SAIEN

When the oft experienced veil of ignorance clouds the vision and we appear discrete separate bits to each other; when the “Unseen Hand” that is faithfully carrying each of us becomes invisible to our seeing, then we walk into the hell of feeling inadequate and lacking in love, in success, in capacity and so on. When Grace steps in dispelling the clouds over our eyes, once more the sun of the invisible hand becomes visible. We see that at every moment it is carrying each of us to our ‘unique optimum’ of success, love and capacity. The previous echo of ignorance intoning “I do not have what he/she has and so I feel small and resentment” is muted into the knowing; “My optimum is unique to me. Her optimum is unique to her. The ‘unseen hand’ knows exactly how much of the desired object/goal is good for me and carries me to that exactly measured optimum. More or less are meaningless. It is senseless to resent another’s achievement because what goes to that one was her due from the unseen han...

During the course of attending an online webinar organized by NAMAH this year, I came across the term  “Subliminal self ” which is a storehouse of perceptions, thoughts and feelings (PFT), just below the surface consciousness and before central psychic consciousness self; gets activated in dream state of consciousness and is also a trigger for our habitual reactions to external stimuli. A good metaphor of mango pulp for subliminal consciousness made me introspect and reflect to develop my understanding. Then reading the book entitled “Our Many selves” by Dr AS Dalal of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, proved to be a good influencer to address my curiosity on this concept of Subliminal consciousness (Self). Having gained basic information on the subliminal self, I took a conscious approach to interpret dreams that used to come and connecting the dots and then consciously working on dilution of impressions and memories by using Meditation and Japa as antidotes. This was an attempt ...

Life gives us many opportunities to become aware of those countless little, pesky flaws in our ordinary nature that stand in the way of making the inner aspiration more sincere and truer and completer.   We are   reminded that the path to becoming self-aware and gaining even a tiny bit of self-mastery is full of immense difficulties.      When such moments come, it is truly the Mother’s Grace if we can recall the ever-helpful, ever-compassionate advice from Sri Aurobindo –    “For the sadhak outward struggles, troubles, calamities are only a means of surmounting ego and rajasic desire and attaining to complete surrender.”  (CWSA, Vol. 29, p. 241)      We must be immensely grateful if we can recall this and try to live with this awareness as we go through the difficulties or struggles! Yet we also recognise that it is not easy to take all that comes up as an opportunity to grow in one’s will to surrender and not get my “I” involved in it!...