Search for Light

...the birth of the Eternal on Earth. - The Mother

The Mother

Steps in Her Living Presence

सहस्रशीर्षा पुरुषः सहस्राक्षः सहस्रपात् ।
स भूमिं विश्वतो वृत्वात्यतिष्ठद्दशाङ्गुलम् ॥ १ ॥
"The Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet. Pervading the earth on all sides, He exists beyond it by ten fingers' breadth."

Rig Veda, 10.90.1.

Prayers and Meditations

-The Mother

Prayers and Meditations consists of extracts from the Mother’s spiritual diaries. Most of them are from the period 1912 to 1917. The 313 prayers reproduced here were selected by the Mother for publication. Written in French, they appear here in English translation.
A small collection of prayers—about one-fifth of the total—was brought out in English in 1941. Sri Aurobindo translated some of those prayers himself and, in the other cases, revised translations made by disciples. These prayers wholly or partly translated by Sri Aurobindo are marked in this volume with an asterisk (*).

Letters by Sri Aurobindo on "Prayers and Meditations"

The Mother

The prayers are mostly written in an identification with the earth-consciousness. It is the 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..... It is the Divine who is always referred to as Divine Mai^tre and Seigneur. There is the Mother who is carrying on the sadhana and the Divine Mother, both being one but in different poises, and both turn to the Seigneur or Divine Master.

- Sri Aurobindo (On Prayers and Meditations)

This book comprises extracts from a diary written during years of intensive yogic discipline. It may serve as a spiritual guide to three principal categories of seekers: those who have undertaken self-mastery, those who want to find the road leading to the Divine, those who aspire to consecrate themselves more and more to the Divine Work. The Mother viii

- The Mother

Prayers and Meditations

(*) These prayer was wholly or partly translated by Sri Aurobindo

Entry on : March 29, 1914


This is perhaps the most famous meditation in the collection, written the day she first met Sri Aurobindo. It begins:

 

"It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth; His presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light... "

Four Letters by Sri Aurobindo

I have said that the Divine does the Sadhana first for the world and then gives what is brought down to others. There can be no Sadhana without realisations and experiences. The Prayers are a record of Mother’s experiences.

4 January 1935

*

In some of the Mother’s Prayers which are addressed to “divin Maiˆtre” I find the words: “avec notre divine Me`re”. How can the Mother and “divin Maiˆtre” have a “divine Me`re”? It is as if the Mother was not the “divine Me`re” and there was some other Mother and the “divin Maiˆtre” was not the Transcendent and had also a “divine Me`re”! Or is it that all these are addressed to something impersonal?

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 trans-formation, 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. The word “notre” is general, I believe, referring to all born into the earth-consciousness — it does not mean the Mother of the “Divin Maiˆtre” and myself. It is the Divine who is always referred to as Divin Maiˆtre and Seigneur. There is the Mother who is carrying on the Sadhana and the Divine Mother, both being one but in different poises, and both turn to the Seigneur or Divine Master. This kind of prayer from the Divine to the Divine you will find also in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

21 August 1936

*

There are some Prayers of the Mother of 1914 in which she speaks of transformation and manifestation. Since at that time she was not here, does this not mean that she had these ideas long before she came here?

The Mother had been spiritually conscious from her youth, even from her childhood, upward and she had done Sadhana and had developed this knowledge very long before she came to India.

23 December 1933

*

There are many who hold the view that she was human but now embodies the Divine Mother and her “Prayers”, they say, explain this view. But, to my mental concep-tion, to my psychic being, she is the Divine Mother who has consented to put on her the cloak of obscurity and suffering and ignorance so that she can effectively lead us — human beings — to Knowledge and Bliss and Ananda and to the Supreme Lord.

The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a man-ifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing divine consciousness, not human turning into divine. The Mother was inwardly above the human even in childhood, so the view held by “many” is erroneous.

I also conceive that the Mother’s “Prayers” are meant to show us — the aspiring psychic — how to pray to the Divine.

Yes.

17 August 1938