SAIEN

My personal sadhana includes time taken to uplift and purify the vital being. For this, I have been following Mother’s guidelines in educating the vital being. Specifically, she says,  “This vital education has two principal aspects, very different in their aims and methods, but both equally important. The first concerns the development and use of the sense organs. The second the progressing awareness and control of the character, culminating in its transformation.” 1   In this write-up I will share what I do for the first part of vital education, i.e. training the senses.   To develop the senses, what I have been doing for the last few years is musical studies. I have been studying music with teachers in singing and in guitar. Presently, I have a teacher in Pune, India who teaches Khayal tradition of Hindustani Sangeet (Indian classical music). And I have a teacher in Seville, Spain who teaches the Flamenco guitar. The vocal training has been very good for the vital bein...

When we reflect on the time we have in our lifetime and how we utilize it, we find that after we calculate time spent in sleeping, eating, bathing, growth in childhood, earning a living, exercising, we have a very limited amount of what may be called “free time” available to us. In a culture and society that wants to keep us ‘occupied’ at all times, this free time is generally allocated to various forms of recreation or dissipation of our focus and energies. Any moment when we do not have a specific task or activity is considered empty and we deal with the feeling of boredom. Our society provides us endless options for filling this time, some spent in building up our skills and experience for success in the outer world of action, and other time in socializing, or even actions of outright dissipation such as use of drugs or alcohol, or used simply as a distraction in various forms of mindless entertainment in which we habitually engage. The Mother suggests that this very limited ‘free t...

The human inclination toward superiority so often leads us to condemn that which is incomplete or partially limited. Sri Aurobindo does not glorify or glamorize atheism or materialism, but he also does not unduly dismiss them or deny the good that they have brought to humanity. Instead, he invites us to "observe with respect and wonder the work that Atheism has done for the Divine and admire the services that Agnosticism has rendered in preparing the illimitable increase of knowledge."1 In the portion of the Markandeya Purana called the Devimahatmya, or Glory of the Devi, the sage Markandeya tells a story about the radiant ones (devas) who have been defeated by an army of demons (asuras). They remember previous times that the Devi, the Mother of All, has saved them from evil, and so they gather together and travel to the Himalayas to invoke Her. They call out to Her in a poignant prayer called the Aparajitastuti, or the Chandipath. The prayer includes a series of repetitive v...

Soul is that timeless part which silently witnesses and decides. Nature is that part which is engrossed in activity and movement. In the ordinary human, nature prevails over the soul; (s)he is bound by the ignorance, error, and bondage of personal and cosmic nature. Free-will here is a deception of nature, because all impulsions, actions are eventually dictated by forces of which the soul is a mere bystander or puppet. When the soul is not self-established in its own power, it uses processes or instruments of nature to manipulate nature (alcohol or WhatsApp for stimulating oneself, anger or threat or lure to sway others) which further binds it in nature. It takes time and relentless vigilance to come alive of its own pervasively unconscious slavery. In the divinized and sovereign human, the soul prevails over nature. This happens in three stages: standing apart from nature unidentified with her, refusing her exhortations and holding poise, and finally possessing and enjoying nature and...