CHAPTER 18 KARMA YOGA I During the years immediately after she had taken full charge of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, the Mother's resources - spiritual, human, material - had to be canalised simultaneously in multiple directions. With the steady increase in the number of sadhaks, there was the persistent need for renting more houses, reconditioning, fitting and furnishing them, and attending to their proper maintenance. From 25 inmates in 1926 the number rose to 150 in 1936, and was to reach 350 in 1942. There were, besides, the permitted visitors. There was also the special influx of visitors at the time of the Darshans of 21 February, 15 August and 24 November

CHAPTER 59 IMMORTAL SUNLIGHT I As 1972, the year of Sri Aurobindo's birth centenary approached, the Mother came to be more and more involved with the centenary programmes and celebrations, as also with the importance of the centenary in the context of the sadhana of integral transformation. While her body was apparently in a 'helpless' condition, while her faculties of seeing and hearing were seemingly impaired, while her physical movements were unavoidably confined to her rooms on the second floor of the Ashram, never had her consciousness been more acute or more wide-ranging, never had the Mother's spiritual puissance and energy of effective action been m

CHAPTER 44 MINISTRY OF WORDS I As the activities of the Ashram increased, there was a corresponding need for finance; and although the Mother was, as Nayana had visioned her, verily Sakambari herself and Plenty was her native gift, occasions were not wanting when the pinch was felt sharply and necessary expenses had to be stinted. In the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, there was no rejection of life but only a determination to accept it and live it wisely and in the process to try to transform it; and no ascetic rejection of money either, but rather its acceptance with a view to utilising it in the service of the Divine. In one of his Evening Talks

CHAPTER 12 LIKE MOUNT FUJI I During the Richards' four-year stay in Japan, - first in Tokyo and later in Kyoto, with short visits to other places, - they were naturally drawn towards people with a spiritual outlook on life. But the Japanese, for all their elegance and culture, and the general atmosphere of friendliness exuded by them, were rather allergic to spirituality. They had their religions, of course - Shintoism, Buddhism, Christianity, with their many sectarian divisions - and they had their picturesque ceremonies, religious and secular, and their elaborate codes of behaviour; but somehow the Japanese as a general rule shied away from spir

CHAPTER 11 A PASSAGE TO JAPAN I The scene shifts from war-torn France to comparatively peaceful Japan. During their year of stay in beleaguered France, Mirra and Richard had their separate roles to play although they also kept in touch with Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry. Mirra had especially her sadhana to do for ailing and tortured earth, and she made quite a few explorations into the Unknown, and spiritual conquests as well, and these were duly recorded in her prayers and meditations. Richard had now to visit Japan on an assignment, but even as in 1910 and 1914, he had combined politics and electioneering with a serious spiritual quest when he

CHAPTER 27   IDENTITY WITH GOD    I   On the eve of the fourth Darshan Day in 1938 (24 November), there was an accident as related in the previous chapter and Sri Aurobindo's right leg sustained an injury and had to be put in plaster. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, who had been staying with some of their disciples in the house in Rue de la Marine (now known as 'Library House') from October 1922, moved to an adjoining house in the same street on 8 February 1927. This was the seventh and last of the houses in Pondicherry which Sri Aurobindo was to occupy. Known as 'Meditation House', this and the 'Library House' (with subsequent alteratio

-03_renascent india and sri aurobindo.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHAPTER 1   RENASCENT INDIA AND SRI AUROBINDO   I   When, by the end of the eighteenth century, the foreigner consolidated his power in India, the country was to all appearance a spiritual "waste land". The Western impact on the Orient had completed the discomfiture of the latter; the old order was seemingly dead, the new one could not be as much as thought of — and only a terrible stupor prevailed, paralysing the secret springs of the nation's high creative endeavour. For nearly three thousand years — or more — India had been in the vanguard of human civilisation. She had, almost continuously

-27_chapter - 25 poet of yoga.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHAPTER 25 POET OF YOGA I While examining the implications of Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Future, we saw how the probable divinisation of man the individual - the emergence of the Gnostic being - will necessarily inspire his immediate environment leading to a better social order and also accelerate the urge towards the realisation of global human unity. But the new Man would also evolve his own theory of poetry and of art in general, and the poetry and art of the Gnostic Age must have their own distinguishing vitality and significance. Here, again, Sri Aurobindo's contributions - as futurist critic no less than as futurist

-04_chapter - 2 childhood, boyhood and youth.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 PART I HUMANIST AND POET   CHAPTER 2   CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD AND YOUTH   I   The district of Hooghly in West Bengal — the district that has given to Bengal and to India two such world-famous figures as Raja Rammohan Roy and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa — can almost be called the cradle of the Bengali or even of the Indian renaissance.* Konnagar is a thickly populated area, almost a small town, in the Hooghly district; situated on the west bank of the river Hooghly (otherwise known as the Bhagirathi), it is about eleven miles to the north of Calcutta. Konnagar is apparently a place of con

-26_chapter - 24 the yoga and the ashram.htm?IsHostedInContentPage=1 CHAPTER 24 THE YOGA AND THE ASHRAM I   It is characteristic of man's double nature that he wants both to cultivate the private garden of his personality and to lose himself in a larger collectivity. At one moment he dares to be all alone, but at other times he is eager to mingle and merge his individual identity in his family, his tribe, his caste, his guild, his nation; or he joins a club, or a professional society, or even a political party. And sometimes individual man is athirst for certainty in the realm of ends and means, he is drawn to the Infinite, he is teased by thoughts of Eternity. Everything