Siddhi Day:Homage To Sri Aurobindo And The Mother

OM NAMO BHAGAVATE

The True Meaning Of Deepavali

"the world of the Sun of Truth, svar, or the Great
Heaven. We have to find the path to this Great Heaven, the path of Truth,
rtasya panthah, [[III.12.7; also VII.66.3.]] or as it is sometimes called the
way of the gods. This is the second mystic doctrine. The third is that our life is a
battle between the powers of Light and Truth, the Gods who are the Immortals
and the powers of Darkness. These are spoken of under various names as Vritra
and Vritras, Vala and the Panis, the Dasyus and their kings. We have to call in
the aid of the Gods to destroy the opposition of these powers of Darkness who
conceal the Light from us or rob us of it, who obstruct the flowing of the streams
of Truth, rtasya dharah, [[V.12.2; also VII.43.4.]] the streams of Heaven
and obstruct in every way the soul's ascent. We have to invoke the Gods by the
inner sacrifice, and by the Word call them into us, -- that is the specific power of
the Mantra, -- to offer to them the gifts of the sacrifice and by that giving secure
their gifts, so that by this process we may build the way of our ascent to the goal.
The elements of the outer sacrifice in the Veda are used as symbols of the inner
sacrifice and self-offering; we give what we are and what we have in order that
the riches of the divine Truth and Light may descend into our life and become
the elements of our inner birth into the Truth, -- a right thinking, a right
understanding, a right action must develop in us which is the thinking, impulsion
and action of that higher Truth, rtasya presa, rtasya dhitih, [[I.68.3.]] and
by this we must build up ourselves in that Truth. Our sacrifice is a journey, a
pilgrimage and a battle, -- a travel towards the Gods and we also make that
journey with Agni, the inner Flame, as our path-finder and leader. Our human
things are raised up by the mystic Fire into the immortal being, into the Great
Heaven, and the things divine come down into us. As the doctrine of the Rig-
veda is the seed of the teaching of the Vedanta, so is its inner practice and
discipline a seed of the later practice and discipline of Yoga. Finally, as the
summit of the teaching of the Vedic mystics comes the secret of the one Reality,
ekam sat, [[1.164.46.]] or tad ekam, [[X.129.2.]] which became the
central word of the Upanishads. The Gods, the powers of Light and Truth are
powers and names of the One, each God is himself all the Gods or carries them
in him: there is the one Truth, tat satyam, [[III.39.5; also IV.54.4 and
VIII.45.27.]] and one bliss to which we must rise. But in the Veda this looks out
still mostly from behind the veil. There is much else but this is the kernel of the
doctrine"
SRI AUROBINDO

The Importance Of Sri Ramakrishna

From a lecture delivered under the auspices of the Bombay National Union by Sri Aurobindo to a large gathering at Mahajanwadi, Bombay, on Sunday, the 19th January, 1908. The title is "The present situation".[…] The Bengali has the faculty of belief. Belief is not a merely intellectual process, belief is not a mere persuasion of the mind, belief is something that is in our heart, and what you believe, you must do, because belief is from God. It is to the heart that God speaks, it is in the heart that God resides. That saved the Bengali. Because of this capacity of belief, we were chosen as the people who were to save India, the people who were to stand foremost, the people who must suffer for their belief, the people who must meet everything in the faith that God was with them and that God is in them. Such a people need not be politically strong, it need not be a people sound in physique, it need not be a people of the highest intellectual standing. It must be a people who can believe.In Bengal there came a flood of religious truth.Certain men were born, men whom the educated world would not have recognised if that belief, if that God within them had not been there to open their eyes, men whose lives were very different from what our education, our Western education, taught us to admire.One of them, the man who had the greatest influence and has done the most to regenerate Bengal, could not read and write a single word. He was a man who had been what they call absolutely useless to the world. But he had this one divine faculty in him, that he had more than faith and had realised God. He was a man who lived what many would call the life of a madman, a man without intellectual training, a man without any outward sign of culture or civilisation, a man who lived on the alms of others, such a man as the English-educated Indian would ordinarily talk of as one useless to society. He will say, "This man is ignorant. What does he know? What can he teach me who have received from the West all that it can teach?"But God knew what he was doing. He sent that man to Bengal and set him in the temple of Dakshineshwar in Calcutta, and from North and South and East and West, the educated men, men who were the pride of the university, who had studied all that Europe can teach, came to fall at the feet of this ascetic.The work of salvation, the work of raising India was begun.Sri Aurobindo from "Speeches", booklet edition pages 26-27also in SABCL, volume 1published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherrydiffusion by SABDA

source:intyoga

The Need Of The Hour

"What India needs especially at this moment is the aggressive virtues, the spirit of soaring idealism, bold creation, fearless resistance, courageous attack; of the passive tamasic spirit of inertia we have already too much. We need to cultivate another training and temperament, another habit of mind."
SRI AUROBINDO
source:danino's lectures

Conversations With Sri Aurobindo On Vivekananda's Letter

Disciple : The question is : Is Vivekananda expressing only a passing mood because of his innate preference for Vairagya or was ambition really an element mixed up in his work. I always felt that there was a double strain in his nature,—he was drawn between work and Sadhana.

Disciple : It is quite understandable that he observed some ambition lurking in his work. I do not think it is only a passing mood. Simultaneously with the Higher Consciousness one can see these things in one's nature.

Sri Aurobindo : These things, like ambition etc., are not easily removed. They remain in the nature and are difficult to get rid of. Even when the Higher Consciousness comes they can continue with the lower nature.

Disciple : But he says in his writings and speeches that he was conscious of a Higher Power driving him into activity.

Sri Aurobindo : Quite possible; he was conscious of such a Power driving him in spite of his weakness, but that does not mean that his own ambition did not mix with the working of the Power.

Disciple : But later on in his letter he speaks of being freed after death or "freed in the body". That implies that he did not attain liberation till then.

Sri Aurobindo : There are two kinds of liberation : one is when you drop the body, that is to say, you may have attained liberation in consciousness yet something in the nature continues in the old bondage and that ignorance is usually supported by the body-consciousness. When the body drops the man becomes entirely free or liberated.

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Vivekananda's letter on Nirvana

27-1-1939

This evening a very feeling letter written by Vivekananda in 1900 from California to Miss. Josephine Macleod was read to Sri Aurobindo. The relevant points in it are here reproduced.

Alameda, California 18th April 1900

After all, Joe, I am only a boy who used to listen with rapt wonderment to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna under the banyan at Dakshineshwar. That is my true nature, doing good and so forth are all super-impositions. Now I again hear the voice; the same old voice thrilling my soul. Bonds are breaking, love dying, work becoming tasteless—the glamour is off life. .

Yes, I come, Nirvana is before me, I feel it at times, the same infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath.

Since the beginning of this year, I have not dictated anything in India. You know that..

I am drifting again in the warm heart of the river, I dare not make a splash with my hand or feet for fear of breaking the wonderful stillness, stillness that makes you feel sure it (the world) is an illusion.

Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance the thirst of power. Now they are vanishing and I drift. I come, Mother....a spectator, no more an actor.

.............things are seen and felt like shadows.

Vivekananda

Aldous Huxley on Self-Transcedence

Aldous Huxley on Self-Transcendence