Musings on the Mother's Prayers and Meditations-Part-1 (An Old and Rare Book)

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Foreword AST JANUARY ON a journey to Pondicherry, home of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, I was lamenting about the lack of origi nal, creative writings on Integral Yoga and the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I must have anticipated something because Shyam Kumari disclosed to me she had written about 380 Musings or short essays on Prayers and Meditations by the Mother.

The Prayers were written by the Mother from 1912 to 1919 and five prayers are from a later period. They reveal an extraordinary aspiration and love for the Divine and his/her manifestation on earth.

In 1935 a disciple wrote to Sri Aurobindo about the Mother's Prayers and Meditations and the confusion regarding the Mother addressing the Divine as if she was someone other than herself. Sri Aurobindo's reply was, The Prayers are mostly written in an identification with the earth-consciousness. It is the Mother in the lower nature ad dressing 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 identifi cation of the earth-consciousness and the higher conscious ness is affected.

Preface JANUARY, 1969, the Mother accepted me in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, making me her chattel and child. She ap pointed me a teacher in her great institution, the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. French being the medium of instruction in the Centre of Education, I enthusiastically plunged into its study.

In the first year I made good progress and even wrote some letters to sweet Mother in French which my teacher Yatanti kindly read out to her. I became enamoured of the Prières et Méditations of the Mother and aspired to have a copy signed by her. But the book was out of print. As luck would have it, a single last copy was found at SABDA, and in November of 1971, I sent the book to the Mother with the prayer, "Je veut lire, relire et vivre les Prières et Méditations." (I want to read, re-read and live the Prayers and Meditations.) On November 26, 1971, the Mother read my prayer, wrote "Blessings" on the book and set her divine signature underneath. I remember how Nolini Kanta Gupta, who was usually placid and grave, handed me the book with a beaming face and said, "Look inside." Upon opening the book I was naturally thrilled to read Bénédictions in the Mother's hand.

Alas, things rarely move in a straight line. There are many meanderings on the path. Soon after receiving the book with the Mother's blessings, I fell ill. My French studies faltered and after some time, stopped. On recovering. I immersed myself in Sri Aurobindo's great epic Savitri, translating it into Hindi.

Introduction ET ME HUMBLY SAY that the Musings are my personal reflections upon the Prayers and Meditations. They do not explain. nay, even attempt to explain, the prayers which are a sublime record of the Divine Mother's spiritual experiences; her ascents to the highest Spirit Planes, her intimate communions with the Supreme. Only when one reads Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of the Mother's experience of November 26, 1915, can he or she begin to realize to what summits the Mother's prayers refer. Those who have not gone beyond the Over mind consciousness (and hardly anyone can make such a claim, barring some exceptional individuals like Nolini Kanta Gupta) cannot fully understand these prayers.

Yet, even if one may not be able to dive into the core of these Divine Communions and Revelations, one can, according to the measure of one's sincerity and preparation, bathe and exult in their divine ambience. And by the Mother's Grace, whose action can exceed even our receptivity or adhikara, we might also enter into the higher worlds or get a clue to the nature of Divinity. In this connection I remember a couplet of the great Hindi poet Tulsidas where he says that after a great king constructs a bridge on a mighty river even the smallest ant can cross to the other side without much labour.

Someone may ask, "Why write at all about this book which is beyond the grasp of our imperfect human consciousness?"

**Contents and Sample Pages**