Teachings of Mother and Aurobindo on Ramzan Month

THE HOLY MONTH OF RAMADAN / RAMZAN

For over one billion Muslims throughout the world, Ramadan is a special month of the year. This year, it begins on May 27. Ramadan was traditionally held to be the month in which the first verses of the holy Quran were revealed to Prophet Mohammad. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to God and self-control. During the month, Muslims fast from dawn to sunset every day.

SRI AUROBINDO speaks of the place of Mahomed (Prophet Muhammad) and his mission in one of his aphorisms:

“Mahomed's mission was necessary, else we might have ended by thinking, in the exaggeration of our efforts at self-purification, that earth was meant only for the monk and the city created as a vestibule for the desert.”

In another writing, Sri Aurobindo says:
“Mahomed tried to re-establish the Asiatic gospel of human equality in the spirit. All men are equal in Islam, whatever their social position or political power, nor is any man debarred from the full development of his manhood by his birth or low original station in life. All men are brothers in Islam and the bond of religious unity overrides all other divisions and differences.”
—Sri Aurobindo

 

Flowers & Divine Mother with Sri Aurobindo - Few Pictures

The Mother in Pondicherry

THOUGHTS AND APHORISMS - SRI AUROBINDO

True humility consists in knowing that the Supreme Consciousness, the Supreme Will alone exists and that the I is not.
THE MOTHER



THOUGHTS AND APHORISMS
SRI AUROBINDO
Purity is in thy soul; but for actions, where is their purity or impurity ?

The Hour of God
P. 113

Divine Messages from Divine Mother

As we progress and purify ourselves of our egoism, our friendship with the Divine becomes more and more clear and conscious.
THE MOTHER

Anilbaran Roy's interview with Sri Aurobindo on 28 June 1926 Monday (Morning) (6)

Anilbaran: I can feel the silence in mountainous scenes, but I can’t feel the same in the restlessness of the sea.

Sri Aurobindo: In the middle of an ocean on board a ship, one can get a sense of vastness.

*

Anilbaran: If one should stop all mental activities during the meditation should one stop all thinking also? Say, about the relation between the Purusha and the Prakriti, attributes of the Purusha, etc.?

Sri Aurobindo: One may have an experience, a perception of these things, but one should not indulge an intellectual thinking or mental debate on such issues. In the normal play of our mind there are all sorts of perversions; hence the need to stop all these things and inculcate right thinking, right willing — in other words, Truth must be established. And, in order to possess the Truth, the plays of the lower nature must be stopped. The Purusha should assume at all times the attitude of a giver of sanction while rejecting the lower movements and accepting only truth-movements.

Anilbaran: The Gita says: ātmasamstham manah krtvā…chintayet [Chapter VI, Verse 25] what does this mean?

Sri Aurobindo: The mind is running on all sides to think about many things, —what we call thoughts coming from outside. We must withdraw the mind from these distractions and make it abide in the self. Thus guarding the peace within we shall have to do the work without. Now, what the Gita has not mentioned but what we say is this: the Truth-power must be brought down from above into that state of peace, and this higher power — Parashakti — will directly guide the vehicle—ādhāra—and transform it.



After having stopped the lower activities of the mind, it must be made receptive; and, instead of weaving all kinds of empty and idle thoughts, the mind should receive intuitions from above. The reason why we recommend the suspension of external activities is that otherwise the mind cannot abandon its habitual activities and old movements and accept truth-movements so long as it is engaged in such activities. This is why isolation is necessary.

Anilbaran: Does the higher Truth work in us only when we are established in the silent consciousness? and not at other times?

Sri Aurobindo: The higher Truth is all the time working in us but through the lower power — Aparashakti. It is when we become conscious of the play of this higher Power then only yoga begins. Not in the state of unconsciousness, but in full awareness when the higher Power will descend into and direct us, then only the yogic life will begin.

Anilbaran: The lower distractions are less and I feel peace quite well. Will this be lasting?

Sri Aurobindo: It will be lasting if you want it to be so. It is not that the distractions will never recur; but you must go on rejecting them and thus the state of peace will be established.

Integral Yoga- Snippets-1

This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasya needed too constant and intense. It cannot be done if there is a petulant self-assertion of the ideas of the human mind or wilful indulgence of the demands and instincts and pretensions of the lowest part of the being, commonly justified under the name of human nature.

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 1310

Everybody knows this; those who do not want to change their way of doing things or their way of being always say, “Oh! What do you expect, it is human nature.” This is what is called a “wilful indulgence”. That is to say, instead of becoming con- scious that these are weaknesses and difficulties on the way, one justifies these things, saying, “Oh! It can’t be helped, it is human nature.” One wants to continue to do what one is doing, without changing, one is full of a wilful indulgence of one’s demands. For the lower nature of man always demands things; it says, “These are necessities, these are needs, I can’t do without them.” Then, the instincts — a sort of instinct for one’s own satisfaction — and pretensions: the lower being claims that it has a considerable importance and must be given what is necessary for it, otherwise it won’t be able to live; it asserts that it alone is important, and so on. It is all this which creates obstacles, all these obscure, ignorant movements, all these justifications of the old ways of being: those who fly into a temper and say, “What do you expect, it can’t be helped”, and everything one does saying, “Oh! It is human nature”, everything one justifies saying, “What can be done, people are like that, there is nothing to be done about it.” It is the old idea that we are born with a particular nature and must get adjusted to it, for we cannot change it.

So Sri Aurobindo tells us that if one cannot change the nature it is not worth the trouble of doing yoga, for yoga is done precisely in order to change the nature, otherwise it has no meaning.

🌸 The Mother ( Question and Answers, Volume-4, page no.332-333)