Spiritual Dawn

In the entry dated 24.8.1914, in ‘Prayers and Meditations’ Mother speaks of “the Dawn that never ends”.

“What spiritual state does this marvelous dawn represent”?, I asked her.

She answered: “Perpetual renewal”.

Sri Aurobindo begins his book ‘The Life Divine’ with the following lines from the Rig Veda:

“She follows to the goal of those that are passing on beyond, she is the first in the eternal succession of dawns that are coming. Usha widens, bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead…. What is her scope when she harmonises with the dawns that shone out before and those that now must shine? She desired the ancient mornings and fulfills their light; projecting forwards her illumination she enters into communion with the rest that are to come.”

Usha is the illumining dawn; she is gomati, luminous, radiant.

“Dawn comes divine repelling by the Light all darknesses and evils.”

Usha is also, asvavati she has conquering energy and force of vitality.

“True with the gods who are true,
Great with the gods who are great
She breaks open the strong places
And gives of the shining herds.”

The herds which Usha gives are, as Sri Aurobindo explains, “the shining troops of the Light”.

Usha, “Mother of the Gods, form (or, Power) of Aditi”, is always the dawn of the Truth, “Following effectively the path of the Truth”. “Dawn born in heavens opens out things by the Truth, she comes manifesting the greatness.”

Dawn is not only rtavari, full of the Truth, she is also sunrtavari, she comes uttering true and happy words.

In ‘Savitri’ also, in the very beginning, Sri Aurobindo writes:

Ablaze upon creation’s quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.
An instant’s visitor the godhead shone:
On life’s thin border awhile the Vision stood
And bent over earth’s pondering forehead curve.
Interpreting a recondite beauty and bliss
In colour’s hieroglyphs of mystic sense,
It wrote the lines of a significant myth
Telling of a greatness of spiritual dawns.

Later, Sri Aurobindo says that, for one who lives in the calm vastness of the One, who climbs on the steps to God’s far secret heights, life becomes a tranquil pilgrimage.

Each year a mile upon the heavenly Way.
Each dawn opens into a larger Light.

Then each dawn becomes a precursor of a greater dawn! And each dawn becomes more beautiful!

Is this not the secret of the eternal charm of the dawn for the poets and mystics?


(Selected from, Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala, ‘From The Editor’s Desk, Some Socio-Spiritual Perspectives’, ‘Sri Aurobindo Action’, Pondicherry)