Canto Seven   The Discovery of the Cosmic Spirit and the Cosmic Consciousness   IN THE little hermitage in the forest's heart, In the sunlight and the moonlight and the dark The daily human life went plodding on Even as before with its small unchanging works And its spare outward body of routine And happy quiet of ascetic peace. The old beauty smiled of the terrestrial scene; She too was her old gracious self to men. The Ancient Mother clutched her child to her breast Pressing her close in her environing arms, As if earth ever the same could for ever keep The living spirit and body in her clasp, As if death were

  Canto Eight   The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness   THEN could he see the hidden heart of Night: The labour of its stark unconsciousness Revealed the endless terrible Inane. A spiritless blank Infinity was there; A Nature that denied the eternal Truth In the vain braggart freedom of its thought Hoped to abolish God and reign alone. There was no sovereign Guest, no witness Light; Unhelped it would create its own bleak world. Its large blind eyes looked out on demon acts, Its deaf ears heard the untruth its dumb lips spoke; Its huge misguided fancy took vast shapes, Its min

  Canto Fifteen   The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge   AFTER a measureless moment of the soul Again returning to these surface fields Out of the timeless depths where he had sunk, He heard once more the slow tread of the hours. All once perceived and lived was far away; Himself was to himself his only scene. Above the Witness and his universe He stood in a realm of boundless silences Awaiting the Voice that spoke and built the worlds. A light was round him wide and absolute, A diamond purity of eternal sight; A consciousness lay still, devoid of forms, Free, wordless, uncoerced by sign or rule, For ever cont

Canto Three   The Debate of Love and Death   A SAD destroying cadence the voice sank; It seemed to lead the advancing march of Life Into some still original Inane. But Savitri answered to almighty Death: "O dark-browed sophist of the universe Who veilst the Real with its own Idea, Hiding with brute objects Nature's living face, Masking eternity with thy dance of death, Thou hast woven the ignorant mind into a screen And made of Thought error's purveyor and scribe, And a false witness of mind's servant sense. An aesthete of the sorrow of the world, Champion of a harsh and sad philosophy Thou hast used words to shutter out the

S E C T I O N  F O U R SECTION  FOUR   THE MOTHER'S LIGHT   Page-34 The Mother's Light   The Mother's consciousness is the divine consciousness and the Light that comes from it is the light of the Divine Truth. One who receives and accepts and lives in the Mother's light, will begin to see the truth on all the planes, the mental, the vital, the physical. He will reject all that is undivine, - the undivine is the falsehood, the ignorance, the error of the dark forces; the undivine is all that is obscure and unwilling to accept the Divine Truth and its light and force. The undivine, therefore, is all that is unwilling to accept the light and force of the Mot

S E C T I O N  F I V E SECTION   FIVE   WORKING OF THE MOTHER'S FORCE   Page-38 The Mother's Force     Nothing can be done except through the force of the Mother.     The Force of Prakriti and the Mother's Force   When I speak of the Mother's force I do not speak of the force of Prakriti which carries in it things of the Ignorance but of the higher Force of the Divine that descends from above to transform the nature.   No, there was no intention on the Mother's part. It is yourself who by coming to Mother became aware of your mistake.     The Yoga-Shakti of the Mother   There is a forc

SECTION  TWO   THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DIVINE MOTHER   Page-15 The Divine Mother   The Divine Mother is the Consciousness and Force of the Divine - which is the Mother of all things.     The Mother and the Lower Prakriti   It is a mistake to identify the Mother with the lower Prakriti and its mechanism of forces. Prakriti here is a mechanism only which has been put forth for the working of the evolutionary Ignorance. As the ignorant mental, vital or physical being is not itself the Divine, although it comes from the Divine - so the mechanism of Prakriti is not the Divine Mother. No doubt something of her is there in

SECTION   SIX     THE MOTHER'S PRESENCE   Page-47 The Constant Presence of the Mother   (1)   Live always as if you were under the very eye of the Supreme and of the Divine Mother. Do nothing, try to think and feel nothing that would be unworthy of the Divine Presence.   (2)   The constant presence of the Mother comes by practice; the Divine Grace is essential for success in sadhana, but it is the practice that prepares the descent of the Grace. You have to learn to go inward, ceasing to live in external things only, quiet the mind and aspire to become aware of the Mother's workings in you.   (3)   He must go into

    Letters   of   Sri Aurobindo   On   The Mother         SRI AUROBINDO CIRCLE   BOMBAY PUBLISHERS:    SRI AUROBINDO CIRCLE    32, RAMPART ROW   BOMBAY       All Rights Reserved     First Published in 1951     SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PRESS   PONDICHERRY   P R I N T E D  I N  I N D I A     576/7/51/3,000 Photo: Henri Cartier Bresson  

SECTION   EIGHT     THE MOTHER AND THE WORKING OF THE ASHRAM   Page-62 Differences in the Mother's Dealing with Sadhaks   (1)   The Mother and myself deal with all according to the law of the Divine. We receive alike rich and poor, those who are high-born or low-born according to human standards, and extend to them an equal love and protection. Their progress in sadhana is our main concern - for they have come here for that, not to satisfy their palates or their bellies, not to make ordinary vital demands or to quarrel about position or place or comforts. That progress depends on how they answer to the Mother's