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

The Mother's oneness with Nature

(Dream-white Lotus – Painting by Sudha)

The Force in her drew earth's sub human broods;
And to her spirit's large and free delight
She joined the ardent-hued magnificent lives
Of animal and bird and flower and tree.
They answered to her with a simple heart
What seemed herself was an image of the Whole,
She was a subconscient life of tree and flower,
The outbreak of the honied buds of spring;
She burned in the passion and splendour of the rose,
She was the red heart of the passion-flower,
The dream-white of the lotus in its pool

-       Sri Aurobindo, Savitri
(Book seven, Canto seven)
When she was about twelve, Mirra used to go for solitary walks in the woods at Fontainebleau, and she would often sit for hours at the foot of a tree losing herself in communion with Nature. It was a singular concatenation, the ardent young girl self-absorbed in the infinitudes, and the silent ageless tree with the imperious woods around: quite an equation of the mathematics of the Spirit! The very birds and squirrels made friends with her, and would often perch on her, or crawl lovingly over her. And, indeed, Mirra felt perfectly at peace there in the bosom of Nature, and experienced a sense of identity.

Some of the trees at Fontainebleau were supposed to be quite ancient - perhaps two thousand years old or more ­ and it was as though Mirra had captivated the heart of primordial Nature. The trees almost seemed to understand her, and whisper in a familiar language to her. The spirit of a tree had once become aware of the talk of cutting it down, and when Mirra went to sit under it began soliciting her to somehow save it from the threatened destruction. In later life she

intervened in several cases and succeeded in staying the murderous axe. Her companionship with Nature was thus no pose, no mere figure of speech, but a deep commitment flowing from a sense of spiritual oneness with all life, all Nature.


(‘On The Mother’, Chapter 1 – “Childhood and Girlhood”, K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry)

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