February 21st – The Mother’s 138th
Birth Anniversary:
The program started with Meditation with Sunil’s Music and Readings
from “Prayers and Meditations”.
Following Darshan Message was read:
Concentrate in the Heart,
Enter into it; go within and deep and far, as far as you can. Gather all the
strings of your consciousness that are spread abroad, roll them up and take a
plunge and sink down.
A fire is burning there, in
the deep quietude of the heart; it is the divinity in you - your true being.
Hear its voice, follow its dictates.
Musical offering
by Members of the Society:
Musical Felicitations, Theme: “Mother” and Words from Mother
& our Master about music
Shashilal Kashyap
Shailaja Kamarshi
Anand Venkat
Sridhar Raman
Saurab Nair (Guitar)
Preethi Saroja
Lakshmanan G (Tabla)
Like a garland of fragrant jasmine flowers and beautiful roses, the
visual entries inter twined with musical offering by our dear friends, helped
us experience the divinity of true music, reach our
inner sanctum.
A glimpse of Mother’s words on music:
v The
role of music lies in helping the consciousness uplift itself towards the
spiritual heights.
v Indian
music when sung by good musicians almost always has a psychic origin.
v The
best way of listening (to music) is this. It is to be like a still mirror and
very concentrated.
v It
is one of the methods of inner opening and one of the most powerful.
v The true and highest art must be the expression of a divine world
brought down into this material world. All true artists have some feeling of
this kind, some sense that they are the intermediaries between a higher world
and this physical existence. If you consider it in this light, Art is not very
different from yoga
-
The Mother
Closing meditation was followed by “Mahaprasad” offered by our society
members.
February 28th – Savitri, an unending
journey:
Meditation on “Savitri”
with Huta’s Visuals: Book One, The Book of Beginnings, Canto One The Symbol
Dawn - Pictures 11 to 23.
The summary of the lines in
pictures from Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo is given below:
The Infinite in
itself has neither a centre nor a circumference. But when it chooses to manifest,
it collects itself for the purpose and formulates what is to be expressed. The
Goddess of Eternal Light is such a self-formulation of the Infinite Divine,
centering in herself the potentialities to be put out, shaping and holding in
herself the blissful calm of the Ineffable.
The Goddess of
Eternal Light forms the link between Timeless Existence and this creation in
Time; she renders the truths of the former into terms proper to the latter. She
is able to do it for she holds the knowledge of what is to be worked out and in
what precise manner. She knows the steps, the course and the goal.
The smile of the
Goddess is aglow with the Light of Life, and when she casts it on the existence
below which lies dumb and still, under the spell of Inconscience, all there
leaps to life; aspiration for her Light and Presence springs up everywhere and
all creation is caught into a movement upwards.
The earth we inhabit
gives no clear clue to the purpose of its existence. Obscure in its
organisation, characterised by insentience in the mass, it is not even
articulate enough. The best light that is found wherewith to guide our
life-movement is that of an ignorance which is only a half-light, a state of
awareness that is not in possession of the truth but seeking for it, partially
turned towards the knowledge.
Life on earth is a
field for the effort of man to build and speed up his evolution. He
participates in the general movement of progression in Nature, fights his way
against the elements that oppose or arrest his advance—both within himself and
without—, now rises, now falls but is always on the move. This whole sequence
of his march onwards through all its ups and downs, struggles and anxieties,
joys and griefs, goes on under the watchful eye of the presiding Spirit which
is more concerned with the broad lines of development rather than with
happenings of local and temporary significance. These circumstances are left to
themselves to work out their bearings in the overall situation.
With all his
limitations of body, life-energy, sense-instrumentation and groping reason, man
is at the head of the evolutionary movement of Nature. He sums up in himself
all the past effort of the evolution and represents a departure from the mode
of unconscious development followed so long by Nature in her creations. For in
him there is the birth of an overt consciousness and he can follow, direct and
speed up the course of his evolution, unlike other creatures who are led by
Nature in her own tardy process. Of all the creatures on earth, man alone
stands erect, lifts up his head from the ground ward position and looks
straight upward. He alone has the capacity to think, to see ahead, to plan, to
control the course of life. He is the rightful leader of the evolutionary
progression in Nature.
As a manifestation of
the Divine Consciousness, Savitri came with all the power, luminous wideness
and joy characteristic of that Consciousness but these powers could not
function in their effectively on the human soil. For in this rushing movement
of Time, with no sure foothold, life stands precariously organised in brittle,
small and divided forms and being unable to assimilate the workings of powers
beyond its accustomed range, contrary to its habitual nature, it rejects them.
The gods have their splendours but also their limitations. For
they are typal beings, fixed in their nature beyond which they cannot move. If
they want to change, progress into a state that is greater than theirs, e.g. to
become one with the Divine, they are obliged to come to this Earth, the field
of evolution and progress. They have to take a human birth or draw upon human
help in order to progress. It is given to man to change, to progress, to evolve
because he has within him a psychic being—a soul whose nature it is to progress
towards the Divine. Other orders of beings are not possessed of this privilege.
Thus it is that a god assuming human birth, human life-load, is richer in
potentialities than his compeer in his own world.
Savitri
was aware that the pain and the dread that were gnawing at her were only her
individual share of the evil of pain and suffering that is the malady affecting
all life in this world at its very roots. She decided to strike at this
affliction at its fundamental base and for that purpose sharpened her resolution
with the intensities of the suffering she was put to. Each pang added an edge.
Immobile in
herself, she gathered force, This was the day when Satyavan must die. (last 2
lines from Canto 1)
That is the
condition for all effective evocation of power. It is on a calm base that
strength can build itself and acquire unfailing power. Poised in the silence of
the soul, holding her nature from all movement, Savitri summoned the force of
the Spirit within to collect itself for action.
February 29th
– Darshan Day special meditation:
The Supramental
Manifestation Day
Following the meditation we read about the
significance of the day from the AIM magazine - The Golden Day.
During
the common meditation on Wednesday 29th February 1956,
Mother writes:
“This evening the
Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a
form of living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and
massive golden door which separated the world from the Divine.
As I looked at the
door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that “the time
has come”, and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one
blow, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces.
Then the Supramental
Light and Force and Consciousness rushed upon earth in an uninterrupted flow”.
This was
followed by silent meditation.
March 6th
– Reading from February 2016 AIM Magazine: Times of Transition
The
Hour of God:
Birth
pangs of a New world
This passage tells that how new creations can
happen with only the destruction of the old ones.
Kala Purusha is already risen to his dreadful
work of destroying the old knowledge and beliefs and establish the first Satya
yuga of Kali.
Lord Krishna tells Arjuna in chapter 11 that,
No construction is possible without a corresponding destruction of its own
previous condition. Today has arisen from the graves of yesterday. Krishna
introducing Himself here as “I am the MIGHTY WORLD – DESTROYING TIME”, who has
manifested to wipe out the generation that has suffered decay in its own false
sense-of-values and wrong assumptions about life and its purpose.
The
first outbreak of a New Dawn
This passage talks about how Truth is the
same at all times but takes different forms. It is inward Eternal taking the
joy of outward Mutability. In India, the chosen land, it is preserved and
awakens with effective Avatar
The
time for revolutionary changes
This passage tells how the higher power is
compelling people to do what they must......
It is like a sort of revulsion with
stagnation. A thirst for something which is ahead and appears more luminous,
better.
The
confusion is there to teach us
To avoid confusion and disorder caused by pre
planning, thinking and arrangements, enter into the consciousness where we can
see only one Being, one Power and live day to day!
The
extremes have become more extreme
Mother tells that she believes in the golden
force pressing down that has no material consistence and yet seems to be
tremendously pressing upon Matter, thus to compel it to turn towards Divine
inwardly. At the same time bad is becoming worse.
The
values have intensified
The Supramental makes the creation more
sensitive to higher power.
All our common sense, all our logic, all our
practical sense is dashed to the ground! Useless! It has no force anymore; It
no longer corresponds to what is. It is truly a new world,
March 13th – Q&A from The
Mother, Complete Works Volume 8 followed by Om Choir
Q: Sweet Mother, Where does our true spiritual life
begin?
The Mother: True spirituality begins when
one is in constant communion with one’s psychic being and conscious of this
divine presence and the will become a constant collaborator with divine will.
Q: Sweet Mother, I would like to have the explanation
of a sentence. Sri Aurobindo has said somewhere, “Materially you are nothing,
spiritually you are everything.”
The Mother: One who is conscious of his
psychic being and united with the divine within is infinitely greater than a
ruler upon earth or a millionaire who possesses considerable material power but
is unconscious of his psychic being.
The more we read about psychic presence in
us, our aspiration to get in contact with that intensifies!
This was
followed by Om Choir.
- Jayalakshmi
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