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It is only in the very recent history, with the discovery of photography, that the sojourn upon earth of very great spiritual masters could be visually documented and recorded. Prior to this, there were few occasions or means to preserve the actual features and expressions of such beings for posterity, apart from rare paintings and portraits which were often done from memory or impressions received and transmitted. Nowadays, with the worldwide use of Internet and the ensuing leveling of all knowledge as information, the distinctions between highly developed ethical personalities, skilled practitioners of occultism, gurus of one yogic tradition or another, saints, wanderers, realized souls, enlightened beings, moral teachers, exemplaries of right action, emanations and incarnations, are not only blurred, but often willfully eroded or ignored. However the fact remains that there is a natural self-evident hierarchy, probably the only hierarchy that is not arbitrary, amongst all those who have taken spiritual birth. In order to introduce this pictorial document and testimony to the lives of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, I have elected to refer to four spiritual giants whose terrestrial presence has been photographically recorded: Shirdi Sai Baba, Sri Ramakrishna and his disciple Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramana Maharshi. All four are continuous sources of inner riches and true development for all human beings. But what exactly is meant by “spiritual master”?

Of the four, the “eldest” in time is Sri Ramakrishna who, born on 18-02- 1836, passed away on 16-08-1886, only fifty years of age

Sri Aurobindo, who was born on 15-08-1872, thus lived in the body of the earth very nearby geographically to Sri Ramakrishna for the earliest part of his childhood.

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