After reading this, I tried it out and it felt very good. Then it happened that I thought, but why just put Her on me when troubled and not always and so for the last months, in the evening when I was lying in bed praying, I would always put Her on my chest for 30 mins or so.
And it really helps me – in a way I can not formulate in words, though, but it is something very precious.
Also, my son (he is 5 years old) was in my office and saw Savitri lying there on my table. And he asked, ‘What is this book? I want to take it home’. And for some time, he was trying to read Savitri in bed. He was going over the words and the pages, looking at them. It was very beautiful to see.
Also, my wife was reading the books of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and also Savitri. And she had some very nice experiences with Sri Aurobindo. It was really humbling to see how fast, by the Grace, she built a strong connection in a short time.
As for me, I am listening right now a lot to the Readings of Savitri by Jhumur-di. There is something in her reading that has a very strong effect on me. And it is really like the Mother said about Savitri: The more you read it (or listen to it), the more marvellous it becomes. I am very grateful for this. And for everything the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have given us.
Also, I like the videos that you post from her, the Reflections on Savitri. There is just something in her way of being and sharing that really resonates with me.
Yes, also I remember your stories so well (about the Lord when he is in a blade of grass and nobody of the gods can blow it away or burn it. Or the story about that character called I think its “prince” (you said you did not find the story over AI) where he can not be killed because he always says the name of Krishna, but then Krishna himself says he will sit on the tip of the arrow, and the one with Krishna and Radha about psychic love, where he plays the flute a last time for her and then he breaks it never wanting to play it again.)
Also, I was listening to the videos where Nirodbaran shares his stories about Champaklal. How he served the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is so inspiring. And I love this subtle humour of Nirodbaran. And in the videos, when he remembers how The Mother and Sri Aurobindo called Champaklal. And also, when Nirodbaran says “Champaklal,” it is so beautiful.
In the last months, the Mother has helped me out of so many situations and showered her Grace on us. So that really the Faith grows and grows. That no matter the situation She will be there and She will help. And even when there was a fall or setback (or let’s say perceived fall or setback). These lines from Savitri always came: “This too the supreme Diplomat can use, He makes our fall a means for greater rise”. And so something is growing in the background. A hope, a strength, something that knows it just has to go on and it will go on. And also, the way challenges are dealt with has taken a new form. And somehow these lines are also always in the background (You were saying them once in a Savitri class that I listened to, and I always remember them):
Thy spirit’s fate is a battle and ceaseless march
Against invisible opponent Powers,
A passage from Matter into timeless Self.
Adventurer through blind unforeseeing Time,
A forced advance through a long line of lives,
It pushes its spearhead through the centuries.
Across the dust and mire of the earthly plain,
On many-guarded lines and dangerous fronts,
In dire assaults, in wounded slow retreats,
Or holding the ideal’s battered fort
Or fighting against odds in lonely posts,
Or camped in night around the bivouac’s fires
Awaiting the tardy trumpets of the dawn,
In hunger and in plenty and in pain,
Through peril and through triumph and through fall,
Through life’s green lanes and over her desert sands,
Up the bald moor, along the sunlit ridge
In serried columns with a straggling rear
Led by its nomad vanguard’s signal fires,
Marches the army of the waylost god.
– which brings me to my first question:
You know I feel very blessed with my family and so grateful, because there is a strong aspiration in all of us for the Divine. And I think this is the most important thing. The best foundation one can have in a family. (I think I also read somewhere that harmony in the family can only be found in the Mother, like when all members are connected in or to the Mother – I found that very beautiful).
And so, my wife is a very strong character, very self-reliant and can be very assertive. And I like it this way (my soul, anyway, loves it), but it was not always like this – because I had some mental constructions that had to go. Anyway, now it is much different. Although sometimes there are still some lower movements coming up (like competition, jealousy, anger, comparison). They have taken on a quite light nature now if they come up, but I noticed them still. I have offered them to the Mother and I really see how they are getting transformed. I just feel I need a bit of fine-tuning or, more accurately, “a king idea” as Sri Aurobindo has written in Savitri.
On how to see my wife, I listened to you saying some months ago about your wife: Here (like when giving a talk), I am a teacher, but at home I am a student. I liked that very much. What humility (and there is another element in it that I can not describe). That resonated so much with me. Also, when you shared the experiences with your wife from her birthday, where you wanted to give her (as you thought it to be the perfect present) the Mother’s Prayers and Meditations and the Mother gave her an experience of Her. I also remember that you said something like you have to see your wife as an expression of the Goddess (like sometimes Mahakali and sometimes Mahalakshmi). I also remember that you said when you have a wife and she wants to do this and that and you feel what is going on, but later on, you see you can sanction all the actions (like Purusha and Prakriti), then this harmonizes it. I liked that as well.
So I wanted to ask you how you are dealing with (or, I guess, better dealing with it) when things of comparison of spiritual experiences or progress came up in the relationship. Or when decisions have to be taken and you are not agreeing with each other. Because I (and I guess both of us, my wife and I) are always aspiring for the Divine Will to be done. And so I always offer these decisions to the Mother. And actually, then it turns out beautifully. Just sometimes one is in the heat of the situation or the decision has to be taken quickly (or sometimes it only looks like this) and I had to (and have to) learn to navigate through this. Also, I feel sometimes it is the Mother that is speaking through my wife and sometimes it is the human. And I am getting better at discriminating between the two. It is like the Mother said, look into yourself and see if the other person has a point, if there is something in you that needs to be changed.
You see, I want to love my wife fully and at the same time I don’t want to say ‘yes’ to everything when I clearly feel that there is a better way or maybe another way. At the same time, I don’t want us to be two egos clashing. I want the love to be strong and divinely guided. So that really in the relationship I fulfill my part completely.
This would be the first question and my second question:
By Her grace, I am taking Her name more and more. Remember and Offer. You once told me that when the psychic is active (or in the foreground), the offering is done automatically, but until then one has to use the agent of thought. Now, in my experience, I was always offering “bigger” things when I was in bed at home before sleeping, because I felt I was more relaxed, focused and it felt more convenient – also because I could offer them up.
During the day, I offer my work. But, for example, when during the day things come up like unpleasant feelings or a difficult situation, I was always just then calling Her, putting my focus on the nama-japa and away from the thing. And actually, it helps, of course (the feeling changes the situation changes). Because before I would actively try to offer them up (like with a gesture) or to offer them with a strong thought. But then my mind would kick in (I have quite a strong mental) and from time to time say “oh this is not really offered” or “that was not sincere enough” or things like this (it’s a bit like Sri Aurobindo said: What you reject violently in the mind comes back with a greater force). And then I would get into thinking, did I really offer it or not and so on (sometimes I was also in a meeting and I wanted to offer something, but then got more into thinking about it).
Sometimes this went on until at home, when I offered it then in the evening (although in the beginning, also the mind would doubt if it was offered or not). I think it is also because I think offering something is really quite simple, but I imagined it to be, or that it has to be such a big act. And because I read from the Mother that she said: Some things resist and don’t really want to be offered and you have to compel them. I was recently more thinking about this again, because I read that the Mother said some people have a very strong aspiration, but they have not cleaned up their room. So then after they have an opening or a nice experience, they are faced exactly with the opposite of their aspiration (or something comes up again that they have not looked at or did not want to). And I feel that was a bit of my case as well.
So basically, I want to clean up my room and go with a torch and light the corners and shine the light on the parts that need to be changed. As the Mother said, use these moments when something (unpleasant) comes up and shine the light on it to change it and really do it in the moment (and not later on). Unless it is really necessary for some things to contemplate about them and then to offer them.
I really aspire for simplicity in my offerings, I guess. Simplicity, simplicity! How sweet is the purity of Thy Presence!
So I would be really grateful for some guidance, clarity and sharing.
Happy to hear from you and do hope to see you sometime here, in our common home. As an elder brother in yoga, I can only share the essence of my experience if that helps.
First, about the magic mantra, the king idea, there are quite a few that I have used and applied with wonderful results.
The first, – and this is the king idea indeed, is that the Divine dwells in all and if, instead of focusing on surface difficulties and deficiencies, we focus on the Divine Presence within the person and keep this thought at the core, then all differences get resolved very soon. Love is the remedy, but love must dive deep, soar high, so that all difficulties are washed away. Love is the power one must harness, sublimate, purify, potentiate until it draws closer and closer to its Divine Origin. As Savitri reveals.
‘My love eternal sits throned on God’s calm;
For Love must soar beyond the very heavens
And find its secret sense ineffable;
It must change its human ways to ways divine,
Yet keep its sovereignty of earthly bliss.
O Death, not for my heart’s sweet poignancy
Nor for my happy body’s bliss alone
I have claimed from thee the living Satyavan,
But for his work and mine, our sacred charge.
Our lives are God’s messengers beneath the stars;
To dwell under death’s shadow they have come
Tempting God’s light to earth for the ignorant race,
His love to fill the hollow in men’s hearts,
His bliss to heal the unhappiness of the world.
For I, the woman, am the force of God,
He the Eternal’s delegate soul in man.
My will is greater than thy law, O Death;
My love is stronger than the bonds of Fate:
Our love is the heavenly seal of the Supreme.
I guard that seal against thy rending hands.
Love must not cease to live upon the earth;
For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven,
Love is the far Transcendent’s angel here;
Love is man’s lien on the Absolute.”‘
In other words, all else can be sacrificed but not love. It is not easy because human nature is driven by the ego
The path is certainly not easy. Remembering Her, calling Her more and more, is no doubt the way. But more importantly, to remember one’s aim always under every circumstance. And to pray for those whom we love and care for so that their heart is at peace and opens to the Divine Love and Grace.
This is the essence I can share and add a prayer that may Her Grace and Love surround us all.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
