Tag: sri aurobindo

My Mind Relief From Madness

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams, Inner Voice and Vision, spirituality2 Comments

About a month ago my mind and vital was in the grip of something. I don’t remember what now exactly, but it was something that had been troubling the  mind and holding it under siege for a couple of days. I wanted to get free of the movement but was having trouble doing so. Then I received these lines from the muse in the morning:

Don’t muddy the mind courts (Came at the end of a dream where I was watching a performance of the hip hop group Run DMC)
My mind relief from madness
Mooning.

The first line’s advice was pretty clear, and motivated me to really try and throw the disturbing thoughts out of my mind, but I was having only limited success. Then all of the sudden, in the evening, I noticed my mind got abnormally clear, and it didn’t take much effort to keep it clear. There was no peace or joy or anything, just a quiet, fairly focused mind. Still it was a welcome respite.

Sri Aurobindo says, among other things, that the moon is a symbol of the spiritual consciousness which is above our normal human mind. One of the main movements in the integral yoga is for the sadhak to not only ascend to this level (or levels I should say) of consciousness, but also for it to descend and transform these lower levels of mind, life and body as well with its peace, silence, light and bliss. So what happened here I think is I got ‘mooned’ by a descent from the spiritual consciousness which quieted my mind and gave me relief from the mind’s madness. It didn’t last and was gone the next morning, but it broke the momentum of the disturbing thoughts, and I was able to move past them. I imagine it was important that, prompted by the muse, I was making a strong effort to throw out the thoughts myself. That I feel opened the door to the descent from the spiritual consciousness.

Now as the reader has no doubt noticed, the first line came at the end of a dream. This is a fairly common occurrence, but I have to admit I often can’t make any connection between the lines that come at the end of a dream and the dream itself. A lot of the time the lines don’t seem to have anything to do with the dream.  Here though I can see a correlation between mud in the mind and hip hop music, which overall has a pretty low vibration, one that appeals to the less enlightened parts of the human vital.

Does anybody else see anything in these lines that they want to share in the comments?

Experience on the Summer Solstice

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams, spiritualityLeave a comment

 

I feel there’s a reason why ancient cultures gave such importance to astrological events like equinoxes, solstices, full moons and such things as planetary alignments. Basically they’re days of power, a day you can get a boost for your sadhana or your dream life if you’re receptive. Usually for me, if there’s any effect at all during these times (and a lot of times there isn’t), it’s on the level of dreams. I’ll have a powerful dream or a lucid dream. However during the last summer solstice, which was paired with a full moon, I had a little spiritual uplift that I think was shown in a dream I’d had the night before. The part I’m going to share however is just the end of a much longer dream since it’s only the end that’s really relevant as far as the spiritual uplift that day was concerned.

I put my backpack on and walk down the street and eventually find myself in some woods.  There’s a stream there and in the water I can see these birds, about twenty of them, that have the heads of peacocks but bodies more like an ostrich’s. They’re about as tall as a man and in the dream I regard them as peacocks.  One of them comes up and peers at me curiously though a gap in the trees.  I can see that we’re at a delta where this stream meets the ocean.  I go down into the water which is only about a foot deep and a very beautiful bluish green.  The whole scene is very beautiful as well. The peacock/ostrich birds are moving out into the ocean, and I’m walking with them.  Though the birds are big they don’t seem aggressive nor do they seem to be bothered by me.  If I remember correctly their ostrich-like bodies are black or greyish black.  It’s getting close to sunset and I want to watch the sunset with the peacock/ostrich birds.

One thing I’ve started to notice recently and have shown in a couple of recent blog posts is how a beautiful natural scene in a dream seems to be showing a nice ‘scene’ trying to manifest inside you in your waking life that day or a day or so afterwards. I believe that was the case here. So let me tell you what happened. On the day of the solstice, in the late morning, I went for a ride in my kayak. While I was out, I encountered one of my favorite water birds around here, a roseate spoonbill, roosting in a mangrove tree. I don’t often see them when I’m kayaking so I just sat there for a while admiring the bird and its beautiful pink plumage. When I returned home I noticed I felt cleared out as I often do after a spin in the kayak, since I can get fully immersed in nature. I noticed also that my thinking was elevated, and I found myself naturally pondering some things I’d recently read by Medhananda and Nolini Kanta Gupta and was looking at the world through the lens of those ideas. It didn’t require any hard mental effort or tapasya though. It was just happening naturally and spontaneously. For the most part I can’t remember exactly what I was reading at the time, but I do recall one little aphorism by Medhananda that was on my mind:

Spirit is tremendously solid.
It is like diamond.
In comparison
matter is only a cloud
of probabilities.1  

A little later I took our dog Rosie for a walk. As we walked I was really feeling the stillness in the plants, and while that’s not a common experience for me it wasn’t the first time that’s happened, and I’m sure a lot of people have felt the stillness in plants. This time though, I could also feel the joy that was in the plants, and I caught it a bit by contagion and was feeling joy inside me as well as I walked. I was also appreciating how beautiful and unique the plants were, seeing them the way you might when tripping on psychedelics but to a much much lesser extent. There was one group of plants I encountered that were nothing but huge leaves on stalks which had been planted to hide a fire hydrant. When I looked at those plants, there was something so delightful about those big leaves that I couldn’t resist the urge to go over and touch one, giving a little laugh as I did so and feeling delight similar to what I think a small child does when they do something like that. That delight continued on the walk, and the uplift continued after that. It might have still been there a little bit when I went to bed. I honestly don’t remember now. It wasn’t there the next day when I woke up though.

So what I think happened here was I was able to open to the amplified energy that was available that day and benefit from it in this altered state of consciousness, which was foreshadowed by the beautiful sunset scene in my dream. This idea that a beautiful dream scene is symbolic of a beautiful uplift in waking life is still a working hypothesis for me, but one I’m getting more and more evidence to support. Recently, I had another dream where I was looking at a beautiful blue lake ringed by breathtaking mountains on the far side, and two days later there was a definite shift in consciousness in the evening, a state of peace and quiet. It wasn’t as strong as other experiences like that I’ve had, but it was definitely there.

One thing that I feel is important to point out is the beauty of these dream scenes is beyond the greatest beauty you can see in the physical world or even in normal dreams. I can’t really explain it any better than that, but if you start to have dreams like this I think you’ll see what I mean, see that it’s a certain class of dream or has a certain type of dream substance that can embody that beauty. It might be a glimpse of what Sri Aurobindo calls the subtle physical, but I can’t say for sure.

Regarding the peacock/ostrich birds in the dream I should point out that Sri Aurobindo has said that a peacock is a symbol of spiritual victory and that fits with the fact that I had a little spiritual opening. The fact that the rest of the body was like an ostrich is interesting since the thing that most quickly comes to mind when I think of the symbolic meaning of an ostrich is sticking your head in the ground. If I’m remembering correctly that the color was black that would indicate a hostile force. So I’d guess the element of spiritual victory is still marred by an element of sticking my head in the ground and maybe also a hostile influence. I think the birds in the dream were also connected to the encounter I had with the roseate spoonbill even though the dream birds were completely different. I always enjoy the sight of a roseate spoonbill because pink is the color that symbolizes the psychic being or soul in the integral yoga.

So in closing I think it’s important to try and keep yourself clear every day and not just on days like full moons and solstices. Knowing, however, that you can get a little boost on days like that is a good motivator for keeping yourself clear especially on those occasions.

References

  1. On the threshold of a new age with Medhananda, pg 165 by Medhananda

I Want Struggles To Be Light

On By Douglas M.In Inner Voice and Vision, PoetryLeave a comment

A few days ago this line from the muse came to me in the morning.

I want struggles to be light.

You can definitely play around with multiple interpretations of a line like this because of the different meanings for the word ‘light’. One interpretation jumps out right away if you take ‘light’ in the sense of something being not heavy or not dark in color. Read this way the line is saying that I want a lighter load of struggles.  There’s no doubt I feel that way often, and I’m sure most people reading this can relate to that sentiment. Another idea though along these lines has to do with my belief that what really makes struggles and pain so dark and heavy is this consciousness we live in which is a state of identification with this mind and body. But as many spiritual teachers have said throughout the ages, if you can enter into a consciousness where you’re identified with the divine, or oneness or whatever you want to call it then you realize that this mind and body isn’t you, is more like a shirt you’ve put on, and you don’t take what happens to them so seriously anymore. Then, even though life’s challenges are still there, they’ve lost their heaviness, and you no longer suffer from them. You deal with them from a state of Light or Knowledge and not a state of Ignorance.  Hand in hand with that idea is a complementary take on the line where ‘light’ means spiritual illumination. This gives the sense to me of struggles being spiritually illumined and transmuted.

Another interpretation that occurred to me takes ‘light’ in the sense of a ‘means of igniting something’ as in “Hey buddy, you got a light?”. It’s a less obvious reading of the line and one that probably wouldn’t have occurred to me if I hadn’t been thinking a lot about something I’d read in the Mother’s Questions and Answers a few days before. I’ll share the quote first before I get into the interpretation.

Quite naturally we ask ourselves what this secret is, towards which pain leads us. For a superficial and imperfect understanding, one could believe that it is pain which the soul is seeking. Nothing of the kind. The very nature of the soul is divine Delight, constant, unvarying, unconditioned, ecstatic; but it is true that if one can face suffering with courage, endurance, an unshakable faith in the divine Grace, if one can, instead of shunning suffering when it comes, enter into it with this will, this aspiration to go through it and find the luminous truth, the unvarying delight which is at the core of all things, the door of pain is often more direct, more immediate than that of satisfaction or contentment.1

So like the Mother says here I think the line could be interpreted in the sense of changing my attitude so that struggles and pain become more a means of advancing on the spiritual path, more a means of igniting my aspiration to go through them in order to reach that ‘unvarying delight’ than something that holds me back when I have  resistance to the pain or depression about the pain. Backing up this idea, I feel, is an experience I had with Medhanada’s Eternity Game two nights before I received this line and a few hours after I’d read the above quote from the Mother. That quote is part of a longer passage where she says a number of things one of which is “When pain comes, it comes to teach us something.”2 As I’ve mentioned in other blog posts, probably my biggest difficulty is contending with the constant chronic pain in my back and knees. So that night after reading the Mother’s words I asked the Eternity Game, “What’s the purpose of this pain?” The card I drew was ‘Dwarf’.

Europe 1997.3 25

In the Eternity Game this card represents the mental being, and as you can see its aspects are ‘Quest’, ‘Next Step’ and ‘Intelligence’. Medhananda gives detailed commentary on all the cards in the game, but he also gives short one sentence descriptions.  The short one he gives for the ‘Dwarf’ card is ‘advance, take the next step.’3 I took this as confirmation that I have to try and take the mental attitude the Mother recommends towards the pain so it becomes more a means of progress. I should point out that for me the fact that my reading of the  Mother’s words was followed by synchronicities with both the Eternity Game and my own inner guidance in just a matter of a few days stresses the need for this change in attitude. It’s not easy to do, and to truly surrender this pain is something I’ve been aspiring for for a while. Hopefully this will help me to take the ‘next step’ with that.

So that’s my take on things. Please feel free to share other ideas in the comments!

References

  1. Questions and Answers 1957-1958  by the Mother pg 41
  2. Ibid pg 42
  3. The Eternity Game by Medhananda pg 133

 

 

Bed Hopping With The Hostiles

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams1 Comment

About a week ago I had a dream where I was taking in a very beautiful mountain setting. When I awoke the next morning I felt a strong desire to get myself together and focused on the sadhana, which for me largely revolves around rejecting the unwanted thoughts and trying to keep the mind quiet.  I was able to build up a little momentum over the course of two days, and on the late evening of the second day I felt a little bit of calm and clearness open up inside me. It was nice because I haven’t had anything happen like that in a while, and it may have been what that mountain scene in my dream represented. A beautiful scene in nature can also have that effect of clearing you out on the inside.

Anyway I sat with the feeling  for a while, and then something odd happened before I went to bed.  Over the course of say 10 minutes there were around seven quick flickers of the power going out, but so fast it didn’t reset any of the clocks in the house. At first I wondered if was just my lamp, but on the third time or so I noticed my lava lamp was going out too. Now I know this isn’t some odd paranormal event I’m describing, but there was something queer about it, something that ‘tingled my spider sense’ so to speak.

So I went to bed and probably fell asleep around 11pm. I awoke a little after midnight to the sound of the smoke detector in my room chirping about every 30 seconds.  It does that when the battery gets low, and though it isn’t loud, it’s enough to keep you from falling asleep. I knew the detector would keep it up until the battery got changed, but rather than going to the garage and getting the ladder so I could change the battery, I decided to move to the guest bedroom for the night.  Once I got in there I  could still hear the chirping of the detector a little bit, but I figured if I put a pillow over my head that would muffle it enough that I could go back to sleep. Then strangely enough the chirping suddenly stopped. I decided though to stay in the guest bedroom in case it started doing it again and was able to fall asleep.

About an hour later I woke up from a rather obscure dream where I think I had been in bed in cataleptic trance (sleep paralysis), but not lucidly aware of that.  In the dream I could hear my parents outside the room fixing the smoke detector.  I was feeling a sense of unease and fear as I lay there, but without any specific cause.   At the end of the dream my mother came in and stood by the bed, and, still feeling the fear, I reached out and grabbed her arm for comfort.  I think it was right after that that I woke up.

Upon awakening I was still feeling the fear and didn’t want to open my eyes.  I figured a hostile force was trying to rattle me, and since the smoke detector was still keeping quiet, I went back to my room.  I really wanted to be back in my bed and next to the altar I have on my nightstand.  As I was getting back in bed I was thinking about my second altar on my computer desk as well as my collection of spiritual books, and how all three of those things added to the spiritual and protective atmosphere of the room.  I also thought about how in the guest room I’d been sleeping on top of the 3,000 plus comic books I’d collected as a teenager that are stored under the bed.  I realized those densely packed comic books we’re giving off a pretty low vital vibration.  Not as low perhaps as 3,000 porno magazines, but low enough that they degraded the atmosphere of the room and probably made things more conducive to a hostile influence.  That may sound far-fetched to some people, but allow me to share a quote that forever changed the way I look at books.  It’s from the book Nirvana: An Occult Experience by the Theosophist George Arundale.  He tells us:

I went the other day into one of our largest bookshops, and I found myself amidst a weird babel of sounds.  Every volume was vocal.  In each book was its author speaking his message – in some cases powerfully, clearly, upliftingly; in other cases, at the other extreme, vaguely, purposelessly, vulgarly, perhaps, often sordidly, or sometime with a well-chiseled form distressingly empty of purpose.  Each work was a sound-scheme, often a jarring sound-scheme, but sometimes a beautiful symphony.  Each book too, was a light-scheme, a dull light-scheme, a lurid light-scheme, a bright, clear light-scheme, now and then a gorgeous light-scheme.  I was not able to follow up this discovery, but I knew that books are alive, that some are in the savage state, and thence there is graded ascent in evolution to God-books, as the Scriptures, and others less than these, yet great.  I cannot pursue further this fascinating theme, but it will be realized that books are no longer mere tomes, they are living beings, for which their creators have serious responsibility, which speak and shed their influence around them.  A book in a room is a factor with which we have to reckon; a library is a potent force.1

Sri Aurobindo has pointed out in his letters that there are hostile forces standing ready to try and spoil any positive movement in the sadhana as well as the existence of mischievous vital physical entities that can do things like cause accidents to happen. In light of that, there does seem to be something to this idea of a gremlin which can cause mechanical or electronic problems, and I imagine a lot of people could relate a strange or bizarre occurrence with a mechanical or electronic device.  In fact, I just read a column the other day in one of our local papers where the writer talked about how her washing machine had been acting up but then went back to functioning normally after she prayed for it to start working again.  And the strangeness continued at our house too the following day with another smoke detector chirping for a few minutes before suddenly stopping.

Now to some people my theories about what happened here will just look like paranoid hogwash, but if you’re the type of person that is open to these ideas, and if I’ve communicated all this effectively, I think you’ll be able to see the possibility that something got into the atmosphere of the house and then set things up so I would retreat to the guest bedroom.  Whether it was something mischievous or hostile, or some combination of the two, I can’t say for sure, but the element of fear in my dream suggests something hostile to me. Why that hostile being or force didn’t try to attack me in my own room I don’t know, since I’ve had my share of brushes with the hostiles while sleeping in my own bed.  Maybe for some reason that night I wasn’t as vulnerable in my room.

Regardless I guess I got out of the guest bedroom before too much damage was done, since the next day I still had the strong urge to press on with the sadhana. Nothing really noteworthy happened on that day, but then on the fourth day after the mountain scene dream something else nice happened, and I found myself quite easily and spontaneously making the movement inwardly of remembering the divine and offering my work to the divine throughout the day.  It was so simple though; there were no bells and whistles about it, just a quiet and uncomplicated movement of devotion. It was a small opening of the heart chakra I believe and fit perfectly with the card I had drawn that day from Medhananda’s Eternity Game,2 which was ‘Heart’. That card represents the heart chakra, and like each card in the game it has four aspects. I usually pay attention to the aspect that is upright, and that day that aspect was ‘Simplicity.’  

The Heart Card
The Heart Card

Getting back to our main topic here I think I should point out the fact that most of the time nothing bad or scary happens to me when I find myself in cataleptic trance. While it’s true that hostile forces can come along and try to scare us or trick us in that state, the state itself is nothing to dread or be afraid of.  These hostile forces want us to be afraid of this state because you can have an out of body experience from there or, as I’ve found, very easily enter into a lucid dream. Now I can only speculate, but I think what happened in this case was hostile forces could see what was going on with me that day I experienced the calmness and clearness, perhaps saw that I was ripe to enter cataleptic trance or maybe even have a lucid dream, and they wanted to spoil any nice or uplifting dream experience I might have had. Or maybe the goal was to get me in the guest bedroom on top of those comic books and give me some bad dream experiences in an attempt to stifle the opening that was happening sadhana-wise. Or maybe they had both objectives.  How much they might have succeeded is impossible for me to say.  All I know is after my day of simplicity my four day sadhana rally came to an end, but that may not have been primarily due to hostile influences.  I feel these surges in the sadhana come from within, are cyclical and peter out or withdraw due to inner causes.  It’s natural part of the process, but at the same time not an excuse to be lax and just wait for the next sadhana rally to come.

So in closing I think the main lesson of this article is the hostiles are craftily standing by to throw a wrench in the works when they see any glimmer of light.  I don’t want to encourage anyone to obsess about this, but to just be aware of it and on one’s guard.  And if it comes to pass that they do knock you down, just get up, try to learn whatever lesson is there, and carry on.

Notes and References

  1. Nirvana An Occult Experience by G.S. Arundale pgs 174-175
  2. The Eternity Game is an oracle I use frequently that was created by Medhananda for the Integral Yoga.

 

For Janet

On By Douglas M.In Inspirational Quotes, Poetry2 Comments

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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

 

Breaking Down A Dream Feeling

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, Dreams1 Comment

Even though I’ve been reading about and trying to dedicate my life to what you might call the advent of a divine life (or heaven on earth if you prefer) for years, it’s not yet something my vital can get greatly excited about. I don’t think I’m unique in this, but rather the rule and not the exception. This inability I feel comes from the limitations of the little mind and vital that I and most everyone else live in. I think it’s possible for that little mind and vital to get more excited and comprehending about the prospect of a divine life than mine do. In fact, the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo aims at ultimately converting and transforming these parts (as well as the body) into willing and able instruments of the divine life.

There’s another part of us though referred to in the Integral Yoga as the psychic being or in more common language the soul. It’s a part of us which is “already given to the Divine”1 and just naturally possesses an ardent fire and aspiration for the divine life which can also spread to the other parts of the being. Now both the words soul and psychic get a lot of usage and can mean a lot of different things to different people. So before I go on, let me allow the Mother to explain in more detail what she’s pointing to with the terms ‘psychic being’ or ‘soul.’

It is the seat of the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Self in the individual being. It is a centre of light and truth and knowledge and beauty and harmony which the Divine Self in each of you creates by his presence, little by little; it is influenced, formed and moved by the Divine Consciousness of which it is a part and parcel. It is in each of you the deep inner being which you have to find in order that you may come in contact with the Divine in you. It is the intermediary between the Divine Consciousness and your external consciousness; it is the builder of the inner life, it is that which manifests in the outer nature the order and rule of the Divine Will. If you become aware in your outer consciousness of the psychic being within you and unite with it, you can find the pure Eternal Consciousness and live in it; instead of being moved by the Ignorance as the human being constantly is, you grow aware of the presence of an eternal light and knowledge within you, and to it you surrender and are integrally consecrated to it and moved by it in all things.2

Though I am not united with my psychic being nor even yet had a really definitive experience of it, I had a smaller experience recently that I believe was the result of an influence or contact with the psychic being and which was connected with a dream. So having set the scene, I’ll now get into what happened.

A few weeks ago I was getting out of bed in the morning and suddenly remembered something that seemed to come from a dream. The memory though was a feeling; there was no picture or image content to it. I wish at the time I had recorded what that feeling felt like on my voice recorder, because now I can’t really conjure it up, whereas it was quite concrete at the time. I do recall though that the feeling somehow grasped what you could call infinity or eternity for lack of a better word. It didn’t bowl me over though. I felt it faintly but distinctly on the left side of my chest for a few seconds and then it sunk back down out of my awareness. I knew it was something significant, figured it came from some kind of experience during the night, but didn’t give it much more thought than that. The whole thing kind of caught me off guard.

So I went about my day and in the afternoon I picked up one of the books I was reading, a book of short stories called Guardians of Oneness by a German disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who went by the name of Medhananda. The story I was currently reading was called ‘One Million A.D.’ It’s the story of an astronaut who returns to earth after a long tour of the galaxy. However, since the astronaut spent most of his time away “traveling on a G-beam in a galactic slipstream”3 only 10 years have passed for him, whereas a million have passed on the earth. A lot has changed. The earth, he discovers, has again become a forest clad Eden populated by self-conscious animals and one remaining man. This man, who introduces himself as homo ultimus, is evolved far beyond what we would call human and has remained behind to foster and oversee the evolution of the animals. The rest of humanity has gone to live and continue their evolution in the suns, where, as homo ultimus explains, they take part in “those higher intensities of life and love which are possible in a sun.’’4 After that initial meeting most of the story is dedicated to showing the life of peace, harmony and joy of creation and discovery that the animals enjoy. Toward the end of the story though, homo ultimus gives the astronaut and us a glimpse of the life man is now living in the suns, through a link between their minds. This is what the astronaut experiences:

all I could see was the stars. But as I looked through his eyes and vibration receptors they were not merely stars any more, they were my fellow beings: friends, comrades, brothers – each one speaking to me, singing his particular and eternal hydrogen song which vibrated directly by molecular resonance in my DNA chains. Each had its own message, each was a guardian of a whole solar system, each was telling me about his adventure in evolution on the planets with which he was surrounded. Each one was singing his paean of cosmic love, of encouragement, of bliss, of victory, of triumph over the difficulties and obstacles of life and evolution. For hours I lay there listening, learning by memory-absorption all this news of the universe, of solar adventures and experiences.5

This was I believe the third time I’ve read this story, and like the other two times, I was struck and somewhat awed by the what this passage implies. This time though it went a little further in me, somehow made me really see the reality of this greater life and helped trigger a little inner opening. Later on as I sat on the front porch and was thinking about what I’d read a strong excitement and yearning for that greater life arose as well as a sort of knowing that this divine life of splendors we can’t even hardly conceive was really waiting for us. This knowing though wasn’t an intellectual thing, but rather a feeling, a confidence. My mind in fact had gotten fairly quiet as this state came to the foreground. In addition, there was joy in the experience as well as calm and a feeling of purity   A further boon was that the chronic pain I constantly experience was significantly diminished.

The yearning and excitement waned after I got up from the porch rocker and had to start actively doing things, but the joy and calm hung around and diminished over the course of a few hours. There was still a touch of it when I went to bed, but upon awakening the next day it was gone. It was just a little glimpse that came and went much like the one I referred to in my last blog post, and like that experience I feel it was a promise of something that could become permanent. One of the reasons I think this was a psychic contact is because the experience was mainly on the level of the heart which is where the psychic being has its nexus with the outer nature. Others things about the experience that for me are indicative of the psychic are the element of aspiration as well as the element of feeling/knowing. As the Mother points out the psychic being:

has the true knowledge, an intuitive instinctive knowledge. It says, “I know; I cannot give reasons, but I know.” For its knowledge is not mental, based on experience or proved true. It does not believe after proofs are given: faith is the movement of the soul whose knowledge is spontaneous and direct. Even if the whole world denies and brings forward a thousand proofs to the contrary, still it knows by an inner knowledge, a direct perception that can stand against everything, a perception by identity. The knowledge of the psychic is something which is concrete and tangible, a solid mass. You can also bring it into your mental, your vital and your physical; and then you have an integral faith—a faith which can really move mountains.6

Now I think I should point out that this wasn’t some exalted state. It all happened within the confines of normal human consciousness and was basically a temporary uplift. Regardless I think any sane person would find it much more preferable to exist in that state if they once had a taste of it. The requirement for that though it seems would be to unite with one’s psychic being, otherwise experiences like this will remain transient.

It also bears mentioning that this memory from the dream and the experience in the waking state were not identical. The essence of the dream memory was something more profound, but more subtle. Regardless, for me the link between the two is clear, and what I think happened was that there was an inner experience during sleep that spilled over a bit into my waking life first as the dream memory and then later as the waking experience. And even though reading Medhananda’s story helped trigger the state, the mostly unrecalled sleep experience was the primary thing in my opinion. I’m also of the opinion that things like this happen with some frequency during our sleep hours, but most of the time we’re unable to bring back any memory of them. In one of her talks on dreams the Mother explained why this is:

Some people do not have a passage between one state and another, there is a little gap and so they leap from one to the other; there is no highway passing through all the states of being with no break of the consciousness. A small dark hole, and you do not remember. It is like a precipice across which one has to extend the consciousness. To build a bridge takes a very long time; it takes much longer than building a physical bridge…. Very few people want to and know how to do it. They may have had magnificent activities, they do not remember them or sometimes only the last, the nearest, the most physical activity, with an uncoordinated movement—dreams having no sense.7

So the lesson here is that with the right development a conscious bridge can be built between all the regions we visit in sleep and our waking state. Then we can more easily recall these things upon awakening. I’m sure there are occult disciplines that have been laid out for building that bridge, but I haven’t come across them with the exception of Tibetan dream yoga. And while I’ve done a lot over the years to improve my dream recall and also my ability to lucid dream, the main thing I rely on now in dream work (other than keeping a journal of dreams I feel are important) is just trying to do the sadhana and asking the Mother to help me reach my psychic being as well as the higher levels of consciousness above the normal human mind while I’m in the dream state. In addition, I’ve asked her to take charge of my lucid dreams and to help me remember to call on her when I find myself lucid. When I do remember to call on her, usually a force takes me and I travel in blackness for a while. A few times I’ve reached another dream, but normally I find I either can’t hold the concentration and fully wake up or am back in my body in the cataleptic state.

I had some dreams though that came about three weeks before the experiences I relate in this article which I feel offer some encouragement that the process of building that bridge is moving forward. The reader should know that both of these dreams happened in the same night. I should also mention to the reader that Sam, who appears in the first dream, was a professor of mine and later a friend. More importantly though he was the first person I ever met who talked openly about how he was on a spiritual path.

In the first dream I’m in a car with Sam going down a country road and he’s driving. As we drive I’m reading a little book someone gave me that was written by Sam. I’m telling Sam the story of how I got the book, which had something to do with how I kept trying to bring someone’s business cards into the chamber of commerce where I work, and they kept blowing out of my hand. I’m reading something in the book, and the gist of it was that you keep up your practices until the zero hour, or maybe it said the third hour. It’s implying that grace eventually intervenes. It says something too about how the grace came for Sri Aurobindo. When I look back at that part of the text again, it’s changed now to say Sir Richmond and not Sri Aurobindo. I know that Sir Richmond is a name Sam uses to refer to himself in the book. Then Sam pulls over and stops the car because he thinks it’s acting up. I tell him we better turn around and head back. Instead though he pulls up a little side road, and we pass through a bit of forest until we get to a wooden bridge that is too narrow for the car. The bridge has some plants on it which are draping it with beautiful flowers. One was like a bougainvillea with purple or pinkish purple flowers. I believe there were light blue flowers too. On the other side of the bridge is a beautiful big stone house landscaped also with the purple flowers and also blue ones too if I remember correctly. The stones are cut and are about the size of cinder blocks. They fit together perfectly and are a dark grey. It’s almost like a fortress or castle in style, but it doesn’t have a sense of foreboding about it. On the contrary, it looks very cool and inviting the way a shady spot next to a cool stream would be. We’re both admiring the beauty, and I tell Sam that the house must be 5,000 square feet at least.

In the second dream, as the observer, I’m looking at a bridge that is being built from both sides to meet in the middle. The bridge is about 50 feet long and is an arch or at least slopes up toward the middle. It’s almost done and there is just a few feet more until the two sides connect. I’m semi lucid and remembering the bridge from the earlier dream with Sam as well as another bridge from another dream from that night, and I’m remembering them both as almost ready to meet in the middle too. I’m thinking this must have something to do with making the connection to the psychic being, and I’m repeating “Mother I must have this.”

Now in one dream the bridge was too narrow, and in the other it wasn’t complete, but I think it’s just two ways of saying the same thing. Namely that there’s some work to go to complete the bridge to whatever is represented by the beautiful stone house with all the flowers. My guess is that the house symbolizes the sanctuary of the psychic being, and the presence of flowers would seem to support that since flowers can represent things psychic. Another thing in favor of this idea is the intuition I had in the second dream that the bridge represented making the connection to the psychic being. I think I will trust that intuition for now until I feel I have good reason not to or I discover in time that the bridge represented something else. I should point out though that while in the Integral Yoga pink is a psychic color, blue is more of a spiritual color and purple a color corresponding to the vital. So maybe there’s more represented here than just the psychic change [or transformation] .

Another interesting point about the bridge in the second dream that was raised by my collaborator Donny, is the fact that it’s being built from both ends to meet in the middle. He suggested that could mean that the one end represents my own personal effort and aspiration in the sadhana while the other end represents the answering grace, and that both are needed to make that connection. I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes enough intuitive sense that I thought it worth putting forward for consideration.

In conclusion, I think that regardless of what the house in the first dream symbolizes, it’s clear the bridge to something good is nearing completion. How near to completion is hard to say. There were feet left to go and not inches, so it may not be something imminent. Being shown though that the bridge is being built has given a boost to my faith, and perhaps that was the primary purpose of these dreams. The first dream also gives some good advice, which I’ll try to take, which is to carry on with the sadhana keeping frustration at bay and with the faith that when the zero hour is reached the grace will take care of the rest.

Notes

1.Question and Answers 1929-1931 by the Mother pg 62
2.Question and Answers 1929-1931 by the Mother pg 62
3.Guardians of Oneness ‘One Million A.D.’ by Medhananda pg 45
4.Guardians of Oneness ‘One Million A.D.’ by Medhananda pg 53
5.Guardians of Oneness ‘One Million A.D.’ by Medhananda pg 63-64
6.Question and Answers 1929-1931 by the Mother pg 152
7.Question and Answers 1953 by the Mother pg 38

 

Divine Whispers: Allegiance

On By Douglas M.In spirituality, SynchronicityLeave a comment

Allegiance

A number of years ago I wrote an article about a synchronicity I had with the book Star Wars: Allegiance in which I tried to show how just about anything can be a source of guidance. Since then that book has been sitting in a drawer in the guest bedroom of my house, and while I’ve donated many other books like that to the library, and more or less stopped reading that type of book, I still found it hard to part with it because of that connection.

About a week ago though, I decided to give the book to Nick, the son of my co-worker Rhonda. Nick loves Star Wars, but like many in this ipad generation he never pulls his head out of his tablet or his laptop and actually reads a book. I decided I would give the book to him in the hopes it might stimulate some interest in reading.  So I took it to work and did so. After he’d left to catch the school bus Rhonda told me that that day was actually Nick’s 13th birthday, and that I’d brought him a birthday gift without knowing it. That made me smile and was confirmation for me that giving him the book was the right thing to do, even if he never reads it. But more importantly this little wink from the universe gave me a chance to marvel once again at how there’s a plan, a purpose in the unfolding of the universe. I believe that purpose is for this universe to evolve into what, for lack of a better phrase, you could call heaven on earth, a world of light, beauty, goodwill, peace and harmony.

It seemed appropriate in light of all this to repost this article, called Divine Whispers: Allegiance, on this leap year day, which is celebrated in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram as the Golden Day. Though progress has been made since I wrote this article eight years ago there is still a ways to go. I take this Golden Day and this posting as an opportunity to rededicate myself to the work of giving my allegiance completely to the Divine.

Divine Whispers: Allegiance

As a boy, one of my greatest loves was Star Wars, and I spent many hours immersing myself in that fantasy world as I played with my toys. Eventually I gave up my toys but my hunger for Star Wars found a new outlet in a succession of new novels and comic books, authorized by George Lucas, chronicling the further adventures of Luke, Han and Leia. A time came though when I even gave those up as my attention turned more towards things divine. Recently however a new Star Wars novel entered my life in such an incredibly synchronic way with a message for me that was so direct and personal that I realized yet again that you can’t discount anything as a potential divine messenger. To illustrate that fact using this particular occurrence is the purpose of this article.

Our story begins not long ago in an american book store far far away. On that day I walked into Barnes and Noble booksellers with $8 left on a gift card and an intention to spend it. As soon as I passed through the door my gaze fell upon a display for the newest Star Wars novel in paperback. It’s name was Allegiance. As soon as I saw it I felt something click inside of me accompanied by this strong feeling that this was the book I had come here to buy. In addition, the whole display for the book seemed to pop into focus in a way that made it stand out sharply from everything else around it. I paused for a moment to reflect on this as it seemed to me to be a very clear intuition that buying this book was in tune with my process. The mind however couldn’t see what purpose it would serve to read something mainly designed to entertain the vital, so I decided to have a look and see what else was available in the store. It seemed to me I should try to find something that had a bit more food for the soul.

After browsing for a while I was able to find only one book that seemed like it might be worth reading. So I went to the science fiction section where they had a few more copies of Star Wars: Allegiance. My vital was of course attracted to the book but it seemed to be willing to live without it. Thus I took the book in my hand and with a rare attitude of complete detachment concerning the outcome I asked the Mother to give me a sign that she wanted me to buy it. Having done that I opened the book and began to read. What I read was a passage where Luke was receiving inner guidance from the voice of Obi Wan Kenobi speaking inside of his head. Now I am not unacquainted with startling synchronicities, but I must admit that I was blown away by this. What clearer sign could I have gotten than Luke receiving guidance from his teacher? Though I was still unclear as to what purpose reading this book would serve, my doubts in regard to buying it were dispelled. Without further hesitation I went up to the counter and bought the book.

I found it quite easy to fall back into my old vital groove and I devoured the book ravenously. As I read I remained attentive in order to discern what the book had to teach me. One of the noteworthy things about the book was that it explored the phenomenon of voice and vision in a way I had not seen in other Star Wars novels. The passage I read at Barnes and Noble was one of several in which Luke receives guidance in this manner. Star Wars is of course quite yogic in some respects i.e. the Force, the guru/disciple relationship etc., but it was still interesting for me to see this coming up in a modern work of popular fiction. To me this would seem to indicate that this type of occult phenomenon is on the rise in the human collective. I found myself wondering if this was all the book had to show me, but it turned out it had a much more personal and specific message for me, one regarding my allegiance.

The events in Star Wars: Allegiance take place shortly after the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope. In the book a disgruntled Han Solo is vacillating on whether or not he wants to fully commit himself to helping the rebellion. There is a struggle between his mind, which knows he should help the rebellion, and his vital, which would rather be free to pursue his own interests.

It took me some time to see it, but finally it hit home that the divine wanted to show me that I was in the same situation as Han. Let me explain. Here in Pondicherry I am involved in a collective sadhana with my fellow Chipmunk collaborators Donny and David. As David pointed out in the December 2007 issue of The Chipmunk Press it’s not an easy situation for any of us. As a result I had a mental/vital split like Han. My mind for the most part had consented to the group process since it knew that it was following the will of the divine. The vital however was not happy about the level of difficulty and sacrifice involved and desired (much of the time) to be free of the situation and responsible once again for no one but myself. These sorts of mental/vital splits are par for the course for a struggling sadhak, and of course the best way to deal with it is to throw out the vital uprisings and suggestions. To do that effectively though the mind has to be resolute and mine was still somewhat divided. Thus the antics of the vital were at times given free play and the result was a lot of personal suffering.

I had been aware of this problem for quite some time but found myself unable to resolve it until I read Star Wars: Allegiance. Seeing the divine point out my divided state in so blatant and conscious a manner had a definitive impact on the mind and a lesser but still significant effect on the vital. The mind has now taken a firm resolution to accept my place in the divine scheme of things and to throw out the rebellious suggestions of the vital. The vital itself is not so one pointed and still has its movements of revolt, but there is a more general attitude of consent to the situation even if it is a somewhat reluctant consent. Whether this state is permanent only time will tell. It seems however that something fundamental has been achieved.

By the end of Star Wars: Allegiance Han has finally made a decisive turn as well. In the final pages of the book Princess Leia asks Han if for the moment he can commit to just one person even if he can’t commit to the whole rebellion. Han’s comrade Chewbacca was formerly a slave of the empire and is very enthusiastic about the rebellion. Therefore, Leia asks Han to commit to Chewbacca, and out of love for his friend he does so. As I read this I realized I was getting one more piece of advice. I was being reminded once again that I don’t need to commit myself to a cause or to a process; I owe my allegiance to one person and one person only, the Mother. The rest is just details.

In conclusion I feel it is necessary for me to offer a word of caution to the reader. External signs and happenings are a means though which the divine can communicate with us. I have found however that to rely on them too heavily can lead one astray. I don’t know if Sri Aurobindo would have done so but I consider this type of phenomenon to be within the realm of the intermediate zone. That being the case there is the risk of much misguidance and confusion when one places too much confidence in these things. I know this from personal experience. Thus, I would recommend moderation with such things as the “Mother please give me a sign” method which I employed in this example. It is possible however to receive reliable guidance in this way. Just try to make sure in those moments that you are surrendered and without preference like I was and you will get the guidance you need if you truly need it.

The Rape Of The Vital

On By Douglas M.In Dream Interpretation, DreamsLeave a comment

A few months ago, I was going to the garage to make sure the side door to the outside was locked. There’s a flight of three stairs you have to go down to get to the garage, and I stumbled on the last one, but was able to put my hands out on the door to the garage and catch myself. Everything seemed fine, but some worry arose that I might have really tweaked my back, and it took a little while for that anxiousness to die down.

Now I don’t remember if it was before or after the stumble, but sometime that evening I read this in Sri Aurobindo’s Letters on Yoga:

Yes, the difficulty is always that something in the nature gives a hold to the attack. It either still indulges it and likes it or even, if wanting to be free, is too accustomed to receive and respond to the old feelings, thoughts, suggestions and does not yet know how not to respond. The first thing is for the mental being to stand back, refuse to accept, say “This is no longer mine.” Then, even if the vital feeling responds to the attack, one part of the nature can be free and observe and discourage it. The next thing is for this free part to impose the same will of detachment on the vital so that after a time this also when the attack comes feels that it is something foreign, not its own,—as if a stranger had come into the room and was trying to impose his ideas or his will on the inmates. After that it becomes more easy to get rid of it altogether.1

The next morning I awoke a couple of hours before I needed to get up, and the worry that I may have really tweaked my back the night before hit again, creating anxious thoughts. I was able to go back to sleep though and had this dream:

These four guys in their late teens have broken into a house and are robbing it. The woman of the house is there, and one of them drags her into the back yard. She’s in her thirties or forties and is slim and attractive. She seems to be a housewife and I know that she actually knows all these boys from the neighborhood. She’s wearing a skirt, and the guy is trying to pull her panties off, but she’s resisting him. Then it changes and now it’s like she’s given in. The guy is on top of her and having sex with her. She seems to be taking pleasure in it, but she also seems to be out of it, like she’s drugged or something, and the whole scene has a sickly sort of blue color to it. It’s not seen but I know the other three boys each have a turn with her as well.

When I awoke from the dream I found myself struggling with the anxiety again. Then I recalled what I’d read the night before, and the meaning of the dream came clear. The woman is my vital and the four boys were the anxious thoughts and feelings having their way with it. I saw my vital was responding to the suggestions more out of habit then anything, like the woman in the dream who, although she struggled at first, gave in to the rape, but it was like she was drugged and wasn’t totally with it. The vital even takes a sort of pleasure in these negative movements just like the woman was taking pleasure in the rape in the dream.

As you might expect seeing what was happening so clearly gave the impetus and will to do as Sri Aurobindo recommends and detach and witness the movement as a foreign invasion. It died down for the most part after that though it did linger for a little while after I actually got out of bed and went about my day.

In closing, I’ll say this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this idea in Sri Aurobindo’s writings nor the first time I’ve tried to put it into practice. It’s so easy to forget though in the heat of a vital movement. Maybe this time however the reading coupled with a dream like that has made the lesson stick in such a way that a step forward has been taken in handling these kinds of vital uprisings. I hope so.

References

  1. Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo Vol 31 Letters on Yoga Volume 4 pg 792.

The Calling

On By Douglas M.In Inspirational Quotes, spiritualityLeave a comment

KA

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

Every woman’s shape is your mouth.

On By Douglas M.In Inner Voice and VisionLeave a comment
Image source: http://www.womensbeautylife.com/
Image source: http://www.womensbeautylife.com/

Recently I received this line from the inner voice:

Every woman’s shape is your mouth.

On one level I think this line was drawing attention to the way I let myself get sucked into chit-chat at work, and how I can be critical in a negative or gossiping way.   Whether it’s ultimately true or not, we have a cultural conception that women gossip more than men. Looking at the line through that cultural lens the ‘woman’s shape’ of my mouth struck me as that gossiping element.

When I told Donny about the line he validated that interpretation, and also suggested it had something to do with desire. A few days later that interpretation hit home when my parents and I went out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, Citrola’s. We eat at this restaurant enough that we’re recognized by the staff and even have a favorite waitress, Lynn. Lynn I would guess is in her late 50’s or early 60’s, but has a body that looks younger. She’s very slim and petite and of course colors her hair. She also has an attractive face though there are enough wrinkles there to tell you she’s no spring chicken. I’m sure many men of all ages find her attractive. I’m no exception.

That night at Citrola’s Lynn was not our waitress, but since she knows us, at one point she sat down next to me at our booth to chat. As she sat there I was feeling the color of attraction and to be honest was indulging it some. Sitting there though I thought about the line and realized what it was saying. It was pointing out how wide my range of attraction is. How ‘every woman’s shape’ stimulates my ‘mouth’ i.e. the desire to consume the object of the attraction. Now of course I’m not attracted to every woman I see, and I certainly wasn’t ignorant that I could be attracted to a woman old enough to be my mother, but lines from the inner voice, like dreams, are exaggerated to make a point. Here what the line was also pointing out and really driving home is something I’ve seen many, many times before, but apparently had to be shown again. Namely what a brainless, primitive thing the desire is.

Now for those who might be wondering why anyone would want to give up sex or sexual desire here’s a line I got about two and half years ago about sex.

Immense Adam block.

 Adam here I feel represents the soul or Purusha since, on one level, that’s what Adam represents in the Hebrew Genesis. The line clearly points out I’m blocking my soul by indulging in the sex feelings and movements. In fact, it spelled it out so clearly that this particular line was a real turning point for me. After that I really started working at trying to not follow the sexual movements. Over two and half years later they’re still not gone, but Sri Aurobindo points out how hard it is to completely get rid of those movements and even said to one person that only the descent of a higher consciousness will completely get rid of them. My continuing job at the moment though is to not follow them or clip them off as soon as I catch myself doing so. I’ve come a long way with this from where I was when I got the ‘Adam’ line, but this latest line provided motivation to step up my game. That was at least a big part of its purpose.

If you’re still scratching your head as to why someone would want to give up sex you can read more of what Sri Aurobindo says about it here.