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me know that some publication was already underway, that would display a number
of photographs of the Mother, not many but interesting and never before published
ones, in the line of a booklet that had already been published by the Ashram on Sri
Aurobindo; and that it ought to be sufficient. That was it.
I did not feel any inner support in trying to approach Pranab directly; I offered the
whole thing up. Somehow, sooner or later, such a work must be and would be
done, by someone.
As of today, though, in 2005, it has yet to be done.
***
Note: At about the same time, that year of 1997, the review “Ahana”, dedicated to
Sri Aurobindo’s work and published in Delhi, decided to bring out an issue on
various subjects – ranging from ecology and agriculture to social work - collecting
written contributions from Aurovilians; I was asked to write a paper on Sri
Aurobindo…!
*On Sri Aurobindo, for the review “Ahana”.
“Particularly now when India’s children, at this striking notch in the wheel of time,
muster some of the courage required to assess honestly their condition, the
condition of their people, their land, and the quality of the service that has been
rendered to their Mother, in 50 years of independence from one form of adversity,
many are those who are dedicated and competent authorities to represent Sri
Aurobindo’s message, views and thoughts on a variety of specific issues.
It is surely a good and dutiful contribution that is thus being made.
Yet I find it irksome, and sadly symptomatic that for this the 125
th
anniversary of
Sri Aurobindo’s birth, as on any other year, day and moment, one continues to
distribute fragments of Sri Aurobindo’s presence as if one was begging the world’
consumerism to accept a few choice bits of a meals prepared within too dim a
temple.
Sri Aurobindo the philosopher, Sri Aurobindo the freedom fighter, Sri Aurobindo the
yogi, Sri Aurobindo the poet… would you please be kind enough to be properly
awed and dumbstruck by the glimpses we are offering, oh so humbly!
I, like so many others, am no authority, and have no wish to become one in any
field; but I have some understanding and some experience of Sri Aurobindo’s
presence and I can tell with certainty that Sri Aurobindo, if He is all of that and
infinitely more, is also none of that, for none of these definitions can ever begin to
contain Him.
Which philosopher could ever have written effortlessly, in less than 4 years, “The
Synthesis of Yoga”, “The Human Cycle”, “The Ideal of Human Unity” and “The Life
Divine”?
The greatest human poets are celebrated through the centuries for a few verse
only, that could channel some of the beauty, the mantric power and the force of