The Avatar

Above the painting, The Mother wrote....

                                                                     The Avatar

                                                                   Sri Aurobindo

- 2nd February, 1940

(painting by Champaklal)

From the Editor’s Desk

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.

Savitri

Life was a marvelous journey of the spirit,
Feeling a wave from the universal Bliss.
In the kingdom of the Spirit’s power and light,
As if one who arrived out of infinity’s womb
He came new-born, infant and limitless
And grew in the wisdom of the timeless Child;
He was a vast that soon became a Sun.
A great luminous silence whispered to his heart;
His knowledge an inview caught unfathomable,
An outview by no brief horizons cut:
He thought and felt in all, his gaze had power.
He communed with the Incommunicable;
Beings of a wider consciousness were his friends,
Forms of a larger subtler make drew near;
The Gods conversed with him behind Life’s veil.
Neighbour his being grew to Nature’s crests.
The primal Energy took him in its arms;
His brain was wrapped in overwhelming Light,
An all-embracing knowledge seized his heart:
Thoughts rose in him no earthly mind can hold,
Mights played that never coursed through mortal nerves:
He scanned the secrets of the Overmind,
He bore the rapture of the Oversoul.
A borderer of the empire of the Sun,
Attuned to the supernal harmonies,
He linked creation to the Eternal’s sphere,
His finite parts approached their absolutes,
His actions framed the movements of the Gods,
His will took up the reins of cosmic Force.

(Savitri, Book 2 Canto 15)

The Mother’s Explanation of Sri Aurobindo’s Symbol

The descending triangle represents Sat-Chit-Ananda.

The ascending triangle represents the aspiring answer from matter under the form of life, light, love.

The junction of both- the central figure – is the perfect manifestation having as its centre the Avatar of the Supreme- the lotus.

The water- inside the square- represents the Multiplicity, the Creation.

"Sri Aurobindo came to tell us: "One need not leave the earth to find the Truth, one need not leave life to find his soul, one need not abandon the world or have only limited beliefs to enter into relation with the Divine. The Divine is everywhere, in everything and if He is hidden, it is because we do not take the trouble to discover Him."

Sri Aurobindo – Vast like the Blue above and the Blue below (contd.)

The following is a continuation of the article on Sri Aurobindo and his Yoga compiled from the book, ‘The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo’ by Swami Shuddananda Bharati. The first part was featured in our July 2013 issue. ‘The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo’ is one of the books selected and preserved for future generations in the Crypt of Civilization in the U. S. A., to be opened six thousand years hence.

His flaming aspiration to see God face to face is revealed to us in one of his most popularly known letters. He was mad after God and divinity. Perfect was his faith, and unreserved his surrender to the Highest Divine.

The ardent aspiration of Sri Aurobindo to see God face to face was fulfilled during his one year’s tapasya in Alipore Jail:

“His strength entered into me and I was able to do the Sadhana of the ‘Gita’… to be free from repulsion and desire, to do work for Him without the demand for fruit, to renounce self-will and become a passive and faithful instrument in His hands, to have an equal heart for the high and low, friend and opponent, success and failure… He made me realize the central truth of the Hindu religion.. It was while I was walking that His strength entered into me..”

It is in the ‘Arya’, the veritable Gospel of Poorna Yoga, the one wonderful work that deserves to be the scripture of the present and the coming humanity, started after four years of silent Sadhana, that we meet the Superman, the God-man, the Poorna Yogi that Sri Aurobindo is.

Every sentence of Arya, so rhythmic, so well-balanced, so replete with the Spirit’s highest promises, so eloquent with its divine optimism, deserves to be inscribed in the heart of humanity in letters of gold.

 “To know, possess and be the divine being in an animal and egoistic consciousness, to convert our twilit or obscure physical mentality into the plenary supramental illumination, to build peace and a self-existent bliss where there is only a stress of transitory satisfactions besieged by physical pain and emotional suffering, to establish an infinite freedom in a world which presents itself as a group of mechanical necessities, to discover and realize the immortal life in a body subjected to death and constant mutation.”

This is the limitless scope of his wonderful synthetic Yoga and its fulfillment in his entire preoccupation. To divinize man and heavenise existence, to universalize the individual, to be God in man and godlike in God’s universal play- this is the ideal with which he was born.

(concluded)

Reproduced from :‘Mother India’, August 1997

(‘All India Magazine’ Dec 1997, “The Greatness of the Great”. Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry)

Darshan Days at the Ashram – Some reminiscences

August 15th every year is celebrated as one of the Darshan Days at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, August 15thbeing Sri Aurobindo’s birthday. This August, we celebrate Sri Aurobindo’s 141st birth anniversary. The following is an extract from K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar’s book, ‘On The Mother’, and speaks of the experiences of sadhaks, receiving blessings from Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, on DarshanDays at the Ashram.

For the sadhaks and disciples, the Darshan days came to acquire the character of milestones on the great journey to the Supramental Light and Force. There was hope and high expectancy in the air, the small room on the first floor of the Meditation House where the Darshan was to take place came to be decorated with loving care, and for the Ashram they were festive days as also days of fulfilment. "Each Darshan in our life," wrote Sahana Devi, "was an experience, nearly a supra-realisation." From Darshan to Darshan the heart yearned once again for the mystic face, the magic touch, and when another Darshan day dawned over the Ashram, there was a new elation and joy:

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.

And here is Narayan Prasad's remembrance of these regular occasions of benediction and grace:

To each the Master gave a penetrating and gracious look and then blessed him .... In those days the Master's Grace would rain over us like Amitabha Buddha's. As through glass windows the things in a room are visible, so the Master's yogic eye would penetrate our being and read our possibilities. Newcomers would return with a new energy to fight the battle of life.

The Sri Aurobindo-Mother-sadhak relationships in the Ashram acquired a focus and a clarification at the time of the Darshans. Although the sadhak could see the Mother daily, when he saw her on a Darshan day sitting by side of Sri Aurobindo, it was an enriching and revealing moment for him. On one such occasion, in August 1934, Nirodbaran "felt a great dryness", instead of the expected Ananda, Force or Light. On the next Darshan, in November, Nirod thought that it was Shiva he was seeing, and felt Ananda too, and "these happy impressions and recollections were with me vividly for 2 or 3 days. Then I found that all that consciousness has evaporated - and I have passed these days most passively, without any strong aspiration. But I marked that there was no depression." On yet another occasion, while Nirod found Sri Aurobindo "grave and austere", he found the Mother smiling seraphically. But a more vivid index to Nirod's opening and reception is his poem:

A moment's touch - what founts of joy arise

Running through dull grains of my life's dead sands

Like a cool stream where once never was shade!

The finite for this one moment brief drinks

The Infinite.

Kapali Sastry's notes are brief but suggestive. Thus, after the Darshan on the Mother's birthday in 1936: "Sri Aurobindo gave recognition-smile. The Mother was gracious, putting a seal on his blessings." Again, on the same day next year:

“The Mother looked long into me with a very benign smile and blessed me longer while my right cheek rested on her lap. Sri Aurobindo, majestic as usual, but not serious.”

Darshan was always a seminal moment, an act of divine insurance, a moment in time and out of time when something that was truly timeless was sought and won. About the sort of instantaneous effect the Darshan could produce there is this testimony by a visitor:

One look of Sri Aurobindo at a man's heart, and it is conquered. There is a lustre in his eyes that infuses itself into the soul of man and sets it aflame. The flame goes on growing in intensity. He puts into the heart of man the flower-seed of Divine love that is sure to grow.

Such, then, were the gains of the Darshan for the sadhaks, disciples and visitors who filed past Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and received the touch of their palms as the concrete symbol, as the electric currency, of their benedictions. It was certainly worth waiting for weeks, months and (with some) even for years; - but when would they be vouchsafed that grace again?

(‘On The Mother’, Chapter 25, K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry)

The Mother’s first meeting with Sri Aurobindo

In 1914, Mirra (later The Mother) voyaged to Pondicherry to meet Sri Aurobindo. After disembarking at Colombo, Mirraand Paul Richard (Mirra’s husband) reached Pondicherry in the early hours of March 29, 1914. While approaching, the Mother had a vision of a huge column of light in the centre of Pondicherry and there was such a change in the physical quality of the atmosphere that she knew they were entering the aura of Sri Aurobindo. They met Sri Aurobindo on the very same day in the afternoon, and everything changed. The Mother saw in front of her the Krishna of her vision, who had been guiding her all along. She knew immediately that her place and work were at his side, here in India.

The next day The Mother wrote in her diary:

“It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.”

- The Mother, 30thMarch, 1914.

Sources : http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org and http://www.aurosociety.org