July 2021 Newsletter

July 2021 SRI AUROBINDO SOCIETY VOL 35.07 Singapore NEWSLETTER Sri Aurobindo’s Symbol – Avatar of the Supreme Avatar-the Supreme Manifested in a Body upon Earth The pink lotus is the flower of Sri Aurobindo. Nelumbo nucifera Sacred lotus, East Indian lotus Very large fragrant chalice-shaped pink flower with several rows of loosely arranged cupped translucent petals surrounding a unique centre of numerous golden stamens that encircle a raised yellow disc; borne singly on sturdy stems high above the water. A vigorous aquatic rhizomatous plant with large, concave orbicular leaves that repel water. Sri Aurobindo's symbol At its centre is the Avatar of the Supreme - the lotus. An Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who assumes a human body on earth. The Mother The word Avatara means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status. Sri Aurobindo (http://www.blossomlikeaflower.com/2008/01/avatar.html)

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 Guiding Light of the Month MY thought is filled with Thee, my heart is full, all my being is filled with Thy Presence, and peace grows ever deeper, giving rise to that happiness, so special, so unmixed, of a calm serenity, which seems vast as the universe, deep as the unfathomable depths which lead to Thee. Oh, these silent and pure nights when my heart overflows and unites with Thy divine Love to penetrate all things, embrace all life, illumine and regenerate all thought, purify all feeling, awaken in every being the consciousness of Thy marvellous Presence and of the ineffable peace that flows from it! Grant, O Lord, that this consciousness and peace may constantly grow within us, so that we may be more and more the faithful intermediaries of Thy divine and absolute law. March 15, 1914 Prayers and Meditations, The Mother From the Editor’s Desk above the godhead into Nihilism. The tenth and final one, the Kalki, is to be the being who would bring down the Light from above into the earth sphere and have divinity inhabit within Nature. In this order is seen a hierarchy of consciousness on the ascent. We began this year with taking up Sri Aurobindo’s In our parlance, an Avatar is generally referred as a Divine birth on earth or as Sri Aurobindo writes, “An symbol for a closer look. We started with the descending triangle and took a closer look at Sat-Chit- Avatar is an emanation of the Supreme Lord who Ananda as also the answering Grace. We then looked at assumes human body on earth.” the ascending triangle as aspiration rising up, one pointed. The we came to a square in the middle formed We wonder when an Avatar would descend into at the intersection of the ascending and the descending earthly manifestation. The symbol seems to offer a triangles, a perfect square symbolising the perfect clue to this. The perfection of our aspiration manifestation. Within this square is water representing warranting an answer from above as the downpouring creation and sitting on this ocean of conscious creation, of Grace, SATCHIDANANDA creates at their is a lotus, symbolling the Avatar of the Supreme. intersections a conducive space of perfection within In this July Newsletter, we conclude the series by taking which the Divinity or the Avatar takes birth for a divinely sanctioned purpose right here upon earth as a closer look at the lotus. The lotus, generally, is an answer to the ardent aspiration arising from the depths. The Lotus that floats upon the waters of associated with both The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, The Mother’s being the white lotus and Sri creation which sustain the lotus as it fulfils the purpose for which the Avatar manifested. So we have Sri Aurobindo’s being the Red lotus. The White lotus Aurobindo as The Avatar who manifested upon earth symbolises The Divine Consciousness or Aditi or The to lay the path for a predestined future for the now Mother. The Red Lotus is The Avatar or Sri Aurobindo. We are mostly familiar with the dashavatars of “earthbound race”. Sanatana Dharma, where evolution is highlighted very The symbol therefore in short, is a reminder of who Sri well ahead of Darwin’s time. From the water borne fish, Aurobindo is and the purpose of his advent and the way forward for all those who have heed his call on to the amphibious creature, to the land animal to the this march towards the illumined future. man-animal to sattwic beings and to one who rose www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 2 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 Savitri The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone Has called out of the Silence his mute Force Where she lay in the featureless and formless hush Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep The ineffable puissance of his solitude. The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone Has entered with his silence into space: He has fashioned these countless persons of one self; He has built a million figures of his power; He lives in all, who lived in his Vast alone; Space is himself and Time is only he. The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune, One who is in us as our secret self, Our mask of imperfection has assumed, He has made this tenement of flesh his own, His image in the human measure cast That to his divine measure we might rise; Then in a figure of divinity The Maker shall recast us and impose A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould Lifting our finite minds to his infinite, Touching the moment with eternity. This transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven: A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme: His nature we must put on as he put ours; We are sons of God and must be even as he: His human portion, we must grow divine. www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 3 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 * Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne. When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp, As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread Of one who steps unseen into his house. A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey, A Power into mind’s inner chamber steal, A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors And beauty conquer the resisting world, The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise, A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss And earth grow unexpectedly divine. In Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow, In body and body kindled the sacred birth; Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars, The days become a happy pilgrim march, Our will a force of the Eternal’s power, And thought the rays of a spiritual sun. A few shall see what none yet understands; God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep; For man shall not know the coming till its hour And belief shall be not till the work is done. Sri Aurobindo www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 4 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 Avatar of the Supreme The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality. He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine. (Sri Aurobindo) * Surely for the earth-consciousness the very fact that the Divine manifests himself is the greatest of all splendours. Consider the obscurity here and what it would be if the Divine did not directly intervene and the Light of Lights did not break out of the obscurity – for that is the meaning of the manifestation * Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development – Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable. As for the lives in between the Avatar lives, it must be remembered that Krishna speaks of many lives in the past, not only a few supreme ones, and secondly that while he speaks of himself as the Divine, in one passage he describes himself as a Vibhuti, vṛṣṇīnāṃ vāsudevaḥ. We may therefore fairly assume that in many lives he manifested as the Vibhuti veiling the fuller Divine Consciousness. If we admit that the object of Avatarhood is to lead the evolution, this is quite reasonable, the Divine appearing as Avatar in the great transitional stages and as Vibhutis to aid the lesser transitions. * The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution. The Avatar is a special manifestation while for the rest of the time it is the Divine working within the ordinary human limits as a Vibhuti. www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 5 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 * An Avatar, roughly speaking, is one who is conscious of the presence and power of the Divine born in him or descended into him and governing from within his will and life and action; he feels identified inwardly with this divine power and presence. A Vibhuti is supposed to embody some power of the Divine and is enabled by it to act with great force in the world, but that is all that is necessary to make him a Vibhuti: the power may be very great, but the consciousness is not that of an inborn or indwelling Divinity. This is the distinction we can gather from the Gita which is the main authority on this subject. If we follow this distinction, we can confidently say from what is related of them that Rama and Krishna can be accepted as Avatars; Buddha figures as such although with a more impersonal consciousness of the Power within him. Ramakrishna voiced the same consciousness when he spoke of Him who was Rama and who was Krishna being within him. But Chaitanya’s case is peculiar; for according to the accounts he ordinarily felt and declared himself a bhakta of Krishna and nothing more, but in great moments he manifested Krishna, grew luminous in mind and body and was Krishna himself and spoke and acted as the Lord. His contemporaries saw in him an Avatar of Krishna, a manifestation of the Divine Love. Shankara and Vivekananda were certainly Vibhutis; they cannot be reckoned as more, though as Vibhutis they were very great. * I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness – if nobody can follow the Way, then either our conception of the thing, which is also that of Christ and Krishna and Buddha also, is all wrong or the whole life and action of the Avatar is quite futile. X seems to say that there is no way and no possibility of following, that the struggles and sufferings of the Avatar are unreal and all humbug,– there is no possibility of struggle for one who represents the Divine. Such a conception makes nonsense of the whole idea of Avatarhood; there is then no reason in it, no necessity in it, no meaning in it. The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without bothering to come down on earth. It is only if it is a part of the world- arrangement that he should take upon himself the burden of humanity and open the Way that Avatarhood has any meaning. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga) * If the Divine were not in essence omnipotent, he could not be omnipotent anywhere – whether in the supramental or anywhere else. Because he chooses to limit or determine his action by conditions, it does not make him less omnipotent. His self-limitation is itself an act of omnipotence.... www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 6 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 Why should the Divine be tied down to succeed in all his operations? What if failure suits him better and serves better the ultimate purpose? What rigid primitive notions are these about the Divine! Certain conditions have been established for the game and so long as those conditions remain unchanged certain things are not done,– so we say they are impossible, can’t be done. If the conditions are changed then the same things are done or at least become licit – allowable, legal according to the so-called laws of Nature, and then we say they can be done. The Divine also acts according to the conditions of the game. He may change them, but he has to change them first, not proceed, while maintaining the conditions, to act by a series of miracles. * If the Avatars are shams, they have no value for others nor any true effect, Avatarhood becomes perfectly irrational and unreal and meaningless. The Divine does not need to suffer or struggle for himself; if he takes on these things, it is in order to bear the world-burden and help the world and men; and if the sufferings and struggles are to be of any help, they must be real. A sham or falsehood cannot help. They must be as real as the struggles and sufferings of men themselves – the Divine bears them and at the same time shows the way out of them. Otherwise, his assumption of human nature has no meaning and no utility and no value. What is the use of admitting Avatarhood if you take all the meaning out of it? * If your argument is that the life-actions, struggles of the Avatar (e.g. Rama’s, Krishna’s) are unreal because the Divine is there and knows it is all a Maya, in man also there is a self, a spirit that is immortal, untouched, divine; you can say that man’s sufferings and ignorance are only put on, sham, unreal. But if man feels them as real and if the Avatar feels his work and the difficulties to be serious and real? If the existence of the Divinity is of no practical effect, what is the use of a theoretical admission? The manifestation of the Divine in the Avatar is of help to man because it helps him to discover his own divinity and find the way to realise it. If the difference is so great that the humanity by its very nature prevents all possibility of following the way opened by the Avatar, it merely means that there is no divinity in man that can respond to the Divinity in the Avatar. (Sri Aurobindo, Letter To Nirodbaran Talukdar) Divine Incarnation What is an incarnation? An Incarnation is the Divine Consciousness and Being manifesting through a physical body. It is possible from any plane. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Meaning and Purpose of Avatarhood) * www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 7 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 When the Divine descends here as an incarnation, does not that very act mould his infinity into a limited finite? How then does he still continue to rule over the universe? Do you imagine that the Divine is at any time not everywhere in the universe or beyond it? or that he is living at one point in space and governing the rest from it, as Mussolini governs the Italian Empire from Rome? (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Avatar and Human Ideas of Space) * I was speaking of the Divine in the body, and not of the Divine in his supreme plane above in an impersonal and formless aspect. Does not his incarnation on earth necessarily limit him? Living in such a world he has to govern all the three universes! It is the omnipresent cosmic Divine who supports the action of the universe; if there is an Incarnation, it does not in the least diminish the cosmic Presence and the cosmic action in the three or thirty million universes. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Meaning and Purpose of Avatarhood) * When the Avatar comes down here how does he take on a mind, vital and body? It is, I think, the soul that is divine, but the adhar has to be built up from the cosmos? Everybody has to do that when he is born. It is the soul that is permanent. Does an Avatar create a new mind, life and body from the cosmos for himself, or take hold of some liberated human being and use his outer personality for his manifestation? That would be a possession, not an Avatar. An Avatar is supposed to be from birth. Each soul at its birth takes from the cosmic mind, life and matter to shape a new external personality for himself. What prevents the Divine from doing the same? What is continued from birth to birth is the inner being. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Avatar and Human Birth) * You wrote: “The Avatar is a special manifestation, while for the rest of the time it is the Divine working with the ordinary human limits as a Vibhuti.” Does not the Divine find it difficult to mould himself into a Vibhuti and accept the human limits? Why should it be difficult? Even the Avatar accepts limits for his work. Since an Avatar comes here with a divine Power, Light and Ananda why should he pass through the same process of sadhana as an ordinary sadhak? The Avatar is not supposed to act in a non-human way—he takes up human action and uses human methods with the human consciousness in front and the Divine behind. If he did not his taking a human body would have no meaning and would be of no use to anybody. He could just as well have stayed above and done things from there. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Meaning and Purpose of Avatarhood) * www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 8 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 Avatars, unlike Vibhutis, do not need to satisfy their vital. Why should they not? For the Avatar’s vital has no cravings and desires as our vital has. He is above them. And if he seems to be satisfying them, it is only to acquire experience and knowledge of the vital world. . All that is wrong. The Avatar takes upon himself the nature of humanity in his instrumental parts, though the consciousness acting behind is divine. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Avatar and Humanity) * When the Divine descends here (as the Avatar), he has to veil himself and deal with the world and its movements like an ordinary man of the cosmic product. Exactly. But behind he is perfectly conscious of what happens. The universal forces cannot make him their tool as they make us. That does not prevent the Avatar from acting as men act and using the movements of Nature for his life and work. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Avatar and Humanity) * Does your above answer mean that the Avatars too satisfy the vital desires, cravings, lust etc. as a layman? What do you mean by lust? Avatars can be married and have children and that is not possible without sex; they can have friendships, enmities, family feelings etc. etc.—these are vital things. I think you are under the impression that an Avatar must be a saint or a Yogi. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Meaning and Purpose of Avatarhood) * Avatars can of course be married and satisfy their vital movements. But do they really indulge them as ordinary people? Don’t they even before they begin the practice of Yoga, remain conscious of their union with the Divine above even while satisfying their outer being? There is not necessarily any union above before the practice of Yoga. There is a connection of the consciousness with the veiled Divinity and an action out of that, but this is not dependent on the practice of Yoga. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: The Avatar and Humanity) * We believe that both you and the Mother are Avatars. But is it only in this life that both of you have shown your divinity? It is said that you and she have been on the earth constantly since its creation. What were you doing during the previous lives? Carrying on the evolution. I find it difficult to understand so concise a statement. Can’t you elaborate it? That would mean writing the whole of human history. I can only say that as there are special descents to carry on the evolution to a farther stage, so also something of the Divine is always there to help through each stage itself in one direction or another. (Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on The Mother: Carrying on the Evolution) www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 9 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 Descent of the Supreme All-knowing he accepts our darkened state, Divine, wears shapes of animal or man; Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time, Immortal, dallies with mortality. The All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance, The All-Blissful bore to be insensible. Incarnate in a world of strife and pain, He puts on joy and sorrow like a robe And drinks experience like a strengthening wine. He whose transcendence rules the pregnant Vasts, Prescient now dwells in our subliminal depths, A luminous individual Power, alone. Rare is the cup fit for love’s nectar wine, As rare the vessel that can hold God’s birth; A soul made ready through a thousand years Is the living mould of a supreme Descent. (Sri Aurobindo) May 2021 Sunday Activities at the Centre - A glimpse 6 June 2021: Savitri Reading Circle The session continued with reading of passages from Savitri - The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation - Book 11- Canto One from page 705 and 706. In the passages we read Sri Aurobindo says that when the moment of the Divine Manifestation draws close, the mighty Mother of creation shall take birth in the world of Time and God shall be born into human clay in forms made ready by your human embodiments. Then shall the supreme truth be given to man. Here are some quotes from Sri Aurobindo himself, from The Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo. \"The mind is not all. Beyond the being of mind there is another being, an immeasurable Reality cast into many forms, a splendid miracle of the One in its multitudinous aspect. There is above, a consciousness that mind cannot touch, speech cannot express, thought cannot reveal. It has yet no dwelling place, no station on earth, no centre in the being of man. And yet it is the true source of all things that arc thought and done on earth; it is the real fount of creation, the source of all its works.” . \"This consciousness is the originating cause of all truth on earth; it is the full sun of which the mind radiates only fragmentary rays; it is Infinity’s heaven from which rains the bounty of God; it is the wide Goal that justifies all the faltering and narrow attempts of man: it is the channel for the little Bliss that man is given to taste.” www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 10 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 \"Some shall be made the receptacles of the glory, vehicles of the luminous power of the Eternal. These elder ones are the high forerunners at the head of gallopping Time, the great liberators of the earth-bound mind, the powerful transmuters of the human clay, the first-born of a new celestial race.” \"The incarnate dual Power (Savitri-Satyavan) shall open God’s door, and the eternal supermind shall directly touch the earthly time. Then shall the dormant superman wake in mortal man and reveal the demi- god hidden in man; or the awakened superman shall grow into God-Light and God-Force, revealing in the proems the deity secretly dwelling in the cavern of his being.” “Then shall the earth be touched by the Supreme; his luminous, direct transcendental Radiance shall light up the mind and heart of man; it shall force the vital and the physical acts of man to expound the ineffable mystery of the Supreme in a celestial language of Divinity’s signs.” “The living cosmic spirit of the Supreme shall cancel the ages-old law of death and pain, wipe out the prevailing laws of Ignorance and enfold the being that is ready for immortality with the profound meaning of beauty and the hidden significance of life.” “The regard of the Supreme across the mystic waves of infinity shall restore to Nature her first joy of life, her rhythmic heart-beats of a delight which she has last, the cry of an ecstasy that has been forgotten, the ebullient dance of the primal Bliss that created the world, in his thousand-pillared temple by Time’s sea.” \"The Immanent God shall be the Witness watching, from his many-branching sovereign seat, his static being and silent might ruling earth-nature by the laws of the Eternal, himself a thinker awakening the world of the Inconscient, an unmoving centre of many infinitudes in his multitudinous temple-creation on the shores of the sea of Time.” (Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo) 13 June 2021: Reading on The Mother by Sri Aurobindo First we read pages 514-516 of Savitri where the Lord describes Imperial Maheshwari in the Triple Soul Forces (Canto IV of the Book of Yoga). We also read some sections related to Imperial Maheshwari from the book \"The letters on the Mother\" where Sri Aurobindo answers questions from sadhaks. We continued chapter 6 on \"The Mother\" on the section on Mahakali. Sri Aurobindo tells us that: … force and strength are her peculiar power. There is in her an overwhelming intensity, a mighty passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to shatter every limit and obstacle. She is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man that is unwilling and she is severe to all that is obstinately ignorant and obscure; her wrath is immediate and dire against treachery and falsehood and malignity, ill-will is smitten at once by her scourge. Indifference, negligence and sloth in the divine work she cannot bear and she smites awake at once with sharp pain, if need be, the untimely slumberer and the loiterer. The impulses that are swift and straight and frank, the movements that are unreserved and absolute, the aspiration that mounts in flame are the motion of Mahakali. Her spirit is tameless, her vision and will are high and far reaching like the flight of an eagle, her feet are rapid on the upward way and her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour. 20 June 2021: Secret of The Vedas - ‘Agni, the Ilumined Will1’- (Rig Veda Mandala 1, Sukta 77) Started with Jared going through a recap on Sri Aurobindo’s commentary so far covered during the previous sessions. After chanting of the 5 Riks, a detailed explanaton of the 1st Rik was taken up covering as follows: www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 11 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021  A prologue - Sri Aurobindo’s commentary on the ‘supreme and crucial point in the Vedic Yoga of the seer Gotama Rahugana’ was explained. Exact situation being the first possibility of the great passage of ‘transition from mind to supermind’ to be followed by ‘transfiguration of the intellignce turning into a divine Light’. At this juncture, the seer seeks in himself for the ‘inspired word’ – which shall help him to realise for himself and others as well, ‘the Power needed for effecting the transition’.  The Rishi asks further as to ‘what right inspired word of affimation and realisation’ to be uttered to Agni, which also must be accepted by other divine Workers.  Then the word by word translation / meaning of the 1st Rik was explained, covering the important aspects and attributes of Agni.  ‘Bhamine’ – Bhama means both ‘light of knowledge’ and a ‘flame of action’  ‘Deva Jushta’- Who is also worshipped by all the devas.  ‘Martyeshu Amritaha’- Residing in humans as immortal  ‘Ritava’- who is Truthful  ‘Hota’- Summoner of gods  ‘Yajishta’ – Superb sacrificer  ‘Devan ith Krinothi’- who fashions the gods in man.  Essenes of the Rik: We should know the path and way of worshipping this great Agni. 20 June 2021: Question and Answers by The Mother; Reading on Synthesis of Yoga 7 November 1956 “The Shakti, the power of the Infinite and the Eternal descends within us, works, breaks up our present psychological formations, shatters every wall, widens, liberates... she frees the consciousness from confinement in the body; it can go out in trance or sleep or even waking and enter into worlds or other regions of this world and act there or carry back its experience. It spreads out, feeling the body only as a small part of itself, and begins to contain what before contained it; it achieves the cosmic consciousness and extends itself to be commensurate with the universe. It begins to know inwardly and directly and not merely by external observation and contact the forces at play in the world, feels their movement, distinguishes their functioning and can operate immediately upon them as the scientist operates upon physical forces, accept their action and results in our mind, life, body or reject them or modify, change, reshape, create immense new powers and movements in place of the old small functionings of the nature. We begin to perceive the working of the forces of universal Mind and to know how our thoughts are created by that working....” Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, pp. 172-73 Question: Sweet Mother, how are our thoughts created by the forces of the universal Mind? 27 June 2021: Readings and Reflections: The Inner Journey Following the reading of Prayers and Meditation, a reflection on, “Where is my consciousness posited in during my day-to-day living?” Some participants responded that it is on the mind, some in the feelings and one mentioned it was in the reflective space. After stressing the importance of self-awareness and eventually self-knowledge for the journey forward, we carried out a cleaning/tidying activity of the space around each one. Some shared that they felt better after putting everything in place. Then everyone was invited to beautify this space by bringing in something significant and beautiful. One addition was a pot www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 12 Avatar of the Supreme

Avatar of the Supreme Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. July 2021 of plant, another was a family photograph, another participant removed a sheath paper from the table and placed on the floor. Then an inner visualisation process happened after which the following reflection question was put to participants: What would I take up to clean in my inner space? This is to be shared during the next session. We then went on to read the passage on the “Psychic Being titled: “Unique Role of The Psychic Being”. We concluded with concentration music. - Jayalakshmi, Ram, Krishnamurthy, Shailaja, Jayanthy PROGRAMME FOR THE MONTH OF JULY 2021 DATE TIME DETAILS 8 AM Monthly Morning Walk 4 July 2021 Savitri Circle by Venkatesh Rao Sunday 6 PM 11 July 2021 6 PM Readings from The Mother by Ram Sunday 5 PM Secret of the Veda by Krishnamurthy and Jared Mother’s Questions and Answers by Shailaja 18 July 2021 Sunday 6 PM 25 July 2021 6 PM Readings and Reflections: The Inner Journey by Jayanthy Sunday *Details can be found in the SAS Whatsapp Group Printed and Published by The Sri Aurobindo Society of Singapore 2A Starlight Road 01-07, Singapore 217755. Ramadoss: 97354063 or [email protected]; Anand Patel:[email protected]; Email: [email protected] Visit our website at: www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 13 Avatar of the Supreme