Still others have accepted this bondage with a definite aim known to them alone. Many of them have lived incognito in the midst of the world, hidden in the crowd and have died without leaving any apparent trace. Since the Carvakas have never been written about, it is only indirectly, through the reactions they aroused, that their name has circulated by word of mouth. The orthodox followers of every tradition have pursued and persecuted them, considering their freedom and influence too great.
Should one attempt to say what Carvakas are? It is written that Brihaspati, a Vedic sage, was their ancestor. Fragments of their teachings are scattered throughout the Katha Upanishad, the Mahabharata, and also the Buddhist texts, since in the time of the Buddha, their voice was listened to very attentively. But their enemies gave such distorted descriptions of their positivist, anti-ritualistic philosophy centered on the search for the “I” that later hid themselves with their well-guarded secret. They knew the paths leading to knowledge.
There is an enormous disparity between quality and quantity; quality hides within, whereas quantity spreads outward.
He who possesses the gift of captivating the imagination of the many and transforming it into creative imagination is a born Guru. When a lamp is used, its light loses none of its brilliance, but when one takes a pound of sugar out of a bag of provisions it leaves an empty space in the mass of material. When receiving the darshan of the Master, one touches the spirit itself, but as soon as one makes arrangements to stay close to him, the “downward curve” begins and the Law of gravity immobilises the spirit.
One cannot escape from this Law, nor from its process of materialization. Owing to its constantly moving densities, matter will always be either somewhat more or somewhat less receptive to spirit.
The Guru sees what is happening with intelligence that is not the intelligence of his disciples. He dwells at the centre of an esoteric circle, which, of course, carries its own limitations; but this circle is far above the circle in which the disciples move. In comparison with them, he is living in knowledge.
However the Guru is well aware that this knowledge is relative, and that he himself is a seeker in relation to knowledge existing in the circle above him. A guru who thinks he has reached the end of his search would be an imposter; a disciple who imagines him thus to satisfy himself would be a fantastic, cutting himself off from the Laws, from the ascending and descending movements that support life.
Why would you want the moment of knowledge to last? Even Brahma cannot keep what he creates for himself! Everything springs from him and immediately flows out. Millions of gods or of Laws at once take possession of it. We are a humble part of those who are trying to swim up stream. And what do we find? Close by we hear the repeated calls of Krishnamurti, who is becoming impatient, because, despite the shocks he produces, Great Nature does not transform itself. He halts people caught in the circumstances of life and cries, “Stop! Understand who you are! Understand what you are doing!”
Elsewhere, in the sphere she governs, the Mother of Sri Aurobindo’s ashram declares, “O Nature, material Mother, you said that you would collaborate in the transformation of man; and there is no limit to splendor of such collaboration.” The unfolding of time enters into play here, in the very play of Prakriti.
Ma Anandamayi was the first in history, faithful, moreover, to the Buddhist tradition still widespread in Bengal, to roam about Northern India, stopping to sleep and eat only in temple rest houses, completely cut off from the rhythm of life. For years she lived almost continually in ecstasy without any relationship with her surroundings. She returned gradually to the human state, at first unconsciously through a known process. Now she has voluntarily returned within the rhythm of Prakriti to transmit her experience to those around her and teach a way of possible expansion.
What tools will the Master use? The ones that suit him best. What difference is there between a bare room like the one in which we are speaking together now and a room filled with a hodgepodge like a bazaar? The Master utilises the means that are needed to bring his disciple to him. Some day perhaps, if such is his wish and need, he will take the very bones of his disciple, crush them, make a pie out of them and offer them to the gods. He can make use of the trust the disciple has placed in him, his submission, and even the essence of his being (bhuta), to the uttermost limits.
So what remains of the disciple, once his bones have been crushed? Nothing. For him it is death. There are deliberate deaths in which the blood flows, as in many temple sacrifices where the bodies of the decapitated goats keep on jumping and twitching until all life departs.
What is it that is freed by death? There is also the secret of dogs, those beasts branded by the curse of impurity, who hide under a bush to die with a dignity the sannyasins envy and hope to have at the moment of their own death. One of the hardest commandments in the initiation into sannyasa is: “When the day comes, know how to die like the dog, with dignity, unnoticed.”
Does the disciple know that by his death he is serving the “essence of the Guru?” Can ashes know what use they have? If he so desires, the Guru can swallow up his disciple. He can use the liberated energy, just as we do in eating the food we need. The interdependence of functions exists; it is right and normal. The Bhagavad Gita states clearly how few out of a million pass through the narrow gate. But the aspiration is there. How can we know what is above us, since we only control the relationship of the planes of consciousness that we have acquired? That is why death in the Guru’s essence” is the highest goal we can desire. We cannot lift our prakriti any higher. The best we can do is to unify, in all our reactions, the raw material of our nature with the movements of the spirit and to place these reactions in the heart- the heart that becomes the “seat of the Guru” (gaddi). This movement in itself is the voluntary death of the ego. It is only in this voluntary death that the Guru sees what is permanent in us: the fact of existing (sat). He can only give it form and animate it. In this he is like the Creator in Genesis, removing one of Adam’s ribs to free the divine Sakti who is ready to give birth. Without this shock coming from above, no transformation is possible.
Another transformation is to give birth in ourselves to Sakti’s child. This child will manifest a different prakriti than ours, different in quality. The child will call right away for a plaything. He must hold something in his hands to have the pleasure of throwing it on the ground, of picking it up, of giving it away, and taking it back, without any logic in his movements, just for the sake of moving around and discovering what life is. So always surround yourselves with plenty of toys, for yourselves and for others…..
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