Saluting and invoking Sri Ganesh

Opening to Sri Aurobindo’s and Her consciousness is a long process; it is however possible fairly early on to realize that essentially each individual soul may find its own religion, for its relationship to the Supreme is unique and singular, although it is free from any sense of exclusivism or separation. As a spontaneous tendency, I would be inclined to revere and worship nature itself - a miraculous stone, an expanse of ocean surge, a wild flower on the wayside, the bark of a forest tree, sand dunes at dawn -, but I increasingly found myself adoring Her, this never before realized incarnation of an egoless formidable Presence here itself, upon this earth, now, now, now… For many years the construction of the Matrimandir was another occasion to serve the Presence in Matter and every inch of concrete that thus manifested towards the realization of our dream was felt and known to be “sacred” – vibrant with a dense promise. Living in India and moulded by Their hands and Their knowledge, boundaries between planes and realities gradually gave way to another sort of understanding. These many facets, powers, aspects of the One Divine that inhabit the inner life of every person in India became as familiar as the members of one’s own family – some better known and appreciated, some more distant and mysterious, as in every large family – and would include those other figures of monotheist traditions as well, in the sense that one can easily find in a puja room in a village somewhere in India the picture of Jesus side by side with that of Ram, or the calligraphied name of Allah next to a Vedic mantra. But the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s Yogic adventure is turned to the material earth as the Supreme Lord’s habitation and site of evolutionary manifestation and one learns to walk that path only when one has relinquished all cravings – including the craving for personal “salvation”. It is no longer a matter of seeking and finding release from this world of suffering and illusion, possibly with the help of one or the other of these deities or divine emissaries. It is a matter of concrete and effective, accelerated evolution and transformation – here itself. * *

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