A collection of short prose pieces on the Mother and her four great Aspects - Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati, along with 'Letters on the Mother'.
Integral Yoga
This volume consists of two separate but related works: 'The Mother', a collection of short prose pieces on the Mother, and 'Letters on the Mother', a selection of letters by Sri Aurobindo in which he referred to the Mother in her transcendent, universal and individual aspects. In addition, the volume contains Sri Aurobindo's translations of selections from the Mother's 'Prières et Méditations' as well as his translation of 'Radha's Prayer'.
THEME/S
Do you not refer to the Mother (our Mother) in your book?
Yes.
Is she not the "Individual" Divine Mother who has embodied "the power of these two vaster ways of her existence"1—Transcendent and Universal?
Has she not descended here (amongst us) into the Darkness and Falsehood and Error and Death in her deep and great love for us?
There are many who hold the view that she was human but now embodies the Divine Mother and her Prayers, they say, explain this view. But to my mental conception, to my psychic feeling, she is the Divine Mother who has consented to put on herself the cloak of obscurity and suffering and ignorance so that she can effectively lead us—human beings—to Knowledge and Bliss and Ananda and to Him.
The Divine puts on an appearance of humanity, assumes the outward human nature in order to tread the path and show it to human beings, but does not cease to be the Divine. It is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of a growing divine
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consciousness, not human turning into divine. The Mother was inwardly above the human even in childhood, so the view held by "many" is erroneous.
I also conceive that the Mother's Prayers are meant to show us—the aspiring psychic—how to pray to the Divine.
17 August 1938
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