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Life under the Mother's protection at the Center - Janani
I had grown up in an Indian family in Chennai, a large metropolis in Southern India. My mother’s ancestral village is near Pondicherry. We used to visit the ashram and pay respects at the Samadhi during our annual visit to maternal grandfather’s place. The Ashram was a holy place of respect to me like any other place of worship.
Around 15, I fell seriously ill. I spent that summer recovering at a Sri Aurobindo Center in a small town away from home, with my mom’s friend who managed the center. I was healed in the Divine atmosphere. I spent hours in concentration making the flower arrangements, “Rangoli” or, “Mandala” as we do in India. I recovered fully and felt an inner balance. The Center’s vibration worked deep within my being. I started taking more interest in the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and looked upon them as my guardian angels. A few years later, when I stayed in a hostel to pursue my studies, I kept a photo of the Mother on my desk and it acted as a compass for me.
My partner in life, Bharani:
His family is devoted to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The moment Bharani saw the Mothers photo on my desk, he felt an inner consent to partner with me in his life.
In 2011, Bharani and I first came to the United States. We felt an inner emptiness as we started to settle down in the faraway. Bharani and I discussed that we should go a temple to regain our inner poise, and as I searched for a temple in our neighborhood, surprisingly the Sri Aurobindo Center, Culver City showed up on the internet. It became our spiritual oasis. In the initial days, we did not have a car, and the Center's friends helped us to commute from home to there. Fast forward seven years, the center is our emotional shelter, our second home. Our lives revolve around the center, be it Savitri sessions, or Saturday Satsangs, or Karma Yoga sessions. We have lost our old friend Anie but met other children of the Mother on the way.
Our elder daughter Nitika came to our life, and I am happy to see her growing up in the Center's atmosphere. I see my reflection when I look at her making the floral arrangements in the meditation room. Our younger daughter, Nishtha, came to our life in October of this year; I feel blessed that she has been nurtured in the spiritual atmosphere of the Center before her birth, in line with the Mother’s teaching that education should start before birth.
The Center has served as the chain anchoring us to the Mother. The feeling of an increasing closeness to Her grows steadily, and is a source of deep joy. One feels Her protection and the sense that She is watching over our lives.
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How to open to the Mother - The Mother Home
How to open to the Mother? The following are the means:
(1) To remember You constantly or from time to time―
Mother: Good.
(2) By taking Your name through Japa―
Mother: Helpful.
3) With the help of meditation―
Mother: More difficult if one has not the habit of meditation.
4) By conversation about You with those who love and respect You―
Mother: Risky because, when talking, often some nonsense or at least some useless things can be said.
5) By reading Your books―
Mother: Good.
(6) By spending time in thoughts of You—
Mother: Very good.
(7) By sincere prayers―
Mother: Good.
Q: If I cannot concentrate or meditate, I simply imagine myself lying eternally in the Mother's lap and going out when she sends me out.
A: This is the best possible kind of concentration.
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The one thing necessary - Sri Aurobindo Home
It is a mistake to think that meditation is indispensable to the sadhana. There are so many who do not do it, but they are near to the Mother and progress as well as those who have long meditations. The one thing necessary is to be turned to the Mother and that is all that is needed.
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To keep the consciousness awake you must set apart a certain time every day for concentration and remembering the Mother.
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Sitting calm and quiet remember the Mother and open yourself to her. This is the rule of meditation.
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Q: For the proper education and cultural development of the mind is reading of books not necessary for a sadhak?
A: It is not by reading books that he can do it—it is by trying to think and see things clearly that it comes. Reading is a quite secondary thing. One may read thousands of books, yet remain narrow and foolish.
Q: Is it true that "satsanga" (company of spiritual persons) creates and increases the aspiration for the Divine?
A: Yes.
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The short cuts to the Divine - Sri Aurobindo Home
MEDITATION is one means of approach to the Divine and a great way, but it cannot be called a short cut—for most it is a long and most difficult though a very high ascent. It can by no means be short unless it brings a descent, and even then it is only a foundation that is quickly laid; afterwards meditation has to build laboriously a big superstructure on that foundation. It is very indispensable but there is nothing of the short about it.
Karma is a much simpler road provided one's mind is not fixed on the Karma to the exclusion of the Divine. The aim must be the Divine and the work can only be a means. The use of poetry etc. is to keep one in contact with one's inner being and that helps to prepare for the direct contact with the inmost, but one must not stop with that, one must go on to the real thing. If one thinks of being a literary man or a poet or a painter as things worth while for their own sake, then it is no longer the Yogic spirit. That is why I have sometimes to say that our business is to be Yogis, not merely poets, painters, etc.
Love, bhakti, surrender, the psychic opening are the only short cuts to the Divine—or can be; for if the love and bhakti are too vital, then there is likely to be a seesaw between ecstatic expectation and viraha, abhiman, despair, etc., which makes not a short cut but a long one, a zigzag—not a straight flight—a whirling round one's own ego instead of a running towards the Divine.
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Thoughts of the Divine - Mother and Sri Aurobindo Home
Each time that you feel restless you ought to repeat, speaking inside yourself without exterior sound and thinking of me at the same time: “Peace, peace, O my heart!” Do it steadily and you will be pleased with the result.
— The Mother
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The true attitude in work comes when the work is always associated with the thought of the Mother, done as an offering to her with the call to do it through you.
— Sri Aurobindo
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Fear is a very bad thing, very bad, it is a dissolvent; it is like an acid. If you put a drop of it on something, it eats into the substance. The first step is not to admit the possibility of fear. Yes, that’s the first step....However, when once you recognize that fear is neither good nor favorable nor noble nor worthy of a consciousness a little enlightened, you begin to fight against it. And I say, one man’s way is not another’s; one must find one’s own way; it depends on each one. Fear is also a terribly contagious collective thing - contagious, it is much more catching than the most contagious of illnesses. You breathe an atmosphere of fear and instantly you feel frightened, without even knowing why or how, nothing, simply because there was an atmosphere of fear. A panic at an accident is nothing but an atmosphere of fear spreading round over everybody. And it is quite curable. There have been numerous cases of a panic being stopped outright simply because some people refused the suggestion and could counteract it with an opposite suggestion. For mystics the best cure as soon as one begins to feel afraid of something is to think of the Divine and then snuggle in his arms or at his feet and leave him entirely responsible for everything that happens, within, outside, everywhere – and immediately the fear disappears. That is the cure for the mystic. It is the easiest of all.
— The Mother
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The Mother, your friend and comrade - Nolini Kanta Gupta Home
The best friend that you can have, the Mother says, is the Divine Himself, that is to say, the Mother Herself. You can find no other friend so friendly, so loving and so lovable. Do not think she is too great for you, she is very far and you are very small. It is not true. She can be, she can make herself as small as yourself to be with you: because she is you.
I will tell you here a personal story. When we were together with Sri Aurobindo, long long ago, we were almost as young as you are, not quite though, only a few years older: we had then like you, infinite freedom, we did almost whatever we liked, went wherever it pleased us to go, we did not care much for food or dress or luxuries but we liked pleasant picnics, and along with that of course a little bit of study: but studying not any imposed lessons, studying whatever we liked, whatever we chose to read. Then one day, years after, Sri Aurobindo told us-we were at that time only four or five in number-he told us, somewhat seriously, he was seldom serious or grave with us, he had always his smile – “You have so forgotten yourselves, you do not think even of what you have come here for (because we had all left our family, even our country and all worldly considerations); to be with you, to be one of you, I have made myself very small, I have cut myself so to say to your size to walk with you, to be on the same level. Even then you cannot follow, I seem to be still too far from you. That won't do. Now you must try to run and come up to me. I cannot make myself still smaller. I have made myself sufficiently small."
However what I wanted to say is, the Mother is truly your mother and as truly your friend and comrade. She loves you as no one else can love. She answers to your love as no one else can. And she teaches you how to love. Even if you are full of errors and mistakes; it does not matter, she takes you as you are, you can be quite free and open to her, she is there to understand you, to help you. She is not there to scold you or find fault with or criticise you. If you are not able to correct yourself, you have simply to look to her, she will do what is needful for you. I have always spoken to you of a body beautiful, an inner body beautiful and an outer body beautiful – any wrong thought or feeling or act leaves a stain, a scar upon your inner body, you are to see that the stain goes away and the body resume its glow, you are not always able to do it with your own will and effort because you do not know how to do it, but only try not to repeat the error and take your shelter in the Mother's presence, in her arms. The stain disfigures your inner beauty, you have to pray and appeal to her: with her healing touch she will remove all stain and disfiguring mark. It is an experience that some of you must have had in some way or other, must have felt in dream at least, the loving embrace of the Mother. You have to live in it, live it even in your waking hours. Be sincere and ask for it, your wish will be granted.
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