October 2020 Newsletter

October 2020 SRI AUROBINDO SOCIETY VOL 34.10 Singapore NEWSLETTER Krishna II : Krishna the Guru and Guide Krishna’s Play in the Vital In His midst it has all its charm. Eichhornia crassipes Water hyacinth. Water orchid Medium-sized light lavender six-petalled flower with one upper petal that has a yellow spot surrounded by blue and rose lavender and resembles a peacock feather; borne on a dense erect spike. A prolific aquatic herb with inflated leaf-bases and feathery roots. * 'If you reach Krishna you reach the Divine; if you can give yourself to him, you give yourself to me...' (Sri Aurobindo, [CWSA 35:431]) * But all is screened, subliminal, mystical; It needs the intuitive heart, the inward turn, It needs the power of a spiritual gaze. Savitri, Sri Aurobindo

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. Guiding Light of the Month “ALL that is conscious within me belongs unreservedly to Thee, and gradually I shall strive always harder to conquer the subconscient, the yet dark bedrock. O divine Master of love, eternal Teacher, Thou guidest our lives. It is in Thee alone and for Thee alone that we want to live; enlighten our consciousness, guide our steps, and grant that we may do the utmost we can, using all our energies solely to serve Thee.” January 30, 1914 Prayers and Meditations, The Mother From the Editor’s Desk This month we continue with our theme on Krishna. In Arjuna and the depth of the words exchanged between the last issue, we got a glimpse of the Godhead even as them. he is regarded as Krishna the celebrated man who lived thousands of years ago and made his mark in the lives In the. Bhagavad Gita, Krishna offers himself as the of those who came into his ambit knowingly or charioteer for Arjuna, the younger Pandava brother unknowingly. In the message of the Gita, Sri and a frontline archer in the army of the Pandavas. Sri Aurobindo briefly alludes to the existence of the Krishna offers his golden words of guidance to the historical Krishna in the Chhandogya Upanishad where initially bewildered Arjuna who later submits himself “Krishna the son of Devaki” is referred to as “the wholeheartedly to his Guru and Guide, who largely knower of the Brahman”. He also points to evidence of remains a friend to him. Here we have the Divine Sri Krishna and Arjuna being “the object of religious Teacher and the Human Disciple before us, both worship in the pre-Christian centuries … from which expressing and responding to the very basic, the Gita may have gathered many of its elements and characteristic problems of life that we too battle with even the foundation of its synthesis of knowledge, so fiercely in our lives, all the time yearning for a devotion and works, and perhaps also that the human reprieve. Krishna was the founder, restorer or at the least one of the early teachers of this school.” Sri Aurobindo also Let us turn the pages and contemplate upon this Divine refers to a hint of Krishna’s early life in Vrindavan Guide to an erring human personality, with God acting which, through the puranas have left a lasting mark in in knowledge and man receiving both the orders and the religious. mind of the race. Sri Aurobindo points to executing these in action in a state of ignorance and the Harivansha as having had a significant impact on with the false notion of ‘doership’ and self-assigned ownership of the fruits of all ‘this’ action. “Through and formed the accounts seen in the Puranas. the thunders roar and the windless hush”, through “the We have known Krishna as a beautiful baby, a mist and fog” and storm of this ignorance sails man, mischievous toddler, an alluring youth, a King, lover, with God his Guide, working with him and through friend and more. One of the most significant perhaps him in all his ignorance or rather, inspite of his impactful roles Sri Krishna took on was as a Guide to ignorance. Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra where the Pandavas and the Kauravas lined up against each other in On the other hand, Arjuna eventually surrenders battle. Sri Aurobindo has given importance to the himself to his Guide, Krishna, fully and carries out his Bhagavad Gita which documents the conversation action in this self-abandonment, neither claiming the between Sri Krishna and Arjuna. In the ‘The message fruits of his action nor the action itself as his. What of the Gita’, Sri Aurobindo gives a detailed, universal inspiration lies in such a relationship and to even or rather cosmic treatment to each verse explaining the consider that the Guru is in no other place but in significance of the relationship between Krishna and oneself, well-hidden in a secret cave deep in us! Seek him out we must! www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 2 Krishna II

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. Savitri Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne. When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp, As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread Of one who steps unseen into his house. A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey, A Power into mind’s inner chamber steal, A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors And beauty conquer the resisting world, The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise, A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss And earth grow unexpectedly divine. In Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow, In body and body kindled the sacred birth; Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars, The days become a happy pilgrim march, Our will a force of the Eternal’s power, And thought the rays of a spiritual sun. A few shall see what none yet understands; God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep; For man shall not know the coming till its hour And belief shall be not till the work is done. www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg Sri Aurobindo Krishna II 3

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. Quotes I thought I had already told you that your turn towards Krishna was not an obstacle. In any case I affirm that positively in answer to your question. If we consider the large and indeed predominant part he played in my own sadhana, it would be strange if the part he has in your sadhana could be considered objectionable. Sectarianism is a matter of dogma, ritual etc., not of spiritual experience; the concentration on Krishna is a self-offering to the iṣṭa-deva. If you reach Krishna you reach the Divine; if you can give yourself to him, you give yourself to me. Your inability to identify may be because you are laying too much stress on the physical aspects, consciously or unconsciously. (Sri Aurobindo, 18 Jun 1943, The Question of Avatarhood) * You can’t expect me to argue about my own spiritual greatness in comparison with Krishna‘s. The question itself would be relevant only if there were two sectarian religions in opposition, Aurobindoism and Vaishnavism, each insisting on its own God’s greatness. That is not the case. And then what Krishna must I challenge,—the Krishna of the Gita who is the transcendent Godhead, Paramatma, Parabrahma, Purushottama, the cosmic Deity, master of the universe, Vasudeva who is all, the immanent in the heart of all creatures, or the Godhead who was incarnate at Brindavan and Dwarka and Kurukshetra and who was the guide of my Yoga and with whom I realised identity? All that is not to me something philosophical or mental but a matter of daily and hourly realisation and intimate to the stuff of my consciousness. Then from what position can I adjudicate this dispute? X thinks I am superior in greatness, you think there can be nothing greater than Krishna; each is entitled to have his own view or feeling, whether it is itself right or not. It can be left there; it can be no reason for your leaving the Asram. (Sri Aurobindo, 25 Feb 1945, The Question of Avatarhood) The Message of the Gita “The secret of action,” so we might summarise the message of the Gita, the word of its divine Teacher, “is one with the secret of all life and existence. Existence is not merely a machinery of Nature, a wheel of law in which the soul is entangled for a moment or for ages; it is a constant man- ifestation of the Spirit. Life is not for the sake of life alone, but for God, and the living soul of man is an eternal portion of the Godhead. Action is for self-finding, for self-fulfilment, for self- realisation and not only for its own external and apparent fruits of the moment or the future. There is an inner law and meaning of all things dependent on the supreme as well as the manifested nature of the self; the true truth of works lies there and can be represented only incidentally, imperfectly and disguised by igno- rance in the outer appearances of the mind and its action. The supreme, the faultless largest law of action is therefore to find out the truth of your own highest and inmost existence and live in it and not to follow any outer standard and dharma. All life and action must be till then an imperfection, a difficulty, a struggle and a problem. It is only by discovering your true self and living according to its true truth, its real reality that the problem can be finally solved, the difficulty and struggle overpassed and your doings perfected in the security of the discovered self and spirit turn into a divinely authentic action. Know then your self; know your true self to be God and one with the self of all others; know your soul to be a portion of God. Live in what you know; live in the self, live in your supreme spiritual nature, be united with God and Godlike. Offer, first, all your actions as a sacrifice to the Highest and the One in you and to the Highest and the One in the world; deliver last all you are and do into his hands for the supreme and universal spirit to do through you his own will and works in the world. This is the solution that I present to you and in the end you will find that there is no other.” www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 4 Krishna II

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. The Divine Teacher Such then is the divine Teacher of the Gita, the eternal Avatar, the Divine who has descended into the human consciousness, the Lord seated within the heart of all beings, He who guides from behind the veil all our thought and action and heart’s seeking even as as he directs from behind the veil of visible and sensible forms and forces and tendencies the great universal action of the world which He has manifested in His own being. All the strife of our upward endeavour and seeking finds its culmination and ceases in a satisfied fulfilment when we can rend the veil and get behind our apparent self to this real Self, can realise our whole being in this true Lord of our being, can give up our personality to and into this one real Person, merge our ever-dispersed and ever-converging mental activities into His plenary light, offer up our errant and struggling will and energies into His vast luminous and undivided Will, at once renounce and satisfy all our dissipated outward-moving desires and emotions in the plenitude of His self-existent Bliss. This is the world-teacher of whose knowledge who is eternal knowledge all are the highest teaching is but the various reflection and partial word, this the Voice to which the hearing of our soul has to awaken. *** The Gita accepts the human Avatarhood; for the Lord speaks of the repeated, the constant5 manifestation of the Divine in humanity, when He the eternal Unborn assumes by his Maya, by the power of the infinite Consciousness to clothe itself apparently in finite forms, the conditions of becoming which we call birth. But it is not this upon which stress is laid, but on the transcendent, the cosmic and the internal Divine; it is on the Source of all things and the Master of all and on the Godhead secret in man. It is this internal divinity who is meant when the Gita speaks of the doer of violent Asuric austerities troubling the God within or of the sin of those who despise the Divine lodged in the human body or of the same Godhead destroying our ignorance by the blazing lamp of knowledge. It is then the eternal Avatar, this God in man, the divine Consciousness always present in the human being who manifested in a visible form speaks to the human soul in the Gita, illumines the meaning of life and the secret of divine action and gives it the light of the divine knowledge and guidance and the assuring and fortifying word of the Master of existence in the hour when it comes face to face with the painful mystery of the world. This is what the Indian religious consciousness seeks to make near to itself in whatever form, whether in the symbolic human image it enshrines in its temples or in the worship of its Avatars or in the devotion to the human Guru through whom the voice of the one world- Teacher makes itself heard. Through these it strives to awaken to that inner voice, unveil that form of the Formless and stand face to face with that manifest divine Power, Love and Knowledge. *** ….. there is the typical, almost the symbolic significance of the human Krishna who stands behind the great action of the Mahabharata, not as its hero, but as its secret centre and hidden guide. That action is the action of a whole world of men and nations, some of whom have come as helpers of an effort and result by which they do not personally profit, and to these he is a leader, some as its opponents and to them he also is an opponent, the baffler of their designs and their slayer and he seems even to some of them an instigator of all evil and destroyer of their old order and familiar world and secure conventions of virtue and good; some are representatives of that which has to be fulfilled and to them he is counsellor, helper, friend. Where the action pursues its natural course or the doers of the work have to suffer at the hands of its enemies and undergo the ordeals which prepare them for mastery, the Avatar is unseen or appears only for occasional comfort and aid, but at every crisis his hand is felt, yet in such a way that all imagine themselves to be the protagonists and even Arjuna, his nearest friend and chief instrument, does not perceive that he is an instrument and has to confess at last that all the while he did not really know his divine Friend. He has received counsel from his wisdom, help from his power, has loved and been loved, has even adored without understanding his divine nature; but he has been guided like all others through his own egoism and the counsel, help and direction have been given in the language and received by the thoughts of the Ignorance. Until the moment when all has been pushed to the terrible issue of the struggle on the field of Kurukshetra and the Avatar stands at last, still not as fighter, but as the charioteer in the battle-car which carries the destiny of the fight, he has not revealed Himself even to those whom he has chosen. www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 5 Krishna II

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. *** Thus the figure of Krishna becomes, as it were, the symbol of the divine dealings with humanity. Through our egoism and ignorance we are moved, thinking that we are the doers of the work, vaunting of ourselves as the real causes of the result, and that which moves us we see only occasionally as some vague or even some human and earthly fountain of knowledge, aspiration, force, some Principle or Light or Power which we acknowledge and adore without knowing what it is until the occasion arises that forces us to stand arrested before the Veil. *** And the action in which this divine figure moves is the whole wide action of man in life, not merely the inner life, but all this obscure course of the world which we can judge only by the twilight of the human reason as it opens up dimly before our uncertain advance the little span in front. This is the distinguish- ing feature of the Gita that it is the culmination of such an action which gives rise to its teaching and assigns that prominence and bold relief to the gospel of works which it enunciates with an emphasis and force we do not find in other Indian Scriptures. Not only in the Gita, but in other passages of the Mahabharata we meet with Krishna declaring emphatically the necessity of action, but it is here that he reveals its secret and the divinity behind our works. The symbolic companionship of Arjuna and Krishna, the human and the divine soul, is expressed elsewhere in Indian thought, in the heavenward journey of Indra and Kutsa seated in one chariot, in the figure of the two birds upon one tree in the Upanishad, in the twin figures of Nara and Narayana, the seers who do tapasya ̄ together for the knowledge. But in all three it is the idea of the divine knowledge in which, as the Gita says, all action culminates that is in view; here it is instead the action which leads to that knowledge and in which the divine Knower figures himself. Arjuna and Krishna, this human and this divine, stand together not as seers in the peaceful hermitage of medita- tion, but as fighter and holder of the reins in the clamorous field, in the midst of the hurtling shafts, in the chariot of battle. The Teacher of the Gita is therefore not only the God in man who unveils himself in the word of knowledge, but the God in man who moves our whole world of action, by and for whom all our humanity exists and struggles and labours, towards whom all human life travels and progresses. He is the secret Master of works and sacrifice and the Friend of the human peoples. (Sri Aurobindo, Essays on Gita) The Human Disciple Arjuna, the disciple who receives his initiation on the battlefield, is a counterpart of this conception; he is the type of the struggling human soul who has not yet received the knowledge, but has grown fit to receive it by action in the world in a close companionship and an increasing nearness to the higher and divine Self in humanity. There is a method of explaining the Gita in which not only this episode but the whole Mahabha- rata is turned into an allegory of the inner life and has nothing to do with our outward human life and action, but only with the battles of the soul and the powers that strive within us for possession. That is a view which the general character and the actual language of the epic does not justify and, if pressed, would turn the straightforward philosophical language of the Gita into a constant, laborious and somewhat puerile mystification. The language of the Veda and part at least of the Puranas is plainly symbolic, full of figures and concrete representations of things that lie behind the veil, but the Gita is written in plain terms and professes to solve the great ethical and spiritual difficulties which the life of man raises, and it will not do to go behind this plain language and thought and wrest them to the service of our fancy. But there is this much of truth in the view, that the setting of the doctrine though not symbolical, is certainly typical, as indeed the setting of such a discourse as the Gita must necessarily be if it is to have any relation at all with that which it frames. Arjuna, as we have seen, is the representative man of a great world-struggle and divinely-guided movement of men and nations; in the Gita he typifies the human soul of action brought face to face through that action www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 6 Krishna II

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. in its highest and most violent crisis with the problem of human life and its apparent incompatibility with the spiritual state or even with a purely ethical ideal of perfection. Arjuna is the fighter in the chariot with the divine Krishna as his charioteer. In the Veda also we have this image of the human soul and the divine riding in one chariot through a great battle to the goal of a high- aspiring effort. But there it is a pure figure and symbol. The Divine is there Indra, the Master of the World of Light and Immortality, the power of divine knowledge which descends to the aid of the human seeker battling with the sons of falsehood, darkness, limitation, mortality; the battle is with spiritual enemies who bar the way to the higher world of our being; and the goal is that plane of vast being resplendent with the light of the supreme Truth and uplifted to the conscious immortality of the perfected soul, of which Indra is the master. The human soul is Kutsa, he who constantly seeks the seer- knowledge, as his name implies, and he is the son of Arjuna or Arjuni, the White One, child of Switra the White Mother; he is, that is to say, the sattwic or purified and light-filled soul which is open to the unbroken glories of the divine knowledge. (Sri Aurobindo, Essays on Gita) An Experience of a Devotee In every age man has awaited the advent of a Messiah or a Teacher, and found his highest glory in discipleship. But the Coming Teacher shall point out the Messiah and the follower, the Teacher and the disciple, in every man and reveal to his gaze the sempiternal glory of a perfect godhead. (Sri Aurobindo, Early Writings before 1910, SABCL 3: 442) The master of existence lurks in us His was a spirit that stooped from largest 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. .... .... One who is in us as our secret self, Our mask of imperfection has assumed, He has made his tenant of flesh his own, His image in the human measure cast That to his divine measure we might rise; www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 7 Krishna II

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. Then in a figure of divinity The Maker shall recast us and impose A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould Lifting our finite minds to his infinite, Touching the moment with eternity. This transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven; A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme: His nature we must put on as he put ours; We are sons of God and must be even as he: His human portion, we must grow divine. Our life is a paradox with God for key. (AIM Magazine, September 2007) Importance of the inner contact with the Divine The Mother’s role as guide Question: I know your love and blessings are always with me and I sometimes wish you had not been so invariably kind and gracious to me. For it makes it still more hard for me to tell you that there are difficulties of my nature which make it difficult for me to accept you and your Yoga in the requisite spirit. And without this what is discipleship? Answer: It is not as a Guru that I love and bless, it is as the Mother who asks nothing in return for what she gives. (AIM Magazine, September 2007 Krishna and The Mother of Light — A Poem By Murali R Krishna meets the Mother of light in earth’s woodland of meek joys, and in the oneness of love they recognise each other. The Mother is awed by the presence of Krishna’s light in the evolution of consciousness and she demands an explanation. It is to which that Krishna replies, and to that which he says she is lost and experiences the supreme nature of Purushottama, not an experience in the word-vision but as if she is hurled to the supreme Nought of Light that no thought can trace. www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 8 Krishna II

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. Krishna O Woman of light boundless beyond mortal raptures and in Shiva’s feet abide, It is to Thy exceeding delight My Soul passes in silence. O living Silence, the mystic embracer of my aspiring consciousness, Thought’s highest marge in God’s wonder manifest, and a golden Bird of heavens. The Mother O Thou Child, my ecstasy-filled boy of light, my supreme son of delight What urgent errand made Thee descend to this mortal space? Were Thy soul hurled to this wicked existence of undelight? O my supreme Love, answer my question of puzzling despair. Krishna I am not forged to this living mortality, O Mother of light, I have chosen to practise my yoga in this cavern of darkness. I am Light and in the nought of infinity abide beyond mortal spaces But wouldst this world behold me without my flaming descent? Could it lift itself to my nearness without My glance of Grace? I am man’s God in Nature and to Thy udder of light lead him I am his primordial beginning and his supreme liberation from the cycle of birth To the worlds above mind and body and material spaces. I am the highest Spirit of light and in man’s heart known as Krishna That is My name and besides, I have a thousand other names. The Mother Thou knoweth the secret, O Light fathomless and my august Son, Thou art the Krishna of heavens and soul’s primordial existence. I know Thee but know not Thy white secret, O my white Spirit and my womb’s flaming Sun of God. Tell me, whence arose the need to descend to this world of sorrow? Art not Thou the same mystic Boy that could flute from above? And hurl souls from this dolorous region to Thy imperishable ecstasy? O my mystic Beauty, expound the mystery to my understanding. Krishna Housed in white ashes, a Being abides in the immortal fire of mystery He is the Lord, the Light beyond mind’s larger spaces. Birthless, He is born in the world; birthless, He is never born. That is the mystery of Me, but still not the whole of My mystery www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 9 Krishna II

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. The Mother You perplex my understanding, God. I am besieged by Thy wondrous mystery Who art Thou besides being Krishna of luminous eternity and my own Son? I am the prologue to Thy living souls in the worlds of light and here in the earthly existence Yet, I know not Thy inscrutable Secret, thy ineffable Nature. Who art Thou, O infernal Sun-God of highest infinity? Krishna I am, O Mother, the all-containing Nought, the most high God of light, I am the single Being no thought can trace and no mind can capture. Thy udder of light is a preface to a greater beginning in Me; Those who reach Thee, reach Me. The spiral of existence delays the Godhead in man, He is a victim of his own insolence. Thou art here to build an ascending ladder into my Spirit, And to face the grim law of the terrestrial and surmount the impossible. Otherwise, man will plummet into the dark abyss of death, And world will come to destruction and dissolution. Thou art the march of My Spirit here on earth; I have come to aid Thy work, and as slave at Thy service. We are both God and Shakthi, and we bear upon us the pain of earth. The Mother O Krishna, shine forth upon us the light of Thy knowledge, And lead us into a thousand joys of Thy infinite bounty. A day shall come when each soul here shall become a songbird of Thee And the earth shall become a one body of Thy glorious Truth. (Murali , https://medium.com/inevitable-word/krishna-and-the-mother-of-light-a-poem-4a6e4fa125dc ) September Sunday Activities at the Centre - A glimpse 6 September 2020: Reading on The Mother by Sri. Aurobindo \"We started with chapter 4 (pages 15 -18) of the book \"The Mother\". In this chapter, Sri Aurobindo says Money is the visible sign of a universal force. However, money is usurped for the uses of the ego or held by Asuras. Money has to be won back for the Mother and placed at her service. We should regard ourselves as trustees and not possessors of money. Whatever money we receive from the Mother, we should lay before the Mother. Sri Aurobindo also advises not to look up to men because of their riches or be impressed by their power or influence.\" www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 10 Krishna II

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. 13 September 2020: Reading on Synthesis of Yoga On this day, we read the third paragraph of Chapter 3 of Part 1 of The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo. Before the reading began, the participants were invited to work on a reflective activity. They were to write down on a piece of paper or in their personal journal their deepest aspiration and aim in life. Most of the participants shared their aspiration/aim candidly. We then proceeded to read the paragraph two times with. Each reader reading half the paragraph at a time. The activity was related to this paragraph and hence doing the exercise once helped the participants to connect directly with what was written. In this paragraph, Sri Aurobindo points at the one and only aim worth having in one’s life that is “an integral conversion to divinity not only of the soul but of all the parts of our nature.” The following was a suggested follow-up activity to be carried out during the month-long interval before the next sitting of the reading circle on The Synthesis of Yoga: 1) Revisit your highest aim you formulated today. Be in your inner spaces with concentration and take a relook at your aim. Make it real to your own self. Write that down. 2. Write down how you would nurture this aim and live your life according to this aim? 3. What are those in you which must change in order to realise that aim. What must you keep alive? 4. How can you change your psychological and physical environment to make the space conducive to realising the aim? 5. Once you have created a kind of action plan for yourself, get into action right away, steering your moments with the aim in view. Mountains of challenges may arise. Watch yourself, help yourself and ask for help. Our conscious journey begins in this way. 6. Maintain a journal Everyday for the next one month, of all your experiences/thoughts/feelings/inclinations. 7. Next month, on the second Sunday, we will touch base, share our experiences over the month. 8. We shall then understand the paragraph we read today line by line. 20 September 2020: Secret of The Vedas Jared continued with the Primodal Discovery of the Light (Mandala 1, Suktam 71 of the Rig Veda) and explained how the image of the cow, the most important of all the Vedic myths, is used as a key to the sense of the Veda, into the striking Vedic parable, or legend of the Angira Rishis. He explained how on closer examination of the Veda, one understands an illumined consciousness out of the dark depths of ignorance. This understanding helps us to demystify the meaning behind the Vedic Rishis constantly praying for such material prosperity as cows, horses, chariots, gold, sons etc. It is true that Veda is not knowledge of the intellectual kind. It is knowledge of bliss. In sum, it depicts the performance of sacrificial worship as the chief duty of man, with a view not only to enjoyment of wealth here and heaven hereafter but also to greater heights leading to immortality “For them these material objects were symbols of the immaterial; the cows were the radiances or illuminations of a divine Dawn, the horses and chariots were symbols of force and movement, gold was light, the shining wealth of a divine Sun-the true light; both the wealth acquired by the sacrifice and the sacrifice itself in all their details symbolized man’s effort and his mean towards a greater end, the acquisition of immortality” (The Secret of the Veda) www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 11 Krishna II

Krishna II Sri Aurobindo Society, Singapore. October 2020. PROGRAMME FOR THE MONTH OF OCTOBER 2020 DATE TIME DETAILS 8 AM Monthly Morning Walk * 4 Oct 2020 Sunday 6 PM AIM Magazine Reading and Discussion 11 Oct 2020 6 PM Thematic Study Circle by Rakesh: Sunday The Synthesis of Yoga 18 Oct 2020 6 PM Thematic Study Circle by Rakesh : Sunday The Synthesis of Yoga 25 Oct 2020 4 PM Youth Programme Sunday 6 PM Savitri Circle by Mr. Ramadoss * NOTE: In view of the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic, please note the following:  There will be a collective meditation, but the brunch and the walk is cancelled Printed and Published by The Sri Aurobindo Society of Singapore 2A Starlight Road 01-07, Singapore 217755. Ramadoss: 97354063 or [email protected]; Anand Patel:[email protected]; Email: [email protected] Visit our website at: www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg www.sriaurobindosociety.org.sg 12 Krishna II