-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,

-039_Sri Aurobindo's Comments.htm SRI AUROBINDO'S COMMENTS     On The Hero     It seems to me a good story and certainly it is very well written. Only, where did you get the idea of the civilians of a town being expected to fight against the invading army? I believe according to the laws of war, as they were then at least, no one was entitled to join in the fighting except the regular military forces. If any others took up arms, the enemy was entitled to shoot them, when captured, without mercy and could not be blamed for doing so. Even the franc tireurs (I think that was the name), volunteers who fought as irregulars in 1870, were considered by the Prussians to co

A DREAM-VISION ON 14 JUNE, 1956     A LETTER TO THE MOTHER   After the Distribution at the Playground, instead of going into your room you are sitting in a broad gold chair with red plush, which is like a throne. Nobody is there except Amiyo standing near you. There is no electric light. The effect in the atmosphere is as of very faint moonlight. Your dress is also gold and red, both in a different shade from that of the chair, a lighter shade. I come towards you, hesitatingly, uncertainly, I am wondering what you are doing. You call me. When 1 go close, you pull me to yourself. I kneel at your side. As I can't understand what

A DREAM-VISION: JANUARY 3,1962     A LETTER TO THE MOTHER     Early this morning — a little before 3:30 a.m. — I had a dream. I saw you standing in a room high up in a very tall building. You are standing with your back turned towards the door and talking with someone inside. I am standing far below in a garden and looking up at you and saying, "There is Mother standing." I suddenly see fire coming out of a door on the floor just below the level at which you are. And I realise that the flame is most rapidly mounting up. I see that in a few minutes it will touch your dress. But how am I to warn you? I am so far down that if I clim

A LETTER TO THE MOTHER AND HER ANSWER     Mother my dearest, I want to tell you how I meet you in the morning and how in the evening. In the morning I give you with all my love all that is best in myself. In the evening, with love I pick out from God's finest gifts to the earth — gifts like sunsets, mountain-sceneries, seascapes, woods and flowers — the essence of beauty and add to it the essence of beauty from the whole universe, the world of moon and stars, and then I offer it all to you. Do you know why I do this? It is because when I sit at the Distribution I see three types of people coming to you. There are a very few who

-046_The Mother's Work in a Dreadful Place.htm THE MOTHER'S WORK IN A DREADFUL PLACE     AN EXPERIENCE OF SEHRA PRESENTED  BY AMAL KIRAN     Perhaps the most frightening peep into the unknown which Sehra ever had was recounted by her to the Mother in a letter dated 11 March 1957: "Before going to bed I asked myself why my prayer for quick recovery in the Mother's eye-trouble had not been answered. Then I went to sleep. Suddenly someone spoke: 'Would you like to know why your prayer is not answered and why this attack has come on the Mother's body?' He took my hand and we went down and down as if into a deep well. Soon I found myself in a place which was dark

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AND MODERN INDIA     Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, passed away on May 27, 1964 in his seventy-fourth year. What India has lost may best be suggested by asking a question he would himself have loved to hear: "Was he seventy-four years old or seventy-four years young?" Nehru never outgrew the happy audacity that was his in the days of his youth. I Ie was at one time the living symbol of young India, and years did not change that aspect of him. This Prime Minister of ours was the country's sole Minister who was always in his prime. For, he represented India in her modernity. It is because modern India flamed i

INDIA AND THE FATE OF NATIONS     A GLANCE AT THE CAREERS OF ANCIENT RACES THROUGH SRI AUROBINDO'S EYES     According to Sri Aurobindo, every nation, every large and distinguishable human collectivity, is a super-organism, with a common or communal body, mind and soul. This super-organism, like the individual, passes through a cycle of birth, growth, youth, ripeness and decline. If the decline lasts long, it generally ends in death. But there resides, in the vast subtleties of the collective being of a people, a power of self-renewal with the help of its inner life-idea. The inner life-idea is the key to a nation's psy

-031_Pranam to the Divine Mother (Poem).htm PRANAM" TO THE DIVINE MOTHER     There are two ways of bowing To you, O Splendour sweet! One craves the boon of blessedness. One gives the soul to your feet. Pulling your touch to ourselves we feel Holy and happy — we think huge heaven Comes close with you that we may pluck A redder dawn, a purpler even. This is but rapturous robbery Deaf to infinity's call That we should leap and plunge in you Our aching empty all And, in the surge of being your own, Grow blind and quite forget Whether our day be a richer rose, A wealthier violet. Precious each moment laid in your h