Thirty six thousand and five hundred days… A hundred years. Time’s tread on this earth is inaudible, but meeting elements at various points marks the trial of time and events result. Events leave behind markers. These markers may be physical ramifications or they are mental cognitions and sensations. They remain in our memories as a result of experiences we may have lived as a direct result of such events. These are the markers that help us re-live time in eternity. The meeting of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, in the physical world for the first time is one such event, that can be brought into our consciousness from time to time. Sri Aurobindo describes this momentous meeting in cryptic lines:
A moment passed that was eternity’s ray,
An hour began, the matrix of new Time.
The meeting was only one point in eternity, one tiny pin point of an interception of two rays, that little moment in time that was preceded by an eternity of evolution and likewise, proceeded by the unfolding of a new working of things, a new order, a new scheme or “a matrix in new Time”. The period of time after the meeting cannot escape our cognition, we are a part of that matrix that ever spreads out, branching out from endless points in space and time.
The meeting of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother began a divine collaboration upon earth, in human time, meant to lead man into a new era of consciousness. It meant the establishment of a centre, in Pondicherry, to work out the realisation of the integral life on earth and in essence, the evolution of consciousness on earth.
We commemorate the Centenary of The Mother’s first arrival in Pondicherry and her first meeting with Sri Aurobindo with this special edition.
This centenary observance is an important event of the Ashram calendar and in Centres all over the world that seek to live out the integral philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. The observance brings us back to the time when The Mother first met Sri Aurobindo and helps us trace the events that followed after this momentous meeting. The observance may well make us question what our part is in this unfolding matrix in time. In the least, at our human levels, we are probably able to, even if vaguely, conceive of the significance of this arrival and this meeting in our own lives, our lives which are in many ways touched by their meeting on the 29th of March 1914. If not for that meeting, our lives would have played on a totally different strain that we may be unable to even imagine.
This special edition carries articles that bring to us the events of 29th March 1914 and the Mother’s perception of the event as seen through her entries in ‘Prayers and Meditations’ as well as Sri Aurobindo’s cryptic insights into the meeting. The edition also carries three articles written by our members on various topics. We reproduce Sonia Dyne’s article, “The Child and the Hearth - a Divine Dialogue”, originally published in ‘Sri Aurobindo’s Action’, February 2004. In this article, she examines the symbolic significance of the entry made in The Mother’s ‘Prayers and Meditations’ of March 27th 1917, three years after her first meeting with Sri Aurobindo and three years before her final arrival in Pondicherry. Sandhya writes on metamorphosis, while Jayalakshmi expresses her gratitude for the spiritual guidance from The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. In this special edition, we include three walk reviews.
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