In 1949, when the Bulletin of Physical Education was launched, Sri Aurobindo was requested by the Mother to initiate it with an article of his. On her request Sri Aurobindo dictated a series of eight articles. The initial articles were meant to reveal the value and importance of sports and gymnastics, but the later articles took a different and new turn and revealed some extraordinary facts in detail regarding the functioning of the Supermind. The articles were brought out in the form of a booklet titled The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth in 1952, that is, two years after the departure of Sri Aurobindo. This booklet was rightly termed as the sequel to The Life Divine by K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran). In the sixth article titled Supermind in the Evolution, for the first time we come across the term ‘Mind of Light’. The chapter begins with the following words: “A new humanity would… be a race of mental beings on the earth and in the earthly body but delivered from its present conditions in the reign of the cosmic Ignorance so far as to be possessed of a perfected mind, a mind of light which could be a subordinate action of the supermind or Truth-Consciousness and in any case capable of the full possibilities of mind acting as a recipient of that truth and at least a secondary action of it in thought and life. It could even be a part of what could be described as a divine life upon earth and at least the beginnings of an evolution in the Knowledge and no longer entirely or predominantly in the Ignorance...”    more »

I had one of those experiences that mark one's life. It happened upstairs in my room. I was doing my japa, walking up and down with my eyes wide open, when suddenly Krishna came—a gold Krishna, all golden, in a golden light that filled the whole room. I was walking, but I could not even see the windows or the rug any longer, for this golden light was everywhere with Krishna at its center. And it must have lasted at least fifteen minutes. He was dressed in those same clothes in which he is normally portrayed when he dances. He was all light, all dancing: 'You see, I will be there this evening during Darshan.' And suddenly, the chair I use for darshan came into the room! Krishna climbed up onto it, and his eyes twinkled mischievously, as if to say, 'I will be there, you see, and there'll be no room for you.' ...   more »

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Lord, Thou hast willed, and I execute:
A new light breaks upon the earth,
A new world is born.
The things that were promised are fulfilled.

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Beyond the trembling veil of sight he disappeared
When with purple dusk the wind surged towards the sea.
In slow advancing night the dim boat sailed
To an island crowded by shadow-birds of Time:
The shouts of broken wings, of waves, beings
Falling not with their weight but with deathfulness
Of thickening gravity—they soon led him leeward.
His name drifted under the flood…   more »

... In July 1938 the Yogi-Poet had an assignation with the primordial Night, the Night of Creation. He went to meet her, carrying “God’s deathless light” in his breast. He was aware that this was going to be a very bold and dangerous rendezvous; it was going to be an exceptional and most decisive affair, fraught with possibilities. His fate and hence the fate of the world remained locked in them, in the possibility leading towards earthly deathlessness. So, he the pilgrim-soul made an assignation with the Night. But what was the outcome of that bold and dangerous rendezvous? What had actually transpired in the course of the meeting? But apart from dropping some broad hints, no communiqué was issued. If at all, it seemed that the way was lost and that there was no end to the “weary journeying”. Yet there was hope, there was conviction and certitude that the outcome was going to be a path leading towards immortality. There was the inalienable freedom, and the Yogi-Poet lived in the Spirit’s calm, and was in possession of the vast immobile bliss of the Being. Soon his rooms would get lit up with an endless Light, and rapture would be coursing through his nerves, and through every cell of his body. In a mute blaze of ecstasy, and preserving the “living sense of the Imperishable”, even in the bodily existence, he would proceed towards his goal. That was great indeed, marvellous. If the bodily existence was set ablaze in this way, it meant that there was the wonderful realisation or the siddhi of the Mind of Light in him, that the physical had started receiving the supramental. Sri Aurobindo had definitely moved towards it, a remarkable event, a landmark event in the evolutionary sequence. It is said that Pythagoras had a thigh of gold, and that Vamadeva, after crossing the hundredth year, lived in a golden body for sixteen full years. Something golden had happened in that far past, but now the Mind of Light has made the body its permanent base, permanent home. ...   more »

I was on a huge boat which was a symbolic representation of the place where this work is going on. This boat, as large as a city, is fully organised, and it had certainly already been functioning for some time, for its organisation was complete. It is the place where people who are destined for the supramental life are trained. These people—or at least a part of their being —had already undergone a supramental transformation, for the boat itself and everything on board was neither material nor subtle-physical nor vital nor mental—it was a supramental substance. This substance was of the most material supramental, the supramental substance which is closest to the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a mixture of gold and red, forming a uniform substance of a luminous orange. Everything was like that—the light was like that, the people were like that—everything had that colour, although with various shades which made it possible to distinguish things from each other. The general impression was of a world without shadows; there were shades but no shadows. The atmosphere was full of joy, calm, order; everything went on regularly and in silence. And at the same time one could see all the details of an education, a training in all fields, by which the people on board were being prepared. …   more »

…the tremendous hour must arrive. The Mother’s own yoga-tapasya bearing the agony and ecstasy in the process of bringing to the gross earth-consciousness the supreme Beatitude got more and more intensified in the course of swift time. Her way to meet the grim hour lay in complete surrender to the Divine: “What Thou willest, what Thou willest” became her solicitous and powerful mantra for the physical transformation. Therein indeed is the true remedy for the body-problem. The Mother describes, as follows, the triumph in what she calls the descent of the superman consciousness, her experience of 1 January 1969:

In the night it came slowly and waking up this morning, there was as though a golden dawn, and the atmosphere was so light. The body felt: ‘Well, it is truly, truly new.’ A golden light, transparent and… benevolent. ‘Benevolent’ in the sense of a certainty—a harmonious certainty. It was new.

How wonderful, this Divine work in the earth-consciousness! The Divine in the Physical! That's tremendous indeed! and beyond our comprehension! Glory to the Divine in all his worlds! …   more »

This book is a collection of twelve articles by R Y Deshpande based on Sri Aurobindo’s perspective of life and his vision of the future. The work consists of conference talks given by the author, literary praise for Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri, and refutations of criticism “levelled against” the poem. Deshpande honors some of the works by Sri Aurobindo’s closest disciples, gives an extensive critique of Kishor Gandhi’s book, Social Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the New Age, and includes informative articles about India and the new millennium and the need for an Indian science.

The book begins with an excellent overview of Sri Aurobindo’s life, emphasizing his childhood and keen ability to learn languages, his interest in literature, and his involvement in India’s struggle for political freedom. Next we are introduced to Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual experiences. Especially interesting is the explanation of the power that brought Sri Aurobindo and the Mother together as a team to perfect the Integral Yoga. Some of the Sanskrit terminology in this chapter would be difficult for a reader who is unfamiliar with Sri Aurobindo’s poetry, psychology, and philosophy. Deshpande’s words and phrasing, however, are dynamic and joyful. One can actually feel the power of his aspiration to transcend our world of ignorance when he explains how the Mother discovered the means to awaken the body’s cells to the divine reality and how, upon his passing from the physical body, Sri Aurobindo gave the Mind of Light to the Mother as a parting gift.

Deshpande gives an excellent explanation of the spiritual discipline practiced by the Mother and how Sri Aurobindo made the supramental descent possible. On April 29, 1956, the Mother announced that the manifestation of the supramental had taken place. “A new light breaks upon the earth, a new world is born.” ...

Reviewed by Joan Price, Ph.D.   more »

The new type, the divine body, must continue the already developed evolutionary form; there must be a continuation from the type Nature has all along been developing, a continuity from the human to the divine body, no breaking away to something unrecognisable but a high sequel to what has already been achieved and in part perfected… New powers have to be acquired by the body which our present humanity could not hope to realise, could not even dream of or could only imagine… The body itself might acquire new means and ranges of communication with other bodies, new processes of acquiring knowledge, a new aesthesis, new potencies of manipulation of itself and objects. It might not be impossible for it to possess or disclose means native to its own constitution, substance or natural instrumentation for making the far near and annulling distance, cognising what is now beyond the body's cognisance, acting where action is now out of its reach or its domain, developing subtleties and plasticities which could not be permitted under present conditions to the needed fixity of a material frame… There could be an evolution from a first apprehending truth-consciousness to the utmost heights of the ascending ranges of supermind and it may pass the borders of the supermind proper itself where it begins to shadow out, develop, delineate expressive forms of life touched by a supreme pure existence, consciousness and bliss which constitute the worlds of a highest truth of existence, dynamism of tapas, glory and sweetness of bliss, the absolute essence and pitch of the all-creating Ananda. The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit.   more »

    
             Photo #1                     Photo #2                 Photo #3                      Photo #4        
                                                               
Photo #1: British Raj begins w. defeat of Nawab of Bengal in 1757 in the Battle of Plassey.
Photo #2: Aurobindo Ghosh in Jan. 1908, just prior to Alipore bomb case.
Photo #3: Mahatma Gandhi starts India Satyāgraha movement in 1920's.
Photo #4: Jawaharlal Nehru, Aug. 15, 1947, first Prime Minister of independent India.

 

On August 15th India celebrates sixty years of independence from British rule. The 135th birthday of Sri Aurobindo, who was one of the chief architects of that independence, is also celebrated on India's National Day by thousands of people around the world. Today India, with a booming economy and on the verge of becoming a 'super power' is a very different place from the India of 1947, when at the stroke of midnight, Independence was declared. Yet, what has come to be known as the 'resurgence' of India, was foreseen long before by Sri Aurobindo, even as far back as the first decades of the twentieth century. He spoke not only of a free and prosperous India, he spoke of a nation with a mission to lead humanity into a new age, even into a new stage of human evolutionary development. ...

...The spiritualized society envisioned by Sri Aurobindo does not exist at present anywhere in the world, not even in Auroville - the one place, founded by the Mother for the material realisation of Sri Aurobindo's vision, that is at least conscious of the goal of an actual human unity and consciously strives to achieve it. Auroville is a precious seed of the future planted on Indian soil and if it is to grow and flourish there, a symbiotic relationship with the nation as a whole is crucial. Auroville looks to India to nurture and protect this seed that is the most concrete expression of Sri Aurobindo's legacy. In turn the Aurovilian population, representative of the nations of the world, must absorb into itself the very qualities that distinguish the Indian national soul: the sense of an all-pervading Infinite; the synthetic tendency to embrace and harmonise opposing forces; the openness to exploration and experiment in every field of human endeavour.   more »

While commenting upon an early biographer’s attempt to present his life Sri Aurobindo, in the course of a conversation with his attendant-disciples, once remarked as follows: “Nobody except myself can write my life—because it has not been on the surface for man to see.” Yet we should be concerned with a few worldly facts from a certain point of view. And the strange thing is that, for a discerning eye, these facts also bring an intuitive vision which can provide a distant bio-spiritual peep into the secrecies of the person whom we so much adore. No wonder, philosophers have described him as the greatest synthesis between the East and the West; critics have acclaimed him as a poet par excellence; social scientists regard him as the builder of a new society based on enduring values of the life of the spirit; devotees throng in mute veneration offering their heart and their soul in a silent prayer that can secure for them the beatitude of the Supreme; Yogins long to live in the sunlight of his splendour to kindle in it their own suns; in the tranquil benignity of his spiritual presence is the fulfilment of all our hopes and all our keenest and noblest aspirations; gods of light and truth and joy and beauty and sweetness are busy in their tasks to carry out his will in the creation; in him the avataric incarnation becomes man to realize the divine in man. Such is the real birth of the Immortal in the Mortal. He comes here as Sri Aurobindo. ...   more »

Primrose School, inaugurated  in June 1999 in the former French colony of Pondicherry, is a pioneering effort in India to utilise Dr. Glenn Doman’s teaching methods as the basis for a full program of pre-school, primary and secondary education.

The Mother's Service Society, Pondicherry, has been in the field of social development for a quarter of a century now and has been recognised as a "Scientific and Cultural Research Institution" by the Central Government for three decades. The Society has longed believed that new methods of education can transform India into a leading knowledge society and fulfill Sri Aurobindo's dream of India becoming the Jagat guru of the world. Primrose School was founded for this purpose, and after discovering the wonderful educational insights of Dr. Glenn Doman, they have taken them and creatively adapted them to suit Indian conditions.

Most of us believe that geniuses are a very rare breed and only a few children are born with that potential. The truth is, many children have the potential of developing genius. Every child has far more potential than comes to the surface under normal circumstances. The secret is to create conditions that enable the child to discover and express their full potential.

Dr. Doman has shown decisively that young children have an incredible capacity for learning. They can learn to read multiple languages with ease at a very young age, even before entering school. They can imbibe a wide range of general knowledge just as a form of recreation. Children can learn at least twice as fast as they normally do in traditional schools without homework, cramming or strain of any type. ... -- The Mother's Service Society believes that this method could revolutionalise education in India. ...   more »

There should be somewhere upon earth a place that no nation could claim as its sole property, a place where all human beings of goodwill, sincere in their aspiration, could live freely as citizens of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the supreme Truth; a place of peace, concord, harmony, where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his suffering and misery, to surmount his weakness and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the care for progress would get precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the seeking for pleasures and material enjoyments.   more »

"Michael Murphy very well might be the single most significant spiritual pioneer of our generation, if for no other reason than the extraordinary spaces that he created in which others could transform," Ken Wilber writes in his book 'The Eye of Spirit.' Indeed, ever since Murphy discovered the pioneering work of Sri Aurobindo almost fifty years ago, his passionate interest in the cultivation of human evolutionary potential has continued unabated. Not only did he found, with his friend the late Richard Price, the by-now-historic testing ground of human potential, Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, but he has also written several best-selling books about the relationship between sports and the mystical dimension of life and has, together with his colleague George Leonard, painstakingly mapped out a systematic theory and program of what he calls "Integral Transformative Practice." Integral practice, inspired by Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, is now Murphy's main passion, and its role in our understanding of human evolutionary potential is, in his thinking, absolutely essential. ...   more »

She's pretty enough to be mistaken for a Hollywood actress... But Seanne Corn's claim to fame is yoga. And for this reason, Hollywood celebs, businessmen, sports personalities, all seek her out.

"Yoga is evolving and growing in the West. So, I wouldn't call it a fad – no fad can last this long. Now, it is attracting younger, aggressive people who want more from their life. The interesting thing is, once they make yoga a part of their lives, they cease to want those things," says Seanne.

But what is her connect with this ancient Indian practice? Seanne gets candid, "I was a very troubled teenager, doing drugs and alcohol. A friend told me in jest that yoga might make me more stable and level headed, and I took it seriously. I travelled to Mysore, and enrolled in the Aurobindo Ashram. I'm 40 now, and this happened when I was 19. So, for the past 21 years, yoga has been a way of my life," she says. ...   more »