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And cattle grazed in the meadows

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No wonder, the cornfields grew rich,
And cattle grazed in the meadows and scent
And hue brought a strange silence that adores
Divinity in each pixel. Someone
Who is vast found the spirit’s algorithm.

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Vithoba
Pandharpur is an important pilgrimage city on the Bhimā river in Solāpur district, Maharashtra, India. The Vithoba temple attracts about half a million Hindu pilgrims during the major yātrā (pilgrimage) in the month of Ashadh (June-July).

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The Mother narrates her new experience, that she immediately feels the origin of an activity, wherefrom it came, from which plane. The origin is rendered automatically by a vibration in one of the centres. And it has a precision! With this sadhana there are some leading strings which one can pursue. For the other sadhanas she had the method: whatever Sri Aurobindo said was clear; that showed the way, one had not to search. But here he has not done it. The first thing to teach the body is to remain immobile, to have no reaction, no shrinking, not even a movement of rejection—a perfect immobility. That is bodily equality. After the perfect immobility comes the movement of inner aspiration, aspiration of the cells, the surrender, the spontaneous and total acceptance of the supreme Will. One has a certain inner poise, a poise of movement, of life, and it is understood that while passing from one movement to a higher movement, almost always there occurs a descent and then an ascent—it is a transition. When the cells are like, after a time comes the perception of the category to which the movement belongs, and one has only to follow in order to see whether it is something that has to disappear and be replaced by another thing or it is something that has to be transformed. This is what is called physical yoga. At every second all the cells must be in an adoration, in an aspiration—an adoration, an aspiration, an adoration... and nothing else. Then after a time there is also delight, then that ends in blissful trust. When this trust is established all will be well. But... it is easy to say, it is much more difficult to do. This is the only means, and there is no other.

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Durga Puja was first celebrated at Belur Math in 1901. Since then it is been celebrated year after year, although for a few years after the first celebration in 1901, Pratima [Image] worship was not done. In this connection it should be mentioned that Durga Puja was conducted on a small scale, without the image, by the disciples of Sri Ramakrishna during the early years of Ramakrishna Math at Baranagar. It was Swami Vivekananda himself who started the first Durga Puja with the image at Belur Math.

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Perception of Avatarhood is an individual matter, and that perception might be governed by the cultural, historical, philosophical, religious, even temporal, or spiritual factors. But there is also a hope that these factors can be set aside when one comes in contact with the inner or higher reality which, and nothing else, should indeed count for an individual. If this is done then we keep all danger away from us, rather all danger is kept away from us.

In this context, let us make another observation here. In the April 2007 issue of Auroville Today we have the following statement, a statement which rather stuns one greatly: “…there's a danger that an over-reliance on the psychic being and surrender to the Divine, as it is practised … can devolve into passivity.” We must say that there can never be over-reliance on the psychic being and surrender to the Divine. Wasn’t that the Mantra of the Mother, particularly “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest” when she was busy with the cellular transformation? If somewhere, and sometimes,—and it is immaterial where that somewhere could be and when that sometimes was or will be,—it is not practised ‘properly’ it cannot be the fault of the principle, of the occult and spiritual truth that is there behind it. People in their too confident a manner of intellectualsing things are generally in a hurry and mix up emotions and sentiments of the vital with the psychic perceptions; surrender to the Divine is something altogether diffrent. There is no cure for that, and perhaps one could just ignore such statements. Instead, let us read the following from Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita:

“In the Avatar, the divinely-born Man, the real substance shines through the coating; the mark of the seal is there only for form, the vision is that of the secret Godhead, the power of the life is that of the secret Godhead, and it breaks through the seals of the assumed human nature; the sign of the Godhead, an inner soul-sign, not outward, not physical, stands out legible for all to read who care to see or who can see; for the Asuric nature is always blind to these things, it sees the body and not the soul, the external being and not the internal, the mask and not the Person. In the ordinary human birth the Nature-aspect of the universal Divine assuming humanity prevails; in the incarnation the God-aspect of the same phenomenon takes its place. In the one he allows the human nature to take possession of his partial being and to dominate it; in the other he takes possession of his partial type of being and its nature and divinely dominates it. Not by evolution or ascent like the ordinary man, the Gita seems to tell us, not by a growing into the divine birth, but by a direct descent into the stuff of humanity and a taking up of its moulds.”

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Rejoice, because you are alive: An asteroid named 2009 TM8 just passed only 216,000 miles from Earth, racing at 18,163 mph. That's closer than the moon.

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