Tag Archive for: Sri Aurobindo

The Glory of The Divine Mother as revealed in Savitri

The Glory of The Divine Mother as revealed in Savitri

Savitri is a many-layered mantric epic that Sri Aurobindo has gifted to earth and men. Given the mantric nature of Savitri and the incarnate Divine Mother at the center and core of the yoga of supramental transformation, it is felt that invoking Her Presence with the help of these mantric lines is bound to help the aspiring soul to open more and more to Her who holds the key to change human nature into divine nature. It is with this purpose that these passages have been selected, passages that reveal to us the glory of the Divine Mother and Her vast all-embracing, all威而鋼
-transmuting Love.


Book Details

Author: Sri Aurobindo
Compiler: Alok Pandey
Print Length: 145
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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Captive of Her Love by Janina Stroka

Longings for the Mother

This book is a collection of letters, poems and paintings by Janina Stroka, a Polish disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and a member of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India, from 1957 until her passing in 1964. It is a truly fascinating book that should interest readers of many backgrounds and persuasions. Employing a primarily epistolary mode, through the use of letters, it combines several interesting categories as well: spiritual travelogue, quest narrative, period history and East-West encounter. Above all, it bridges the gap between the falsity of public image vis a vis the reality of our private self.

Janina’s account of her life in Pondicherry in this book is divided into three parts. The main part of the text consists of extracts from letters written to a Dutch friend with whom Janina lived first in Palestine and later in Germany, from December 1957 to June 1958. The letters in the next section were written between 1960 and 1963 to a young Bengali, a writer and social worker. Next, the book contains selected poems and paintings by Janina and concludes with a comment by the Mother on Janina’s passing.

All of these provide an invaluable glimpse into Janina’s inner life in the Ashram, no less than her observation of the details of the seemingly trivial but no less significant aspects of the day to day life in the Ashram and Pondicherry during the late fifties and early sixties. We find, for instance, a perceptive description of meal-time atmosphere in the Dining Room. Those who habitually crib against the Dining Room food would do well to see Janina’s sense of reverence towards this food (“We always get two bananas and a wonderful yoghurt, just a dream!”). She talks memorably of a number of events and impressions of the supramental force spread over Pondicherry, vis a vis the ubiquitous presence of the town’s dirt, filth and squalour; about “bad people in the Ashram”; regarding the problem with maid-servants, their perpetual intrigues and the need to constantly humour them in order to extract work out of their reluctant selves and so on. She also records her encounters with Pavitrada, Nolinida and Medhananda and the quota of luscious mangoes from Bombay that she receives from X, a friend: “What a pity that I do not have a husband” she observes with self-deprecating humour.

Janina reveals in her engrossing accounts that despite their rootedness in reason, science and rationality, (or perhaps because of it!) a dedicated westerner, drawn powerfully to spirituality, is likely to blossom more fully vis a vis his/her eastern counterparts. Her life — full of ordeals, hardships and agony — is testimony to the indomitable human spirit forever in search of the deepest meaning of life. Her narrative offers us a lesson in humility.

(from book review by Dr Sachidananda Mohanty)


Book Details

Author: Janina Stroka
Print Length: 106
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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Longings for the Mother by Indra Sen

Longings for the Mother

I learned of the Mother’s passing on the morning of the 18th November, 1973 at Sri Aurobindo Yoga Mandir, Jwalapur (Hardwar), where my normal work lies as given by the Mother in 1958. The impulse that arose within me was to go deep within and be with the Mother to the best of my capacity. I reduced my external preoccupations to the minimum and began to live in that manner and it was profoundly satisfying. In this experience, there were occasional moments of shock and grief too but, on the whole, there was a feeling of inner assurance and a sense of contact and conversation with the Mother. On the morning of the 27th November, as I sat in this contemplation, a move arose to concretise the inner thought and feeling and I wrote out “Our Mother, who is no more, who is ever more.” Soon all the ten topics ending with “Mother, we read again Your ‘Notes on the Way’” came along. And I read these again and again and enjoyed doing so. I began to do this day after day. I felt that this tended to deepen my inner contact. The next three pieces were written on the following three days, a piece per day. Then I had to go on a short journey and, for about a fortnight, there was no writing. About the middle of December, the writing was resumed and the remaining six pieces were written out. The entire writing was done, on the whole, with ease and simplicity.

To me, all this served to clarify and strengthen an inner contact with the Mother. Many friends, who have read these pieces in typescript, have felt deeply moved and found in varying degrees a greater inner contact.


Book Details

Author: Indra Sen
Print Length: 43
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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To Thee Our Infinite Gratitude (Writings on the Passing of Sri Aurobindo)

To Thee Our Infinite Gratitude

Writings on the Passing of Sri Aurobindo

A series of essays written in commemoration of Sri Aurobindo’s passing. The words of Amal Kiran, Udar and K.R.S.Iyengar give us a vast spiritual, psychological and factual perspective of the event, greatly helping us to understand several aspects of the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the young American scholar Rhoda P. Le Cocq’s account of the last Darshan of the Master and the Mother unveils that aspect of the power of Grace which so smoothly and silently demolishes the wall of scepticism one had maintained around oneself for long. The compilation brings us a serene calm and an intense feeling of gratitude, and reminds us that:

Death is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride
The soul must take to cross from birth to birth,
A grey defeat pregnant with victory,
A whip to lash us towards our deathless state.

Savitri


Book Details

Author: Nirodbaran, Dr. Prabhat Sanyal, Amal Kiran, Udar Pinto, Pavitra, K.R.S. Iyengar, Rhoda P. Le Cocq
Print Length: 100
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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The Mother Abides – Final Reflections

The Mother Abides
Final Reflections (1973–1983)

by Nolini Kanta Gupta

These thoughts and reminiscences of Nolini Kanta Gupta were written or spoken during the final decade of his life — from the time of the Mother’s passing in November 1973 until shortly before his own passing in February 1984. During that period they served as a source of guidance and consolation to the Ashram community, and they still seem relevant today.

Many of these writings and talks were first presented to the students, young and old, of Nolini-da’s classes. Later they were published in The Advent, a quarterly journal he edited, or in his Collected Works. Details about their publication and a life-sketch of the author are given at the end of the book.


Book Details

Author: Nolini Kanta Gupta
Print Length: 77
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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My Friend and Master by C.C. Dutt

My Friend and Master

A Memoir by C.C. Dutt

The book “My Friend and Master” is a personal account of Sri Aurobindo’s pre-Ashram days told by C.C.Dutt, who had been a revolutionary comrade and later became a spiritual disciple of Sri Aurobindo in his ashram. C.C. Dutt’s memoir carries the unmistakable direct presence of the Guide and Master and vivid experience that can only occur in the immediate closeness to the Guru. It will be of a great interest to all those who have been guided on their spiritual paths by Sri Aurobindo’s words and presence. C.C. Dutt’s memoir “My Friend and Master” was originally published in “Sri Aurobindo Circle” Eighth Number, 1952


Book Details

Author: C.C. Dutt
Print Length: 34
Publisher: Auro e-Books
Original source: http://auromaa.org/my-friend-and-my-master-charu-chandra-dutt-part-2/
Book format: Pdf, ePub, Mobi
Language: English
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A Comparative Study of the Educational Philosophies of Sri Aurobindo and Maria Montessori

A Comparative Study of the Educational Philosophies
of Sri Aurobindo and Maria Montessori

In 1975, Aleta You Mastny wrote this dissertation, “A Comparative Study of the Educational Philosophies of Sri Aurobindo and Maria Montessori”, as a part of the requirements for her Doctor of Philosophy degree. In this paper, Mastny presents a detailed examination of the educational philosophies of two important pioneers in the field of childhood education.

Maria Montessori was a truly remarkable woman who was born in August 31, 1870, and was educated in Italy. Beginning her higher education in the field of engineering, she later switched to medicine. After earning her medical degree, she becoming an expert in pediatric medicine and went on to conceptualize her own methods of applying the educational theories first put forth by French physicians Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard and Édouard Séguin. Her success in education came form her application of a religious, if not wholly spiritual, perspective, to the practical knowledge she developed in close observation of childhood development.

Sri Aurobindo was a most remarkable man born in India on August 15, 1872 and classically educated in England. When he returned to India, he fought for the independence of India as a political leader and went on to become a well respected spiritual leader, establishing an ashram with his collaborator, Mira Alfassa (The Mother). While overseeing a growing community in the ashram, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother developed and implemented their own ideas about childhood education.

In this insightful paper, Mastny finds many important parallels between Montessori’s theories and those of Sri Aurobindo. Despite the scholarly form of this dissertation, fans and followers of Sri Aurobindo are sure to find this work interesting. It also has a five-page bibliography.


Book Details

Author: Aleta You Mastny
Print Length: 145
Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
Submitted by: Blindshiva
Book format: Pdf
Language: English
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Talks with Sri Aurobindo by Nirodbaran (Volume 1 and 2)

Talks with Sri Aurobindo

On the eve of the November Darshan Day in 1938, the hostile forces finally managed to strike a heavy blow against Sri Aurobindo. In the wee, dark, hours of the morning, Sri Aurobindo “stumbled” over a tiger skin rug in his apartment and struck his right knee upon the skull of the tiger, causing a fracture of his right femur. However, as these two volumes of Talks with Sri Aurobindo recorded by Nirodbaran will attest, the attempt by the forces of Darkness to silence Sri Aurobindo actually had the opposite effect, creating an opportunity for a handful of disciples and others to engage in a free flowing, wide-ranging, informal and open inquiry into the Master’s thinking and teaching which would never have happened otherwise. Collected here, we have the reminisces, musings and discussions of that band of men who were fortunate enough to be there at the right time and place to make this intimate atmosphere among seekers of Truth possible. These conversations stretched over a period of nearly twelve years, bringing these men ever closer to each other and closer to the light.


Book Details

Author: Nirodbaran
Print Length: Volume 1 – 514p., Volume 2 – 517p.
Publisher: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Submitted by: Blindshiva
Book format: Pdf, ePub, mobi (Kindle)
Language: English
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Weekly Readings in Savitri – an Invitation to a Journey

Dear friends,

Website AuroMaa.org have started publication of “Weekly Readings in Savitri”, which Dr Alok Pandey has kindly agreed to make available to all Savitri readers.

For the next 5-7 years, every Tuesday a new Weekly Reading will be posted, each containing 2 to 3 pages of the original poem (using a standard edition as in Vol 33-34 of the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo), together with a passage-by-passage summary.

The following passage describes the author’s intention behind this labor of love:

… [Savitri], a revelation coming from the very highest summits of consciousness and embodying the sublimest and subtlest Wisdom and Power, is best received as a gift of Grace. It cannot be the subject of mental analysis and speculation, for the Truth it embodies comes from far above the mind. Hence we do not intend to offer any ‘explanations’ or ‘analytical understanding’ of Savitri through these pages. What we do inte犀利士5mg
nd is to share the joy of Savitri and the insights that are received by all who deeply engage with this wonderful word-body of Sri Aurobindo.

Surely there is no one single way of understanding or engaging with this ‘scripture’ even as there is no one single exclusive approach to the Divine. It is left to each one of us to discover the delight of these unique and powerful revelations that pour through the luminous pages of Savitri. But surely when each of these ‘delights’ meet and come together, it multiplies the joy divine upon Earth and adds to the breath of God upon our lives. It is with this intention and as a humble offering at the feet of the Divine Mother that we have initiated this project, this work on Savitri. Its justification is simply that we are moved by an inner inspiration to do so. Its fulfillment is to facilitate and deepen our engagement with Savitri.

It is with this prayer that we embark upon this project as an offering of love and leave it in Her hands to see what purpose it serves in the grand scheme of things. Let us then dive deep into the fathomless ocean of Light called Savitri and loose ourselves in its limitless delight.

Alok Pandey
Pondicherry, Oct 24, 2016

Life Divine free ebook by Sri Aurobindo (pdf, epub, kindle)

Life Divine free ebook by Sri Aurobindo (pdf, epub, kindle)

The Life Divine free ebook

The Life Divine free ebook by Sri Aurobindo combines a synthesis of western thought and eastern spirituality with Sri Aurobindo’s own original insights. The Life Divine covers topics such as the human aspiration, the emergence of life in the cosmos from out of a Divine Source, the evolution of matter to spirit in the universe, the division and dualities inherent in human consciousness, the way out of man’s ignorance through an evolution of consciousness, and the spiritual destiny of life on earth.

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