14 th and 15 th March 2015 (Bihar State Conference)
Gaya, in Bihar, is an ancient holy city famous for the shradha ceremony (the rites of pinda daan for the departed as practiced in Hindu thought). It is believed that if one performs shradha at Gaya, then the dead are released from all bonds of death and rebirth and attain Moksha. This is based on the legend of Gayasura
(after whom the city is named) who performed severe forms of askesis to please
Lord Brahma. When the great god appeared, the demon asked him for the boon of having the power to release anyone from the bonds of birth and death by a mere look and touch. Though Brahma was compelled to grant the boon it was obvious that this would upset the balance of the world and corrode its evolutionary law wherein all things must develop and arrive at the goal through a long and complex evolutionary labour and effort. Hence the great Preserver of the Law and the balance of creation, god Vishnu appeared before the Asura and sent him to Patala , the subconscious worlds by pressing his feet over his chest.
So though the boon stands, it seems that the action of the Asura is limited to destroying the subconscious past formations that are left behind after the soul departs, rather than granting moksha and the great release! As Sri Aurobindo reveals us that shradha is performed mainly for dissolving the vital sheath that is left behind after the soul sheds its gross attires. To believe that any simple ritual can grant our souls the release from bonds of Ignorance is, as always, an oversimplification of the great cosmic Law where some occult truths have been mixed with wishful thinking and creative imaginations.
Nevertheless, the place where Lord Vishnu is supposed to have placed his holy feet upon Earth is preserved and a temple dedicated to him built around as the
Vishnupad temple.
It is an ancient temple with good vibrations and relatively cleaner than many other temples, though cleanliness is much wanted still in most temples including this one.
By the side of the temple there flows the river Falgu where the shradha is performed. The river literally means ‘waste’ and ‘cast aside’, terms that become significant when we connect it to shradha which is performed for the vital parts that have been cast away for the soul and is now an occult waste burdening the earth. The dissolution of these ‘waste elements’ are needed more for unburdening of the Earth where these things can persist and spread like diseases gripping the mind and body of earthly beings. The rite of Fire (burning the body in fire) is also one such means to destroy these vital elements ( bhootas ) thrown out of the body at death. As for the soul, these things can at best delay its passage through the occult worlds at worst but have no enduring power to either bind the soul for long and so also the shradha ceremony has no effect on the soul’s evolutionary journey

through the cycles of birth and death towards God and Light and Freedom and
Immortality. Besides given the fact that the kind of occult knowledge of the past is no more there and all that we have a body of certain mantras and rituals without the required inner and occult development in most of the priests it is doubtful if this ceremony done blindly helps at all. A simpler and better way, applicable universally to all has been given by the Mother. It is to remember the departed with love and kindness and send them peace and goodwill from here through our thoughts and feelings. Above all to invoke the Grace of God in their lives as they travel beyond. Nothing else or nothing more is needed.
Here again this is indicated in the story of river Falgu itself. The river once ran like a decent stream upon earth until Sita, the divine consort of Lord Rama performed the shradha of her father-in-law, King Dasratha at its banks. This shradha involved no priests or rituals. All that happened was that the soul (or the vital body) of the king came to Sita asking for food and she offered it to him with the river and the Banyan tree as witnesses to her act. It is a beautiful simple way to send away the soul of the departed. Meanwhile soon after that when Lord Rama tried to perform the ritual, the soul of king Dasratha no more partook the food since it was already satisfied with what Sita had offered (this is path breaking for those times and even today since it is believed that it is only son who can perform these and other rites of death. When Sita spoke of it to Lord Rama she invoked the presence of her natural witnesses. While the tree testified this, the river refused and lied since she was greedy of the offerings that were to be poured into her body by King Rama for his father king Dasratha’s shradha . The result of it was that Sita cursed the river to go underneath whereas blessed the tree to remain ever blooming ( akshay vata ). Since then the river runs below the earth but one has to dig only half an arm deep with one’s own hands and one can easily find clean water right below the surface! The tree still stands as a silent witness to
Sita’s offering.
Interestingly and again somewhat paradoxically, Gaya is known not only for the release of the dead from the various sheaths that holds them back to Earth and thus delays their further journey, Gaya is also known for the Enlightenment of the Buddha who gave a noble eightfold path to release the living from the bonds of Ignorance. As we know well, the Buddha dispelled the ignorant beliefs in rituals and the ritualistic interpretation of the Vedas by the Vedavadins. For this reason many think that his path is non-vedic. But what Buddha destroyed or rather did not accept was the ritualistic degradation of the Vedic truth. In his own way however he realised the truth of the Adwaita by discovering the ‘Permanence’ behind and beyond the world of ever changing appearances. Of course its natural long term consequence was the turn towards an other-worldliness, a search for an escape door out of the present imperfect state of earth. Nirvana and Moksha became the goal thus sapping the energy of evolution from mankind. Even

Shankara who opposed the Buddha and tried to bring back the Vedic truth ended up reaffirming the Buddha’s way of escape from the illusion of earthly life. Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother, on the other hand reveal to us that the world is not an illusion in the sense that it is a non-reality but that it is a distortion of a Truth.
Therefore instead of trying to escape from this distortion we should try to transform it into the true representative image that the world seeks to be.
Just as the Akshaya Vata (the imperishable Banyan tree) is a silent witness to the incarnate Divine Rama and Sita’s lila , the Boddhi tree ( Peepal ) is the silent witness of another Avatara Buddha’s enlightenment. What is preserved now is not the original tree but a sapling from the same tree. However the spot is sanctified by the presence of the Buddha and his heroic tapasya . The temple though and the throng of visitors has turned it into another religious spot with all its attendant problems and evils. Perhaps this is how once the Buddha was surrounded by ‘Mara’ (evil) on all sides and yet he conquered it. So also despite the hustling and bustling crowd of all kinds of humanity, the place still retains something of the Buddha vibration making it indeed a special place.
Finally, Gaya is also one of the Shakti Sthala . It is one of the 51 sacred power spots where the body parts of Shiva’s consort Sati fell as Vishnu cut off her dead body to absolve the great and mighty god Shiva’s grief born out of the agony of a world that was bereft of the Divine Mother’s love. It is believed that the
Mother’s bosom fell here. It is aptly named Mangala Gauri (the auspicious and fair one). It is the Divine Mother’s love in her previous incarnation that tried to redeem the world but the world rejected her sacrifice. And yet it is this allpowerful Love that alone can save man and earth and transform our humanity into a divine race. That has been the purpose of the present embodiment of the
Divine Mother to whom we offer ourselves in love and gratitude and aspire for the sincerity that can make Her ever present Grace and Love fully effective in our life.
The following three talks in Hindi were delivered at Gaya:
1.
The Divine Presence in everyday life.
2.
A spiritual look at the Ramayana.
3.
The three secrets of the Gita.

1.
The Divine Presence in everyday life
The Divine is everywhere and in all things yet we live our life unaware of His
Presence. At best He is a remote abstraction, an object of worship, of awe or of fear and favour, a subject of philosophy or thought. But while these movements are helpful they are not enough to change our life. Something more is needed. A veil has to be removed that stands behind our heart, a lid above the mind that obscures our sight. But even that is not enough. In Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, a double movement is necessary, an efflorescence of the inmost soul as in other
Yogas but also an efflorescence of Nature so that it can become a crystal clear, pure and perfect channel of the Divine Force and His working in and through us.
Some approaches to this effort have been touched upon in this talk.
2.
A spiritual look at the Ramayana
The Rmayana is not just a book of ethics laying down the dharma for man but much more. We can see in it an early indication of the great epic of the future that was yet to come. Like Savitri it is future looking for its time. It foresees the evolution of humanity out of the animal and demoniac type of civilisations through en evolutionary struggle and crisis that operates at many levels simultaneously. At the deepest level, Rama is the Divine Soul and Sita the Earth nature or rather the Divine Mother identified with the Earth nature for its evolution. The epic unfolds around this theme of the coming together of the two which alone can establish an ideal society, Rama-rajya .
But there are obstacles on the way. There is first of all an animal nature in us that refuses to be easily tamed. Then there is the demoniac nature whose stamp is felt upon earth nature. All this needs a renunciation and a battle, an inner and outer struggle, an equality and courage and a will to triumph over every obstacle.
Hanuman represents the conversion of the vital in man through Divine Service and Devotion. Finally there is the purification symbolised in Sita’s Agni-
Pariksha . This talk deals with some of these aspects of the Ramayana woven with the yoga of Sri Aurobindo which is also a tale of evolutionary transformation but at another and more fundamental level, that is from Man to Superman.
3.
The three secrets of the Gita
The Gita gives us three fundamental secrets. The first is about the Divine Advent upon Earth to redeem humanity and earth by His touch. The second is a revelation that the Divine dwells in the human body and there is a path through which we can discover Him. The third and the final secret or the Secret of secrets is the possibility of redemption by an act of surrender and faith, sarvadharman

parityajya
…..The Mother has called it the Great Secret and referred to this in some of Her talks. The present talk is based upon these secrets and the difference between Sri Aurobindo’s yoga and the Yoga of the Gita.
Each talk is followed by Question and Answers.
* * *