December 2nd
- Passages
from All India Magazine-July 2018 issue - All Life is Yoga, by Sri Aurobindo,
Selections from The Synthesis of Yoga Part II
Following
Meditation and Readings from the Prayers and Meditation, we gathered in a
circle and read random passages from the issue in turns. The titles of the
selections were: Renunciation and
Enjoyment, Detachment, Knowing and seeing God in the world and Complete surrender is the chief mainstay.
The Synthesis of Yoga offers a step-by-step methodical guide to Integral Yoga
complete with in-depth explanations from all angles, including and especially
the psychological.
Sri Aurobindo
summarises Integral Yoga into these three stages:
“There must be, first the effort towards at
least an initial and enabling self-transcendence and contact with the Divine;
next, the reception of that which transcends, that with which we have gained
communion, into ourselves for the transformation of our whole conscious being;
last, the utilisation of our transformed humanity as a divine centre in the
world.”
December 5th – Sri Aurobindo’s
Mahasamadhi Day
We gathered in our
centre premises to observe the occasion of Sri Aurobindo’s Mahasamdhi Day. The
main part of the programme was the reading of senior sadhak’s accounts of the
last few days of Sri Aurobindo’s passing and the significance of the Mahasamdhi.
We read first an excerpt from Amal Kiran’s, ‘The Passing of Sri Aurobindo – Its
inner Significance and Consequence’. We read of the astrologer who predicted
the year when Sri Aurobindo would see to his “self-undoing”, and Sri
Aurobindo’s nonchalant response, though he did indicate that the astrologer was
partialy correct in his predictions; his ‘strange’ display of affection to the
attendants around him; and his sudden interest in hurrying up with Savitri, and
in his own words, “I must finish Savitri soon.”
Amal Kiran accords significance to the passing of Sri Aurobindo. Here is
an excerpt from the excerpt, “Everything foes to prove that what happened in
the small hours of that December day was no purely physical casualty…”
Following this, we read an excerpt from Nirodbaran’s
account of the passing of Sri Aurobindo titled, Sri Aurobindo “I am here, I am
here!”. The events that specifically took place on the 4th of
Decemebr to the 5th and then
to the 9th were graphically brought before our minds’ eye. Here are
some poignant lines from this reading, “The news spread around in the early
hours of the morning. The reaction of the disciples can be better imagined than
described. Through the hush of night one by one they came and mounted up the
stairs of Heaven to see what nobody had seen before. It was not eath they saw,
not a resurrection, nor a withdrawal into Nirvana but a grand repose, a death
pulsating with power, light, beauty in every limb as if death had become
immortal in the body of the King of kings.”
We then read words of The Mother written on the
significance of the Mhasamadhi of Sri Aurobindo. One such satatement from The
Mother was:
“We stand in the Presence of Him who has sacrificed
his physical life in order to help more fully his work of transformation.
He
is always with us, aware of what we are doing, of all our thoughts, of all our
feelings and all our actions.”
We concluded the session with readings from Savitri,
from Book 1, Canto IV: The Secret Knowledge,
Pgs. 70-73, which ended thus:
To evoke a Person
in the impersonal Void,
With the
Truth-Light strike earth’s massive roots of trance,
Wake a dumb self
in the inconscient depths
And raise a lost
Power from its python sleep
That the eyes of
the Timeless might look out from Time
And the world
manifest the unveiled Divine.
For this he left
his white infinity
And laid on the
spirit the burden of the flesh,
That Godhead’s
seed might flower in mindless Space.
We then spent some time in concentration in the
silence that the solemn contemplation on Sri Aurobindo’s Mahasamadhi evoked.
December 9th – A Special session
on Huta’s relationship with The Mother and Huta as The Mother’s instrument in
the manifestation of Beauty through Art,
Part 1
December 16 - A Special session on Huta’s
relationship with The Mother and Huta as The Mother’s instrument in the manifestation of Beauty through Art, Part 2
In these two
sessions, Jared brought us through the life of Huta with The Mother, especially
in being Her instrument in bringing out the essence and spirit of Savitri, the
epic poem by Sri Aurobindo in the Art form. Huta started her journey with The
Mother into Savitri on her birthday, on 1st September 1961. The
Mother herself initiated her into this journey of representing Savitri in lines
and colours, making it clear to Huta that The Mother alone would do all the
work and she will only be a docile instrument in the hands of The Mother. Each
day, she met The Mother twice, once before noon and then in the evening to show
Her the work done and receiving feedback and instructions for corrections. The
Mother worked with Huta from another plane and Huta responded. She relates in
the book her trials and tribulations, attacks and struggles and how The Mother
kept watch over Her and brought her along the journey to complete the work She
had given her on her birthday in 1961.
December 23rd – Meditations of
Savitri by Huta
This evening
Pictures 12 and 13 of Book 12, ‘Epilogue, The Return to Earth’ was the focus of
our meditation. Mr. Ramadoss led us through the pictures and the accompanying
Savitri lines as members recited the lines in turns.
Meditations on Pic. 12
Wondering
at her and her too luminous words
Westward
they turned in the fast-gathering night.
Drawn by
white manes upon a high-roofed car
In flare
of the unsteady torches went
With
linked hands Satyavan and Savitri,
Hearing a
marriage march and nuptial hymn,
Where
waited them the many-voiced human world.
Describing
in the gloom the ways of light.
Then
while they skirted yet the southward verge,
Lost in
the halo of her musing brows
Night,
splendid with the moon dreaming in heaven
In silver
peace, possessed her luminous reign.
She
brooded through her stillness on a thought
Deep-guarded
by her mystic folds of light,
And in
her bosom nursed a greater dawn.
-
Jayanthy
