mankind
Sri Aurobindo"I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition."
The 15th August is the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary; it implies that the physical nature is raised to the divine Nature..."
"Everyone makes the forefathers of a great man very religious- minded, pious etc. It is not true in my case at any rate. My father was a tremendous atheist."
`Lotus and Dagger'
"Envoi""Me from her lotus heaven Saraswati Has called to regions of eternal snow And Ganges pacing to the southern sea, Ganges upon whose shores the flowers of Eden blow."
"Humour""I am quite well. I have brought a fund of health with me from Bengal, which, I hope it will take me some time to exhaust; but I have just passed my twenty-second milestone, August 15 last, since my birthday and am beginning to get dreadfully old.
"New Lamps for Old""Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.""I say, of the Congress, then, this, - that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; - in brief, that we are at present theblind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed."
"Above my head a mighty head was seen, A face with the calm of immortality And an omnipotent gaze that held the scene In the vast circle of its sovereignty. His hair was mingled with the sun and breeze; The world was in His heart and He was I: I housed in me the Everlasting's peace, The strength of One whose substance cannot die."
"Kali Temple""With my Europeanised mind I had no faith in image-worship and I hardly believed in the presence of God."
"I thought that a yoga which requires me to give up the world was not for me. I had to liberate my country. I took it up seriously when I learnt that the same tapasya which one does to get away from the world can be turned to action. I learnt that yoga gives power and thought: why should I not get the power and use it to liberate my country?"
There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.
Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, and capable of living a life perfectly harmonious, good and beautiful, happy and fully conscious. During the whole of his life upon earth, Sri Aurobindo gave all his time to establish in himself this consciousness he called supramental, and to help those gathered around him to realise it. "
". . . the best thing would be to obtain perfect silence -and achieve a state of immobility of the brain, I might say, so that the attention becomes as still and immobile as a mirror, like the surface of absolutely still water. Then what one has read passes through the surface and penetrates deep into the being where it is received with a minimum of distortion. Afterwards -sometimes long afterwards -it wells up again from the depths and manifests in the brain with its full power of comprehension, not as knowledge acquired from outside
Invitation
With wind and the weather beating round meUp to the hill and the moorland I go.Who will come with me? Who will climb with me?Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?
Not in the petty circle of citiesCramped by your doors and your walls I dwell;Over me God is blue in the welkin,Against me the wind and the storm rebel.
I sport with solitude here in my regions,Of misadventure have made me a friend.Who would live largely? Who would live freely?Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend.
I am the Lord of tempest and mountain,I am the Spirit of freedom and pride.Stark must he be and a kinsman to dangerWho shares my kingdom and walks at my side., but as a light one carried within."
WHO
In the blue of the sky, in the green of the forest,Whose is the hand that has painted the glow?When the winds were asleep in the womb of the ether,Who was it roused them and bade them to blow?
He is lost in the heart, in the cavern of Nature,He is found in the brain where He builds up the thought:In the pattern and bloom of the flowers He is woven,In the luminous net of the stars He is caught.
In the strength of a man, in the beauty of woman,In the laugh of a boy, in the blush of a girl;The hand that sent Jupiter spinning through heaven,Spends all its cunning to fashion a curl.
There are His works and His veils and His shadows;But where is He then? by what name is He known?Is He Brahma or Vishnu? a man or a woman?Bodies or bodiless? twin or alone?
We have love for a boy who is dark and resplendent,A woman is lord of us, naked and fierce.We have seen Him a-muse on the snow of the mountains,We have watched Him at work in the heart of the spheres.
We will tell the whole world of His ways and His cunning;He has rapture of torture and passion and pain;He delights in our sorrow and drives us to weeping,Then lures with His joy and His beauty again.
All music is only the sound of His laughter,All beauty the smile of His passionate bliss;Our lives are His heart-beats, our rapture the bridalOf Radha and Krishna, our love is their kiss.
He is strength that is loud in the blare of the trumpets,And He rides in the car and He strikes in the spears;He slays without stint and is full of compassion;He wars for the world and its ultimate years.
In the sweep of the worlds, in the surge of the ages,Ineffable, mighty, majestic and pure,Beyond the last pinnacle seized by the thinkerHe is throned in His seats that for ever endure.
The Master of man and his infinite Lover,He is close to our hearts, had we vision to see;We are blind with our pride and the pomp of our passions,We are bound in our thoughts where we hold ourselves free.
It is He in the sun who is ageless and deathless,And into the midnight His shadow is thrown;When darkness was blind and engulfed within darkness,He was seated within it immense and alone.
* Sri Aurobindo & The Mother *
posted by thegoat @ 7:06 pm
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