August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition. Indeed, on this day I can watch almost all the world-movements which I hoped to see fulfilled in my lifetime, though then they looked like impracticable dreams, arriving at fruition or on their way to achievement.
(Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo Birth centenary Library edition, Volume 26, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1972, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)
What is a Nation? The Shakti of its Millions
For what is a nation? What is our mother-country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up a nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha Mardini sprang into being from the Shakti of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis of three hundred million people; but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons. To get rid of Tamas we have but to wake the Brahma within.
Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram- Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Volume 1
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1972, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry
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