SAIEN

The body is a wandering, mortal temple Whose walls grow in size and tremble with age, The two even pillars uphold its sacred frame,   Human form, a marvellous tabernacle. The rising hands, the gopuram in a holy cascade, The face, serene and still, the temple’s sacred façade; The eyes, twin lamps illumining its inner colonnade, The nose, the guiding ridge of the tower in its upward braid. The fingers, the fine relics that serve the temple’s art; The lungs, deep wells sustaining every sacred part; The stomach, the homa-kunda where life’s offerings flame; The heart, the sanctum sanctorum where the soul  rests in its eternal aim. Though each body bears a shrine, crafted with a sacred grace, Yet travel s  far in longing, seeking holiness in every place; From pillar to post wandering, yearning for a fleeting spark, Though the silent Divine within waits in stillness, glowing through the dark. And when the outer temple quivers, weakened and worn,   The inner deity rises, u...

As ours is an integral yoga, Mother speaks about the need to organize the whole of our being around the deeper psychic centre. And although one may have a certain level of sincerity in following the spiritual path, still a complete organization of the being is needed if one wants to progress farther. “You may be moved, pushed into action and used as  unconscious  instruments by the divine Force, if you have minimum of   goodwill   and   sincerity.   But   to   become   a   conscious   instrument, capable of identification and conscious, willed movements, you must have this inner organization; otherwise you will always be running into a chaos somewhere, a confusion somewhere or an obscurity, an unconsciousness somewhere.   And naturally your action,   even   t hough   guided   exclusively   by   the   Divine, will   not   have   the   perfection   of   express...

The instrument watches in awe, Beauty that transcends the human law, Being channeled through its modest reed, Filling  every gap, satiating every need. The flautist playing the blessed flute,   Renders it drunk and mute. Love drenched into the music the flute drowns, Amazed and struck by the rich deep sounds, From its own body wafting, Unable to comprehend the sublime grafting, Only one truth the simple flute knows One seed, its happiness sows: Not in itself lies the music but in its player, Unmoved by praise, it lies quenched in prayer. - Anahita Sanjana (India)

In his epic poem  Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol ,   Sri Aurobindo states: “God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep.” Until an individual has an actual experience of an inward state of consciousness, or that of the silent mind, or one in which the experience is that of an uninvolved witness, or one experiences the descent of knowledge, or power or ecstatic bliss that goes outside the bounds of the normal human experience, he cannot truly understand what is meant by these descriptive terms. The matter of spiritual experiences, for those who have not personally experienced them, is one of either belief or disbelief, or one of argument in favor of or against. For those who are locked into the logical, rational, mental mind-set, these experiences are almost impossible to fit into their world-view, and thus, they will declare them as hallucinations, dreams, delusions or any number of other derogatory terms that, more than anything else, define the limits and framework t...

Before the sun shines its first ray To glitter the sky with golden hue, The rooster perches quietly, and cracks the shell of dawn. His crowing every daybreak Is sharp as truth and pure as oath, Meandering the dark sleeping world   Lifting morning from its sheathe. Through him, the earth hears The divine beginning to revitalize, He rises where heaven blushes awake, Propelling to an entity brighter than itself. He is the coupling   Between sleep and waking, A feathered messenger   In the tabernacle of eternity. In the context of spiritual growth,   The rooster helps the aspirant's awakening   to higher consciousness and   the pursuit of inner transformation. He serves as a potent metaphor   for the soul’s progression   from ignorance to divine consciousness,   A liaison between the self and The Divine! The above poetic prose is an inspiration from my own experience of taking the Aurobindonian path as a result of the self-awakening action of the...

The entire existence, this world is a gradual self-expression and manifestation of the Divine, says the Indian spiritual tradition. But without the vision to experience the world, and everything and everyone in the world, as a manifestation of the Divine, and more importantly, without the experience of our own self as a manifestation and as a portion of the Divine, we continue to exist in Ignorance and separated from the omnipresence of the Divine. Only through a sincere aspiration and an intense personal effort of the  sadhak  the Divine Grace begins to slowly tear apart the many layers of the veil behind which is hidden the deeper, inner vision which is able to see the Divine all around and within. Such intense  sadhana  also includes rejection of all that obstructs the path of aspiration, and surrender of one’s entire being and all the movements within – the act of aspiration and the rejection included – as an offering to the Divine so that He may decide the cours...