CHAPTER 60 GRACE ABIDING I 1973 - And the Mother's New Year message: When you are conscious of the whole world at the same time, then you can become conscious of the Divine.1 And her New Year prayer for the students: Let our effort of every day and all time be to know You better and to serve You better.2 These linked up with her message for the previous Darshan on 24 November 1972: Beyond all preferences and limitations, there is a ground of mutual understanding where all can meet and find their harmony: it is the aspiration for a divine consciousness.3 The Mother had also said on 31 December 1972: Th

CHAPTER 56 YEAR OF WONDERS I It was to be a year of wonders, 1968, and the Mother's New Year message was a radiant exhortation: Remain young, never stop striving towards perfection. In her message for her ninetieth birthday on 21 February, she elaborated her idea of 'youth' and 'age': It is not the number of years you have lived that makes you grow old. You become old when you stop progressing. ... ...When you feel that what you have done is just the starting-point of what remains to be done, when you see the future like an attractive sun shining with the innumerable possibilities yet to be achieved

The Mother ON THE MOTHER THE CHRONICLE OF A MANIFESTATION AND MINISTRY by K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar Reprinted (third edition) 2004 SRI AUROBINDO INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF EDUCATION, PONDICHERRY "I stretch it out to Thee with both arms in a gesture of offering and I ask of Thee: If my understanding is limited, widen it; if my knowledge is obscure, enlighten it; if my heart is empty of ardour, set it aflame; if my love is insignificant, make it intense; if my feelings are ignorant and egoistic, give them the full consciousness in the Truth".¹

CHAPTER 43 "I WANT ONLY YOU" I The year 1954 was a time of all-round progress in the history of the Ashram. The de facto merger of Pondicherry with India on 1 November and the freer two-way traffic resulting therefrom were but the outer recognition of an inner aspiration and of a progressive deeper reality. Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's writings went round the world and, encountering the elect in unpredictable places, effected remarkable conversions. Thus, from 1 February, Savita Hindocha, who was later to acquire the Ashram name of "Huta", began writing down in her mother tongue Gujarati, her intense prayers to the Divine Mother with single-pointed devo

CHAPTER 33 AFTER INDEPENDENCE I In August 1947, the Congress leaders stampeded by Lord Mountbatten to some extent - had agreed, to the Partition in the hope of averting further communal strife and the resultant bloodshed. Actually, the "tryst with Destiny" - the midnight hour preceding the dawn of 15 August - was to prove the signal for the flow of rivers of blood in the Punjab. The anticipated moment of triumph and fulfilment was surpassed by shame-faced perplexity and the benumbing sense of fatality. The butcher's knife of vivisection let loose unimaginable horrors and the desecration of cherished national and all humane values. Lahore, Multan, Rawalpind

CHAPTER 49 MOTHER IS EIGHTY I The Mother's 80th birth anniversary celebrations were spread over 20 and 21 February 1958. On the 20th, she went to the Ashram Theatre where she first read out a message for the All India Radio, and went round the grand flower show that had been organised in the large courtyard. There were thousands of pots with ferns and flowers in a variety of colours, and there was also a tank of white lotuses, emblazoning the Mother's symbol. Then she attended a programme of dance recitals representing the Bharat Natyam, Kathak, Manipuri and Kathakali styles. On the 21st, there was a march past in the same courtyard, and a presentation o

CHAPTER 48 SUPRAMENTAL WORLD I While the Playground talks were part of the very oxygen of life in the Ashram during the nineteen-fifties, there were other events that claimed the attention of sadhaks and visitors alike. From the visible to the inward, from the men, women and children who lived in the Ashram and the sadhaks running the services to the spirit within that moved them all; and above all, from the Mother's spoken words (instructive and enlightening as they were) to the intervening silences and the invisible vibrations from the Light and Force and Consciousness - one always wanted to be thus led from the visible to the invisible, from objective

-26_A God^s Labour.htm CHAPTER 23 A GOD'S LABOUR I From the beginning of 1926, the exhausting work of managing the community of sadhaks gathered around Sri Aurobindo, and keeping in touch with their sadhana had been devolving more and more on the Mother, but this silent transfer of responsibility and authority became visible only after 24 November, the Siddhi Day. There was also the additional circumstance of the steady growth of the Ashram community year by year: a more than fourfold increase during the 1926-31 five-year period. Some few left the Ashram, but many more were coming in. All this generated the pressures of expansion, new houses, new services, new departmental

CHAPTER 47 READINGS IN "DHAMMAPADA" I From the middle of August 1957 till September 1958, every Friday evening the Mother used to read a few verses from the Dhammapada to a class consisting of students, teachers and Ashramites. Her commentaries, based on a French translation of the Pali text, were in French and were tape-recorded at the time. After reading a chapter, she would speak about the points that interested her and then asked the class to meditate on them.1* As she said once: Naturally, I took this text because I consider that at a particular stage of development it can be very useful. It is a discipline which has been crystallised in c

CHAPTER 28 ASURIC UPSURGE I As we have seen in the preceding chapters, during the seven-year period between 1931 and 1938 there were broad indications that the Yoga at the individual and even collective levels was making steady progress. The Mother's sudden and serious illness in October 1931 had been a set-back of course, a temporary triumph for the hostile forces, but presently the divine dispensation visibly reasserted itself. The whinings, grumblings and philosophic doubts punctuating several of the letters written by some of the intellectuals among the disciples at this time should be viewed only in the wider perspective of this general progress