August 1, 2013 

An experience of wider community, of unity and the realization of a growing oneness with all at the Sri Aurobindo Integral Yoga Retreat and in daily life is continues.  One can feel it in the beautiful emails one receives where words are charged with love, in the visits of friends and the generous help they bring when they come to Mother's Garden, inspiring me with their sincerity and devotion and selfless offering.

Yet there is more and this is something I have experienced this many times.  If one walks down the street or goes to the Post Office in this ultra conservative area of the US and one is consciously calling Mother and Sri Aurobindo into the heart, the response is immediate.  One receives smiles of such depth and beauty from strangers, so genuine, and not merely passing greetings, one knows that something of Their Light and Force has touched another soul.  This has happened again and again with people I have never met before, not, of course, with everyone because so many are still locked in their chosen life and bring filled with it are still closed to Her.  Yet, it has happened wherever I travel and I have experienced it in California, three thousand miles from Mother's Garden, in Florida, in New York, in Africa, Colombia, South America and India. 

 

The meetings at the Integral Yoga Retreat were as important as the brilliant talks by the speakers.  Above all in the greeting of new friends and the re-establishment of deeper contacts with those well-known, there was a palpable joy everywhere.  There is a line in Savitri, and only Savitri can express those experiences that are beyond our mental explanation.

As when being cries to being from its depths

Behind the screen of the external sense

And strives to find the heart-disclosing word,

The passionate speech revealing the soul’s need,

But the mind’s ignorance veils the inner sight,

Only a little breaks through our earth-made bounds,

So now they met in that momentous hour,

So utter the recognition in the deeps,

The remembrance lost, the oneness felt and missed.

In the next blog I will share more of the Integral Yoga Retreat but now I am preparing for a visit to Russia to meet Sri Aurobindo's disciples to celebrate His birthday together.  Since my early years in the Russian Church, which I left at a young age because I felt it was choking me, and something very deep was pressing from within, I never forgot the beauty of the music, sung only by human voices as no instruments are allowed.  I sang the hymns and chants of Rachmaninoff, Gretchaninoff, Kedrov, Tchnesnokov, Kalinnikov, Glinka and many others and still today listen to the higher music they brought down.  This will be my second visit to St. Petersburg.  the first was a three day visit when we were on a cruise.

 

The great beauty of the city, the architecture, the waterways, the Czars 'Summer Palace', all are indelible retained in my consciousness but there is also a poignant remember that stays.  I may have written about it previously but it bears repeating in this blog as I leave on the 6th.

Mary Helen and I wanted to see the major sights of St. Petersburg after meeting some very special and devoted disciples one evening through a friend known in the Ashram.  It was a powerful meeting in an old Khrushchev block of concrete structures with five or more locks on each door and the lowest wattage imaginable in the halls and stairs.  Entering the room  of one of the disciples, where all were gathered, I felt immediately the Light and the Presence there.  We spoke for hours when I finally realized that no one had eaten and all were waiting for us to begin!  So we enjoyed Prasad together in the love and harmony of Her children.

(Photo - Felix , Lyuda and Mary Helen)

The next day we went off on our own to get a taxi to visit the great sites of St. Petersburg.  When we walked to the main street we met a couple, Felix and Lyudmila, who were on the cruise as well.  We introduced our selves and then the huge and happy man said, "I hem Felix, like duh ket!" (I am Felix, like the cat) and we all had a great laugh.  They told us never to take a taxi because there were private cars travelling around that would take you for an entire day for the cost of one taxi drop. So we went around with Felix and Lyuda and had a wonderful time.  Lyuda told us of her life.  As a Kiev Jew she somehow managed to get into college at a time when only 1% of the attendance  was allowed for Jews.  She spoke almost no English but told us she graduated in computers  and had a young baby.  She desperately wanted to go to America and get out of Russia with her baby, and though unable to converse in English she finally made it to Brooklyn.  Over the years her child, a boy, grew up in America and the family did well as Lyuda because an expert in her field.  Now they were visiting their homelands once again.

Felix said they had already been to the Summer Palace and gave me the following advice for us not have to pay the exorbitant amount charged to Westerners.  He said  "Go on the side of the booth so the person cannot see your clothes.  Then throw two rubles at her and say 'Dva' "(two).  I did so and we entered at the regular Russian price!

When we returned to the U.S. I had a lovely photo of the both of them taken in front of St. Paul's statute and called to get their address.  The young man answered and I told him I would like to send his parents the photo.  He said "My dad will be so happy to receive it as my mom died from injuries on 9/11.

The next day we sent with Dmitri, now Ritam, when he graciously and somewhat amusedly perhaps, honored my strange request, to go to a small monastery on the outskirts of St. Petersburg to see the cemetery, a necropolis, devoted to the great souls of Russia.  When we arrived I was deeply moved that Russia would honor so many of those who contributed to her greatness in his way.   The sections of the cemetery were designated.  We went first to see the great composers, Mussorgsky and Glinka,

Tchaikovsky (If I am remembering correctly after 13 years!) and many more next to each other, all with inscriptions on their tombs,  then the greatest poets, scientists, etc.  I know of no other country to have done this.  Arlington honors the soldiers, presidents, etc. but I have never seen anything to compare with this.  One could walk around for hours in remembrance of the beauty and power these great Russian souls gave to the world.

To be continued.....