Part 3 A New Creation The destiny of man is governed and worked out by a Power beyond human calculation. That Power is dynamic today to a degree unknown heretofore. We have only to give ourselves up in the hands of that Power, allow it to act in us and around us, recognise its action and be grateful to the Divine Providence. That is the only way to deliverance out of this present turmoil. In that way lies our utmost happiness and the supreme achievement. —Nolini Kanta Gupta Page-49 On the Brink l One of its legs the Swan does not lift as it soars upward out of the waters; if perchance it l

The Secret of Life How to remain young and strong in spite of age and unhappy circumstances? Ah! For that you must remain happy, always happy, truly happy under all circumstances of your life. It sounds impossible. The world is full of misery and suffering, life around us is full of pain and evil, the entire humanity around us seems to groan with agony; and in the midst of all this unhappiness, to remain happy? Even if by a rare piece of luck you have a peaceful, contented life for yourself, what of others? And unless you are wholly self-centred, how can you help being unhappy? The arguments seem rational, but nevertheless they are not true. How?

The Mother Abides l If it is a Pralaya, even a Mahapralaya, all is not lost, all is not washed away. Something remains, untouched, deathless, the divine part in you, the Mother's part in you, the consciousness incarnate and articulate. Indeed it was your soul that she salvaged out of the inconscience and established in you as a living reality. That was her first and primary task and she has fulfilled it. It was there always, true; but it was a far-off, very distant, almost inactive point of light, an unknown and uncharted star not yet come into the ken of human measure and potency. She has brought it nearer home and established it in our living and dynamic

The Mother, Human and Divine In our human frailty we regard the Divine Mother as mother only, forgetting that she is also divine. We are apt to seize exclusively the last term of the great Name and ignore the other term which is equally important. We demand from her the same reactions of motherly love that we expect from a human mother. Our love for her is human, human in the ignorant way—full of passion and craving, hunger for appropriation, considering her as nothing else than food for our egoistic desires. She is the mother indeed, but the Divine Mother. She wishes us to come to her in the divine way and not in the human way. For it is in the divine

Love the Divine "Love the Divine alone and the Divine will always be with you." Mother wrote this to one of her children. It is the key to solve problems, the magic mantra to cure the ills of human life and consciousness, the one remedy for all inner and outer ailments. Take ego, for example. It epitomises, in a way, the problem of man, and all spiritual disciplines urge the need to get rid of it, to surmount or uproot or suppress or annihilate it. Ego is a dangerous and perilous pitfall and must go. As to the methods by which this is to be done, well, the teachings vary: be disinterested, grow detached, serve others, forget yourself and your self-assumed importanc

A Canadian Question l It is written in A Practical Guide to Integral Yoga: "The physical nearness to the Mother is indispensable for the fullness of the sadhana on the physical plane. Transformation of the physical and external being is not possible otherwise. " (Sri Aurobindo) My question is: How are we to interpret these words in the light of the Mothers recent passing? Does this mean that a full transformation is no longer possible to the aspirant? Or has discipleship on the material level in the path of the Integral Yoga come to an end? Obviously, the immediate programme of a physical transformation is postponed—not cancelled. But what we have

Freedom If there is one value that the Mother cherished most, it is undoubtedly freedom. Right from her childhood she fought for freedom: freedom from tradition, freedom from convention, freedom from habit, freedom from Nature, in fact freedom from everything that constrains the evolution of the soul. Even in spiritual matters which are organised ostensibly for the development of the individual in terms of truth, love, harmony, she was most particular that nothing should be done that could interfere with the freedom of the person to grow as he liked. She was all compassion, all love in responding to calls for help, but she always acted on one unique principle: as she put it

To Live Within Live within, do not be upset by outer circumstances. Yes, that is the motto: live within. But how? And what does it exactly mean? Usually the dynamic being, the active part of the consciousness, is centred on the surface, in superficial external movements. One of the ways to live within is therefore to withdraw from outer activities and live detached or sort of retired, in the inner consciousness. But this withdrawal is not very easy nor is it very spontaneous; it needs a long and arduous discipline. And one must also make a distinction between the dynamic consciousness and the thought-movements; the two are not the same. Thought-movements are o

Yesterday Yesterday should not be turned into today. It is a sane counsel for everybody, whatever one's avocation, not to live in the past. To live in the future may yield some dividends to a rare few, but dwelling in the past never. Yet we continually revive bygone movements and in the process give force to those vibrations to form again and again and interfere with the present. This is especially so in the case of a spiritual seeker. The most common problem is the memory of some past wrong done against us. Each time this recurs, we relive the whole situation and re-experience all the emotional turmoil we went through at that moment. All the resentment, anger, grief rush

Your Soul I congratulate you all on your success, your success in having passed the Higher Course, which is all to your credit. But this is not the important thing. What is important is that you have passed your youth here and have acquired something in the process, something that one does not gain by dint of merit but absorbs and imbibes with the atmosphere, in the same way that one sucks one's mother's milk. You may hide it or veil it, but this thing is very singular. For it is above all contradiction, all smirch and stain. It remains always shining and pure. At times you will remember it in your outer material life. You will be entering now another order of material li