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Category: Inspirational Quotes
Nolini Kanta Gupta on ‘Evil’
Here’s a thought provoking quote from Nolini Kanta Gupta to celebrate the summer solstice.
Evil, according to Sri Aurobindo, is not coeval or coterminous with the Divine, it is a later or derivative formation under given conditions, although within the range and sphere of the infinite Divine. Evil exists as a stern reality; even though it may be temporary and does not touch the essential reality, it is not an illusion nor can it be ignored, brushed aside or by-passed as something superficial or momentary and of no importance. It has its value, its function and implication. It is real, but it is not irremediable. It is contrary to the Divine but not contradictory. For even the Evil in its inmost substance carries or is the reality which it opposes or denies outwardly… As we have said, evil is a formation necessitated by certain circumstances, the circumstances changed, the whole disposition as at present constituted changes automatically and fundamentally.
Nolini Kanta Gupta
From ‘The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part 4’
For Janet
This morning my friend Janet’s long ordeal with cancer finally came to an end. The last time I saw her a few days ago in hospice I read her a passage from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri about the soul. I share it here as a tribute to her but also for the benefit of the reader. It’s long but well worth the time to read.
A being stood immortal in transience,
Deathless dallying with momentary things,
In whose wide eyes of tranquil happiness
Which pity and sorrow could not abrogate
Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes:
Observer of the silent steps of the hours,
Eternity upheld the minute’s acts
And the passing scenes of the Everlasting’s play.
In the mystery of its selecting will,
In the Divine Comedy a participant,
The Spirit’s conscious representative,
God’s delegate in our humanity,
Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent’s ray,
She had come into the mortal body’s room
To play at ball with Time and Circumstance.
A joy in the world her master movement here,
The passion of the game lighted her eyes:
A smile on her lips welcomed earth’s bliss and grief,
A laugh was her return to pleasure and pain.
All things she saw as a masquerade of Truth
Disguised in the costumes of Ignorance,
Crossing the years to immortality;
All she could front with the strong spirit’s peace.
But since she knows the toil of mind and life
As a mother feels and shares her children’s lives,
She puts forth a small portion of herself,
A being no bigger than the thumb of man
Into a hidden region of the heart
To face the pang and to forget the bliss,
To share the suffering and endure earth’s wounds
And labour mid the labour of the stars.
This in us laughs and weeps, suffers the stroke,
Exults in victory, struggles for the crown;
Identified with the mind and body and life,
It takes on itself their anguish and defeat,
Bleeds with Fate’s whips and hangs upon the cross,
Yet is the unwounded and immortal self
Supporting the actor in the human scene.
Through this she sends us her glory and her powers,
Pushes to wisdom’s heights, through misery’s gulfs;
She gives us strength to do our daily task
And sympathy that partakes of others’ grief
And the little strength we have to help our race,
We who must fill the role of the universe
Acting itself out in a slight human shape
And on our shoulders carry the struggling world.
This is in us the godhead small and marred;
In this human portion of divinity
She seats the greatness of the Soul in Time
To uplift from light to light, from power to power,
Till on a heavenly peak it stands, a king.
In body weak, in its heart an invincible might,
It climbs stumbling, held up by an unseen hand,
A toiling spirit in a mortal shape.
Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;
They looked upon each other, knew themselves,
The secret deity and its human part,
The calm immortal and the struggling soul.
Then with a magic transformation’s speed
They rushed into each other and grew one.
From Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri pgs 526-527
GOODNESS AS RECOGNITION OF DIVINE PRESENCE
“The goodness which one man may express in his relation to another is derived ultimately from his own divine soul and is an unconscious recognition of, as well as gesture to, the same divine presence in that other. Moreover, the degree to which anyone becomes conscious of his true self is the degree to which he becomes conscious of it in others. Consequently, the goodness of the fully illumined man is immeasurably beyond that of the conventionally moral man.”
Paul Brunton
THE ART OF EQUILIBRIUM – THE GREAT TEACHING OF THE MONKEY
By Medhananda – from his book The Way of Horus. This commentary is on the hieroglyph above.
Let us forget about doomsday and the last judgement.
The weighing described here is going on all the time
in ourselves.
Something in us not only maintains
our chemical and hormonal balance,
but also tries to prevent the heaviness of our heart
from upsetting our delicate psychological equilibrium.
On top of the balance sits THOTH,
the ancestral teacher,
ready to intervene and help us.
The power wearing the wolf mask
is our higher self in its role of evolutionary force,
contributing also to the steadying of the scales.
The neter of truth appears
as the weightless standard for our heart
and as the ‘double truth’
always wearing the feather which emphasizes her lightness,
the ankh symbol of eternal life
and the lotus scepter for rebirth.
The scales represent a psychological exercise
to be practiced at every moment of the day:
weighing our heart against the feather of truth,
calling to the transfiguring power to help us
jettison everything that contributes
to our heaviness,
to let us soar free.
The disciple of truth is light-minded and light-hearted.
Let every day be a psychological levitation,
a pure longing for the heights of our own being,
a new birth into a new weightlessness.
For more on Medhananda please visit http://www.medhananda.com/
Image source: https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/bookofdead
The Calling
By Medhananda from his book The Way of Horus
One of the most powerful movements in man
is the will, the aspiration to overcome his limitations.
It appeared in a few carbon rings
as the power to reproduce themselves;
it appeared in a few unicellular beings
as the power to unite,
in a few fish to crawl on land,
in a few proto-hominids
to tame fire and invent instruments,
and in a few men to a walk on the moon.
It is not his cleverness that makes man man,
it is his will to surpass his limitations,
to go higher, wider, deeper than anyone has gone before,
as well in the inner as in the outer world.
Perhaps we should live more often and more consciously
in the company of this evolutionary power
the we experience as aspiration: our KA*.
If this neter* calls-
dddddddthe others answer back.
It is invincible, on one condition:
that it is exercised.
There are still amoebas in every drop of water.
But we are the amoeba who exercised.
Will we travel to the stars?
For more on Medhananda please visit http://www.medhananda.com/
Notes
* KA was the Egyptian word for aspiration and neter was the word for a god such as Osiris, Isis, KA etc. Medhananda considered the gods to be parts of our psychological makeup and not something outside ourselves to be worshipped.
Image taken from http://www.joanannlansberry.com/journ…/pathmark/feed-ka.html
Harm's End 