AT THE FEET OF THE MOTHER
Ask Alok da

Regarding the Four Aspects of the Mother, Alok da, I sense a parallel in Sri Aurobindo’s evaluation of various poets in which they excel and in which they lack. Poets like Keats have a lyrical sweetness and beauty but lack vital power and raw force, which a poet like Browning has. 📜✒️😊🙏🏻🪷[…]

But he says again that Browning lacks lyrical beauty and refinement (in this sense, Keats embodies Mahalakshmi more but not exactly of Mahakali and vice versa). Some write beautiful small epigrams but lack a larger knowledge force and vision, while one may have the large vision but execution falters in its interrelation between minute parts together and vision of the whole, so in these cases, there’s a mismatch between Maheshwari and Mahasarawsati. If I try to evaluate all the activities that we endeavour upon in this way, one aspect of the Mother might be lacking while the other may predominate. How do I develop a keen eye to see what’s missing and how to correct it all the time?

And also It’s been a long time I’ve read his play he wrote when he was 18, called ‘The Harmony of Virtue’ but if I think about it now in retrospect the theme of the whole play in a sense is about These Aspects of The Mother, he talks about how a brute ferocity of tiger is graceful and artistic while in man it is in inharmonious and crude, So Sri Aurobindo way back, when he was a college Student, had the whole vision of the Mother? It’s understandable that Yogi Sri Aurobindo has this knowledge, but the college student who hasn’t begun his spiritual journey in any way had it?

Yes. Not only in poetry, as you have rightly pointed out, but in everything, in the least atom and grain of sand, one can see the working of the four aspects and the Knowledge and Power of the Divine Mother hidden behind it. 

Yes, Sri Aurobindo had the glimpses of his high destiny and the work ahead even as a 10-year-old, which one can see in his earliest poem, Light (written at 10). Harmony of Virtue reveals the fundamental truth of Truth itself that Truth is supreme harmony and delight. His other plays and poems are sheer delight. 

Evidently, there were quite a number of early glimpses of the Divine Mother before beginning his spiritual journey. We find it in his pre-yogic poems, Bengali writings, vision of the Divine Mother in Pune, as well as in Chandod. These early glimpses presaged what was coming. 

Affectionately,

Alok Da

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