by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Delhi Branch
On the occasion of Sri Aurobindo's 150th birth anniversary, we are launching the podcast as an offering. 'Golden Words' is a series that will help seekers of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo to immerse themselves in readings on the masters' work in the voice of Ms. Tara Jauhar. Ms. Tara Jauhar is the Chairperson of 'Sri Aurobindo Ashram Delhi Branch'.
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Publishing Since
1/26/2024
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March 21, 2024
<p><strong>Perseverance - the decision to go to the very end</strong></p> <p><br></p> <p>Perseverance is patience in action. </p> <p><br></p> <p>The road of Yoga is long, every inch of ground has to be won against much resistance and no quality is more needed by the sadhak than patience and single-minded perseverance with a faith that remains firm through all difficulties, delays and apparent failures.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Generally, all progress made on one side is set off by an attack of the adverse forces on the other. So, the more you advance, the more vigilant must you become. And the most essential quality is perseverance, endurance, and - a kind of inner good humour which helps you not to get discouraged, not to become sad, and to face all difficulties with a smile. There is an English word which expresses this very well - cheerfulness. If you can keep this within you, you fight much better, resist much better, in the light, these bad influences which try to hinder you from progressing.</p> <p><br></p> <p>If you are not able to face difficulties without getting discouraged and without giving up, because it is too difficult; and if you are incapable... well, of receiving blows and yet continuing, of "pocketing" them, as they say - when you receive blows as a result of your defects, of putting them in your pocket and continuing to go forward without flagging - you don't go very far; at the first turning where you lose sight of your little habitual life, you fall into despair and give up the game.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The most... how shall I put it? the most material form of this is perseverance. Unless you are resolved to begin the same thing over again a thousand times if need be... You know, people come to me in despair, "But I thought it was done and now I must begin again!" And if they are told, "But that's nothing, you will probably have to begin again a hundred times, two hundred times, a thousand times; you take one step forward and think you are secure, but there will always be something to bring back the same difficulty a little farther on. </p> <p>You think you have solved the problem, you must solve it yet once again; it will turn up again looking just a little different, but it will be the same problem", and if you are not determined that: "Even if it comes back a million times, I shall do it a million times, but I shall go through with it", well, you won't be able to do the yoga. This is absolutely indispensable.</p> <p><br></p> <p>People have a beautiful experience and say, "Ah, now this is it!..." And then it settles down, diminishes, gets veiled, and suddenly something quite unexpected, absolutely commonplace and apparently completely uninteresting comes before you and blocks your way. And then you say, "Ah! what's the good of having made this progress if it's going to start all over again? Why should I do it? I made an effort, I succeeded, achieved something, and now it's as if I had done nothing! It's indeed hopeless." For you have no endurance.</p> <p><br></p> <p>If one has endurance, one says, "It's all right. Good, I shall begin again as often as necessary; a thousand times, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times if necessary, I shall begin again—but I shall go to the end and nothing will have the power to stop me on the way."</p> <p><br></p> <p><strong>Read Complete Essay:</strong> <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jDQ4ATOiqXDRMOCzZsq7pYUv5rZ1FqM9/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101678726341485960406&rtpof=true&sd=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Click here to read</a></p>
March 14, 2024
<p><strong>Distinguishing the voice of the Divine.</strong></p> <p><br></p> <p>We have said that there is only one safety, never to act except in harmony with the divine Will. There is one question: how to know that it is the divine Will which makes you act? </p> <p><br></p> <p>I replied to the person who put to me this question (although this person did not agree with me) that it is not difficult to distinguish the voice of the Divine: one cannot make a mistake. </p> <p><br></p> <p>You need not be very far on the path to be able to recognise it; you must listen to the still, small peaceful voice which speaks in the silence of your heart.</p> <p><br></p> <p>I forgot one thing: to hear it you must be absolutely sincere, for if you are not sincere, you will begin by deceiving yourself and you will hear nothing at all except the voice of your ego and then you will commit with assurance (thinking that it is the real small voice) the most awful stupidities. </p> <p><br></p> <p>But if you are sincere, the way is sure. </p> <p><br></p> <p>It is not even a voice, not even a sensation, it is something extremely subtle—a slight indication. When everything goes well, that is, when you do nothing contrary to the divine Will, you will not perhaps have any definite impression, everything will seem to you normal. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Of course, you should be eager to know whether you are acting in accordance with the divine Will, that is the first point, naturally, without which you can know nothing at all. </p> <p><br></p> <p>But once you are eager and you pay attention, everything seems to you normal, natural, then all of a sudden, you feel a little uneasiness somewhere in the head, in the heart or even in the stomach;</p> <p><br></p> <p>generally one doesn’t give it a thought; </p> <p><br></p> <p>you may feel it several times in the day but you reject it without giving it any attention; </p> <p>but it is no longer quite the same; </p> <p><br></p> <p>Then, at that moment, you must stop, no matter what you may be doing, and look, and if you are sincere, you will notice a small black spot (a tiny wicked idea, a tiny false movement, a small arbitrary decision) and that’s the source of the uneasiness. </p> <p><br></p> <p>You will notice then that the little black spot comes from the ego which is full of preferences; </p> <p><br></p> <p>generally it does what it likes; the things it likes are called good and those it does not are called bad—this clouds your judgment. </p> <p><br></p> <p>It is difficult to judge under these conditions. </p> <p><br></p> <p>If you truly want to know, you must draw back a step and look, and you will know then that it is this small movement of the ego which is the cause of the uneasiness. </p> <p><br></p> <p>You will see that it is a tiny thing curled back upon itself; you will have the impression of being in front of something hard which resists or is black. Then with patience, from the height of your consciousness, you must explain to this thing its mistake, and in the end it will disappear. </p> <p><br></p> <p>I do not say that you will succeed all at once the very first day, but if you try sincerely, you will always end with success. And if you persevere, you will see that all of a sudden you are relieved of a mass of meanness and ugliness and obscurity which was preventing you from flowering in the light. </p> <p><br></p> <p>It is those things which make you shrivel up, prevent you from widening yourself, opening out in a light where you have the impression of being very comfortable.</p> <p><br></p> <p>If you make this effort, you will see finally that you are very far from the point where you had begun, the things you did not feel, did not understand, have become clear. </p> <p><br></p> <p>If you are resolved, you are sure to succeed.</p> <p>This is the first step towards unifying yourself, becoming a conscious being who has a central will and acts only according to this will, which will be a constant expression of the divine Will. It is worth trying.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Read Complete Essay: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RnG3o4kvdPGh-d1DHg7yaqQV6fTmnMcg/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101678726341485960406&rtpof=true&sd=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Click here to read</a></p>
March 8, 2024
<p><strong>Krishna - The Divine Teacher</strong></p> <p><br></p> <p>Krishna the divine Teacher of the Gita, the eternal Avatar, the Divine who has descended into the human consciousness, the Lord seated within the heart of all beings. </p> <p><br></p> <p>He who guides from behind the veil all our thought and action and heart’s seeking even as He directs from behind the veil of visible and sensible forms and forces and tendencies the great universal action of the world which He has manifested in His own being. </p> <p><br></p> <p>All the strife of our upward endeavour and seeking finds its culmination and ceases in a satisfied fulfilment when we can rend the veil and get behind our apparent self to this real Self, can realise our whole being in this true Lord of our being, can give up our personality to and into this one real Person, merge our ever-dispersed and ever-converging mental activities into His plenary light, offer up our errant and struggling will and energies into His vast, luminous and undivided Will, at once renounce and satisfy all our dissipated outward-moving desires and emotions in the plenitude of His self-existent Bliss. </p> <p><br></p> <p>This is the world-Teacher of whose eternal knowledge all other highest teaching is but the various reflection and partial word, this the Voice to which the hearing of our soul has to awaken.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The Krishna consciousness is a reality…</p> <p><br></p> <p>It is the person who gives value and reality to the personality, </p> <p><br></p> <p>he expresses himself in it and is not constituted by it. </p> <p><br></p> <p>Krishna is a being, a person and it is as the Divine Person that we meet him, hear his voice, speak with him and feel his presence.</p> <p> </p> <p>It does not seem to me that there can be any reasonable doubt that Krishna the man was not a legend or a poetic invention but actually existed upon earth and played a part in the Indian past. </p> <p><br></p> <p>I have always regarded the incarnation as a fact and accepted the historicity of Krishna …</p> <p> </p> <p>The Lila of the Gopis seems to be conceived as something which is always going on in a divine Gokul and which projected itself in an earthly Brindavan and can always be realised and its meaning made actual in the soul. </p> <p><br></p> <p>It is to be presumed that the writers of the Puranas took it as having been actually projected on earth in the life of the incarnate Krishna and it has been so accepted by the religious mind of India.</p> <p> </p> <p>These questions and the speculations to which they have given rise have no indispensable connection with the spiritual life. </p> <p><br></p> <p>There what matters is the contact with Krishna and the growth towards the Krishna consciousness, the presence, the spiritual relation, the union in the soul and till that is reached, the aspiration, the growth in bhakti and whatever illumination one can get on the way. </p> <p><br></p> <p>To one who has had these things, lived in the presence, heard the voice, known Krishna as Friend or Lover, Guide, Teacher, Master or, still more, has had his whole consciousness changed by the contact, or felt the presence within him, all such questions have only an outer and superficial interest. </p> <p><br></p> <p>So also, to one who has had contact with the inner Brindavan and the Lila of the Gopis, made the surrender and undergone the spell of the joy and the beauty or even only turned to the sound of the flute, the rest hardly matters. </p> <p><br></p> <p>But from another point of view, if one can accept the historical reality of the incarnation, there is this great spiritual gain that one has a point d’appui for a more concrete realisation in the conviction that once at least the Divine has visibly touched the earth, made the complete manifestation possible, made it possible for the divine supernature to descend into this evolving but still very imperfect terrestrial nature.</p> <p><br></p> <p><strong>Read complete Essay:</strong> <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h8r9Jk-XgxuyY0v6W2TzIZJ4HamnRm88/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101678726341485960406&rtpof=true&sd=true" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Click to read</a></p>
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On the occasion of Sri Aurobindo's 150th birth anniversary, we are launching the podcast as an offering. 'Golden Words' is a series that will help seekers of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo to immerse themselves in readings on the masters' work in the voice of Ms. Tara Jauhar.
Ms. Tara Jauhar is the Chairperson of 'Sri Aurobindo Ashram Delhi Branch'.
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