Let alone the answers, it is even the essential precursor, the question, that one is unaware of. And yet, like a flash, in a self-revealing moment, the question and answer impose and impress perceptibly together, superimpose even one another in the consciousness, making it difficult to discern whether the question begot the answer or the answer, the question!

So it happened one day, in the afternoon…

Having seen, know not how many times, the dish antennas standing (or sitting?) on rooftops, never before this instance was received that that this moment led me to see. Or is it that the moment saw through me, making me see what it saw? Atop the building facing the one where we live, the dish antennas presented a different picture altogether… Bare to and bare under the vast sky, their face upward, the self-answering question they provoked (or evoked or invoked, difficult to discern): Why do the antennas stand bare, under the wide and bare sky? To receive and transmit the signals from the source, unhindered! Then, is it different from the conditions required by us to receive and transmit Truth and thus, Be? No. Is it not essential for us in order to connect to our Truth to stand bare – unashamed as an innocent child, free from the intelligent and intellectual absolute observations and inferences, unfettered by our limited human notions and reservations, our definitions of good and bad – bare under, and bare and open and wholly exposed to and integrally receptive to the wideness of the Infinite, to be swathed and bathed in the Light of Truth?

Yes, so opening and remaining so open and increasing the openness to the Light, cannot happen in one day, nor can it be coerced, as soothes and affirms the Mother: “The opening to the Divine Light cannot be made through coercion.” (2) As She says, “openness” too is a matter of “will” and “faith”: “Openness is the will to receive and to utilize for progress the force and influence; the constant aspiration to remain in touch with the Consciousness; the faith that the force and consciousness are always with you, around you, inside you and that you have only to let nothing stand in the way of your receiving them.” (3)

Do the antennas not open themselves to us, giving us an insight into the workings of the Divine? Do the antennas, by their example, not thus call us to be such “passive and plastic” instruments, wholly surrendered, as they stand bare and outstretched, aspiring to receive the signals and transmit the corresponding unhindered expressions and thus, be what they are meant to be? Yes, innocuous they might be, these antennas. Even mundane and commonplace they might seem to be – and their presented not of much consequence, the Mind might deem, on second and subsequent sceptical thoughts. But Mind, well, it has to be always reminded to be mindful of the ways of the Divine, which only Yoga can reveal and lead to, leading out of all limited seeing and limit-setting: “The field of Yoga is practically unlimited and its processes and instrumentation have a plasticity and adaptability and power of expansion to which it is difficult to see or set any limit.” (4) In the Lexicon of the Divine, the divisions none, in the divine vision ordinary and extraordinary one, each and all a divine agency (this, the Divine relentlessly affirms and we, untiringly forget!), now is seen how aptly the antennas are received by the moment to capture their transmitted question and answer, two-in-one!

Questions and answers, are they thus not calling to us, in general, themselves baring, through them the Truth beckoning, to ourselves bare to the Truth, to the Light, to the Word, so that questions and answers are no more, losing their identity of duality in the Unity of the Truth? The Light, that hides not the answer and bares the question, the question that lies veiled and the answer that awaits years to be revealed and received, it presents both and paves the way for their disappearance. In the moment, through the enlightened moment the Light speaks and explains all, exposes all repressed and suppressed so as to redress all.

“A Word is spoken or a Light is shown,

A moment sees, the ages toil to express.” (5)

References

(1) Sri Aurobindo. Savitri, p. 315

(2) The Mother. Words of the Mother – II, p. 144.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Sri Aurobindo. Essays Divine and Human, p. 322.

(5) Sri Aurobindo. Savitri, p. 315..