Message of the Day - Integral Yoga

From Question and Answers: Sri Mother Says: " An integral yoga is one which comprises all the parts of the being and all the activities of the being.  But the activities of one being are not as powerful as the activities of another;and the integrality of one being is not as total as the integrality of another. You don’t understand?  If all your being, as it is, participates in the yoga, it becomes for you an integral yoga. But your participation may be very poor and mediocre compared with that of someone else, and the number of elements of consciousness which you contain may be very small compared with the elements of consciousness contained in another person. And yet your yoga is integral for you, that is, it is done in all the parts and all the activities of your being.

                       

Message of the Day - The Divine is indeed what you expect of Him.

From Words of the Mother: " In reality, the Divine gives to each individual exactly what he expects of Him." If you believe that the Divine is far away and cruel, He will be far away and cruel, because it will be necessary for your ultimate good that you feel the wrath of God; He will be Kali for the worshippers of Kali and Beatitude for the Bhakta. And He will be the All-knowledge of the seeker of Knowledge, the transcendent Impersonal of the illusionist; He will be atheist with the atheist and the love of the lover. He will be brotherly and close, a friend always faithful, always ready to succour, for those who feel Him as the inner guide of each movement, at every moment. And if you believe that He can wipe away everything, He will wipe away all your faults, all your errors, tirelessly, and at every moment you can feel His infinite Grace. The Divine is indeed what you expect of Him in your deepest aspiration.

                       
- From Thoughts and Aphorisms by Sri Aurobindo

Message of the Day - Divine Command

From Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms : "When thou hast the command, care only to fulfil it. The rest is God’s will and arrangement which men call chance and luck and fortune." The Mother’s commentaries on this quote by Sri Aurobindo: It is obviously in the silence of the mind that it is possible to perceive the Divine Command. The true way of knowing is above words and thoughts. When this phenomenon occurs, it becomes very clear, because one knows the Divine Command first, and the words to describe it come later.

                       
- From Thoughts and Aphorisms by Sri Aurobindo

Message of the Day - Uttarpara Speech of Sri Aurobindo - The final part

To magnify the religion means to magnify the country. I have shown you that I am everywhere and in all men and in all things, that I am in this movement and I am not only working in those who are striving for the country but I am working also in those who oppose them and stand in their path.I am working in everybody and what ever men may think or do they can do nothing but help on my purpose. They also are doing my work; they are not my enemies but my instruments. In all your actions you are moving forward without knowing which way you move. You mean to do one thing and you do another. You aim at a result and your efforts sub serve one that is different or contrary.  It is Shakti that has gone forth and entered into the people. Since long ago I have been preparing this uprising and now the time has come and it is I who will lead it to its fulfilment.” This then is what I have to say to you. The name of your society is “Society for the Protection of Religion”. Well, the protection of the religion, the protection and upraising before the world of the Hindu religion, that is the work before us.   But what is the Hindu religion? What is this religion which we call Sanatana, eternal? It is the Hindu religion only because the Hindu nation has kept it, because in this peninsula it grew up in the seclusion of the sea and the Himalayas, because in this sacred and ancient land it was given as a charge to the Aryan race to preserve through the ages. But it is not circumscribed by the confines of a single country, it does not belong peculiarly and for ever to a bounded part of the world. That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion, because it is the universal religion which embraces all others.   If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose. This is the one religion that can triumph over materialism by including and anticipating the discoveries of science and the speculations of philosophy. It is the one religion which impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and embraces in its compass all the possible means by which man can approach God. It is the one religion which insists every moment on the truth which all religions acknowledge, that He is in all men and all things and that in Him we move and have   our being. It is the one religion which enables us not only to understand and believe this truth but to realise it with every part of our being. It is the one religion which shows the world what the world is, that it is the lila of Vasudeva. It is the one religion which shows us how we can best play our part in that lila, its subtlest laws and its noblest rules. It is the one religion which does not separate life in any smallest detail from religion, which knows what immortality is and has utterly removed from us the reality of death.  This is the word that has been put into my mouth to speak to you today. What I intended to speak has been put away from me, and beyond what is given to me I have nothing to say. It is only the word that is put into me that I can speak to you. That word is now finished.  I spoke once before with this force in me and I said then that this movement is not a political movement and that nationalism is not politics but a religion,a creed,a faith. I say it again today, but I put it in another way. I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a faith; I say that it is the Sanatana Dharma which for us is nationalism. This Hindu nation was born with the Sanatana Dharma, with it it moves and with it it grows. When the Sanatana Dharma declines, then the nation declines, and if the Sanatana Dharma were capable of perishing, with the Sanatana Dharma it would perish. The Sanatana Dharma, that is nationalism. This is the message that I have to speak to you. The End   Delivered at Uttarpara, Bengal, on 30 May 1909. Text published in the Bengalee, an English-language newspaper of Calcutta,on1June; thoroughly revised by Sri Aurobindo and republished in the Karmayogin on 19 and 26 June.

                       
-KARMAYOGIN , Sri Aurobindo

Message of the day - Uttarpara Speech - 5

Then a thing happened suddenly and in a moment I was hurried away to the seclusion of a solitary cell. What happened to me during that period I am not impelled to say, but only this that day after day, He showed me His wonders and made me realise the utter truth of the Hindu religion. I had had many doubts before. I was brought up in England amongst foreign ideas and an atmosphere entirely foreign.  About many things in Hinduism I had once been inclined to believe that it was all imagination; that there was much of dream in it, much that was delusion and maya. But now day after day I realised in the mind, I realised in the heart, I realised in the body the truths of the Hindu religion. They became living experiences to me, and things were opened to me which no material science could explain.  When I first approached Him, it was not entirely in the spirit of the Bhakta, it was not entirely in the spirit of the Jnani. I came to Him long ago in Baroda some years before the Swadeshi began and I was drawn into the public field. When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion. I felt there must be amighty truth somewhere in this Yoga, a mighty truth in this religion based on the Vedanta. So when I turned to the Yoga and resolved to practise it and find out if my idea was right, I did it in this spirit and with this prayer to Him,“If Thou art,then Thou know est my heart.Thou knowest that I do not ask for Mukti, I do not ask for anything which others ask for. I ask only for strength to up lift this nation, I ask only to be allowed to live and work for this people whom I love and to whom I pray that I may devote my life.”Is trovelong for the realisation of Yoga and atlast to some extent I had it,but in what I most desired, I was not satisfied.  Then in the seclusion of the jail, of the solitary cell I asked for it again. I said, “Give me Thy adesh. I do not know what work to do or how to do it. Give me a message.” In the communion of Yoga two messages came.  The first message said, “I have given you a work and it is to help to uplift this nation. Before long the time will come when you will have to go out of jail;for it is not my will that this time either you should be convicted or that you should pass the time as others have to do, in suffering for their country. I have called you to work, and that is the adesh for which you have asked. I give you the adesh to go forth and do my work.”  The second message came and it said, “Something has been shown to you in this year of seclusion, something about which you had your doubts and it is the truth of the Hindu religion. It is this religion that I am raising up before the world, it is this that I have perfected and developed through the rishis, saints and avatars, and now it is going forth to do my work among the nations. I am raising up this nation to send forth my word. This is the Sanatana Dharma, this is the eternal religion which you did not really know before, but which I have now revealed to you. The agnostic and the sceptic in you have been answered, for I have given you proofs within and without you, physical and subjective, which have satisfied you.   When you go forth, speak to your nation always this word that it is for the Sanatana Dharma that they arise,it is for the world and not for themselves that they arise. I am giving them freedom for the service of the world. When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall rise. When it is said that India shall be great,it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall be great.When it is said that India shall expand and extend herself,it is the Sanatana Dharma that shall expand and extend itself over the world. It is for the dharma and by the dharma that India exists.  To be continued........

                       
-KARMAYOGIN , Sri Aurobindo