Sri Aurobindo had to write these important letters in an absurdly ill-provided situation. He used any scrap of paper he could make available, writing closely on both sides. Now, for more than half a century, the ravages of time have impaired their textural quality, colour, and legibility. They are brittle, some have crumbled in parts or extensively. We have had a formidable task in deciphering them. No pains have been spared in this toil, yet a few gaps remain—to the readers' guess, …

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There is now a new road laid out as if all light turned into substance,
And swift the swallows fly like names reaching the azure of names,
And copper-pod trees blossom with fragrant songs on green boughs.
In a hush, ardent like prayer and heavenly vast as in the spiritual noon,
Om the Lord of Creation descends again, wearing the form of Sound.

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They asked: What is this fire that went to the ether when it rained?
It is the fire that burns in the seeds and in the roots of things.
They asked: What is this fire founded in the speed of the Wind?
It is the fire that consumes food in the belly of the universe.
They asked: What is this fire that dwells in the Inconscience?
Of Man and Woman this fire is the unborn son nourished by Death.

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Sri Aurobindo once said to me that he doubted if there was in the past any figure embodying so great a Yogic power. He added that he had done ten years’ Yoga by one’s contact with her. The Yogic Power of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo opened wide the doors of the unostentatious Ashram, so long in the grip of want and difficulty, to the steady inflow of sufficiency and prosperity. Spontaneous offerings came from disciples and admirers. The most ordinary men found in themselves an outflowering of the poetic power, a wonderful talent for painting, a capacity for meditation, occult vision and skillfulness in work. Day by day the Pondicherry Ashram grew into a Yogic place of pilgrimage for the entire world. An aspirant had a vision: the Mother and Sri Aurobindo were inside a golden tabernacle on the top of a luminous hill, and men from different climes from all directions thronged to the place in endless streams. To-day his vision has materialised.

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One cannot imagine—one cannot imagine what a grace it is to have someone in whose hands you can place yourself entirely! By whom you can let yourself be guided without having the need to seek. I had that, I was very, very conscious of it as long as Sri Aurobindo was there. And when he left his body, it was a dreadful collapse.... One cannot imagine. Someone you can refer to with the certainty that what he says will be the truth. There's no path, the path has to be blazed out!

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Behind all the destructions—the big destructions of Nature—earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, cyclones, floods, etc., or the human destructions—wars, revolutions, riots—there is always Kali's power and upon earth Kali works for the hastening of the terrestrial progress.

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Ever since the seminal work of Needham, who showed that till around the sixteenth century Chinese science and technology seem to have been more advanced than their counterparts in Europe, it has become fashionable for historians of science to wonder “Why modern science did not emerge in non-western societies?” In the work of the Kerala School, we notice clear anticipations of some of the fundamental discoveries which are associated with the emergence of modern science, such as the mathematics of infinite series and the development of new geometrical models of planetary motion. It seems therefore more appropriate to investigate “Why modern science ceased to flourish in India after the 16th Century?” It may also be worthwhile to speculate “What would have been the nature of modern science (and the modern world) had sciences continued to flourish in non-western societies?” In this way we could gain some valuable insights regarding the sources and the nature of creativity of geniuses such as Srinivasa Ramanujan, Jagadish Chandra Bose and others in modern India.

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Life of flowers (Жизнь цветов) from VOROBYOFF PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

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Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

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The Divine is given to us in the great formula of Sachidananda, which can be translated as pure being (sat), consciousness (chit), and bliss (ananda). It has a transcendent, yet self-absorbing aspect, but also a dynamic multi-dimensional fullness. Sachidananda continuously pours forth its essence into the different worlds of existence and enters back into them as their inner substance and support. In Sanskrit, the term for energy is shakti, the force or active power of the Divine and it signifies the feminine principle. In the Tantric tradition, and according to Sri Aurobindo, Shakti is the Divine Mother, the Consciousness-Force of God. As creator of the worlds, Shakti is manifested in all things, and is at the core of Sri Aurobindo’s teaching of Integral Yoga.

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This remark, "We shall die afterwards," is my own experience, it wasn't a "dream"—in fact, it's never dreams: it's a sort of STATE you enter VERY CONSCIOUSLY, and all at once you relive a thing. Even now I can see the picture: I see the picture of the people, the populace, myself, the gown, the person who nursed me—I see the whole scene. And I answered ... It was so obvious! I felt so strongly that things are governed by the will that I answered, "We shall die afterwards," quite simply.

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November 24 is known as the Day of Victory, for, on it, Sri Aurobindo had the experience which promised complete fulfilment of his vision. It is significant that the last living darshan he granted was precisely on this day and in spite of grave obstacles. He declared through the occasion that his life was victorious, no matter what the appearance soon after. And the declaration was even verbal and explicit, for the sentence culled from his writings and published as a message on that day ran: "The Supramental is a truth, and its advent is, in the very nature of things, inevitable."

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Across the Gate of Horn rises in a wide reach of gaze the dream-palace,
On the banks where sparkling the sleepless Alacananda’s waters rush;
But in peacock-groves of Paradise there are no red-blossoming Ashokas
And a kind of tenuous mortality touches even the Unborn of the Sky.
So like a ship of amethyst sounds bearing the ocean of Arcturus-songs,
Savitri with the ruby-gold feet of ecstasy steps into the geodesic Time.

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A poet need not be a reflective critic; he need not have the reasoning and analysing intellect and dissect his own poetry. But two things he must have in some measure to be perfect, the intuitive judgment which shows him at a glance whether he has got the best or the second-best idea, the perfect or the imperfect expression and rhythm, and the intuitive reason which shows him without analysis why or wherein it is best or second-best, perfect or imperfect. These four faculties, revelation or prophecy, inspiration, intuitive judgment and intuitive reason, are the perfect equipment of genius doing the works of interpretative & creative knowledge.

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These high mountains fixed long ago thou hast set in motion,
These far-drifting galaxies thou hast arrested in thy calm.
Therefore thine is the fiery haste on four feet of the spirit,
And thy waters conquer the rock of that tremendous Nothing,
And hast thou by the force of Truth adventured into Death.
Thy rhythms now run through seasons of this worldly earth,
And speech breaks forth like the Spring on thy green boughs,
And in subtle-dense of thy rapture blossoms the Mind of Light.

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Our friendship is not such a shallow thing
And to the shores where bloom moon-buds let us sail;
The waters are deep and true, the winds wouldn’t fail,
In lucent calm swiftly the heaven-birds wing

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Plant tall trees in the deep soil, deep season,
When the winds are calm, when the sun is mild,
And the arguments of time that have been piled

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Lives of two Mughal princes, whose character sketches have been distorted by historians, their relations, religious views and a bitter struggle over political control of the culturally and economically rich empire, were explored at a programme attended by a small gathering of people on Wednesday evening. Dara Shikoh, heir apparent of Emperor Shah Jahan, and his younger brother, Aurangzeb, were the central figures of the interesting discourse, New perspectives on the Mughals: the case of Dara Shikoh.

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Something peculiar happened to me.... It's that the center of the body consciousness moved (usually it's in the head, in the brain). The body consciousness, the cellular consciousness, the one that responds to the workings of Nature and governs the whole functioning—suddenly it moved, it went out of the body. I had the experience, I had the experience of my body consciousness going completely out of the body (that must be what happens when one dies, mustn't it?), and for ... apparently for ten or fifteen minutes, I don't know, it was over, the physical world no longer existed, the body no longer existed. But I was very conscious of a movement of forces and of an action; that corporeal consciousness was even repeating its mantra, that was very interesting: it was repeating its mantra and watching the effect of the mantra on the vibrations of forces. But the consciousness left the body over there (gesture to the bathroom) and came back into it here (on the bed). I was carried ... and what happened between the two, I don't know. But when you re-enter your body, it's very painful, very painful—all the nerves hurt. So then, suddenly, I felt a lot of pain like that, and then I felt that I was lying on cushions! My last impression was of standing over there!

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1 January 2012
Happy New Year

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