This is the second of the two editions on Sri Aurobindo commemorating his 141st Birth Anniversary. In this issue, we continue with the article written by Swami Shuddhananda Bharati. We also take a look at excerpts from two letters exchanged between Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi, with the latter requesting for an audience with Sri Aurobindo, who declines. Sri Aurobindo’s cryptic reply to Gandhiji is worth a read. The topic of the “vow of abstinence” is particularly insightful, albeit amusing, and shows up on the markedly different views of the two. We also include in the pages to follow some expressions of sadhaks who came face to face with Sri Aurobindo during darshans.
These articles are timely reminders to us to explore within ourselves what the approaching Darshan Day means to each one of us. On the larger external front, Darshan Day unites all the children of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother across the world in spirit and we thrive in knowing that the air is indeed filled with a certain joyous vibration, a subtle feeling of some connection with Sri Aurobindo, with everyone around us, the air is filled with some divine perfume and a particular silence suffuses, more than on other days. The heart is at peace and a certain joy dances around and everyone who passes one is deserving of a hug. Then there may be some of us who experience none of these but feel a monotonous bareness and emptiness, a state in which nothing really matters. Or the day could be as any other.
Then, what does the Darshan Day really mean to us in the internal spheres, away from the surface movements, deep, deep down in our own cores.
As one looks forward to the approaching day, something in the consciousness may gather itself and focus on these questions and other links may start forming - on Sri Aurobindo’s birth anniversary, his birth, his entry into one’s life in a quiet, spectacular way – and something happens inside. A quick succession of existential questions later, one may plunge into another realm that barely surfaces. One is all too familiar with this self, the secret self that none sees or is allowed to see, however it may be from time to time. Sri Aurobindo seems to certainly have access to this space and we communicate often, very often, sometimes about him, and usually about oneself and one’s raison d’etre. One may be brought face to face with the questions of the purpose of one’s existence. Then an opening comes, as if in prayer. The being kneels down and asks the Lord of the secret space for guidance in walking the maze that is one’s life, seemingly, to ask for Light where all is pitch dark and to ask for a refreshing life breath to live a meaningful life, befitting him who occupies that secret space within. This Darshan Day certainly fuels the flame of aspiration, nurtures the seeds within those who want to become trees, reaching out to the light from the Sun.
Sahana Devi succinctly summarises the significance of Darshan Days : “It brought to us the golden opportunity to reach out to the unattainable. He (Sri Aurobindo) instilled into us something that no one else could. Thus, as the Darshan Day approached, our minds too, leaned to a self-gathering, with a view to receiving rightly.”
It seems very much in place that a self-gathering of this heap called “oneself” be made and placed at the foot of the master to be made good.
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