Dear Friends, we have gathered a list of resources for US events celebrating Sri Aurobindo’s Birthday
12:00 PM August 15, Reading & Meditation in the Sri Aurobindo and Mother Sanctuary,
12:45 PM Vegetarian Lunch
2:00 PM Screening of Sri Aurobindo & The Earth’s Future, Part 1: From Darkness to Light
6:00 – 6:30 AM Sunrise meditation Sri Aurobindo Symbol Garden
11:00-12:00 PM Devotional music offering*
6:30 – 7:00 PM – Screening of the animated film Sri Aurobindo – A New Dawn
7 – 7:30 PM – Silent meditation
*Premsheela and Joan Allekotte, students of Sri Karunamayee, will offer devotional music in celebration of Sri Aurobindo’s birthday. Premsheela has offered music in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram – Delhi branch, for many years supporting the special celebrations and meditations.
An evening of readings and meditation in honor and celebration of Sri Aurobindo’s 150th Birth Anniversary.
4:00 PM: Come early for Meet & Greet!
4:30 PM: Darshan Program
5:30 PM: Group Meditation
6:30 PM: Dinner
The Early Years
On August 15th in 1872 a child was born in what was then called Calcutta (now Kolkata), in Northeastern India. At age seven, this child was sent across the sea to England with his two brothers by a father who wanted him to be educated and immersed in the English language, mindset, and culture. His father asked the boys’ caretakers to ensure that they spoke only English and retained nothing of Indian spirituality.
This child would later be known as Sri Aurobindo. He would lead a revolutionary movement to free India from British colonialism, revolutionize modern understanding of India’s most ancient spiritual texts, compose the longest poem in the English language, be nominated for two Nobel Prizes, found a unique ashram that created a bridge between India’s ancient past and the future of humankind, and inspire Auroville, the world’s most diverse spiritual community.
He was an intellectual genius who turned his laser focus to the exploration of yoga, both what it has been throughout history and what it promises for the future. He shared the daily challenges and breakthroughs of his yogic voyage in detailed notes, and later wrote thousands of pages of supportive letters to disciples who had joined his quest. In 1914 he met Mirra Alfassa, who he identified as an embodiment of the Divine Mother.
It was the Mother who founded Auroville. She guided its early development closely and her words and inspiration have shaped its development over decades. Decades before Auroville came to be, she “had a plan of the “ideal town”…with Sri Aurobindo living at the centre….on top of [a] hill.” And she said that “Auroville wants to be the first realisation of human unity based on the teaching of Sri Aurobindo, where [people] of all countries would be at home.”
Sri Aurobindo once said about the Mother that: “there is one divine Force which acts in the universe and in the individual and is also beyond the individual and the universe. The Mother stands for all these, but she is working here in the body to bring down something not yet expressed in this material world so as to transform life here — it is so that you should regard her as the Divine Shakti working here for that purpose.” Together Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have inspired many thousands of devotees to seek an “Integral Yoga”, a path of total self realization and alignment of all layers of the self, from the most physical to the highest spiritual.
Devotion to India
Despite his father’s wish that he become a proper English gentleman, from a young age Sri Aurobindo had “a natural attraction to Indian culture and ways of life, and a temperamental feeling and preference for all that was Indian.” His love for India compelled him to struggle for her freedom and call upon the Divine Mother to empower the revolution. And on August 15th, 1947 when India finally became a free nation, he wrote that
“August 15th is my own birthday and it is naturally gratifying to me that it should have assumed this vast significance. I take this coincidence, not as a fortuitous accident, but as the sanction and seal of the Divine Force that guides my steps on the work with which I began life, the beginning of its full fruition.”
Auroville is a crystallization of Sri Aurobindo’s vision, and it has been offered space to grow on the soil of India. The Mother once said “From the spiritual point of view, India is the foremost country in the world. Her mission is to set the example of spirituality.”
Today we celebrate the 75th anniversary of India’s birth as a nation that nurtures profound wisdom greatly needed by the broader world. And we celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo, who gave his entire life to the cause of human freedom, whether it be the freedom of a nation or the freedom of all people to experience the truth of their divinity.
In Honor of this Auspicious Day
Sri Aurobindo’s Action Journal “Homage to Sri Aurobindo”, extracts from the 1972 Anniversary Edition
The Complete Writings of Sri Aurobindo at Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry
Harmonies Inspired by Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry Recorded on August 7, 2022 at Auroville Radio
A Spiritual History of India in the Light of Sri Aurobindo
The Short Film Iniyan
An offering from Yatra Arts Media in Auroville, Iniyan is a whimsical fictional tale that captures the spiritual aspiration of Auroville to be a place of human unity and a bridge between ancient Indian traditions and the modern world. Iniyan sweetly articulates a call inspired by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother for humanity to manifest a life in harmony with each other and Mother Earth.”
