Guiding Light of The Month

O Lord, how ardently do I call and implore Thy love! Grant that my aspiration may be intense enough to awaken the same aspiration everywhere: oh, may good- ness, justice and peace reign as supreme masters, may ignorant egoism be overcome, darkness be suddenly illu- minated by Thy pure Light; may the blind see, the deaf hear, may Thy law be proclaimed in every place and, in a constantly progressive union, in an ever more perfect harmony, may all, like one single being, stretch out their arms towards Thee to identify themselves with Thee and manifest Thee upon earth. - The Mother

Flowers of the month

Love for the Divine



The vegetal kingdom gathers together its most beautiful possibilities to offer them to the Divine.
Common Name: Rose
Botanical Name: Rosa
Spiritual Name: Love for the Divine

Integral Love for the Divine


Pure, complete and irrevocable, it is a love that gives itself for ever.

Common Name: Rose
Botanical Name: Rosa
Spiritual Name: Integral Love for the Divine

The Dalai Lama's visit to Auroville

On 20 January 2009, the Dalai Lama inaugurated the Tibetan Pavilion, at the International Zone of Auroville. The inauguration marked the completion of the Pavilion some 16 years after its foundation stone was laid. It was in 1993 that the Dalai Lama himself laid the 8-kgs foundation stone from Tibet itself. The Dalai Lama met The Mother in 1973, when he visited Auroville for the first time. It is notable that of all the planned pavilions, the Tibetan Pavilion is the only one completed thus far. It was mentioned in the Introductory Speech for the occasion by Deepti Tiwari, that the Tibetan Pavilion represents the spirit of Tibet, such as “sweetness, generosity, openheartedness”. It stands today in the International Zone as another concrete symbol of human unity envisaged by The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

(Information from Hans Vas, who made a transcript of Deepti Tiwari’s introductory speech for the occasion; Pictures from AV Info, Auroville)

Dawn at Auroville


It was as if we were destined to land in Auroville on New Year’s Day!

As is the case every year end, we were planning the annual family holiday and this year the general consensus was to go on a wild life safari in Kenya. We started checking out the ticketing and although we never intended to, we ultimately happened to transit via India.

On the way back we couldn’t help stealing a visit to our Mecca….Pondicherry. Once our plans were finalised both Venkatesh and I realised that both of us had in fact had a strong urge to celebrate the dawn of the new year at the Samadhi but somehow this slipped our minds. Strange are the ways of the Divine.

Our holiday in Kenya was most enjoyable and Venkatesh quipped that the animals seemed to be living in Peace and harmony, but the same cannot be said of us humans! On the 30th of January, we finally reached Pondi and spent a wonderful 4 days there. We visited the Samadhi every morning and late night and soaked in the peace and energy around it. We were looking forward to attending the New Year meditation at the Samadhi at 6am. However while chatting and having dinner with some old time friends they mentioned that they were attending the Morning BonFire and meditation at Auroville and asked us to join them. We didn’t have to be asked twice!

On the 1st day of 2009, we hopped onto two little scooters and headed for Auroville where a memorable experience awaited us. We reached Auroville at 5:30 in the morning. It was pitch dark but somehow we found our way to the amphitheatre where we came upon a marvelous sight. The entire open-air theatre was lit up with candles and looked out of this world. We settled down to the silence and peace pervading all over. At 05:45 the music was turned on. The beautiful meditative music of the sonorous Russian bells elevated the atmosphere to a higher plane. The whole setting was ethereal. Not a sound was made. A deep calm descended all over. A little after 06.00 the first day of 2009 dawned and slowly revealed the Matrimandir in the background. For a few minutes I was mesmerised by the sight of Matrimandir slowly emerging from darkness to light.

Once day broke and the bonfire was lit, a wave of hope and joy seemed to wash over all gathered there. We greeted and wished people around us a happy new year and moved towards the bonfire to enjoy the warmth as the morning was surprisingly chilly. Aurovillians had gathered several baskets of flowers. All joined in to decorate the area around the urn with Kolams of flowers.

It was the most pure, peaceful and pristine New Year day of my life.

Every day that I was in Pondi, at the Samadhi, my sincere prayers went out to The Mother and Sri Aurobindo for Peace on Earth. I prayed that Sri Aurobindo’s 5 dreams come true. With The Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s Divine Grace and our Sincere Aspirations, it will happen!

- Shailaja

The Matrimandir


“Matrimandir” is a Sanskrit word which means ‘house, or temple, of the Mother.’ From outside, it will resemble a golden, slightly flattened globe breaking out of the Earth - the golden world of Supermind breaking out of Matter. The globe, with a diameter of about thirty meters, rests on four gigantic supports representing the four active powers of the Mother in the universe: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati. The most important feature inside the globe is a ‘chamber’ with a diameter of about twenty metres and near the wall twelve round columns seemingly supporting the ceiling but not touching it. The chamber is completely white and its marble floor is covered with a white carpet. In the middle of the chamber a crystal ball of seventy centimeters (specially made for Auroville by the Carl Zeiss Werke in Oberkochen, near Stuttgart, Germany) rests on a pedestal consisting of four gold symbols of Sri Aurobindo, which in turn is placed in the center of the symbol of the Mother on the floor. Night and day a ray of light falls through a central opening in the ceiling of the chamber straight on to the crystal. During the day, the ray consists of sunlight deflected by a mechanism that follows the movement of the sun; at night, the ray is produced by conserved solar energy. There is nothing else in the chamber and all noise is avoided.

A crystal that projects a ray of light directly into the core of your being, in a harmonious room of material purity - one can give all kinds of interpretations to it or simply undergo the unworldly beauty of the place. The Matrimandir cannot be explained. The Mother has ‘seen’ it and wanted it to be erected in the center of Auroville as soon as possible. It represents ‘the consciousness of the Divine’, it is ‘the soul of Auroville’ she said, and ‘the sooner it will be finished the better’ for the young city.

The Matrimandir only makes sense when it represents something on the level of the forces which have to contribute towards the coming of the New World. It must be a kind of power plant effecting a field with a transforming power which acts upon all who enter into it, upon those who live in its vicinity, and upon the Earth out of whose body it seems to emerge. The transformation of the Earth was the object of the Mother’s Work. Auroville is another step in that direction which had become possible in the general process of transformation, a step’ outwards’ in the divulgence of the new Force. If the Mother had wanted the occult power source which is Matrimandir to be built, then it can only have been, in a vision without religion, with the intention of speeding up the transformation of the Earth.

The Mother has said several times that Auroville exerts an occult influence in the world. That what vibrates in the cell, vibrates in the universe. That what has a life in one place of goodwill spreads in the whole body of the Earth. At first she said that the attempt at world unity which is Auroville contributed in preventing a third world war. Later on, in the beginning of February 1968, Sri Aurobindo gave her the complete rationale for the existence of the city and she had noted down his words; ‘India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of present-day humanity. India will be the site of its resurrection, the resurrection of a higher and truer life’ And she explained that: “The same thing which in the history of the universe has made the Earth the symbolic representation of the universe so as to be able to concentrate the work at one point, that same phenomenon is occurring now: India is the representation of all human difficulties on earth, and it is in India that there will be the cure. And it is THEREFORE that one has made me create Auroville”.

The sea port she had envisioned, the airport, the hotels, the yachting club, the hydroplanes, the film studio, the press and publishing house for publication in all world languages, the grand organ in the auditorium – all that is not here yet. As we have seen Auroville’s material growth can only be the outcome of its spiritual growth, and at the moment it is not yet ripe for a material development of such dimensions. But the real Auroville exists- in the heart of the Aurovillians; it is there that it has to develop fully before a complete outward shape makes any sense. At present, there is little more than the embryo of a city. But the fact that Auroville still exists after twenty-five year is by itself, considering its purpose and the circumstances of its beginnings, a miracle.

‘Auroville is a great adventure,’ the Mother said. She had seen the city in that world where is being prepared what has to be realized on the Earth; she also knew that the city already exists in the hankering hearts of so many, not only on that spot on the Coromandel Coast but in the whole world- in all places where women and men can no longer stand the deadening meaninglessness of existence and long with all the intensity of their heart for Meaning, Beauty, Truth, Authenticity, for a totally satisfying, twenty-four carat fulfiment of life, at last.

‘The city will be built by what is invisible to you,’ said the Mother. ‘Those who have to act as instruments will do so despite themselves. They are nothing but puppets in the hands of larger Forces. Nothing depends on human beings, neither the planning nor the execution; nothing! That is why one can laugh.’

(An extract from the book “Beyond the Human Species – The Life and Work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother”, under the title of “The New Utopia: Auroville” by Georges Van Vrekhem Paragon House- St. Paul, Minnesota, 1998)

Because Thou Art


Because Thou art All-beauty and All-bliss,
My soul blind and enamoured yearns for Thee;
It bears Thy mystic touch in all that is
And thrills with the burden of that ecstasy.

Behind all eyes I meet thy secret gaze
And in each voice I hear thy Magic tune:
Thy sweetness haunts my heart through Nature’s ways;
Nowhere it beats now from Thy snare immune.

It loves Thy body in all living things;
Thy joy is there in every leaf and stone:
The moments bring Thee on their fiery wings;
Sight’s endless artistry is Thou alone.

Time voyages with Thee upon its prow –
And all the future’s passionate hope is Thou.


-- Sri Aurobindo in “Collected Poems”, SABCL Volume 5

Divinely Human and Humanly Divine Mother

She is the first to pay attention to our cries of despair, discontentment, sorrow or even anger. She tightly holds our hands to make us remain under her secure protection but we are often possessed by our illusionary ego that compels us to run away from her. The biological mother too never leaves her child’s hands and can hear her cry even while asleep. How would one describe in words with our lower mental being, the fathomless and the manifold love of the Mother Divine who has graciously descended into this human body? She used to appear a very common and normal person managing and involving perfectly and meticulously in all the activities of the Ashram that we often would forget that it was the Divine Mother with whom we were interacting in her physical form. Each member in the Ashram would write to her about all mundane questions and she, like a most patient and persevering physical mother, would listen to each one as if she had her full time for only one child.

This reminds us of the beautiful imagery that the great devotional poet Surdas (15th century blind poet) gave us about Sri Krishna: ‘he appeared to each Gopi in Bridanvan as if he was only dancing with her and loving her alone’. More intimate is the Divine love when it is incarnated in the form of a mother excessively indulging and pampering, correcting our errors and weaknesses without loosening her tight grip around us, always forgiving us with her eternal smile of immense grace. It was she who would do the sadhana for us to transform our ignorant egoistic being and demands only surrender from us. The increase of surrender is directly proportional to the decrease of our rigid ego. This may sound very simple. Yet, it takes several lives to arrive at a state of unconditional surrender to the Divine and become its conscious instrument.

Everybody in the Ashram was given some regular work to perform and it was the Divine Mother who used to decide the external allocation of work. She would not take into consideration our mental or physical skills as is mostly done in the world outside but would act with some higher purpose of spiritual growth aspired for all of us through means of action done as an instrument where the very human will was expected to get synchronized with the higher Divine Will leading us towards a perfect state of Ananda.

There are four kinds of devotees, as per Sri Krishna, who worship the Divine: ‘ the afflicted, the seeker of knowledge, the seeker of worldly possessions, the man of wisdom’ (ArthO, jijnAsu, arThArThI, jnAnI cha BharatharShaBah BG 7.16)

Her grace is equally bountiful on all those who call her but it is the ‘person of wisdom who consciously surrenders to her and becomes her unconditional instrument’ that she most cherishes as she moulds us and guides us along the arduous path of sadhana, herself removing the thorns and clearly showing us the way ahead.

‘Mysterious are the ways of the Divine’ when our ‘life is a paradox with God for key’. On this 131st birth anniversary of our Divine Mother, may we, her children, aspire to improve our surrender at her feet and experience the embrace of her divine love! One single formula of surrender and the rest is taken care of!

- Sundari

The Mother's love


What value have our impulses and our desires, our anguish and our violence, our sufferings and our struggles, all these inner vicissitudes unduly dramatized by our unruly imagination – what value do they have before this great, this sublime and divine love bending over us from the innermost depths of our being, bearing with our weaknesses, rectifying our errors, healing our wounds, bathing our whole being with it’s regenerative streams?

For the inner Godhead never imposes herself, she neither demands nor threatens; she offers and gives herself and forgets herself in the hearts of all beings and things; she never accuses, she never judges nor curses nor condemns, but works unceasingly to perfect without constraint, to mend without reproach, to encourage without impatience, to enrich one with all the wealth he can receive; she is the mother whose love bears fruit and nourishes, guards and protects, counsels and consoles; because she understands everything, she can endure everything, excuse and pardon everything, hope and prepare for everything; bearing everything within herself, she owns nothing that does not belong to all, and because she reigns over all, she is the servant of all; that is why all great and small, who want to be kings with her and gods in her, become, like her, not despots but servitors among their brethren.

How beautiful is this humble role of a servant, the role of all who have been revealers and heralds of the God who is within all, of the Divine Love that animates all things….


-- “Words of Long Ago”, Complete Works of The Mother, Volume 2

Love The Mother


“… she throws the smell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine: to be close to her is a profound happiness and to feel her within the heart is to make existence a rapture and a marvel; grace and charm and tenderness flow out from her like light from the sun and where ever she fixes her wonderful gaze or lets fall the loveliness of her smile, the soul is seized and made captive and plunged into the depths of an unfathomable bliss. Magnetic is the touch of her hands and their occult and delicate influence refines mind and life and body and where she presses her feet course miraculous streams of an entrancing Ananda.”

-- Sri Aurobindo in “The Mother”

Question of the month – Who is The Mother?

Q: Do you not refer to the Mother (our Mother) in your book “The Mother”?
A: Yes

Q: Is she not the “Individual Divine Mother who has embodied the power of these two vaster ways of existence – Transcendent and Universal?”
A: Yes

Q: Has she not descended here (amongst us) into Darkness and Falsehood and Error and Death in her deep and great love for us?
A: Yes

Q: There are many who hold the view that she was human but now embodies the Divine Mother and her ‘Prayers’, they hold, explain this view, but, to my mental conception, to my psychic feeling, she is the Divine Mother who has consented to put on her the cloak of obscurity and suffering and ignorance so that she can effectively lead us - human beings – to Knowledge and Bliss and Ananda and to the Supreme Lord.
I also conceive that her ‘Prayers’ are meant to show us –the aspiring psychic – how to pray to the Divine. Am I right?

A: Yes. The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing Divine consciousness, not human turning into divine. The Mother was inwardly above the human even in childhood. So the view held by “many” is erroneous.

(Sri Aurobindo, “Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on The Mother”, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry, 1953)

From Savitri


Her divine parts the soul’s allegiance called;
It saw, it felt; it knew the deity.
Her will was puissant on their nature’s acts,
Her heart’s inexhaustible sweetness lured their hearts,
A being they loved whose bounds exceeded theirs;
Her measure they could not reach but bore her touch,
Answering with the flower’s answer to the sun
They gave themselves to her and asked no more.
One greater than themselves, too wide for their ken,
Their minds could not understand nor wholly know,
Their lives replied to hers, moved at her words:
They felt a godhead and obeyed a call,
Answered to her lead and did her work in the world;
Their lives, their natures moved compelled by hers
As if the truth of their own larger selves
Put on an aspect of divinity
To exalt them to a pitch beyond their earth’s.
They felt a larger future meet their walk;
She held their hands, she chose for them their paths:
They were moved by her towards greater things,
Faith drew them and the joy to feel themselves hers.
They lived in her, they saw the world with her eyes.

Editorial

In the Sri Aurobindo circle, this time of the year is one of the most anticipated, one that is sweetly cherished, just as it has always been, even as The Mother was around to cast her glance on the throngs of thousands who would queue up to present themselves before Her for brief moments.

February 21st shines like a magic number on the calendar, carrying with it some kind of subtle force. The day itself, inevitably, without exception, carries in it a certain presence, or force, or an atmosphere of peace and quiet, or joy and happiness or a sense of solemnity and serenity, these experiences varying from devotee to devotee or for the same one, from one span of time to another. It is a day that never fails to make us take a look at our lives with The Mother and all that has altered since that day when we first embraced Her. She has a way of magically filtering herself into the sphere of our time and space and gives each of us the needed. Importantly, it becomes a day for us to contemplate on the meaning of our lives with The Mother and its future course and direction. It naturally becomes a time to ask for that guidance and pray for the needed transformation to be effected in our natures to enable Her to penetrate one more measure of Her force into the dense clay of humanity. It is a day for self-examination and a honest barring of all we are to Her alone, that She may take the being in Her embrace and do the needed and necessary for the larger work at hand.

The Mother was born in 1878, in Paris. What was this year like? It was an interesting task getting this day in perspective on the world calendar. It was a year when wars were raging on in parts of the world, like The Battle of Shipka Pass IV, The Battle of Plovdiv and The Lincoln County War. It was also the Year that The Hindu, was founded. Hirota Koki and Yoshida Shigeru, later to become Prime Ministers of Japan were born in this year, together with Jack Johnson, the American boxer, Elizabeth Arden, the Canadian born cosmetician and entrepreneur and Andre Citreon, the French car maker.

Pope Leo XIII succeeded Pope Pius IX to become the 256th pope just a day before The Mother was born.

Then in 1968, after a lifetime of work dedicated to the divinising of Earth, a week past her 90th birthday, The Mother founded Auroville, The City of Dawn, a Township that was waiting to come down into existence since the time The Mother was in Her thirties. The following charter resounded over the Indian National Radio on that day in The Mother’s voice:

1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.

2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.

3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.

4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

Auroville was intended to give a concrete form to Sri Aurobindo’s vision of the realization of human unity. We see its slow but steady march towards its ultimate completion and perfection. Many hold that that day of completion may never arrive, as Auroville brings humanity towards higher and higher realms, a more and more perfect perfection of itself leading to the manifestation of Divinity therein. The Matrimandir stands, more and more obviously, as the symbol dawn of such an evolution.

Salutations to this special month of February.