Extracts from The Mother's diary, written during years of intensive yogic discipline. 'It may serve as a spiritual guide to three principal categories of seekers...' - The Mother
«Ce livre, écrit la Mère, a été composé avec les extraits d’un journal écrit durant des années de discipline yoguique intensive» Ces 313 prières et méditations ont été écrites pour la plupart entre 1912 et 1917.
'Prayers and Meditations' consists of extracts from the Mother’s spiritual diaries. Most of them are from the period 1912 to 1917. The 313 prayers reproduced here were selected by the Mother for publication. Written in French, they appear here in English translation. 'This book comprises extracts from a diary written during years of intensive yogic discipline. It may serve as a spiritual guide to three principal categories of seekers: those who have undertaken self-mastery, those who want to find the road leading to the Divine, those who aspire to consecrate themselves more and more to the Divine Work.' - The Mother
The 313 prayers comprising this volume were selected by the Mother from her spiritual diaries. These diaries were destroyed after the selection was published. The original French text, entitled Prières et Méditations de la Mère, was first brought out in 1932. A second edition, which included one new prayer and an introductory note by the Mother, was issued in 1944. Subsequent editions were published in 1952, 1973, 1980 and 1990 under the shortened title Prières et Méditations.
An English translation of the entire text, entitled Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, was first published in 1948. A second edition, newly translated and with the shortened title Prayers and Meditations, was brought out in 1979 as Volume 1 of the Collected Works of the Mother. New impressions of that edition were issued in 1979, 1988, 1997 and 1999. The present, third edition has the same text as the second.
In 1941 English translations of sixty-one prayers (about one-fifth of the complete text) were published under the title Prayers and Meditations of the Mother. Six of those prayers were translated by Sri Aurobindo in their entirety, three others in part. For the rest, he revised the translations made by disciples. Further revisions were made by Sri Aurobindo when he corrected the page proofs at the time of publication. A second edition of the book, containing three more prayers added by the Mother, was issued in 1962. New editions were brought out in 1969, 1971, 1975 and 1979; the last of these editions has been reprinted several times. The sixty-four prayers in the 1962 edition were incorporated into the 1979 edition of the complete text.
For the first English edition of selected prayers, the Mother wrote an introductory note which she dated "September 1941". She recopied this note in 1948 for the first edition of the complete text in English, dating it "1941-1948"; this note is reproduced in facsimile at the
Page 387
beginning of this book. It is followed by an English translation of the introductory note she wrote for the 1944 (French) edition.
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