August 2021 Newsletter

August 2021 SRI AUROBINDO SOCIETY VOL 35.08 Singapore NEWSLETTER Sri Aurobindo Divine Sacrifice For the Divine it is not a supreme sacrifice to renounce the beatitude of His unity in order to create the painful multiplicity of the world? Punica granatum Pomegranate Small single brilliant orange flower with six rounded crinkled petals and a centre composed of numerous cream yellow anthers, held in a thick waxy orange six-pointed calyx that covers the base of the flower. A shrub or small tree. yellow anthers, held in a thick waxy orange six-pointed calyx that covers the base of the flower. A shrub or small tree. The Divine's sacrifice is the descent of the Divine into the obscurity of the unconsciousness. (The Mother) The manifestation of the love of the Divine in the world was the great holocaust, the supreme self-giving. The Perfect Consciousness accepted to be merged and absorbed into the unconsciousness of matter, so that consciousness might be awakened in the depths of its obscurity and little by little a Divine Power might rise in it and make the whole of this manifested universe a highest expression of the Divine Consciousness and the Divine love. (The Mother) The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance. (Sri Aurobindo)

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 Guiding Light of the Month My trust in Thee, the certitude within me grow deeper day by day; and day by day too I feel Thy love more ardent within my heart, Thy light more brilliant and yet also more sweet; and more and more am I unable to distinguish Thy Work from my life and my individual being from the entire earth. O Lord, Lord, Thy Splendour is infinite, marvellous is Thy Truth; and Thy all-powerful Love shall save the world. June 17, 1913 Prayers and Meditations, The Mother From the Editor’s Desk This August edition of our newsletter celebrates not only And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns Sri Aurobindo’s Birth Anniversary month, but also the And every feeling a celestial thrill. momentous occasion of the sesquicentennial of his birth, on 15 August 2022, observation of which begin this year Nature shall live to manifest secret God, from 15 August 2021. His was no ordinary birth, no The Spirit shall take up the human play, ordinary life. His acumen, his abilities, the many caps he This earthly life become the life divine. wore supersede any known person’s accomplishments of that time and for times to come thereafter, it can be safely Sri Aurobindo is not a legend. He is a living inspiration assumed. He was an exceptional poet, a seer, a who fires our aspirations to outdo our limitations and philosopher, a teacher, a literary critic, a revolutionary, a emerge larger and greater through self-perfection into the maha yogi, a rishi and more that words may not collective upliftment of the entire race through adequately describe. He plunged into the adventure of transformation. He is ever present even now in the subtle consciousness from his early years, nursing in him this physical as The Mother claimed just after his passing. one thing he came to do, and that is to do the word of God. She also mentions, “What Sri Aurobindo represents in He had claimed. “Neither you nor anyone else knows the world's history is not a teaching, not even a anything at all of my life; it has not been on the surface revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the for men to see.” Nevertheless, the exceptional acumen Supreme.” and qualities could not be wholly concealed, it showed on the surface for mortal eyes around him to glimpse and This 150th year of Sri Aurobindo’s birth anniversary lives touched by him to understand, if even a little. He gives all of us an opportunity to plunge into the meaning emerged a force from infinity for a decisive action upon of all these, us who have been graced with this this manifested world. He came to give the message to association with him even devotees or followers. More man, the one who holds the highest rung now on the tree than that, this period of introspection and reflection must of evolution, that the position he holds on that tree is not thrust upon us a necessity to find the meaning of our final and that larger vistas of golden Light await him place and time in what Sri Aurobindo puts forward to the higher up as he is born anew into super-manhood. He entire creation as a vision, both as individulas and as a claimed in Savitri, collective. This naturally leads us to ponder on the The supermind shall claim the world for Light proposition that our own lives have been given only for And thrill with love of God the enamoured heart this purpose. And place Light’s crown on Nature’s lifted head And found Light’s reign on her unshaking base. The Mother plays a cardinal role in this Yoga and we conclude with these telling line from Savitri: His vision for the entire human race was large, wide, high and deep, nothing short of splendorous, all at the My soul and his indissolubly linked same time. He envisaged, In the one task for which our lives were born, A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell To raise the world to God in deathless Light, And take the charge of breath and speech and act To bring God down to the world on earth we came, To change the earthly life to life divine. www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 2 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 Savitri Even his first steps broke our small earth-bounds And loitered in a vaster freer air. In hands sustained by a transfiguring Might He caught up lightly like a giant’s bow Left slumbering in a sealed and secret cave The powers that sleep unused in man within. He made of miracle a normal act And turned to a common part of divine works, Magnificently natural at this height, Efforts that would shatter the strength of mortal hearts, Pursued in a royalty of mighty ease Aims too sublime for Nature’s daily will: The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him; They were his life’s pattern and his privilege. * His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres Into our province of ephemeral sight, A colonist from immortality. A pointing beam on earth’s uncertain roads, His birth held up a symbol and a sign; His human self like a translucent cloak Covered the All-Wise who leads the unseeing world. Affiliated to cosmic Space and Time And paying here God’s debt to earth and man A greater sonship was his divine right. Although consenting to mortal ignorance, His knowledge shared the Light ineffable. A strength of the original Permanence www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 3 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 Entangled in the moment and its flow, He kept the vision of the Vasts behind: A power was in him from the Unknowable. An archivist of the symbols of the Beyond, A treasurer of superhuman dreams, He bore the stamp of mighty memories And shed their grandiose ray on human life. His days were a long growth to the Supreme. * He kept the vision of the Vasts behind: A power was in him from the Unknowable. An archivist of the symbols of the Beyond, A treasurer of superhuman dreams, He bore the stamp of mighty memories And shed their grandiose ray on human life. His days were a long growth to the Supreme. A skyward being nourishing its roots On sustenance from occult spiritual founts Climbed through white rays to meet an unseen Sun. His soul lived as eternity’s delegate, His mind was like a fire assailing heaven, His will a hunter in the trails of light. An ocean impulse lifted every breath; Each action left the footprints of a god, Each moment was a beat of puissant wings. The little plot of our mortality Touched by this tenant from the heights became A playground of the living Infinite. Sri Aurobindo www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 4 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 Sri Aurobindo's symbol The water – inside the square – represents the multiplicity, the creation. Creation - The Conscious Inconscient Because Thou hadst all eternity to amuse, O dramatist of death and life and birth, O sculptor of the living shapes of earth, World-artist revelling in forms and hues, A mathematician Mind that never errs, Thou hast played with theorems, numbers, measures, cubes, Passed cells, electrons, molecules through Thy tubes, World-forces for Thy Science’s ministers, And made a universe of Thy theories, Craftsman minute, an architect of might. Protean is Thy Spirit of Delight, An adept of a thousand mysteries. Or built some deep Necessity, not Thy whim, Fate and Inconscience and the snare of Time? (Sri Aurobindo) A Witness to the Creation of Universe A witness of creation, if there had been one conscious but uninstructed, would only have seen appearing out of a vast abyss of an apparent non-existence an Energy busy with the creation of Matter, a material world and material objects, organising the infinity of the Inconscient into the scheme of a boundless universe or a system of countless universes that stretched around him into Space without any certain end or limit, a tireless creation of nebulae and star-clusters and suns and planets, existing only for itself, without a sense in it, empty of cause or purpose. It might have seemed to him a stupendous machinery without a use, a mighty meaningless movement, an aeonic spectacle without a witness, a cosmic edifice without an inhabitant; for he would have seen no sign of an indwelling Spirit, no being for whose delight it was made. A creation of this kind could only be the outcome of an inconscient Energy or an illusion-cinema, a shadow-play or puppet play of forms reflected on a superconscient indifferent Absolute. He would have seen no evidence of a soul and no hint of Mind www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 5 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 or Life in this immeasurable and interminable display of Matter. It would not have seemed to him possible or imaginable that there could at all be in this desert universe for ever inanimate and insensible an outbreak of teeming life, a first vibration of something occult and incalculable, alive and conscious, a secret spiritual entity feeling its way towards the surface. ( https://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/a-witness-to-the-creation-of-the-universe/ ) A Life Sketch of Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo was born in Calcutta on 15 August, 1872. In 1879, at the age of seven, he was taken with his two elder brothers to England for education and lived there for fourteen years. Brought up at first in an English family at Manchester, he joined St. Paul's School in London in 1884 and in 1890 went from it with a senior classical scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he studied for two years. In 1890 he passed also the open competition for the Indian Civil Service, but at the end of two years of probation failed to present himself at the riding examination and was disqualified for the Service. At this time the Gaekwar of Baroda was in London. Sri Aurobindo saw him, obtained an appointment in the Baroda Service and left England for India, arriving there in February, 1893. Sri Aurobindo passed thirteen years, from 1893 to 1906, in the Baroda Service, first in the Revenue Department and in secretariate work for the Maharaja, afterwards as Professor of English and, finally, Vice-Principal in the Baroda College. These were years of self-culture, of literary activity -- for much of the poetry afterwards published from Pondicherry was written at this time -- and of preparation for his future work. In England he had received, according to his father's express instructions, an entirely occidental education without any contact with the culture of India and the East. At Baroda he made up the deficiency, learned Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages, assimilated the spirit of Indian civilisation and its forms past and present. A great part of the last years of this period was spent on leave in silent political activity, for he was debarred from public action by his position at Baroda. The outbreak of the agitation against the partition of Bengal in 1905 gave him the opportunity to give up the Baroda Service and join openly in the political movement. He left Baroda in 1906 and went to Calcutta as Principal of the newly-founded Bengal National College. The political action of Sri Aurobindo covered eight years, from 1902 to 1910. During the first half of this period he worked behind the scenes, preparing with other co-workers the beginnings of the Swadeshi (Indian Sinn Fein) movement, till the agitation in Bengal furnished an opening for the public initiation of a more forward and direct political action than the moderate reformism which had till then been the creed of the Indian National Congress. In 1906 Sri Aurobindo came to Bengal with this purpose and joined the New Party, an advanced section small in numbers and not yet strong in influence, which had been recently formed in the Congress. The political theory of this party was a rather vague gospel of Non-cooperation; in action it had not yet gone farther than some ineffective clashes with the Moderate leaders at the annual Congress assembly behind the veil of secrecy of the \"Subjects Committee\". Sri Aurobindo persuaded its chiefs in Bengal to come forward publicly as an All-India party with a definite and challenging programme, putting forward Tilak, the popular Maratha leader at its head, and to attack the then dominant www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 6 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 Moderate (Reformist or Liberal) oligarchy of veteran politicians and capture from them the Congress and the country. This was the origin of the historic struggle between the Moderates and the Nationalists (called by their opponents Extremists) which in two years changed altogether the face of Indian politics. The new-born Nationalist party put forward Swaraj (independence) as its goal as against the far-off Moderate hope of colonial self-government to be realised at a distant date of a century or two by a slow progress of reform; it proposed as its means of execution a programme which resembled in spirit, though not in its details, the policy of Sinn Fein developed some years later and carried to a successful issue in Ireland. The principle of this new policy was self-help; it aimed on one side at an effective organisation of the forces of the nation and on the other professed a complete non-cooperation with the Government. Boycott of British and foreign goods and the fostering of Swadeshi industries to replace them, boycott of British law courts, and the foundation of a system of Arbitration courts in their stead, boycott of Government universities and colleges and the creation of a network of National colleges and schools, the formation of societies of young men which would do the work of police and defence and, wherever necessary, a policy of passive resistance were among the immediate items of the programme. Sri Aurobindo hoped to capture the Congress and make it the directing centre of an organised national action, an informal State within the State, which would carry on the struggle for freedom till it was won. He persuaded the party to take up and finance as its recognised organ the newly- founded daily paper, Bande Mataram, of which he was at the time acting editor. The Bande Mataram, whose policy from the beginning of 1907 till its abrupt winding up in 1908 when Sri Aurobindo was in prison was wholly directed by him, circulated almost immediately all over India. During its brief but momentous existence it changed the political thought of India which has ever since preserved fundamentally, even amidst its later developments, the stamp then imparted to it. But the struggle initiated on these lines, though vehement and eventful and full of importance for the future, did not last long at the time; for the country was still unripe for so bold a programme. Sri Aurobindo was prosecuted for sedition in 1907 and acquitted. Up till now an organiser and writer, he was obliged by this event and by the imprisonment or disappearance of other leaders to come forward as the acknowledged head of the party in Bengal and to appear on the platform for the first time as a speaker. He presided over the Nationalist Conference at Surat in 1907 where in the forceful clash of two equal parties the Congress was broken to pieces. In May, 1908, he was arrested in the Alipore Conspiracy Case as implicated in the doings of the revolutionary group led by his brother Barindra; but no evidence of any value could be established against him and in this case too he was acquitted. After a detention of one year as undertrial prisoner in the Alipore Jail, he came out in May, 1909, to find the party organisation broken, its leaders scattered by imprisonment, deportation or self-imposed exile and the party itself still existent but dumb and dispirited and incapable of any strenuous action. For almost a year he strove single-handed as the sole remaining leader of the Nationalists in India to revive the movement. He published at this time to aid his effort a weekly English paper, the Karmayogin, and a Bengali weekly, the Dharma. But at last he was compelled to recognise that the nation was not yet sufficiently trained to carry out his policy and programme. For a time he thought that the necessary training must first be given through a less advanced Home Rule movement or an agitation of passive resistance of the kind created by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa. But he saw that the hour of these movements had not come and that he himself was not their destined leader. Moreover, since his www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 7 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 twelve months' detention in the Alipore Jail, which had been spent entirely in practice of Yoga, his inner spiritual life was pressing upon him for an exclusive concentration. He resolved therefore to withdraw from the political field, at least for a time. In February, 1910, he withdrew to a secret retirement at Chandernagore and in the beginning of April sailed for Pondicherry in French lndia. A third prosecution was launched against him at this moment for a signed article in the Karmayogin; in his absence it was pressed against the printer of the paper who was convicted, but the conviction was quashed on appeal in the High Court of Calcutta. For the third time a prosecution against him had failed. Sri Aurobindo had left Bengal with some intention of returning to the political field under more favourable circumstances; but very soon the magnitude of the spiritual work he had taken up appeared to him and he saw that it would need the exclusive concentration of all his energies. Eventually he cut off connection with politics, refused repeatedly to accept the Presidentship of the National Congress and went into a complete retirement. During all his stay at Pondicherry from 1910 onward he remained more and more exclusively devoted to his spiritual work and his sadhana. In 1914 after four years of silent Yoga he began the publication of a philosophical monthly, the Arya. Most of his more important works, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Essays on the Gita, The Isha Upanishad, appeared serially in the Arya. These works embodied much of the inner knowledge that had come to him in his practice of Yoga. Others were concerned with the spirit and significance of Indian civilisation and culture (The Foundations of Indian Culture), the true meaning of the Vedas (The Secret of the Veda), the progress of human society (The Human Cycle), the nature and evolution of poetry (The Future Poetry), the possibility of the unification of the human race (The Ideal of Human Unity). At this time also he began to publish his poems, both those written in England and at Baroda and those, fewer in number, added during his period of political activity and in the first years of his residence at Pondicherry. The Arya ceased publication in 1921 after six years and a half of uninterrupted appearance. Sri Aurobindo lived at first in retirement at Pondicherry with four or five disciples. Afterwards more and yet more began to come to him to follow his spiritual path and the number became so large that a community of sadhaks had to be formed for the maintenance and collective guidance of those who had left everything behind for the sake of a higher life. This was the foundation of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram which has less been created than grown around him as its centre.Sri Aurobindo began his practice of Yoga in 1904. At first gathering into it the essential elements of spiritual experience that are gained by the paths of divine communion and spiritual realisation followed till now in India, he passed on in search of a more complete experience uniting and harmonising the two ends of existence, Spirit and Matter. Most ways of Yoga are paths to the Beyond leading to the Spirit and, in the end, away from life; Sri Aurobindo rises to the Spirit to redescend with its gains bringing the light and power and bliss of the Spirit into life to transform it. Man's present existence in the material world is in this view or vision of things a life in the Ignorance with the Inconscient at its base, but even in its darkness and nescience there are involved the presence and possibilities of the Divine. The created world is not a mistake or a vanity and illusion to be cast aside by the soul returning to heaven or Nirvana, but the scene of a spiritual evolution by which out of this material inconscience is to be manifested progressively the Divine Consciousness in things. Mind is the highest term yet reached in the evolution, but it is not the highest of which it is capable. There is above it a Supermind or eternal Truth-Consciousness which is in its nature the self-aware and self-determining light and power of a Divine Knowledge. Mind is an ignorance seeking after Truth, but this is a self- existent Knowledge harmoniously manifesting the play of its forms and www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 8 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 forces. It is only by the descent of this supermind that the perfection dreamed of by all that is highest in humanity can come. It is possible by opening to a greater divine consciousness to rise to this power of light and bliss, discover one's true self, remain in constant union with the Divine and bring down the supramental Force for the transformation of mind and life and body. To realise this possibility has been the dynamic aim of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. Sri Aurobindo left his body on December 5, 1950. The Mother carried on his work until November 17, 1973. Their work continues. (Volume 30, SABCL, p.1-6) PS: The images of Sri Aurobindo during different periods of his life has been added for the purpose of this newsletter. Integral Yoga Many Aurovilians, certainly those who have specifically come for Auroville's spiritual vision and call, are practicing the 'Integral Yoga' as described by Sri Aurobindo, and naturally refer to it in their communications in daily life as well as on this site. We add here below some introductory definitions relating to the yoga in the words of Sri Aurobindo himself. Central purpose of the Integral Yoga Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life. Integral yoga This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ananda (Bliss). But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousness is indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 9 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga. Sâdhanâ of the Integral Yoga The Sâdhanâ [practice] of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come. Integral method The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sâdhaka of the sâdhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity. * Sâdhana, the practice by which perfection, siddhi, is attained; Sâdhaka, the Yogin who seeks by that practice the siddhi. Aim of the Integral Yoga It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter. Conditions of the Integral Yoga This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyâ (concentration of the will) needed too constant and intense. Method in the Integral Yoga To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one's own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother's Power and Presence. Key-methods The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender. The way to knowledge www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 10 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements. Yoga by works Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousness or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one. Object of the Integral Yoga The object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine. Principle of the Integral Yoga The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ananda of the Supramental Divine. Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness. (Dictionary of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga) July 2021 Sunday Activities at the Centre - A glimpse 4 July 2021: Savitri Reading Circle The session continued with reading of passages from Savitri - The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation - Book 11- Canto One from page 706 to 707. In the lines discussed from the passages, Sri Aurobindo can see in his vision the future mankind as no longer in the tunnel of dark ignorance and veiled by petty egoism. Here are some comments. By M.P. Pandit on the lines: “For sure there comes a time when it will be possible for man, the embodied being, manifestation of the Imperishable, to live as a thought of the Divine, as a will of the Divine, as a mask or a robe of his Divinity, as an instrument and partner of the Divine Force. The Super mind shall be the source of his nature; the Eternal’s truth shall shape his thoughts and acts; it shall be his light and guide. Then shall all change. Then shall a new magic order overcome this mechanical universe. A race mightier than the mortal shall inhabit this world of mortality. Life shall be a power freed from its constrictive limits, its heights shall be lifted beyond the reach of hungry death; the Immortal’s thoughts shall set aflame the summits of life and Light shall invade the darkness of its base. www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 11 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 Then in the process of the evolution of Time all shall be drawn into a single plan. A divine harmony shall become the law of the earth; Beauty and Joy shall recast her way of life. Even the physical body shall remember God dwelling in it; Nature shall withdraw from the hold of mortality; the luminous fires of the Spirit shall guide the blind force of the earth; Knowledge shall bring to aspiring Thought a high nearness to Truth and God. This world shall be God’s manifest garden-house, the earth shall be a field and headquarters of God; man shall no longer accept death, no longer embody a weak transience in himself. Our dear Mother Earth’s deep yearning and aspiration for Her children’s transformation into Divine Beings is so palpable in the lines of Our dear Master Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri!” 11 July 2021: Reading on The Mother by Sri Aurobindo We completed the section on Mahakali along with Savitri lines on the Mother of Might (pages 508-510). We also read some questions asked by the Sadhaks on Mahakali to Sri Aurobindo. The Master says that Mahakali's love is as intense as her wrath and she has a deep and passionate kindness. “When she is allowed to intervene in her strength, then in one moment are broken like things without consistence the obstacles that immobilise or the enemies that assail the seeker. She is loved and worshipped by the great, the strong and the noble; for they feel that her blows beat what is rebellious in their material into strength and perfect truth, hammer straight what is wry and perverse and expel what is impure or defective. But for her what is done in a day might have taken centuries; without her Ananda might be wide and grave or soft and sweet and beautiful but would lose the flaming joy of its most absolute intensities. To knowledge she gives a conquering might, brings to beauty and harmony a high and mounting movement and imparts to the slow and difficult labour after perfection an impetus that multiplies the power and shortens the long way. Nothing can satisfy her that falls short of the supreme ecstasies, the highest heights, the noblest aims, the largest vistas. Therefore with her is the victorious force of the Divine and it is by grace of her fire and passion and speed if the great achievement can be done now rather than hereafter.” 18 July 2021: Secret of The Vedas - ‘Agni, the Ilumined Will1’- (Rig Veda Mandala 1, Sukta 77) In this session, we moved on to Sri Aurobindo’s commentary on verse 2 of Rig Veda I.77: “He who in the sacrifices is the priest of the offering, full of peace, full of the Truth, him verily form in you by your surrenderings; when Agni manifests for the mortals the gods, he also has perception of them and by the mind offers to them the sacrifice” - Sri Aurobindo. We focused on the psychic flame as the manifestation of Agni in us – he who is full of the peace and truth. Agni is not far – his spark in us is the true Flame that is our true self. It is Agni as the psychic who is the priest in us, the one who offers the true surrender and sacrifice. It is also him, when he comes forward, who sees and manifests the divine Godheads—and through sacrifice, spurs their growth. The focus of this session is on how Agni and the psychic is father and child. They are fundamentally one – and it is the Divine within us that will flame up and take us to the highest peaks. Sri Aurobindo’s commentary related to the above verse was read by the participants – some of the important points covered are as follows: There are 2 ways by which the manifestation of cosmic gods can take place in man: • Sanskrit expression a krnudhvam – An idea of a drawing upon oneself of something outside and the working and shaping it out in our own consciousness. • Sanskrit expression a bhu – Converse of the above, used of the gods when they approach the mortal with the contact of Immortality and, divine form of godhead following on form of humanity, “become” take shape, as it were, in him. This is the true sense and theory of Hindu image-worship } www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 12 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 • Thus present and conscious in man, like a “house-lord” Agni appears in true nature of his divinity. Due to our obscurity and revolting against the Truth and the Law, our progress stumbles from ignorance to ignorance, full of pain. Contrary to this, by our constant submission to the Truth and surrender we create in ourselves that image of the divine Will – which is full of peace and calm. Since our Wisdom guides all our steps in the straight paths of Truth, we are carried by it beyond all stumbling. • With Agni conscious in our humanity, creation of the gods in us is a veritable proposition, not a veiled growth. • Will within grows conscious of increasing godhead, awakens the process and perceives the lines of the growth. • Human action intelligently directed and devoted to universal Powers, is no more a mechanical, involuntary or imperfect offering. • Thinking and observing mind participates and becomes the instrument of the sacrificial will. The word for word meaning of the entire Rik was also explained to the participants. 18 July 2021: Question and Answers by The Mother; Reading on Synthesis of Yoga Here is an excerpt of the reading taken up for this session: 8th January 1958 Mother, we sometimes have sudden ideas. Where do they come from and how do they work in the head? Where do they come from? — From the mental atmosphere. Why do they come?... Perhaps you meet them on your way as one meets a passer-by in a public square. Most often it is that; you are on a road where ideas are moving about and it so happens that you meet this particular one and it passes through your head. Obviously, those who are in the habit of meditating, of concentrating, and for whom intellectual problems have a very concrete and tangible reality, by concentrating their minds they attract associated ideas, and a “company of ideas” is formed which they organise so as to solve a problem or clarify the question they are considering. But for this, one must have the habit of mental concentration and precisely that philosophical mind I was speaking about, for which ideas are living entities with their own life, which are organised on the mental chess-board like pawns in a game of chess: one takes them, moves them, places them, organises them, one makes a coherent whole out of these ideas, which are individual, independent entities with affinities among themselves, and which organise themselves according to inner laws. But for this, one must also have the habit of meditation, reflection, analysis, deduction, mental organisation. Otherwise, if one is just “like that”, if one lives life as it comes, then it is exactly like a public square: there are roads and on the roads people pass by, and then you find yourself at crossroads and it all passes through your head — sometimes even ideas without any connection between them, so much so that if you were to write down what passes through your head, it would make a string of admirable nonsense! 25 July 2021: Readings and Reflections: The Inner Journey As a follow up to the previous session, we re-visited the idea of “placing of the I-Consciousness” during our day-to-day activities by looking at some sentences and identifying where the “I” was placed. Then we did a visualisation exercises on inner cleaning or purification by identifying all the unwanted things in us which needs cleaning or clearing off in order to be better in touch with our inner spaces and ultimately the Psychic Being. Then a reading on the fire within as the cleansing agent was read. We concentrated a while as more shorter quotes of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo were read. www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 13 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 - Jayalakshmi, Ram, Krishnamurthy, Shailaja, Jayanthy PROGRAMME FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST 2021 DATE TIME DETAILS 8 AM Monthly Morning Walk * 6 PM Savitri Circle by Venkatesh Rao 1 Aug 2021 Youth Programme Sunday 7 PM 8 Aug 2021 6 PM Readings from The Mother by Ram Sunday 5 PM Secret of the Veda by Krishnamurthy and Jared 15 Aug 2021 Sri Aurobindo’s 149th Birth Anniversary Sunday Sesquicentennial Observations Commence (2021-2022) 6 PM 22 Aug 2021 6 PM Readings and Reflections: The Inner Journey by Jayanthy Sunday 29 Aug 2021 Sunday 6 PM Readings and Reflections: The Inner Journey by Jayanthy *Details can be found in the SAS Whatsapp Group Printed and Published by The Sri Aurobindo Society of Singapore www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 14 Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. August 2021 2A Starlight Road 01-07, Singapore 217755. Anand Venkat: 86126067 or [email protected]; Anand Patel:[email protected]; Email: [email protected] Visit our website at: www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 15 Sri Aurobindo