Without Him I exist not. Without Me He is unmanifest.” ~ The Mother
This International *Women’s Day on 8th March 2025* the Divine Body team is happy to announce a full day online event focussed on – *Decoding Shakti*. From Integral Yoga and other Shakti Upasana traditions we have selected 7 facilitators both women and men who could zoom into the Divine Shakti and Mother aspect. The sessions will be a combination of insights, experiential sessions and sharing of the facilitator’s own journey .
There are 7 events spread through the day. You can join as many as you wish to.
The Registration link of zoom is shared below. Prior registration is needed. Zoom will send you the link to your email id and it will be there either in your inbox or notification folder.
“Power of double attention, to thought and to Ananda, is now well-established. What has now to be got rid of, is the interference of the mind-stuff in condensation; this is being already done initially by the interposition making no essential difference, since even then the Ananda reaches the side of conscious attention, subordinate as yet, which is deputed to receive it. But this siddhi is as yet imperfect and initial.”
Page 1076, Record of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo
“K.A is now in a way settled in the body, thus fulfilling the suggestion about the 7th; but the intensities vary and there is not perfect continuity when the mind is turned away entirely from the body. Nevertheless the opening of a double consciousness which has the full mental or gnostic activity and below it the sense of the body has definitely set in in spite of frequent intermittence.”
Page 1114, Record of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo
We humbly touch Record of Yoga, a treasure house of Yogic Sadhana of Sri Aurobindo. Concentrate and dive deep into these two quotes and experientially practice the double attention or concentration. Some suggestions are offered below. These are only hints based on our limited understanding of His intense work. By focussing on these may the true illumination and practice awaken within us.
The clue given is double attention to thought and Ananda. This leads to a beautiful condensation. How can we practice this? Some options are:
Keep awareness within your thoughts and also Above your Head Space or Consciousness and wait. Actually awareness should be within both. You will feel or see movement of thoughts – First awareness. You will experience some quality above Head like Vastness, Joy, Light or Presence – Second awareness. It is a joy to read that Sri Aurobindo was practicing to get this dual awareness perfect. We too can do in our own ways. Then the condensation ie. the mixing of the quality present Above our head with the substance of our thoughts can unfold.
Connect to your forehead region and open it to the Consciousness above, being present within the ajna chakra region and also being present Above head and wait
Place your awareness within the thought region and also within the living presence present as a flame within the cave of heart and simply wait being present together in both the spaces.
Also in any part of your body if you have accessed a Divine Self-Existent joy like within your lips or in the Sacred consciousness beneath your feet you can connect this to the thought region with dual awareness and wait.
The second quote on double consciousness is illumining. Practice being within your body and above your mind consciousness simultaneously and actually. If you are actually within your body, you will feel your body’s substance ( the mass, weight or density of your body), you will be aware of sensations both pleasant and unpleasant and by Grace each of us will also be shown the domain of subtle substance that is self-lit and has a natural delight. Now the second, if you are actually above your mind progressively the seven suns Above will open up in our extended consciousness. This is the journey of unfolding of our Divine Body.
May each of us explore this double concentration and share back our insights and experience to all of us.
Breath to become a subtle living presence, a flame, where AUM and chants are offered.
This subtle breath then can be requested to flow into all parts of our body.
Practice Date: 28th February 2025 | Duration 30 minutes | Guided practice | Facilitator : Arul Dev
Guided Audio Recording of Practice Link:
Details of Practice
Intuitively for today, a practice is coming more on our breath. There are two insights which we need to bring into our experience. The subtle breath is something that can collect a lot of the new consciousness within itself and this breath needs to intermingle with our body’s substance so that the substance can get fully nourished, especially in areas where the body is holding some kind of an illness or memories and stuff like that.
Approach today’s practice with a complete space of the unknown, the mystical, allowing more nuances to get revealed each time. The freshness in the practice is what is very important. So touch your body with your awareness as if you’re doing this practice the very first time in your life ever. And just see how it feels to touch your body substance with your awareness across your body.
You will find that in many of the places, your awareness is not alive, it is not very fresh, it is not living and actually you can’t do much about it also. It’s almost as if we need to recognize another layer of consciousness, which is directly sensing our body.
Now keep your awareness outside your body perhaps in the aura region or perhaps beyond. Don’t define anything today. So just place your awareness outside your body. It’s neither inside your body nor is the awareness lost in some transcendental realms. The awareness is outside the body, but it is fully aware of the body. From outside the body, you will perhaps be able to sense the vastness incoming. So there’s an aspect of vastness that is expansive, where you get into the expansiveness, and there’s another aspect of vastness that is incoming, which acts on you. So with your awareness outside your body, catch that aspect of the vastness as it acts on your body.
You can easily do it if you completely identify with the domain of the cricket sound, as an example. If you identify with that zone of cricket sounds, you’ll get exactly this phenomenon. You’re not inside the body, but you’re not disconnected. And you’re in that vast circular field, which is acting on the body, in a way. This is just one way.
Now, slowly bring your awareness to your breath, especially in your heart region or anywhere else where it comes to you. We’re not talking about the In breath full and the out breath full, we’re not really focusing on that part of the breath. There is a part of the breath that is subtle which is always holding a Presence. Like if you take a flame, and if you really concentrate on the core, it’ll be soft. Similarly, there’s an in breath, out breath. There is somewhere in this breath a presence, a light, a dance. This breath will not be flowing up and down across the full body. This breath will be almost like a joyful light, like a flame. This breath will all be almost be like a flowing Lingam, present, upward rising, but at the same time it can be steady and collect something as a base.
The origin of this breath and what is being sustained in this breath is not necessarily from within your body, it’s from the beyond. So keep this breath connected to that field outside your body, which by itself is connected to the Infinite. And that’s what is nourishing this breath which can collect something from the beyond.
Very silently you can chant something into this breath. It can be a AUM, or let us say you use a particular chant regularly. Chant into the breath like the way you would do to a flame or like the way you would chant to a lingam. This is now a living breath filled with a Presence. You can chant into this breath whatever you wish, silently.
This breath, you’re just focusing in a tiny space within your body, which will sometimes almost feel static. It’s not going really up and down like your regular full breath and all. It’s just there, alive, present, connected to the field around, the incoming vastness, which is connected to the beyond.
As you chant into this breath, you would find something occurring in your body through the breath. This breath could feel localized inside your body or it could sometimes be even outside, it doesn’t matter. This breath is a Presence. Connect the rest of your body to this breath, to this Presence, to this living breath lingam that is present inside you somewhere.
Connect the rest of the body substance to this breath and it’s almost like you allow the body to breathe into this breath. Each part of your body has its own breath movement, and pulsations. So allow each part of the body as much as possible to connect to this subtle breath of Presence or Light, to breathe into this subtle breath and be nourished by this breath. And you can continue to chant into this subtle breath as you allow all other parts of the body to breathe into this subtle breath.
You observe and you can even do it in one specific part of your body where there is some persistent difficulty. This central breath Presence that you’re becoming aware and chanting into can act very minutely into any body region that you focus upon. It’s not you who are acting now in the body region. This subtle living breath itself will act directly on your body parts. We just have to request and direct this subtle living breath to specific body parts or body as a whole.
There could be a lot of stuck energies and old breaths stuck in a particular way. Keep nourishing your subtle breath. Keep connecting it to that part of the body you are working on. And you will notice the subtle breath itself acts. Let this Breath Lingam, act directly and you bring absolute faith, not on the problem, not on the history of your body or the challenges inside. But you bring absolute faith on this potent breath, on this subtle breath presence. You bring absolute faith that this subtle breath will act fully into the minute pores and cells in each part of your body.
Continue to nourish this breath flame throughout this week and let it act on the tiny pores and cells of your body. Thank you.
In this practice session we work here on the substance of our body to make it more conscious and offer it and link it with the Divine. When we use the word substance, what we are referring to is the matter, the weight and density of the body. Just allow the substance to rest on the substance itself to just make it a little bit more relaxed. We’ll also bring our awareness below our feet and through that we are actually trying to enter into our subconscious and inconscient, which is also the collective and we’ll try and go deep down.
And when we read Savitri or we use the chant AUM, everything we’ll do silently. We can offer it to the body and we can also offer it to the below, and we’ll see. The aspiration all of us can keep is, some day it’ll be beautiful if we discover the Divinity at the very depth below in the inconscient also. Like we do the practice above the head, this is also important.
If you connect to your body, you will feel its weight and its sensations. Normally, we are trained on a single point concentration. Try and develop a multiple point concentration where your awareness can touch 10, 20 or even 100 points across your body and learn to hold your awareness across your body to some extent. Keep attention across the body, hundred points or thousand points across. Show those points to the Mother, to Sri Aurobindo, to the Divine, so that they can directly act.
Notice when it is a flow – a continuous flow. Notice when you get stuck. And then shift your awareness so that you’re living in with your awareness inside a particular point and show it to the Divine.
From the learnings of The Mother, how She used to do the prayer of the cells, in our own simple way, be within these many different points and silently pray to the Divine. For example you can say, may Your beauty be manifest here. So when we say may Your beauty, you’re looking into the Divine. May Your beauty be manifest here. And when we say ‘here’ focus on one or two or three, four points in your body that intuitively emerges.
May Your beauty be manifest here. May Your joy manifest here. May Your wisdom manifest here. Drop deeper within your body, feeling into your body’s mass, matter, substance. Go deeper overall into it. But for that you have to develop an interest, a love for matter – the basis of existence. So go deeper into your body’s substance. And there continue the prayer.
Now when you go deeper into your body’s substance, be free in your mind, so that you discover new domains of the substance, which you’re not aware normally. A substance is not just gross matter. As you go deeper, you move into subtle, supple domains of matter which seems more softer, more lit. And that will come when you just do this in a very relaxed way. You relax your body and just move in to the very substance and if possible you discover a matter which seems more softer, more lit, more nicer, to put it that way.
Develop an attitude of worship because there is a Divine matter inside all of us. We see that in the Mother’s Agenda very clearly. It’s not Divine present as matter, there is a Divine matter itself inside all of us. Even if you are not aware, with faith, bow down and touch the depth of your body’s substance.
Now the beauty about the deeper substance is that it is very malleable. So with your awareness just compress, condense this substance. Which means you are not just doing on the physical matter. Whatever is the inner part of the matter that is appearing to you or you are feeling it, just condense that for a few moments, and then just allow it to expand for a few moments.
On your own, you will do this condensing and expansion across your body, hugging the cells of the matter closer intimately, that is condensing, and then allowing it to connect to vastness which is expanding.
Into this, wherever we read some Savitri, just allow the Savitri lines and consciousness to touch the depth of your body. So you be in your body’s depth. We will chant the mantra AUM once or twice for the sake of the collective. You silently receive it in the depth. of your body. So you’ll have to be inside your body’s substance. Today, be in the depth of your body’s substance and receive the AUM and a few lines that I read from Savitri, giving a lot of break time.
And while you are in this practice, leave your body connected to the Consciousness above. So, you are aware of your body and you are also aware of the above. Which means, there could be a zone of silence, vastness, a zone of light or a zone of joy, whatever is there, you are connecting to it and allowing that to take over your body.
Now if you bring the tradition of breath and prana work, as you are inside your body, there is a prana that is spread across the body. If you become aware of that, that conscious breath and prana opens the body, allows cells more to be receptive to what comes from above.
In this posture, receive the sounds and Savitri lines…
We can prepare for a labour of love to go into our subconscious, unconscious, to offer that too to the Divine, so that the Divine’s glory can manifest. So we’ll begin with our body itself. Intuitively connect to your body, where you have deeply ingrained patterns, habits that are pretty much hardened and no matter what we try, there is a repetitive stubbornness. This could be in a particular way of being or health. Just get into the process. These hard habits are ingrained in our body. Intuitively connect across your body into layers of rigidness, falsehood and patterns that are there. Look into these patterns. Half the time we won’t even know what these are but we would have an intuitive feel. Look deeply into these hard grained habits, illnesses present within us and silently tell into these regions, praying to the divine, ‘May Your force manifest here. May your force manifest here.’
Continue to look very deep. And sometimes when we are looking into these hard grained habits, certain images may come, certain memories could pop up sometimes not even from our lives. Just take them as embedded stuff in the cells of your body and look at them neutrally, but directly and pray to the divine. So from the cells, you’re looking up to the Divine and you’re praying ‘May your love manifest here. May your will manifest in this body, across all the cells.’
Now, take your awareness below your feet. For some, it could appear as if you’re entering and going down into the earth. That’s if you’re doing it very materially. That’s also fine. For some, it’ll appear as if the moment you go down, you will notice a dark zone. And if you’re very sensitive, you will notice some untransformed stuff. So I’ll be reading lines of Savitri once or twice. You don’t pay attention to Savitri, but you go down below your feet. If you get that zone of darkness, travel through that and every part of that, offer it, like you may offer your home. Allow the AUM to touch below your feet into the darkness. Offer the words of Savitri into the darkness. And by doing like that, keep going down and down.
Receive the sound AUM in the darkness below. Keep on going down. And the terrain is vast. On all sides you will find all kinds of things if you are sensitive. Grasping the hand of the Divine keep going down and keep offering the sounds into that regions wherever you are. Connecting to the Divine Mother or Sri Aurobindo or both take a final dive of your awareness into whatever depth you are able to touch with an aspiration that today or another day you discover the golden Divinity below. In whatever manner it comes to you, take the deepest dive possible, aspiring to touch the Divine source below. Wherever you have reached, receive these lines of Savitri there as seeds, so that the work can continue by the grace of the Divine.
Both deep within our body’s substance and also in the consciousness below our feet, we read the following lines of Savitri, and allowed its vibrations to touch our body and subconscious / inconscient:
“A lamp was lit, a sacred image made.
A mediating ray had touched the earth
Bridging the gulf between man’s mind and God’s;
Its brightness linked our transience to the Unknown.
A spirit of its celestial source aware
Translating heaven into a human shape
Descended into earth’s imperfect mould
And wept not fallen to mortality,
But looked on all with large and tranquil eyes.
One had returned from the transcendent planes
And bore anew the load of mortal breath,
Who had striven of old with our darkness and our pain;
She took again her divine unfinished task:
Survivor of death and the aeonic years,
Once more with her fathomless heart she fronted Time.
Again there was renewed, again revealed
The ancient closeness by earth-vision veiled,
The secret contact broken off in Time,
A consanguinity of earth and heaven,
Between the human portion toiling here
And an as yet unborn and limitless Force.
Again the mystic deep attempt began,
The daring wager of the cosmic game.
For since upon this blind and whirling globe
Earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining mind
And life invaded the material sheath
Afflicting Inconscience with the need to feel,
Since in Infinity’s silence woke a word,
A Mother-wisdom works in Nature’s breast
To pour delight on the heart of toil and want
And press perfection on life’s stumbling powers,
Impose heaven-sentience on the obscure abyss
And make dumb Matter conscious of its God. ”
Page 353-354, Savitri, Sri Aurobindo
I’ll be quiet for five minutes now. Either you can be silent or you can open your own Savitri and intuitively pick just two lines. Just read two lines and offer it to your body and to your breath.
We simply close our eyes for the final prayer, connecting to your entire body and its substance, bringing that attitude of worshipping your own substance. What comes to us in the first glance is our illnesses, our discomforts, our good and bad. But beneath that, everywhere there is Divine matter. So with faith, we go down into our body’s substance.
Connecting to our entire substance of our body, we look up to the Divine above with the concluding prayer:
May your will manifest within this body.
May your joy manifest within this body.
May your love manifest here.
May your purity manifest itself here.
May your flow manifest here.
We offer ourselves unto you, O Lord.
By ‘here’ we pointed to specific points / cells of our body and also in general across our body.
Poems, Sonnets, Insights, Chanting and deeper body work with Lord Shiva in the light of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo Facilitators: Arul, Archana, Shweta
Insights on Shiva Consciousness from Thirumoolar Thirumanthiram by Niveditha Ramaratnam
A soul touching performance by: Odissi dance – Kavita Dwibedi Indian classical vocal music – Reeshabh Purohit
Bhajans and songs by : Ramakrishna Ganta & Vaibhav Pandya
Join us this Mahashiva ratri, do the chant together in your own quiet space, let your body cells open to The Shiva Consciousness.
