December
18th – Study of Secrets of Veda:
Mr Ramanathan conducted the session on
the “Secrets of the Veda”. The topic
for the week was a review of verses 10, 11 and 12 of Sukta 1, Mandala 3 of the
Rig Veda. In the previous verses (1 to
9) we were introduced to the Ashwins and Indra.
In verses 10 to 12, Saraswati, as we now worship as the Goddess of
Knowledge, is being introduced as the
goddess of inspiration. This is the
brief highlight of what the Rishis meant in verses 10 to 12:
·
The intimate connection
between the Vedic sacrifice and a certain state of mind and soul.
·
The interdependence
between the offering of clarified butter, Soma juice and luminous thought.
·
Richness of
psychological content.
·
Right states of the
mind and its awakening and impulsion to Truth and Light.
·
Reveals the figure of
Saraswati as the goddess of the inspiration, or sruti.
·
Establishes the
connection between the Vedic rivers and psychological states of mind.
According to
Vedic Rishis, Saraswati liberates the life and being from falsehood, weakness
and limitation and opens to it the doors of the supreme felicity.
Sri Aurobindo,
mentions goddess Saraswati as embodying the following aspects:
·
She is that power of
Truth, which we call inspiration.
·
Inspiration from the
Truth purifies by getting rid of falsehood.
·
As per Indian idea, all
sin is merely falsehood, wrongly inspired motion and wrongly directed will and
action.
·
Idea of life and
ourselves we start with is a falsehood and all else is falsified by it.
·
Truth comes to us as a
light, a voice, compelling a change of thought, imposing a new discernment of
ourselves and all around us.
·
Truth of thought
creates truth of vision.
·
Truth of vision forms
in us truth of being.
·
Out of truth of being
(satyam) flows naturally truth of emotion, will and action.
December 25th –
Savitri, An unending journey:
Book 2 (The Book of the
World Traveller of the Worlds) - Canto 1 – The World – Stair – (pictures 1 to
7)
Mr Ramadas facilitated the video session
on the Meditations on Savitri, where Mother reads certain passages from Savitri
with Huta’s paintings as the backdrop.
In this Canto, Sri Aurobindo describes
the beginning of the evolution, when the The Supreme Divine, fascinated by his
own shadow took a plunge into it, and became the Inconscient, as mentoned in
the “PurushaSukta”. The descent is depicted
in picture 2 reflecting the following words from Savitri:
Once
in the Vigil of a deathless gaze
These
grades had marked her giant downward plunge
The
wide and prone leap of a godhead’s fall
Our
life is a holocaust of the Supreme.
The
great World-Mother by her scacrifice
Has
made her soul the body of our state…
In Picture 5, we see the formation of
the Universe, seen through these words from Savitri
A
slow reversal’s movement then took place:
A
gas belched out from some invisible Fire,
Of
its dense rings were formed these million stars;
Upon
earth’s new-born soil God’s tread was heard.
In Picture 6, we
see the advent of Man (a spark of the Divine) described by Sri Aurobindo
through these significant lines:
A
miracle of the Absolute was born,
Infinity
put on a finite soul,
All
ocean lived within a wandering drop,
A
time-made body housed the Illimitable.
To
live this Mystery out our souls came here.
December
31st – Midnight Meditation with Readings from Savitri:
We started the prayers at 11 pm with a
reading from Mother’s Prayers and Meditations, after which we started reading
from Book III (The Book of the Divine Mother), Canto Three (The House of the
Spirit and the New Creation) of Savitri, where Aswapati devotes
his attention on the “Mightier
Task” which is awaiting ..
“A Mightier task
remained than all he had done
To that he turned from
which all being comes,
A sign attending from
the Secrecy
Which knows the Truth
ungrasped behind our thoughts
And guards the world
with its all-seeing gaze,
In the unapproachable
stillness of his soul,
Intense, one-pointed,
monumental, lone,
Patient he sat like an
incarnate hope
Motionless on a
pedestal of prayer.
A strength he sought
that was not yet on earth,
Help from a Power too
great for mortal will,
The light of Truth now
seen afar,
A sanction from his
high omnipotent force.
The readings continued till five minutes
to midnight, after which we set through a beautiful meditation session with The
Mother’s music to celebrate the
commencement of the New Year, for the establishment of a “new birth of our
consciousness”.
January
1st – New Year’s Day, Darshan day special meditation:
We started the new year with a peaceful meditation
with Sunil da’s music. We read some beautiful prayers of the Mother followed by
the reading of Savitri - Book 1, Canto 1 - “The Symbol Dawn”.
January 1st – Reading from AIM Magazine:
We read from 2 pages of the Dec 2016
issue of the AIM magazine. In page 40, The Mother discussed about the advent of
the New Race. She mentioned that in a few thousand years, “There will be a new
heaven and a new earth, a new race will be born, the world will be
transformed”, as foretold by the prophets of the various traditions.
The Mother mentioned that this was possible to be accomplished in a few
thousand years because “man has thought of and awaits it”.
In page 41 the Mother talks about the
“Difference in the Earth Atmosphere”, where she mentions that “people who are
inwardly ready”, who are open and in contact with higher forces, people who
have had a more or less direct personal contact with the Supramental Light and
Consciousness are able to feel the difference in the earth atmosphere.
January 8th - Reading from Questions and
Answers, The Mother:
Volume 8, Page no. 121
The passage talks about how we get lost
finding perfection of divine in the personal relationships and get
disappointed! Mother says only when a relationship turns sour we turn to
divine. It is much wiser to take a straight path to see all the relationships
in the Divine. It is aptly put in the following Seven Beatitudes of Life in the
human body: (Thoughts and Aphorisms) Discipleship to God the Teacher, sonship
to God the Father, tenderness of God the Mother, clasp of the divine Friend,
laughter and sport with our Comrade and boy Playfellow, blissful servitude to
God the Master, rapturous love of our divine Paramour, these are the seven
beatitudes of life in the human body. Canst thou unite all these in a single
supreme and rainbow-hued relation? Then hast thou no need of any heaven and
thou exceedest the emancipation of the Adwaitin.
-
Sri Aurobindo
How blissful it would be if we have the
Love of Gopis for Lord Krishna!
January
15th – Savitri, An unending journey:
Book
2 (The Book of the World Traveller of the Worlds) - Canto 2 – The Kingdom of
Subtle Matter – (pictures 1 to 9)
In this Canto Sri Aurobindo describes
the world beyond the physical world through Aswapati’s journey.
Mr Ramadas, the facilitator for the video session on the
Meditations on Savitri, read from MP
Pandit’s summary on The Kingdom of Subtle Matter, an extract of which is
provided below.
Crossing beyond the borders of the
physical world, Aswapati enters into a realm of wonder and delight—the world of
subtle matter. This world overtops our physical world. Beautiful, symmetrical
in forms, with senses subtler and more far-ranging than the physical ones, this
realm is the shining origin of the world below. All here on earth follows the
lines already mapped out there in the subtle world above.
It forms a protective shield to the
material world, intercepting the charge of the higher Light and Power and
allowing only so much of it as can be borne by it without it breaking under the
impact. It functions as a regulating channel to the downflow of the Powers from
above. With all its glitter, however, this world is not all safe. Attractive
and delightful though it is on its summits, it has dangerous gulfs on its lower
levels. Peril is clothed in beauty, danger is invested with charm. After
reading MP Pandit’s summary Mr Ramadoss shared Huta’s paintings with Mother’s
voice in the background reading the relevant lines from Savitri. We list below
two out of the nine pictures that depict
this Canto.
Picture 2 – We see a golden roof with dew drops dripping from the sky.
The words from Savitri is as follows:
This
brilliant roof of our descending plane,
Intercepting the free boon
of heaven’s air,
Admits
small inrushes of a mighty breath
Or
fragrant circuits through gold lattices…
And
bright dews drip from the Immortal’s Sky
In Picture 9 which is the last picture -
We see a very happy soul swinging in a cradle
The words from Savitri is as follows:
Life
in its boundaries lingered satisfied…..
The
beautiful body of a soul at ease,
Like one who laughs in
sweet and sunlit groves,
Childlike she swung in
her gold cradle of joy.
-
Rama
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