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Mother India is not a piece of earth;
she is a Power, a Godhead, for all nations have such a Devi
supporting their separate existence and keeping it in being.
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India must remain India if she is to fulfil her destiny. Page 862, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL |
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So with India rests the future of the
world. Whenever she is aroused from her sleep, she gives forth some
wonderful shining ray of light to the world which is enough to
illuminate the nations. Others live for centuries on what is to her
the thought of a moment. God gave to her the book of Ancient Wisdom
and bade her keep it sealed in her heart, until the time should come
for it to be opened. Sometimes a page or a chapter is revealed,
sometimes only a single sentence. Such sentences have been the
inspiration of ages and fed humanity' for many hundreds of years. So
too when India sleeps, materialism grows apace and the light is
covered up in darkness. But when materialism thinks herself about to
triumph, lo and behold! a light rushes out from the East and where is
Materialism? Returned to her native night. |
AN EARLY PREDICTION Since 1907, we are living in a new era which is full of hope for India. Not only India, but the whole world will see sudden upheavals and revolutionary changes. The high will become low and the low high. The oppressed and the depressed shall be elevated. The nation and humanity will be animated by a new consciousness, new thought and new efforts will be made to reach new ends. Amidst these revolutionary changes, India will become free. January, 1910 1 Given in response to a request from the Bombay Chronicle on the occasion of C. R. Das's death and published in its issue of 22.6.1925. . 2 In January 1910, Sri Aurobindo gave this prediction to the correspondent of the Tamil Nationalist weekly India, who met him in Krishnakumar's house at Calcutta. It was published with Sri Aurobindo's authorisation.page 390 , On Himslef , volume 26 , SABCL |
*WHOEVER* is still under the influence of intellectual pride, is shocked when people depreciate the reason as the supreme guide. He asks how is it posssible for a man of culture to depreciate the reason and exalt some extraneous influence like that which people call God? But these doubters are under the influence of European materialism which tries to confine man to his material portion and deny him the possibility of a divine origin and a divine destiny. When Europe left Christianity to the monk and the ascetic and forgot the teachings of the Galilean, she exposed herself to a terrible fate which will yet overtake her. God in man is the whole revelation and the whole of religion. What Christianity taught dimly, Hinduism made plain to the intellect in Vedanta. When India remembers the teaching she received from Shankaracharya, Ramanuja and Madhva, when she realises what Sri Ramakrishna came to reveal, then she will rise. Her very life is Vedanta. If anyone thinks that we are merely intellectual beings, he is not a Hindu. Hinduism leaves the glorification of intellectuality to those who have never seen God. She is commissioned by Him to speak only of his greatness and majesty and she has so spoken for thousands of years. When we first received a European education, we allowed ourselves to be misled by the light of science. Science is a light within a limited room, not the sun which illumines the world. The /apar//ā// vidy//ā// /is the sum of science but there is a /higher vidy//ā//, /a mightier knowledge. When we are under the influence of the lower knowledge, we imagine that we are doing everything and try to reason out the situation we find ourselves in, as if our intellect were sovereign and omnipotent. But this is an attitude of delusion and /m//ā//y//ā//. /Whoever has once felt the glory of God within him can never again believe that the intellect is supreme. There is a higher voice, there is a more unfailing oracle. It is in the heart where God resides. He works through the brain, but the brain is only one of His instruments. Whatever the brain may plan, the heart knows first and whoever can go beyond the brain to the heart, will hear the voice of the Eternal. This is what Srijut Aurobindo Ghose said in his Bombay speech. But our contemporary, the /Indian Patriot, /has lamented his downfall from the high pedestal of culture he once occupied. Our contemporary has forgotten the teachings of Vivekananda which were once so powerful in Madras. What does he think was the cause of the great awakening in Bengal? Page 715, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL |
India has in herself a faith of superhuman virtue to accomplish miracles, to deliver herself out of irrefragable bondage, to bring God down upon earth. She has a secret of will power which no other nation possesses. All she needs to rouse in her that faith, that will, is an ideal which will induce her to make the effort. That ideal is now being preached by Srijut Bepin Chandra Pal in every speech he delivers and never has it been delivered with such beauty of expression, such a passion of earnestness and pathos, such a sublimity of feeling as at Uttarpara on Sunday when he addressed a meeting of the people in the compound of the Uttarpara Library. The ideal is that of humanity in God, of God in humanity, the ancient ideal of the /san//ā//tana dharma /but applied, as it has never been applied before, to the problem of politics and the work of national revival. Page 837, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL |
The Message of the Mother When, therefore, you ask who is Bhawani the Mother, She herself answers you, "I am the Infinite Energy which streams forth from the Eternal in the world and the Eternal in yourselves. I am the Mother of the Universe, the Mother of the Worlds, and for you who are children of the Sacred Land, Aryabhumi, made of her clay and reared by her sun and winds, I am Bhawani Bha- rati, Mother of India." Then if you ask why we should erect a temple to Bhawani, the Mother, hear Her answer, "Because I have commanded it, and because by making a centre for the future religion you will be furthering the immediate will of the Eternal and storing up merit which will make you strong in this life and great in another. You will be helping to create a nation, to consolidate an age, to Aryanise a world. And that nation is your own, that age is the age of yourselves and your children, that world is no fragment of land bounded by seas and hills, but the whole earth with her teeming millions." ' Come then, hearken to the call of the Mother. She is already in our hearts waiting to manifest Herself, waiting to be worship.,. ped, - inactive because the God in us is concealed by Tamas, troubled by Her inactivity, sorrowful because Her children will not call on Her to help them. You who feel Her stirring within you, fling off the black veil of self, break down the imprisoning walls of indolence, help Her each as you feel impelled, with your bodies or with your intellect or with your speech or with your wealth or with your prayers and worship, each man according to his capacity. Draw not back, for against those who were called and heard Her not She may well be wroth in the day of Her coming; but to those who help Her advent even a little, how radiant with beauty and kindness will be the face of their Mother. Page 70-71, Bande Mataram , volume 1, SABCL |