THE HERO     AN EPISODE OF THE EIGHTEEN-SEVENTIES     A SHORT STORY   Quiet, to a musician, is not relief from sound; it is only a chance to make him listen better to the voice of his art. Andre Chaudanson found night the happiest time, for he could then concentrate most intently on the sounds that rose and fell continually through his mind. And on this particular night he listened more intently than ever because he felt the sorest need of soothing harmonies. Life was breaking up all around him; discords were written on the face of every man he met. The Prussians were reported to be less than thirty miles from the town where he lived. Any

THE TWO SMILES   A LETTER TO A WESTERN VISITOR TO INDIA   Bombay, May 11,1952 1 think that during those few hours we met I smiled at you sufficiently to make up for all the unsmiling faces you have encountered in Delhi! And I assure you that you will find many smiling ones in various parts of India. The trouble is that mostly they are scattered, because the conditions that make for the Indian smile do not prevail in strength enough all over the country. I should like to make a few remarks about the Indian smile and the Western smile. Of course, human beings have the same qualities everywhere and authentic happiness beams out from the same sou

        SUPPLEMENT THE MOTHER AND SEHRA      

COMMUNICATION WITH OBJECTS AROUND US       AN EXPERIENCE AND THE MOTHER'S REMARKS     Sehra's Letter   Dearest Mother,   I am very sorry to trouble you but a certain experience needs to be told so that I may have your guidance. It has been going on for several months and now it is more intense. All objects around me — including bottles and soaps and even stones and walls — are like living beings. You know that I was always in contact with the life of trees, but this is something new. To make you see how far it has gone I will tell you my experience of last night. I woke up suddenly from sleep as i

SOME COMMENTS ON SAVITRI   1   The opening passage of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri — the block of the first 78 lines from   It was the hour before the Gods awake to All can be done if the god.-touch is there   is often regarded as the most difficult, the most obscure in the whole epic. Its obscurity lies precisely in its description of an obscurity, a darkness, a night which covers the world. What is the nature of the tenebrous phenomenon pictured in lines 2-4 of the passage in relation to the 1st? —   Across the path of the divine Event The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone In her unlit temple of eternity.

-028_Mind of Light (Poem).htm MIND OF LIGHT     ("The Supermind had descended long ago — very long ago — into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also, but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question now was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the supramental light: the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. The physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light." — Note received from the Mother)   The core of a deathless sun is now the brain And each grey cell bursts to

-029_This Too is Her Love (Poem).htm THIS TOO IS HER LOVE     (The background of this poem is the following letter, dated May 11, 1955, to the Mother: "1 was waiting for you outside your bathroom yesterday. When you came out, you did not look at me at all. I couldn't understand why and it was simply awful — but, as always, I tried to feel that every act of yours is really a grace to me and is meant to remould me into the Divine Truth. The incident moved me to write a poem. Here it is — a symbolic transcription of my faith — but, of course, I hope I shan't have to write such poems very often.")     This too is her love — that with unseeing gaze She goes as if I were

THREE LITTLE CONVERSATIONS WITH THE MOTHER       15 January 1962       Sehra: Mother, did you read my letter mentioning the predictions-made by astrologers about February? Mother: Yes. Many people have asked me about these predictions. The astrologers say that something bad will happen. Even Punditji says so. Every time I hear all those things I try to see what the truth is. But always there is a blank. I see nothing. There is neither a Yes nor a No. This may mean that nothing is going to happen. Or else it may be the Supreme's Will that I should know nothing and not interfere with anything. Usually I don't int

-023_The Mother's Gayatri.htm THE MOTHER'S GAYATRI The most sacred Mantra of the Rigveda (III.62.10), the Gayatri of Rishi Vishwamitra, directs us to the Solar Godhead of Truth — Surya-Savitri: Tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi dhiyo yo nah prachodayat Let us meditate on that most excellent light of the divine Savitri that it may impel our minds. It is hardly possible for the Mother to have come across this great formula of Yogic progress in Paris in 1911. But just at that time, she gave a speech to a Women's Association. It makes a study of the anatomy of thought and explains how thinking can be controlled and turned into a perfect servant. Her s

SPIRITUAL INDIA AND SRI AUROBINDO     The old picture of spiritual India with the dreamy unpractical look has been stripped off the wall. Not that the picture was false in every detail; but unhappily it overlaid the true with the fictitious. India does "dream" a great deal of what is behind the veil of earth's appearances and she definitely is not concerned with only the dust and heat of an outward-going life. Even in the tumultuous twentieth century, she is tremendously "inward": political slogans and economic formulas do not wholly absorb her, but her "inwardness" is not unpractical, her otherworldly dreaming does not end in an emotional haze,