Sri Aurobindo once said that for a true resurgence of Indian spirit, the recovery of the old spiritual knowledge and experience in all its splendour, depth and fullness is our first, most essential work. This recovery is not to be confined to intellectual or mental sphere, but it has to become a living force guiding all aspects of our life. The Mother reminds us there are no two separate lives – spiritual life and ordinary life, – thus all life and works are to be taken up in the spirit of sādhanā.
This has been the eternal and inmost significance of Indian spirituality since millennia, and this has to become once again the main inspiring motive-power for a new India – new because it is a rebirth of the timeless Indian spirit. Outer work has true meaning only when it becomes a means to grow inwardly in our consciousness, when it is done as sādhanā, as an offering to the Divine.
In this Sādhanā series, we feature a small prayer or meditation which expresses our aspiration that this be the mantra for our sādhanā, illuminating and purifying all our movements, every day of the month.
We invite our readers to join us in this collective aspiration. May our conscious effort to refer all the movements in all parts of our being to this dhyāna-mantra be our offering into the yajñá for a true rebirth of the Indian soul, a rebirth in which not only the Mind but the entire Life begins to experience the touch of the Spirit.
This month we have chosen a prayer from the Mother’s Prayers and Meditations, which according to Sri Aurobindo are prayers from the Divine to the Divine.
The Prayers are mostly written in an identification with the earth-consciousness. It is Mother in the lower nature addressing the Mother in the higher nature, the Mother herself carrying on the Sadhana of the earth-consciousness for the transformation, praying to herself above from whom the forces of transformation come. This continues till the identification of the earth-consciousness and the higher consciousness is effected.
(Sri Aurobindo’s letter dated 21 August 1936, CWM, Vol. 1, p. 383)
~ Preface by Beloo Mehra
~ Cover image: Lord Krishna Divine Light, original painting by Sunil Kumar (source)
