Footprints of God

Journey: Towards The New And The Unknown

Beyond the boundaries

I have wrapped the wide world in my wider self

And Time and Space my spirit's seeing are. . . .

All Nature is the nursling of my care,

I am the struggle and the eternal rest;

The world's joy thrilling runs through me, I bear

The sorrow of millions in my lonely breast. . . .

I pass beyond Time and life on measureless wings,

Yet still am one with born and unborn things.

Sri Aurobindo

A moment of transition: Impressions of Motilal Roy*

Sri Aurobindo's sadhana at Chandernagore went on with intensity. He saw many visions on the subtle planes. He used to see figures of three Goddesses at the time of meditation. They were seen going away at the end. It was later when he went to Pondicherry that he knew them to have been Ila, Mahi (Bharati) and Saraswati, the Vedic goddesses.

*

My first contact with Vedic thought came indirectly while pursuing certain lines of self-development in the way of Indian Yoga, which, without my knowing it, were spontaneously converging towards the ancient and now unfrequented paths followed by our forefathers. At this time there began to arise in my mind an arrangement of symbolic names attached to certain psychological experiences which had begun to regularise themselves; and among them there came the figures of three female energies, Ila, Saraswati, Sarama, representing severally three out of the four faculties of the intuitive reason, — revelation, inspiration and intuition. Two of these names were not well known to me as names of Vedic goddesses, but were connected rather with the current Hindu religion or with old Puranic legend, Saraswati, goddess of learning and Ila, mother of the Lunar dynasty. But Sarama was familiar enough.

*

Reason for leaving politics

I did not leave politics because I felt I could do nothing more there; such an idea

• Sri Aurobindo stayed briefly with Motilal Roy at Chandernagore on his way to Pondicherry .

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was very far from me. I came away because I did not want anything to interfere with my Yoga and because i got a very distinct adeua in the matter. I have cut connection entirely with politics, but before I did so I knew from within that the work I had begun there was destined to be carried forward, on lines I had foreseen, by others, and that the ultimate triumph of the movement I had initiated was sure without my personal action or presence. There was not the least motive of despair or sense of futility behind my withdrawal. For the rest, I have never known any will of mine for any major event in the conduct of the world-affairs to fail in the end, although it may take a long time for the world-forces to fulfil it.

*

I entered into political action and continued it from 1903 to 1910 with one aim and one alone, to get into the mind of the people a settled will for freedom and the necessity of a struggle to achieve it in place of the futile ambling Congress methods till then in vogue.

The facts of the departure: A command from Above

I suddenly received a command from above, in a Voice well known to me, in three words: "Go to Chandernagore." In ten minutes or so I was in the boat for Chandernagore [Feb. 1910] ... I remained in secret entirely engaged in Sadhana and my active connection with the two newspapers ceased from that time. Afterwards, under the same "sailing orders" I left Chandernagore and reached Pondicherry on April 4, 1910.

Sri Aurobindo

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