Meeting with Yogi Lele

In the midst of all these political activities, on December 30th, 1907, Aurobindo met a yogi named Vishnu Bhaskar Lele. It was the first time he had met a yogi intentionally. He said to Lele: “I want to do Yoga but for work, for action, not for sannyasa (renouncing the world) and nirvana. "(Aurobindo, 1972, p. 349). The two men spent three days together in a single room. Lele told him to "Sit in medi¬tation, but do not think, look only at your mind you will see thoughts coming into it before they can enter throw these away from your mind till your mind is capable of entire silence. " (Aurobindo, 1972. p. 132). He later recorded: "The first result was a series of tremen¬dously powerful experiences and radical changes of consciousness which I had never intended.. and which were quite contrary to my own ideas. for they made me see with a stupendous intensity the world as a cinema topographic play of vacant forms in the impersonal universality of the Absolute Brahma. " (Aurobindo, 1972, p. 127)

"In the enormous spaces of the self the body now seemed only a wandering shell." (Aurobindo, 1972, p. 132)

"It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought. unstained by any mental or vital movement.. there was no ego, no real world only when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialized shadows without true substance. There was no One or many even, only just absolutely That featureless, relationsless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet su¬premely real and solely real. This was no mental realization or something glimpsed somewhere above. no abstraction. it was positive, the only positive reality although not a spatial physical world. pervading. occupying or rather flooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world, leaving no room or space for any reality but itself allowing nothing else to seem at all actual, positive or substantial... What it (this experience) brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous silence, an infinity of release and freedom." (Aurobindo, 1972, p. 132)

Aurobindo had entered into the state of "Nirvikalpa samadhi" or "That" of the Vedanta and Hindu sacred literature, or what the Buddhists referred to as "Nirvana", "liberation", the final goal of mystical traditions around the world, which so few ever attain, even after years of arduous effort. But this end point was to be just the beginning of much higher experiences. He records: "I lived in that Nirvana day and night before it began to admit other things into itself or modify itself at all... in the end it began to disappear into a greater Super consciousness from above... The aspect of an illusionary world gave place to one in which illusion is only a small surface phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality behind it and a supreme Divine Reality above it and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of everything that had seemed at first only a cinematic shape or shadow. And this was no re imprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth... Nirvana in my liberated consciousness turned out to be the beginning of my realization, a first step towards the complete thing, not the sole true attainment possible or even a culminating finale. "(Aurobindo, 1972, p. 154). "Nirvana cannot be at once the ending of the Path with nothing beyond to explore... it is the end of the lower Path through the lower Nature and the beginning of the Higher Evolution." (Aurobindo, 1969 (a) p. 71)

Aurobindo continued in this state while editing his daily news¬paper, organizing clandestine meetings and addressing political rallies. Before the first such rally, when he expressed to Lele his hesitation to speak, Lele "asked me to pray, but I was so absorbed in the Silent Brahman consciousness that I could not pray. He replied that it did not matter, he and some others would pray and I had simply to go to the meeting and make Namaskar (bow) to the audience as Narayan (the Lord) and wait and speech would come to me from some other source than the mind" (Purani, 1958, p. 120).

Aurobindo followed these instructions and "the speech came as though it were dictated. And ever since all speech, writing, thought and outward activity have so come to me from the same source above the brain mind" (Aurobindo, 1972, p. 83). This was his first experience with the Superconscient. His speech was wonderful: "Try to realize the strength within you, try to bring it forward; so that everything you do may be not your own doing but the doing of that Truth within you... because it is not you. it is something within you. What can all these tribunals, what can all the powers of the world do to that which is within you, that Immortal, that Unborn and Undying One, whom the sword cannot Pierce, whom the fire cannot burn?... Him the jail cannot confine and the gallows cannot end. What is there that you can fear when you are conscious of him who is within you?" (Aurobindo, 1922, p. 22)

Aurobindo was arrested by the British police a second time at dawn on May 4, 1908. It was during the daily exercise period in the yard of the Alipore jail that a series of spiritual experiences brought about a change in his consciousness. He began to see the Lord in everyone. In the iron cage in the courtroom during the trial, which lasted six months, the same vision followed him: 'I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the Prosecution that I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat there and smiled. 'Now do you fear? 'he said, I am in all men and overrule their actions and their words'." (Aurobindo, 1922, p. 58)

source: Babaji and the 18 Siddha Kriya Yoga Tradition

The Supramental Evolution - Sri Aurobindo and the 18 Siddhas

One of the few persons in modern times who could fully appreciate the greatness of a Divine transformation of humanity was Sri Aurobindo. While most of the pundits and orthodox religious leaders of India have regarded the writings of the Siddhas, with their claims of physical immortality as the product of imagination, Sri Aurobindo attempted for forty years to realize such a state. While he never claimed to be a part of the 18 Siddha Tradition, as will be seen below, it is evident that the transformative experiences of Thirumoolar, Ramalinga, Aurobindo and the Mother (Aurobindo's chief disciple) were all of the same nature. His contemporary accounts may therefore help one to appreciate the claims of the Siddhas.

Sri Aurobindo's inspired vision was expressed in The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga, and his experiences in self¬ transformation were expressed in his Letters on Yoga and the epic poem, Savitri (Aurobindo, 1935 [a], 1935 [b], 1969, 1950 [a]). The latter two works, in particular, describe in detail the many stages and difficulties involved in such a transformation. Far from being an end in itself, physical immortality, represented to Aurobindo the next stage in humanity's evolution. It was to be the result of spiritual transformation: the culmination of a process in which a Divine "Supramental" consciousness would descend into the lower planes of consciousness, even into the inconscient levels of Matter.

Aurobindo's descriptions of this transformative process and its results are strikingly similar to those of both the Eighteen Siddhas and Ramalinga described in earlier chapters, particularly in the references to the "golden dust" and "golden body". His deep love for humanity and his orientation towards the physical world and action are also similar to those of the Siddhas. This commonality of experience and orientation may provide us with some guidelines for our own discipline and lifestyles, to be explored in the next chapter.

Aurobindo Chose was born in Calcutta on August 15, 1872. He studied in England from the age of five to the age of 20. Returning to India in 1892, Aurobindo worked as a teacher of French and English and later as the private secretary of the Prince of Baroda. He married in 1901. However, in the intervening years most of his energies wore taken up by the fledging Indian independence move¬ment, for which he had become one its principal leaders. He was charged by the British with subversion and jailed. but acquitted after a trial for lack of evidence. (Satprem, 1975, p. 27, 149 150)

source: Babaji and the 18 Siddha Kriya Yoga Tradition